Page 85 of Beyond The Maples
"This is your last warning. Open, or we're coming in." His voice is so commanding I wonder how anyone can resist it. We stand still and listen. I hear a creak in the floorboards behind the door.
Tane starts counting down from three, and just before he gets to one, the door whips open and a disgruntled woman huffs at him.
"No need to be so impatient. I move slowly. Pleasedo come in," she mocks. Her long brown hair is peppered with white, falling around her thin face as she moves awkwardly into the room.
Tane nods his head, ducking his giant frame to get into the small, run-down house. We follow, and I'm immediately thrown off by the space. I don't know what I was expecting; I think probably some kind of defector’s lair, with weaponry and plans of mass destruction.
Instead, we're standing in a home. Not much bigger than the one Linden, Willow and I live in. It's got that New Providence charm, with worn, scavenged pieces slapped together. The only difference is the woman living here has clearly done a better job of making it look homey. There's a tablecloth and candles on the small dining room table. A few pieces of art sit atop a shelf, something drawn by a child.
"Where's your husband?" Tane demands.
"He's right here," comes a raspy voice from the back of the house.
Vera's holding the man by the collar and shoving him through the tiny back room. He wants to fight her off, but she's got her gun out. The man looks livid. He and his wife must be around fifty, maybe? Definitely older than Berkley, who is now coming through with Tarius.
My eyes pinball when I see the tiny figure they have locked between them. It's a little boy. I almost lose my composure completely. He looks terrified.
"Who's this?" Taneasks.
"I have no idea," Vera gripes back. She tosses the man at the woman with anything but gentleness and stomps over to Tane. "This is not what we were told this was going to be, Tane." She's the furious one now. Tane's eyes are darting between the family members. Even I'm confused. They look a little old to be his parents.
Berkley lets go of the kid who runs straight into the woman's arms.
"What is the meaning of this? What do you want? We have nothing to offer you," the man says, chest heaving.
Had they tried to run? While the woman distracted us? Makes sense, she was hobbling when she opened the door, she wouldn't have made it far.
Tane reaches into his upper thigh pocket, pulling out a paper and handing it to the man.
The man’s face goes white.
"No, no you can't just come in here and take us.We've done nothing wrong." His words come out as a shout at first, but end in a plea, "Take me, but leave them."
Tane's face pinches into something I can't discern.
"We have orders," he responds there's almost an apology in his voice, which has me hesitating until he says, "Cuff them while we search the property."
Berkley and Tarius come around to cuff the man and his wife to their dining room chairs.
Vera storms out the back of the house.
"Go in pairs," Tane mutters, without making eye contact.
Farra and I head out the front to do a quick assessment, and my eyes snag behind the town. We're closer to the barrier. I can almost see faint movement in the endless white light. What is that? I blink a few times, convinced my eyes are playing tricks on me. The white seems to morph from pearlescent to an ominous grey. It's quick, but I see it ––the movement of dark swimming in the light. I've never heard it described this way. The more I stare, the more I wonder what those flecks of darkness are that seem to lurk beneath the light.
Faintly, I can hear the man inside pleading. My heart constricts, making my feet move faster and further away. They don't look like defectors, although neither did the girl from the church.
Farra and I are silent as we reach the abandoned town. The buildings are half stripped of material, sitting forgotten.
The forest is also closer, albeit further than the barrier, and I feel pulled in both directions. Eager to explore the eerie black shadow that I know is the dead forest. I wonder if that's the forest I was named after; I think back to the map I saw, and I'm pretty sure it is. The Lindens are past the mountain ranges, and the Willows only grew on the islands.
Mom used to love telling us the stories of "our" forests. She would say that each held their own special magic––that was connected deeply to the earth, and yet they were all as different as the three of us were.
As I continue to walk, I notice how the air changes the further I go. It feels lighter, my lungs feeling free.
I get the faintest waft of sulphur, and turn to look, when I spot something along a fence. Is that… grass? I jog over to the fence and, sure enough, there's grass growing here.
"Farra!" I holler, snapping her attention to me from where she wandered.
