Page 84 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rachel

L iv approaches me as I’m heading back to the hut I share with Lorna to sleep.

“Do you have a minute?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say, hating that my heart trips over itself with nerves.

I’ve been careful to hide my sickness - making sure I eat through it, never complaining.

Hiding away in the healer’s hut when it gets too much.

I haven’t taken any of Shemza’s remedies, too afraid he’d notice the diminishing supply and have questions.

No one has said anything to me yet, but every time someone asks to speak with me, I’m still afraid they might have noticed something.

It’s not easy to pretend to be okay all the time, especially when your head is twisting itself inside out with worry.

Grace said they put birth control in our food.

That’s why no bottom tier girl ever got pregnant since I was about ten.

It wasn’t enough to work us to death in the factories.

We were still breeding too fast. Even when half the babies died - like my younger siblings who never got as far as being named - we were still multiplying faster than they could drive us into the ground.

So I can’t be pregnant. I can’t.

But even as I think it, I remember all the meals Jeremy cooked for me with his middle tier food. Food that wouldn’t have been laced with the cocktail of drugs they kept us bottom tier folk on. Would those missed doses have been enough to cause the birth control to fail?

“It’s about what was discussed in the meeting earlier,” Liv says, which doesn’t make me feel any better.

Liv has promised to update everyone later, but whatever the topic of the meeting, it looked serious.

It’s entirely vain to think it was about me, but that’s where my head goes, Mama’s voice insisting that they’ve figured me out.

They’re going to get rid of me because I’m so much of a burden.

Mentally, I tell that voice to shut up, and try to smile at Liv.

“What can I do to help?”

Liv smiles, and I relax a little.

“I really appreciate how you’ve got stuck in around here,” she says. “You’ve been such an example to the others. I feel bad for asking more of you, but you’re the best person for this job.”

I flush at the compliment, grateful it’s dark enough that Liv likely can’t see the colour in my cheeks. No one has ever thought of me as the best person for anything before.

“The meeting was to discuss the future of the tribe,” Liv continues. “Gregar wants to bring other tribes from the area together with this one, so we are all better protected from tribes like the Cliff Top one that attacked as we were travelling here.”

I think of Khadija setting her traps. Lorna’s question.

They can keep us safe, right?

“Sounds sensible,” I say.

“He’s sending messengers to two nearby tribes. I want two of us to accompany them. Maldek is going with Sam. The other messenger is Vantos. I was hoping you would be okay with going with him?”

“Oh,” I say, unable to think of anything else fast enough.

“If you’re not comfortable with it, tell me.

I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do.

I know it’s a lot - the travelling, and being alone with someone who you can’t communicate with.

I’m asking you because you’re one of the few people who’s spent any time with him, but also because you seem like you’re doing a bit better than some of the other girls. But if it’s too much, that’s fine.”

“I don’t mind,” I say. “I mean, Vantos - he’s alright. I’m okay with being alone with him.”

Liv’s shoulders relax. “Are you sure? It’s not a long journey - a few days at most. And you don’t have to do anything when you get there. Just exist. I just want the other tribes to see that Gregar’s not trying to trick them in any way. That we are real, you know? And worth protecting.”

I nod. It will be a lot. Not being with Vantos, we’ve got on fine before now, even with the communication barrier.

But the travel. Leaving the comfort of the village.

Sleeping on the hard floor again. I’m not like Khadija and Ellie - I didn’t have a super physical job back home.

I spent all day every day folding up the clothes produced by the clothing sector and packaging them for sale in the upper tier districts.

Fiddly work - it made my eyes and back and fingers ache - but not the kind of thing that made anything about me strong.

But I keep thinking - if I do this, it’s just one more way I am contributing more to the tribe than I’m taking out. If I do this, they can’t possibly turn me away.

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” Lorna asks when I tell her what Liv said.

I shrug. “It needs to be done, doesn’t it?”

Lorna shudders. “I don’t want to ever go back out in the forest. It creeps me out. I don’t know why Ellie was in such a rush to get back out there. And just the two of you? I don’t think I’d feel safe.”

I get what she’s saying, but also, my mind flashes back to Vantos jumping in front of me when the Cliff Top tribe attacked. He already took three arrows to the chest to defend me. I know he’ll keep me safe.

