Creatures of the Night

Chapter One

Every day is the same mind-numbing routine. I wake up, venture from the tunnels, serve breakfast for the hunters, weed the gardens, make lunch, clean the tunnels, and then cook dinner. And finally, the most important step—go back into the tunnels and don't leave until sunrise. I thought that by the time I turned nineteen I would've been able to hunt like everybody else. That I'd already have ventured farther than the tree line that guards our village. I was wrong.

"Did you slice the carrots, Milena? Remember, Charles likes them extra thin."

The carrots on the chopping board lie in crooked chunks beside the blunt knife. "Yes, Cynthia."

Her gray hair pops up from behind the wooden countertop, her thick eyebrows pulled together as she eyes the hacked-up carrots in front of me. Darius, her thirteen-year-old son, lingers behind, pulling a face behind her back. In charge of food preparation, Cynthia has been bossing me around for half my life now, so her disapproving tone barely affects me.

"That's not thin." Her nose wrinkles. "You're turning twenty this week, child, yet you still don't know a slicer from a knife."

My best friend, Flo, who stands beside me, warns me to keep my mouth shut with a shake of her head, and I bite my tongue. The only time I ever talked back to Cynthia, I was put on cleaning duties for a month. Alone. I couldn't go more than a few hours without having to pick dirt from my fingernails.

"I'm sorry. I'll try again."

"Good." She brushes her hands on her apron. "All the vegetables need to be sliced and in the pot. You have an hour before the hunters return, two before the sun sets. Make sure dinner is prepared and ready in the tunnels."

"Yes, Cynthia," Flo and I chime. The matron turns on her heels, grabs Darius's hand, and drags him outside, the door swinging shut behind them.

Flo's shoulders slump, red hair spilling over them. "She's such a nightmare. I know the hunters are important, but I'm pretty sure how thin the carrots in the stew are is the last thing on their minds when they get back."

"Yeah." Still, I'm slicing the carrots as thinly as I can manage. "Who would've thought that I'm days away from turning twenty and still stuck on cooking and gardening?"

"You get to clean sometimes too."

"Oh, joy."

"Come on, Millie." Flo picks the bucket of potatoes up off the floor and dumps it on the wooden countertop. "It's not that bad."

"Easy for you to say. Charles let you hunt the moment you came of age."

"You turn twenty soon," she says without looking at me. "And then you'll get your wish."

"Everyone else only had to wait until they turned sixteen." Flo peels the potatoes, as there's nothing she can say to make me feel better. She knows it's true. My entire life, I've been prohibited from venturing into the forest. While everyone else had some freedom starting at sixteen, Charles kept me here, wanted me safe. "Come on," I say. "Let's weed the garden while we wait for the stew to boil."

Chucking the carrots and the rest of the potatoes into the simmering pot, Flo follows me out of the wooden shack we use as a kitchen. The sun glares down at us as we wander toward the vegetable patch behind it. The village we live in doesn't look like much. With one, sole building aboveground, the rest of the clearing consists of gardens and a thin stream before a large, clear area that separates us from the reaches of the forest. To a passerby, the building would be as inconspicuous as a run-down shack.

As Flo tugs at some weeds, I lean back on my heels and gaze across the clearing at the tree line. The sun bathes the tips of trees in gold as it begins its descent, dipping between the distant mountains. Figures of hunters form in the gaps between the trees. Charles is first to come into the open, a dead boar thrown over his shoulder and four hunters following behind. Like every other day, a crowd gathers around the entrance to the tunnels beside the kitchen shack, mostly children, welcoming the hunters back. Life seems normal, like a regular day of hunting. But it isn't. The hunters never return early.