Rayne (1)

A Chapter by Ally Baker

Rayne

“Bynx,” I say, sighing, as I enter the tiny bedroom. “You should be sleeping.”

“I know Rayne! I know! But I just can’t!” She tells me in a high little voice that only she can pull off without upsetting someone with its similarity to them.

But I know where this is going so I sit down on the edge of her bed. It was a really nice bed for The Colony. Ash had made it for her when she was only three years old. He had been out, above, opening the water tunnels that lead to the water tank in the northern part of The Colony during a thunder storm when a strike of lighting hit one of the many trees in the area. It fell immediately to the ground. His dad was the wood maker of The Colony so he knew a few things about wood. One was that he knew this tree would rot soon if we didn’t use it and that They would come to dispose of it since they like to keep everything so clean and that would mean risking finding our location. So, he went back to find his dad to help him bring it down to the woodshop. He knew Bynx and I had been sharing a bed for the past year since mom was sick and I didn’t want Bynx to catch it. So he made the bed for me but I insisted that Bynx should take it. I was fine with my mattress in the other corner of the room. Plus, the bed suited Bynx. It was soft wood but it was very sturdy and was still holding up well after six years.

Six years. Bynx is nine. Soon I will have to leave her. I’ll have to move into one of the bedrooms in the adult wing when its my time. Quickly, I count the days left for me in this room. Only eight days. I sigh, mentally, not wanting to upset her with this again. I would be 19 in only eight days. They had already given me an extra year to stay with her since we had only lost our mother a year before. But now they needed the mattress for Water, a girl leaving the maternity wing.

The Colony leaders are so strict about living situations. Between the age of birth and 5 years old a Natural Bred lives with their mother in the Maternity Wing. On the day of their fifth birthday, they move into the Student Wing, where the kids live with other kids during their learning years. Unlike what school once was, so many, many years ago, here we don’t learn algebra and physics and all that stuff. We learn how to stay alive. How to help The Colony. In our younger years we learn the basics: how to read and write and about all the different jobs in The Colony. Then, we take a sort of test that tells us what we would be best at doing for The Colony and then we spend the rest of our student years learning about that job and how to do it to the best of our talent.

The rest of the wings are pretty self explanatory. The Single Wing. The Couple Wing. The Marital Wing. The Elder Wing. The Leader Wing. We were lucky to have this place. Very lucky. None of us really know how it got here. The truth is that The Founder, my grandpa, stumbled upon one day when he was a kid. He kept it a secret from everyone. The place was huge, with the seven wings that each have around a dozen bedrooms. There is a washroom with a tub, and a toilet. The toilet doesn’t have plumbing obviously, but it does feed into some sort of river that carries away all waste of ours. There is a big kitchen with primitive utilities, or at least that’s what they tell us at school. This is the only life most of us have ever known. We’ve dug our way through some earth to build a school room and some extra storage rooms. One very surprising thing that was here was a medical wing. It wasn’t great but it had medicine, recipes for medicines that you can make of natural things like herbs and plants, a few gurneys, and some cots.

“Please Rayne! Just one story!” she begs me.

“Only one, Bynx,” I tell her while tucking the sheets tight around her tiny body. Unfortunately, one thing The Colony doesn’t have is heating. We’re nearing the cold season, I think once they called it Winter, I don’t know why. During the cold season though, I’m always worried about Bynx. I don’t want her to sick like Mom did. “Which story would you like to hear tonight?”

I watch her as she thinks it over in her head. “Tell me the one about when they first came here.”

I sigh. It’s her favorite story, although to everyone else it’s their least favorite. But I tell it to her anyway.

“It was around 50 years ago during the cold to hot season of the year. It was mid-afternoon and suddenly the temperature dropped from pleasant to bone chillingly cold. The skies turned grey and filled with the sound of humming. Immediately, Teddy knew that something was wrong. That something was going to happen. He was only the age of 20 then. He still lived at home with his parents, older brother, and two younger sisters. The younger sisters were twins and were both engaged to be married. He ran home from the far side of the lake where the underground house was located. Inside he found his entire family in the living room. They all looked at him, confused. ‘What is it, dear?’ his mother asked him. ‘We…need…to…get…out…of…here,’ he huffed out finally. They all looked shocked and genuinely perplexed. ‘What are you talking about Teddy?’ asked Claire’s fiancé. ‘They’re here. I know it. I can feel it in my soul!’ Teddy shouted at him. Now Bella’s fiancé stood to talk to Teddy. ‘Who is here?’ he asked. Teddy pauses to think about it. ‘I’m not sure really, who they are. But I know its not safe for us to stay here. Above ground. We need to go to the underground house.’ Now they all just looked at him like he was crazy. ‘Please’ he begged them. ‘Just come with me and I will show you!’ They all looked at one another and finally George and Billy decided to go with him. Claire and Bella went too, not wanting to be away from their fiancés. But his mother and father stayed, believe that their son was just going crazy from all the hours he spends in the sun. The minute they stepped outside of the house and felt the temperature, and the feeling of the atmosphere they believed him and followed him quickly across the farm. There was a tall tree that was the quickest known entrance at that point. They climbed a few branches and Teddy stopped to remove some covering of a hole on the trunk of the tree. Once he got it out of the way he crawled into it and starting climbing down the inside of the trunk. The others were confused but followed him down. Teddy had been saving up food and supplies for as long as he could, whenever he was able to. He had discovered that whomever had built the underground house had found a whole in the ceiling and put in mirrors to reflect it onto soil for growing vegetables. He thought it must have been for preparation by people before they lived there in case something happened. Something like this. Claire, Bella, George, and Billy were amazed by the place as Teddy showed them around. He was just getting to the gardening section when there was a loud, thundering THUD from above. Then some sort of sound like metal on metal. They ran to some sort of window disguised by overgrowth of trees and bushes. Far off they could see some sort of large ship with something come off of it. They had legs like spiders, 8 of them, they were even furry like tarantulas. They had torsos like horses with stripes like tigers but the colors of green and blue. They had short stubs of tails that just kind of sat there. Remember, Teddy said they were like animals called deer. Haven’t seen them ‘round here in ‘bout 45 years. They had arms like sticks, long, skinny, and just bony looking. As more and more got off the ship, about 15 in total, they noticed that some of Them had wings folded neatly on their backs. They were the same color as their generous eyes that took up most of their faces. One’s was neon green. Another’s bright baby blue. One’s was even pitch black, blacker than the sky of night. 5 years after the main settlers had joined The Colony, Sun had concluded that the ones with wings were the females. The part of their heads which was not covered with their large eyes was almost transparent. There was some sort of organ inside of their heads that you would automatically think were their brains, but it didn’t look like one, and it pumped like a heart. It was very large though, and had an orange color. Inside of it, it pumped some sort of greenish liquid. What were those animals that they said their feet looked like?” I ask her, breaking away from what Bynx calls my “story telling stare.” I look down at her calm, sleeping face. It was hard to believe that this little girl was one who had to live in such a strict environment.

I walk over to the lamp and blow out the flame. Walking over to my mattress, I feel around quietly so as not to stumble and wake Bynx. Laying down on my mattress, I pull my quilt around me and snuggle up against the wall. I have one last thought before drifting off to sleep.

Seven days tomorrow.

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