“It’s not far,” I say as Lorna sits on her bed and starts doing the exercises to strengthen her arm.

She has to open her fingers, then clench them in a fist, rotate her wrist in different directions and generally warm up and stretch the muscles three times a day.

At first, it used to pain her a lot. Now, she goes through the exercises without wincing.

“Looks like it’s getting better,” I say.

“I think so. Hopefully soon I won’t be so useless.”

“You’re not useless now,” I say. “Just a bit hindered.”

Lorna smiles, but her expression quickly shifts to serious.

“I know it’s stupid, but, sometimes I freak myself out.

All this - living in the village, getting fed and cared for - is too good to be true, you know?

It’s alright for Liv and Ellie, all mated and pregnant.

What do I offer to the tribe? Nothing. And I know the raskarrans have been nothing but generous and kind and have never made any suggestions that we have to do anything, but sometimes I get thinking a bit too much when my arm is aching me at night and I can’t sleep.

And I start worrying that one day they’ll turn round and say, ‘Well, we gave you a chance to mate to one of the tribe and you didn’t, so now we’re getting rid of you. ’”

It’s unnerving hearing my own thoughts spoken by someone else.

“I’ve been thinking things like that, too,” I say.

“I think it’s only natural,” Lorna says.

“We never mattered to anyone back home more than the value our work could provide. It’s hard to imagine that someone could care about us just because, you know?

Like I said, I know it’s stupid, but I can’t stop myself thinking about it.

I’ll be glad when I can be like you - learning a new skill and doing something with my time other than lounging about. ”

Like me. Hah. The words are on the tip of my tongue. I could tell her the truth. Sharing my fears might make them a little easier.

But it would also make them more real, and just like with Grace before, my mouth dries up. The words stick. I can’t do it. I just can’t.

“It won’t be long before you can,” I say instead, and the words have the same taste as a lie.

“Hopefully,” Lorna says. “And maybe when these new tribes join us, we’ll find our mates. Then we can be all mated and pregnant, too.”

I wonder if my face is saying something I’m not, because she shoots me a shy little smile, and adds, “If you want to be, I mean.”

“I, um.” My mouth clams up, the back of my neck prickling with sweat. I never feel sick this late in the evening, but my stomach churns suddenly.

Lorna gives me an uncertain look. “Did you love him? The guy you were with back home. Do you miss him?”

“I… I thought I did. I thought he loved me. I was wrong about that, though, so maybe I was wrong about the first part, too.”

If she notices I don’t answer the second of her questions, she doesn’t press me, just starts nestling down into her bed, getting comfortable ready to sleep.

We sleep in the kids’ room. There are two beds tucked into it - smaller than the bed in the main room, but because we humans are so much smaller than the raskarrans, they’re a perfect size for us.

We could have taken a bedroom each but after days of sleeping all crushed together on the parachute, I don’t think either of us wanted to face the loneliness of sleeping by ourselves.

I try to settle myself, but I feel wide awake, my eyes open as I stare at the ceiling overhead.

Do I miss Jeremy? For long tracks of time, not at all. I don’t even think about him. But sometimes at night when I’m restless, it all comes back. The hurt and heartbreak. The knowledge that even when I was lying next to him, I was as far away from him as I am now.

I close my eyes and try to push thoughts of Jeremy out of my mind. Try to relax. It’s the last night I’ll have in a nice cosy bed for a little while. I should make the most of it.

Liv brings me a small bag the next morning to pack a change of clothes and some supplies.

Optimistically, I pack the pads that Sally gave me for when my bleeding starts.

I ignore the metallic taste in the back of my mouth and the roiling in my stomach and the fact that there’s no way it could be food poisoning, or a side effect of getting used to eating so well, now.

“Shemza is just giving Vantos one last check over, making sure he’s fit to travel,” she says. “If he’s not, we’ll come up with a new plan.”

“He will be,” I say, thinking of him stubbornly doing push-ups. There’s no way he would allow himself not to be fit enough. The thought makes me smile.

“You’re enjoying learning to heal?” Liv asks.

“Very much. Shemza is a good teacher, and I try to be a good student.”