Light, Glorious Light

The Waste

"How'd you end up with The Yellow Suns."

"Birth mother was prisoner of Blue Crone Reavers.  They let seed boy slaves have her until she got fat with baby.  She had me then escape."

"Your mother left you?"

"Yup.  I was three when she came back with Latisha.  They kill all the Blue Crone seed boys and take me.  She kept me ever since... until Master Akiva win me."

Akiva sat up in a rush, her head swimming with the effort.

"Anya is your mother?"  Akiva was incredulous.

"She is my birth mother, but I have Blue Crone slave tattoos."  The girl stared off into the distance.  "I can never be Yellow Sun... always slave.  Forever."

"That's terrible."  Maira looked away, wiping something from her eye.

"That's the way it is."  Foxy laughed, a bitter sound.  "Old master feed me the best, make me learn with the reaver children. Made me her favorite."

May fell silent.  Akiva looked around.  The sun was inching towards its peak, beaming off the sand and baking the world.  The waste was a harsh place.  It looked even harsher to those who lived behind the security of Phalanx's walls.  She shook her head.  Harsh conditions conditioned harsh people.

"Why didn't you stay back there with Red Anya?"  Akiva asked.

"Old master told me to go with you... she said Latisha would take me and she wanted me safe."

"When?  Why would she do that?"

"After the challenge.  She was crying, but not from her outside pain."  Foxy looked over her shoulder at Akiva.  "She said you keep me safe, because you protect your slaves."

"May's not my slave!"  Akiva wasn't sure why she snapped, but the girl's words were upsetting her.  "In Phalanx we don't have slaves."

The terrain wobbled past at a slow clip.  The tumbler might have survived the fall, but it was on its last legs.  Objects jutted up out of the sands in the distance.  They were the bones of old cities, destroyed by the infected and claimed by The Great Mother's sands.  The Black Smoke Reavers called the region home by day, and the infected called it home by night.  They'd want to be away before nightfall.  The roar of the tumbler's engines would call both for miles.

"We're going the wrong way.  Phalanx is northwest of here."

Foxy and Maira gave Akiva a questioning look.

"That way."

The slave girl nodded.

"Everyone lean this way," she grunted as she tugged on the tumbler's controls. 

They leaned, lurching into a turn.  The vehicle whined and grumbled, gears and bolts rattled in their moorings.  The vehicle turned with agonizing slowness.  Akiva looked around, seeing the damage sustained by the tumbler during its fall.  It was by the grace of The Great Mother they'd survived, it was her continued mercy that allowed the smashed machine to still move.

Once they were moving in the right direction Akiva rummaged around in her pack which had managed to stay with them throughout their flight from Pride Home.  In the bottom, wrapped in a cloth, was a piece of reflective glass she'd found a couple of years ago.  She looked at herself, sensing the knot on her forehead before she saw it.  Akiva looked terrible and felt worse.  Someone had bandaged her wounds, but she'd be wearing reminders of her battle with Anya for years.

Red Anya had birthed a child outside her clan and was forced to leave her behind in order to be free of her captors.  Akiva understood that.  The Blue Crones trafficked in children, using their seed boys to keep their pens full of pregnant prisoners.  Valkyrie killed themselves to avoid capture and the fate of a broodmare.  But Anya didn't just escape she came back for what was hers, though it meant her marked baby would never be accepted by her clanswomen.  Akiva thought of her own mother, Akemi, and wondered what kind of terrible decisions she had to make.