Page 3 of Argurma Warrior (The Argurma Chronicles #1)
M egan Hart stared out the window at the dead world outside the city walls. In this world no one knew her as that, however. Or rather her grandfather had painstakingly taught her to play the piano as he had been taught before the world went to hell. She remembered her grandfather petting her head as he smiled down at her proudly in the slowly decaying ruins of his family home, his eyes rheumy with his advanced age. Still the corners had crinkled merrily, and his smile had been wide as he regaled her with stories of the world as it had once been when he was a child.
He often had a far-away look in his eye—not quite there in the present world her father had explained—but she had loved her grandfather more than any other, and if he didn’t wish to live in that world but preferred his memories, then she was all the happier to exist there with him. She still remembered the awe she had felt the day that he told her that the hart which her family was named for was no ordinary creature but a great deer. A fast and a noble beast. A creature of kings.
A mirthless laugh fell from her lips. A creature of kings indeed. Now that she was a woman, she didn’t see it as being quite so magical. Especially not since seeing a few scraggly, half-starved deer make their way past the city in their forage.
A deer was nothing more than prey. No matter how anyone dressed them, in the end—that was simply what they were. Not that it mattered. She was no longer Megan Hart. That woman died years ago.
All she was here was Meg, one of the unfortunate camp women who had come to the city who had sold themselves for safety. A woman looked down at with pity by the women of the city, and with disgust by those women who had been imprisoned within the camp and tortured for refusing to submit.
Not that she could blame them. Although she had seen it as the best choice she could make at that time, and a simple matter of survival, now that it was over, she felt unclean. No matter how many baths she took or how hard she scrubbed herself, she couldn’t scrub out the shame.
The difference between her and the others who had served the camp was that she found the stares and whispers intolerable while the others seemed simply grateful for the safety and food that didn’t require humiliating and degrading themselves for scraps. Of course, having hot water and electricity, due to the scavenged supply of generators that had kept the city going since the devastation, was a huge selling point for the city. Because of them she was able to enjoy hot baths since arriving. But hot water and the comforts offered by electricity were like a band aide on the real problem… an illusion to convince them all that they were safe and could have a normal life
She closed her eyes as a faint tremble ran through the structure of the building. Another earthquake. Between the horrible storms that ravaged the coastal city and the earthquakes, it was a constant reminder that the world was rapidly dying all around them. Sure, it had been in decline all their lives, but the signs of planetary death that her grandfather had often sadly spoken of had escalated in recent years. If Earth survived the devastation, he used to say, it would be in a new form and one that lacked human life. Humans had tossed dice with fate and had lost. Knowing that had long made her a big believer in “enjoy what comforts one could while they could,” but after living under the tyranny of the Red Reaper gang in Phoenix where she had been forced to give up everything for the illusion of safety and food, the idea of just surviving regardless of the cost left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Everyone else could pretend all that they wanted, but Meg knew that safety was as much of an illusion in The City as it had been in Phoenix. The only difference was that instead of a gang, their lives were held in the hand of a council and for all their talk of compassion and mercy, even the smallest slight perceived as an inability to “get along” risked getting expelled into the wilderness beyond the city gates.
Meg snorted. It wasn’t even a real city. It was called The City as a remembrance of the height of humanity but the city itself was nothing more than a small collection of reinforced buildings that withstood the quaking and howling of the world around them. She was pretty sure it was one of the compounds that her grandfather recalled his father bitterly speaking of, places that were established for the wealthy whose descendants clearly still ran them. At times, she wondered if they would even have been allowed into the city if the council hadn’t had some use for them.
Her lips pinched and she picked up the trimmers and turned them on, their soft hum filling the room as she squared up to the mirror in front of her. The face that stared back at her had a bone structure that gave the illusion of roundness despite the gauntness under her cheekbones from years of scavenging for what food she could find. It had filled out a little with the carefully measured rations that were given out to them but that didn’t take away the flinty look in her dark eyes. Gathering her closely shorn curls tightly in one hand, she lifted the trimmers and glided the edge through the mass, watching with satisfaction as the damp curls dropped away to the floor. There, they joined the mass of long curls that she had hacked away with the scissors sitting on the counter in front of her.
It was the ultimate cleansing. As the hair fell away leaving nothing more than stubble, a lightness permeated her, a light briefly filling the dark void of taint that had settled into her for so long. She needed this. A new beginning. But a true new beginning where she could take control of her future couldn’t happen where she was, where everyone would remind her with every look that she was a broken woman, soiled by her choices.
Hence the decision she had finally arrived at.
“So, you’re going through with it. Are you really sure about this, Meg?” Dani, another young woman from the camp, gnawed nervously at her bottom lip as she watched uncertainly from where she sat on the bed.
“As certain as I’m going to be about anything,” Meg replied, brushing off the last of the cut hair from her head, her scalp visible beneath the spray of dark fuzz that now covered her head. She met the other woman’s eyes in the mirrors and tried her best to dredge up a smile, though there hadn’t been much to smile about for ages. “I know you don’t get it, but I need this, Dani. I get tired of being gossiped about. I feel like I’m suffocating here.”
“The gossip isn’t so bad,” Dani whispered. “At least here it’s safe and no one’s demanding that you pay for it on your back.”
“Doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening anyway,” Meg returned a little sharper than intended. “You don’t see the men buying time with the other women by bringing them little gifts as they do with the Reapers’ camp girls, do you?”
