The Way Life Was Forever

THE WAY LIFE WAS FOREVER

  a short story

  CAREY CORP

  The Way Life Was Forever

  Copyright © 2011 by Carey Corp

  Cover by Carey Corp

  Photos used to design cover were legally obtained from Microsoft Office

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form in whole or in part without written permission from the author, with the exception of brief quotations for book reviews or critical articles.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This story is dedicated to anyone who’s dared to walk a different path, especially Lorie.

  THE WAY LIFE WAS FOREVER

  “Don’t you wish you could see it just once, Lyra?”

  “What?”

  “The sun.”

  Aquila’s face is so wistful my heart wants to break. Smoothing a patch of silver-blonde hair from her eyes, I explain, “It’s not safe, Quil. You know that.”

  Staring dreamily into the night sky, trying to see something other than tiny points of light littering the dark pitch of space, my little sister sighs. “Maybe it would be worth it…”

  “No! Don’t ever say that.”

  The force of my words jars her from her reverie. She looks at me, sucking her lower lip between her teeth in petulance. “You don’t know,” she pouts. “Nobody knows...”

  Immature for her twelve years of age, the jutting of her lips increases the severity of her angular face making her seem like a much younger child. She fixes light blue eyes—so pale they are nearly colorless—on me in an unspoken challenge. And while I can barely stand to reprimand her, it must be done.

  “Nobody comes back! Every single person who has missed the locking of the vaults has disappeared without a trace. Not even their remains were found.”

  She takes a minute to absorb what I have said. The moment it sinks into her child’s brain, a small shiver trembles its way up her spine. “Still…”

  Even when being difficult, Quil is breathtaking in her loveliness. Pale, translucent skin with a pixie’s pointed face, tiny in stature, and long straight hair that sways against her hips as she moves; she is the epitome of feminine delicacy. When she comes of age, she will have no difficulty attracting a husband.

  Unlike me.

  My sister’s mirror opposite, I am considered abnormally dark. Hair so yellow it is the hue of flax, a peach tint to my skin and moss-green eyes; I retain too much color to fit my colony’s ideal of beauty. At sixteen years of age, they have already written me off as a spinster—a destiny I’ve no choice but to accept.

  In the distance, the great horn sounds. Three sharp blasts signal time to quit the colony orchard and return home before daybreak. Grabbing a final green apple from the lower branches, I consider adding it to our already full bushel before taking a small bite. The tart juice fills my mouth as I savor the crisp fruit. Two more delicious bites and then I hand the apple to Quil, sharing it in the way sisters so often do. She accepts my offering and I rest easily in the knowledge she has forgiven me for my harshness.

  As she finishes our snack, I pick up the heavy bushel and balance it against my hip for the short walk back to the vaults.

  “Lyra, when was the last time anyone saw a sun-dweller?”

  “A long time ago. Decades before our time.”

  “Then how do we know they’re still out there?”

  “Because… if they weren’t, those who miss the locking of the vaults would live to tell about it.”

  We walk in silence for a bit, each cocooned in our own thoughts like the pupae of the Gypsy moth, our sites fixed on the windowless structures of grey stone and steel. The vaults of our colony. The skies surrounding the monoliths are blue-black, revealing no hint of the impending sun, but the thickly shadowed landscape has already begun to wake. The chirping of crickets reaches a fevered pitch, and the night resonates with the scuttling of small diurnal creatures beginning their day.

  “Get a move on girls! It’s nearly time to seal the vaults.” Regulus, the keeper of vault ninety-seven, says the same thing as we return each night. His nearly white eyes rake sharply over our brimming basket of fruit, our labors of the night. “Come on, before the sun-dwellers get you and eat the flesh from your bones.” There is comfort in his constancy.

  Behind us, the final warning echoes: two sharp blasts of the colony horn. At the next sounding the vaults will close, without consideration or exception, until the new night dawns.

  I don’t know who first thought of constructing the vaults to protect us from falling prey to the sun-dwellers. Whoever it was lived and died generations before mine. But their legacy lives on, existing in one hundred and sixty-eight structures of impenetrable concrete that comprise the cornerstone of our modern civilization.

  A final blast signifies the closing of thick steel doors followed by the soft whir of the complex locking system that give our vaults their name. Fixed with light sensors, the doors will remain sealed until night falls again. Although accustomed to life nocturnal, for a moment I cannot help but wonder what it would feel like to experience the sun. To witness the dappled light I have only seen in science book pictures and feel warmth on my face from the real source, rather than the artificial facsimile in my vault’s Health and Well-Being Center.

  Shaking off my unproductive musings, I walk down the jaundice corridor to the massive storage room off the common area. Dark as a tomb, even the wash of yellow artificial light cannot dispel the gloom of the only home I’ve ever known.

  Depositing our bushel, we take our allotted rations of spring fruits and vegetables for the morning meal and wind our way through the dim catacomb-like interior to our family dwelling.

  Mother already has a pot simmering on the fire, ready to boil our rations into a fine stew. Fruit from the previous day—raspberries and gooseberries—has been baked into a pie and now sits cooling on the rough wooden table. The heady, sweet smell permeates the air as we enter, making my mouth water.

  For an instant, home is pure bliss…but then angry voices from the adjoining room intrude upon the moment to remind me that today is an anniversary. And for my family, not a happy one.

  “I still say we should hunt them down—kill them in their sleep.” My uncle’s ragged words are thick with wine.

  “And what if they cannot be killed?” asks my father, doing his best to be the calm voice of reason despite his own overindulgence. “What if we cannot make it back to the colony before sunrise? What if we miss the locking of the vaults?”

  Quil and I press closer to the doorway, eavesdropping to hear my uncle’s surly answer. “I’m not afraid of what lies beyond the fields. I’d cross our borders and face the forbidden forest to get my revenge, I would.”

  A sharp wail pieces the air, followed by a muffled “There, there, dear.” The latter is my mother, doing to best to comfort her sister in her grief.

  My aunt howls, “Sirius was only sixteen! He’d be a man of five and twenty now. I’d be a grandmother.”

  “There, there, dear.”

  Sirius, my cousin and my aunt and uncle’s only child, missed the locking of the vaults nine years ago. He never returned—cannibalized by the sun-dwellers when he was my age.

  My aunt continues her just lament. “They killed my boy, my only child.”

  The persistent tug of Quil on my sleeve pulls my attention back into the kitchen. Rising up on her toes, she whispers to me, “What if Sirius isn’t dead? What if he lives with them?” When I don’t answer her, she clarifies
, “You know, the sun-dwellers.”

  Her suggestion is ridiculous! Everyone knows sun-dwellers eat their victims. It is foolish—and dangerous—to indulge in fantasies to the contrary. “Don’t be daft,” I hiss at my lovely, harebrained sister. “And don’t you dare say anything. It is not your place to deny them their grief.”

  “Yes, Lyra.” Although she is perfectly contrite, her obeisance seems hollow. Quil has never accepted truths easily. Unconvinced by her act, I wonder what kind of delusions my silver-haired sister harbors and if they are the kind that could get her killed.