THIRTY-NINE - Atherton

Atherton struggles with his loyalties.

Atherton sat on his own, as far away from Quintessa and the others as they would let him.  The back of his head still throbbed from the rock she had thrown at him when he tried to head back into the city.  It had just started to feel better from when she had attacked him in the Barelands after his Exile.  He tried to sneak away one more time, but she headed him off and threatened to throw another stone.  He hadn’t tried to leave again after that.

After a few hours of waiting, he was getting extremely fed up.  How long do we have to sit and wait here?  If the plan was for them to cross beneath the Barelands, they won’t be back here.  We’re just wasting our time.  When they do leave, I don’t think I’m going back with them.  I don’t care what happens anymore.  Not unless they let me save my brother and sister.

As though she could hear his thoughts, Quintessa started talking to him from a distance.  “Everyone isn’t going to die.  Once they find out what danger they’re in, the smart ones will choose to leave.  The ones who make it across the Barelands will be welcome.  Your brother and sister, your friend… you don’t have to worry about them.”

Atherton didn’t say anything.  That’s not the point.  You’re trying to kill Xanthus.  Right now, he’s the only hope my siblings have to survive.  If you kill him, they’re going to die.  I’ll kill Draven if he lets that happen.

“How long are you going to make me wait here?  I thought they were crossing underneath the Barelands.”

“That’s assuming everything goes according to plan,” Quintessa said.  “Like you said, Xanthus isn’t even here.  Once things start going wrong, they might decide to postpone the other half of the plan for another day.  We’ll wait here for another hour, and then we’ll head back to the cliffs.”

Another hour of this.  I don’t think I can take it.

A few minutes later, Meridian came over and sat beside him.  He refused to be the first one to speak.  They sat in silence for a long time before she said anything.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I know this isn’t easy for you.  Maybe we shouldn’t have lied.  Then you might have been able to save your siblings.  I don’t know.  But… this is important.”

“The only thing that’s important to me is them.  I could forgive you for everything if you’d just tell Quintessa to let me go back in and save them.”

“I already tried.  She says we can’t risk it.”

“You did?”

“Yes.  Believe it or not, I have a heart.  And… if there’s anything I can do to make you feel better…” she put a hand on his leg.

“I’m not interested.”

“How do you know if you’ve never tried?”  She leaned in close.  “It’ll take your mind off things.”

He swatted her hand away.  “Leave me alone.  I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to look at you, and I definitely don’t want to touch you.”

She got up.  “Fine.  Just know you’re never getting another chance.”

“Yeah, well… you’re the last person I’d want another chance with anyway.  You’re a murderer, the same as your father.”

“We’re not killing anybody!  We’re saving our own lives.  If the people in Xantom are too stupid to leave when things get bad, then that’s their own fault.  You can’t hold us responsible.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”  He felt her standing there, staring at him through the darkness, waiting for him to say something more, but he didn’t give in.  Finally, he heard her footsteps receding towards the others.  She isn’t nearly as stealthy when she’s walking away.  She’s probably doing it on purpose.  Too bad, I’m not falling for it.  I still hate you.

After another half hour, Atherton decided to try a different approach.  He walked over to Dragomir and sat beside him.  “What if something happened to Wulfric?” he asked.  Dragomir turned to look at him.  He’s worried.  Of course he is.  He’s a human being.  “Wouldn’t you want someone to go in and make sure everything went okay before we turned around and left?”  Dragomir looked off towards the city.  He’s thinking about it.  It’s working.

“If something went wrong, there’s nothing you’d be able to do about it,” Quintessa said.  “If someone was able to take out Wulfric, you wouldn’t stand a chance.  Dragomir understood the risks when he let Wulfric go in there, the same as the rest of us did.  We’re not changing our minds.”

I should have tried to talk to him without Quintessa around.  That might have gone differently.  I was clearly reaching the man.  Then Dragomir rested his big, powerful hand on Atherton’s shoulder.  He squeezed gently, as if to say, “They’re going to be alright.”  Atherton couldn’t help it.  Tears began falling from his eyes and he averted his gaze so no one would notice.

“I don’t care if I die,” he said.  “I just want to do something.  I’m tired of just sitting here and waiting.  I want to know that Saxon and Sephora are okay.  They’re babies.  Just let me go in and check on them, I promise I won’t try to do anything else!  They’re my entire life.”

For the first time, it felt like Quintessa actually felt sorry for him.  She opened her mouth to respond when they heard noise growing in the distance and she turned away to figure out what was approaching.  There was a line of torches headed this way.

“Put out the torches.  Now.  Be quiet.”  Meridian and Atherton dug the tips of their torches into the dirt.  Smoke rose out of the ground in place of the fires that had been there prior.  They crouched down, trying to stay out of sight.

“Is it the Hunt?” Atherton whispered.

