Light in Dark Places

Chapter Three

The guards let them out for a half hour for exercise and Agatha immediately finds her mother. She just wanted to see her, nothing more, but as soon as she does see her she collapses into her arms and holds her tight.

"It happened again, didn't it?" Rebecca whispers into Agatha's hair.

Agatha closes her eyes. Her mom doesn't know everything (yet) but she knows enough. She wants to stay like this, just like this, and let the moment stretch on forever.

Rebecca pulls back to look at her daughter. "Honey, who did that to you? Was it one of the guards?"

Agatha shakes her head. "It was Sempiternal."

"The red fiend? He—" her mother stops and looks around. They could get in trouble for calling him "fiend" instead of "god" like everyone else.

"It's not important," Agatha says.

"It is," Rebecca says firmly. "He can't hurt you like this. He's not supposed to—"

Agatha just shakes her head. Pulling back, she looks at the outer yard of the camp and sees everyone Carl Mathiessen doesn't want in his region: the people who don't look like him, who don't believe what he believes; the people who might rebel. There are people here who started out defiant, but day in, day out, they lost a little bit of themselves, and now there's nothing left.
It isn't like this everywhere, she wants to say. In other regions, in other Places, it's not like this here. Arissana is like a distant dream—a land where the people in power protect, instead of imprison, and Agatha Jaine doesn't know how to offer that kind of hope.
"Is it—are you going to be OK?" Rebecca asks.
"Yes, Mom. I'm going to be fine." Agatha can't stop looking at the people in this yard, many who will not be fine, and there is very little she can do for them.
"OK," Rebecca sighs. "Then, let's help where we can."
"Her," Agatha says immediately, looking at an old Hispanic woman, leaning against the wall.

*

In their life before the camp, Rebecca Jaine baked bread every weekend and distributed the food to anyone who needed it. Agatha tries very hard to match her mother's generosity, and it is part of their tenets to offer what comfort they can, even here (even here, where there is very little comfort to offer anyone).

"You shouldn't bother with an old woman like me," Rosa says, as Rebecca massages her foot. "But bless you, Mrs. Jaine. How did you even know it was just what I needed? I sprained my foot the other day..."

She trails off, sighing as the pain eases. Rebecca's Ash talent was called warm hands warm heart and it's what made her such a good baker. It is a soothing ability, a gentle ability, and here in this camp it is the only comfort anyone has.

"You people are so strange," Rosa says, her eyes closed. "You don't have to be here— oh, Ashes, it hurts."

Rebecca's hands still, thinking that she must have done something wrong. But then they all feel it, the earth shaking— they hear a crashing sound off in the distance and some people clutch their sides, falling on the ground.

"What's happening?" Rebecca asks, alarmed. She looks subconsciously towards Agatha, but it is Rosa who answers.

"That cabrón is ripping through the earth," Rosa says. "He is building more towers, more walls, he—"

"Ssh," Rebecca tries to soothe. Agatha takes Rosa's hand in hers, as if that could provide comfort in this moment.

Rosa's eyes fly open and she stares Rebecca. "My Ash talent is the ground beneath us. Do you know what that means? It means I feel it, when he tears open the earth. The more he takes away, I feel it. The more he takes, the less there will be for all of us—"