Dani’s face fell and Meg kicked herself, feeling like the world’s biggest bitch. She really wasn’t meant for human company anymore. Wrestling for survival in the Reaper camp only to continue being treated as something less after her escape from it had twisted something within her into an ugly thing. Dani was trying so hard to find some small grain of happiness, and Meg was shitting all over it.
Sighing, she plopped on the bed beside the other woman and clasped her hand in hers. “Hey, it’s okay to be happy,” she assured her. “I just can’t be. Not here with the constant reminders of the past. I need to escape it. And the council did say that there are groups that migrate up and down the coast. I can hook up with one of them, I’m sure. I will at least feel like I’m taking charge of my own destiny for once.”
Meg’s lips twisted grimly. This entire conversation felt very familiar, except now she was sounding a lot like Terri had back then when her friend had tried to convince her to leave the Reaper camp. In consequence, she finally understood how Terri had felt all those times that Meg had tried so hard to talk her into joining the “safety” of the camp. She hadn’t understood then why her friend valued her freedom and being in complete charge of her own destiny over safety, but she got it now. Boy did she ever.
Now Meg felt guilty for all the times she had uncharitably thought Terri believed herself to be better than them with her determination to survive on her own as she kept out of reach of the Reapers. She hadn’t believed herself better than them any more than Meg did now. She just hadn’t been able to tolerate that which would have been intolerable to her. Of having all choice and autonomy stripped away. Of being less than human as someone’s plaything and unable to escape.
Meg got that now more than ever because she had lived with that reality every day, even when she pretended that it was worth what she had gained. It had been center in her mind every time that asshole Dale slapped her or passed her off to one of the other guys to keep the peace. He got what he deserved in the end but at the time she had lied to herself because he at least made sure she had a scrap of food to eat and shelter that it was worth it. Now that she was far beyond it, she recognized it for what it had been. She saw everything so much more clearly that she couldn’t go back to that shit or exist in any semblance of that existence anymore of being grateful for whatever it cost just to be kept barely surviving.
How she fucking wished she had understood back then. Fuck, she might have even left with Terri. She hadn’t been invited but when her friend left Earth with the alien salvager there had been an opportunity that she had fled from. A chance to go into the scary unknown and escape a dying world and the painful past and desolate future held here. But she had been too afraid. Now it was too late.
Dani gave her a watery smile. “Yeah, that’d be nice.” A tiny puff of air escaped her. “I wish I were brave like you. Being able to start over would be wonderful. But the world out there is too scary, and I like the little gifts and the nice things that we have living here. Still, I do get it, Meg, and I do want us all to be happy, regardless of where we all are.”
“Me too,” Meg sighed, “but I’m not brave. I’m a terrified mess. And truthfully, part of that fear of being under another’s control frightens me as much in The City as it had in the camp. That world out there scares the hell out of me, but I’m afraid of what staying here will do to me. It is a miracle that Dale, that asshole I was ‘ with ,’ or one of his friends, hadn’t killed me. I escaped that and am not looking that good fortune in the mouth. All I can do is take a chance to find something better.”
She wrapped her arms around Dani and gave her a tight hug. “But I don’t want you worrying about me. Just focus on that happiness you’ve found. Have all of those fat babies you talk endlessly about,” she teased, making her friend giggle as she hugged her back.
Wiping her tears from her eyes, Dani’s smile widened as she pulled away. “Okay, I’ll try not to worry. I’ll just think of you finding a group out there and being settled in all snug in a little tent on the beach with someone who can make you forget all that crap. I’ve found that and I want that for you as well. Promise me that you will seize it when it comes. Even if it scares you.”
“I promise,” Meg murmured.
Dani nodded and stood, her hand straightening the simple, clean dress she wore. “Ok, well I’ll let you get on your way. But I love you, Meg, so you take care of yourself.”
Meg gave her a little salute. “Will do.” She watched, heart in her throat, as Dani headed toward the door. This was it, her last chance to say a real goodbye. She had squandered that once, she wouldn’t again. “Hey, Dani?”
Dani turned and raised an eyebrow.
“Love you, too. I think you saved me in the camp. I’m going to miss your face,” Meg said earnestly. Ten years younger than her, Dani had been a spirit of hope that had lifted her on her darkest days, her small hands tending the wounds that Meg had sometimes returned to their shared tent with. “Have a great life.”
Dani beamed and blew a kiss before ducking out the door and closing it firmly behind her. Meg rubbed her chest as she stared at the shut door. She was alone. She let that sink in for a moment before bending down to grab her packed bag sitting at the foot of the bed. She slung it over her shoulder as she stood and gave her room one last look. It had been her refuge for over a year. Now, it was finally time to go.
Without a backward glance, she stepped out of the room and headed for the staircase that would take her out of the building where the camp women lived. No one stopped her as she made her way out. Since she had gained a reputation for being unfriendly within the city, it didn’t shock her that no one tried. Even the guards posted at the city gates gave her annoyed looks as if her departure was nothing more than an inconvenience to them.
But it didn’t matter. The moment she stepped out onto the packed, dry earth, that small, hidden part in her lightened further and for the first time she felt a small smile tug at her lips. As she stepped out into her future, she entertained the thought that just maybe Terri would be proud if she could see her now.
For Meg there was nothing but hope laid out before her and a sense of self-pride in finally freeing herself.