“I think so.  If it is, they’re back early… Be quiet,” was her only response.   He decided it was probably best to obey her.  As long as they were quiet, the Hunt would probably head straight back to the city without ever knowing they had been there.

The first thing Atherton noticed once the torches were out was the drop in temperature.  I’ve had to survive without fire before… why is it so much harder now?  Have I gotten used to this new life that quickly?  He still didn’t have enough layers to fight the cold.  He started shivering; his teeth clattered loudly.  Meridian slid closer to him.  Her cloak brushed against him and even just the small amount of fur made him feel a little warmer.

He nuzzled in closer to her cloak.  At the very least, it made his teeth stop clattering.  I still hate you.  But he didn’t say anything, and she threw the cloak over him.  The two huddled together.  It’s definitely warmer in here.  He knew she was looking at him, waiting for some form of thank you, but he refused to acknowledge her kind gesture, instead choosing to stare into the dirt.

The first audible voices came from a few body lengths away from them.  They tried to lower themselves, to make sure they remained unseen.  The hunters were a lot closer than Atherton had expected them to get, and based on Quintessa’s reaction, she hadn’t expected this either.

“We’re almost back now,” a man’s voice said.  “What are we supposed to tell them when they find out we don’t have the King with us?”

“We tell them the truth,” a woman’s voice said.  “We tell them that Xanthus refused to follow the rules, the rules that Emeric instilled for safety, and he ended up dying because of it.  He failed in finding us a new food source, but we can still rely on the old one.  The Dome provides.”

“The Dome provides,” a group of voices responded.

Atherton’s heart fell.  Xanthus is dead.  That means Saxon and Sephora are going to die any day… they don’t stand a chance without him protecting them.

Tears streamed silently down Atherton’s cheeks, freezing onto his face in the harsh cold air.  It was everything he could do not to let out some kind of noise, but he knew that would mean his own death, as well.  If anyone else knew he was crying, they didn’t let on.

“You’re sure he’s dead, right?” came the woman’s voice through the darkness.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” another man said.  “It was dark in the cave, but I know what I saw.  The Beast clawed him in the chest.  Sliced right through him.  He fell to the ground and then the Beast dragged him away into the caves.  I barely got out of there alive.”

“Thank you for bringing us the news.  Once again, the Dome has given us what we need.”

“At least he died doing what he set out to do.  We found where the Bareland Beasts live.  It may not be a new food source, but it’s a lead.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll share what you found, Valleaux.  Thank you, again,” the woman said.

“Maybe we can tell them right away.  I mean… maybe if the King’s Guard goes out, they’ll be able to take on one of the Beasts.  It might… it would be safer than us trying to do it.”

“We don’t need to,” came the woman’s voice.  She spoke in a low, soothing whisper.  “The Dome will never stop giving us what we need.”

“What if the Dome is giving us the Bareland Beasts?  We didn’t even know they were alive.  Maybe Xanthus died to bring us that information.”

“Then I’m sure the Dome will make that clear to us in the future.  For now, we have everything that we need.”

And then the conversation was past.  The two continued their discussion, but the footsteps of the remaining hunters swallowed up their voices.  Nobody elaborated on what the “old food source” was, or what exactly it was that the Dome was providing them with.

It doesn’t feel like the Dome is doing a very good job providing us with anything… people are starving to death every day.  And… if the hunters aren’t bringing back Bareland Beasts… what have we been eating?  They don’t know about the drywater pools or the swimmers we ate in the caves…

And then the entirety of the Hunt had gone past, leaving Atherton alone with Quintessa, Meridian, and Dragomir.  They lit their torches on the ground and sat in silence.  They had just learned a whole lot of new information that would likely have a huge impact on the future for everyone.

Quintessa turned to Atherton.  “What have you people been eating for all this time?  If they didn’t know the Bareland Beasts were alive…” she let it hang.

“I don’t know.  They don’t tell me anything.  I just eat what I can find.”

“They’ve been eating our friends,” Quintessa said.

Everyone was silent.  The more Atherton thought about, the more he knew it was true.  Draven did say they hated the hunters because they killed his people.  If they weren’t gathering any other kind of food on the Hunts…

“Do you still feel like we’re making a bad decision in letting the Xantomians die?” Quintessa asked.

“I…” he couldn’t answer.  His head was spinning from this new information.  “I didn’t know,” is all he could muster in the end.

“So now we can’t trust anyone,” Meridian said.  “We don’t know which people are good and which people are planning on eating us.”

“I don’t think it’s safe to invite anyone from Xantom to come with us for awhile.  I know you don’t like hearing that, Atherton, but it’s for the best.”

She may actually be right about that.  I can’t let her know I think so.

“I think it’s time we head back to the caves.  This is too much.”

The four of them turned around and began the long trek across the Barelands.