The Divide
Jeremy Robinson
THE DIVIDE
By Jeremy Robinson
Description:
A wildly exciting journey through a world remade, The Divide combines real characters with horrifically realized creations, pitting the worst of human nature against the strength of family. Equal parts action, horror, and moving drama that only Jeremy Robinson can pull off.
WHEN THE DIVIDE IS CROSSED…
No one remembers how the Divide was created. The miles-deep and miles-wide chasm has existed for hundreds of years, protecting what remains of humanity from the Golyat: a creature whose shadow moves across the horizon at sunset.
Davina, daughter of Jesse, is a shepherd. She spends her days guiding herds of deer through the forests of New Inglan, protecting them from predators, herding them away from the Divide, and ensuring the tribe of Essex has meat when needed. While many shepherds die in their first year—from the elements, from injury, or in the jaws of a wolf—Davina is resilient.
Having just slain a mountain lion, Davina returns to her village to discover a hunting party has been sent out in search of the Modernists, a group fascinated with the past, the technology that once filled the world, and what lies beyond the Divide. To keep the Modernists from reaching the Divide’s far side, and revealing humanity’s presence to the Golyat, the hunters will torture and kill them all. Including Davina’s teenaged son.
Davina strikes out, intending to ensure her son’s death will be quick and without torture. Reaching the island of Boston first, Davina confronts the Modernists and finds herself incapable of taking her son’s life. Captured by the enemies of Essex, she is transported across the Divide, along with her son and the Modernists.
For the first time in five hundred years, humanity steps foot on the Divide’s far side. Stranded with the enemy, Davina must fight to keep them all alive, herding people instead of deer, while uncovering the truth about humanity’s past, and her connection to events that reshaped the world.
…THE GOLYAT WILL FEAST
THE DIVIDE
Jeremy Robinson
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Table of Contents
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Epilogue
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
ART GALLERY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO by JEREMY ROBINSON
For David Berube,
Good friend, librarian supreme, and slayer of dragons.
Welcome to the party, pal!
1
Stark naked, hair tied back, body and weapon poised for optimal aerodynamics, falling still makes noise. Pockets of air collect and swirl. In the ears, the eye sockets, between the breasts, and against a slender belly. In the silence of a still forest, the whisper of churning air screams. That’s a lesson best taught, hunter to apprentice. I learned from experience, and the four long scars across my belly serve as a constant reminder. The mountain lion below, fur glowing yellow in the morning sun, wearing scars of its own, confirms this simple fact by turning to face me as I descend.
Ten feet above the ground, I have a choice to make: throw the spear, or hold on to it. The first choice, if successful, prevents a dangerous fight. Missing means death. The second choice guarantees a fight, the outcome of which will be determined by whichever of us is the more experienced killer.
The lion has more scars.
It kills to survive.
But so do I.
At birth, I was given the name Davina. My friends now call me Vee. To everyone else, I’m known by an assortment of official titles—mother, former elder’s daughter, present elder’s wife. While they all sound nice, noble even, the words used in conjunction with my titles are far from flattering. Runt, scrap, outcast, dirty, and wild are common but my favorite is savage.
Though I am a wife of Micha, Elder of Essex, and daughter of Jesse, the county’s former elder, my status is lower than most common people. I am sometimes called ‘dirt.’ To be ‘walked on, brushed off, or spat upon.’ Micha’s words. I call him a ‘delightful man,’ which his sarcasm-deaf ears hear as flattery.
As the youngest of eight children, and the last of eight wives, I am an afterthought, most often referred to—when people believe I’m not present—as ‘Eight.’ A woman of few offspring and many names. Had I been a better breeder, I could have elevated my status. Bearing children, especially to an elder, is a blessing. Sixty percent of children die from disease, from exposure to the elements, or from predators, by the age of two. Of those, only fifty percent make it to adulthood. Without large broods, humanity would cease to exist.
But I wasn’t married for children. My body was used for pleasure, not for reproduction. Despite frequent visits to my bed, Micha worked hard to make sure I never conceived. And when I did, no thanks to the man I was forced to marry, his visits came to an end. My unspoiled womanhood was all that had drawn him to me. Swollen with child, he lost interest. Had I known that earlier, I would have sought out a donor far sooner. Yet another lesson learned through experience, and not without scars of its own.
The lion’s ears fold back as it bares its teeth and hisses, angry at the interruption. I land, spear still in hand, its point creating a small, but effective barrier between my soft flesh and the lion’s jaws. The small gathering of deer that the lion had been hunting see both of us for the first time and bound away through the forest, hooves thumping the soil, white tails flashing. The lion leans toward the fleeing creatures while keeping its eyes locked on me, warring instincts simultaneously telling it to give chase, and to defend itself.
But it can’t do both, and since I don’t want it killing my deer, I hiss back and give the spear a thrust, challenging the beast, making this a territorial dispute between rival predators…even if that is not my job.
I am not here to kill the deer. I am simply a shepherd. In their small minds, the deer are free, living out normal lives in the forest. In reality, they are stalked, day and night, and on occasion, guided away from—or protected from—danger. When meat is needed, hunters come and kill the oldest, weakest, and least productive animals. In days past, such animals might have been confined by a fence, but even the simplest technological advances are forbidden.
To be present in any meaningful way is to be detectable, and detection means death, not just to the individual, but to the species. To all of humanity. So says the Prime Law—the guiding force that shapes every aspect of our lives.
I really only know two things about the law’s origin—its many rules, regulations, and guides protect the human race from unseen dangers, and it was, without a doubt, written by men. As a woman with just one child—a son—my life, and the resources I consume, are in direct conflict with the Prime Law.
But murder is also forbidden. So I have been given a job for which the odds of surviving are lower than a newborn baby’s, not because of disease, or even the elements, but because of dangers like the one now staring me down.
“Easy,” I say, creeping to the side, circling, showing no fear, asserting dominance. The encounter will end with one of us dead, or one of us running—and I’m not going to run. Not because I want to fight, but because outrunning a mountain lion that can outpace and outleap any human being, man or woman, isn’t possible. The moment I show my back is the very moment I will die.
With the deer long gone, the big cat that probably outweighs my two hundred pound husband, gives me its full attention. It’s not going to run. I’m too small for it to be intimidated into retreat, and while I’ve cost it a meal, I’ve also offered myself as a replacement.
Only its eyes move as the beast tracks me. The rest of its body is coiled, frozen, and ready to spring. A living trap, waiting to be prodded. And when the trap springs, a flurry of movement lasting no more than a second, will leave one of us unharmed, and the other transformed.
Even killers can become meals.
Such is the life, and usually the death, of a shepherd.
What no one knows is that I’m happy with my ‘low’ status. Facing the jaws of a lion is preferable to a loveless husband. And while I am not a loyal wife, I would die before breaking the law. I’m happy to push the limits on occasion, but I understand what’s at stake.
Freedom is death.
My father used to say that to me while my siblings were out being groomed for lives greater than mine. He would talk to me while I tended the chickens, fished the river, and dug for edible roots. He would expound on the world, on the forbidden knowledge he kept safe, and skirt around secrets which only elders were allowed to know. He was unaware that I was listening, really listening, and getting a better education than my siblings because of it. ‘Freedom is death’ was his favorite subject. I believe he was paraphrasing something from the Time Before, but he would never confirm it. To speak of the Time Before to anyone other than another elder was against the Prime Law. He broke that law, on occasion, during his ramblings, but always without realizing it.
The result was a youngest daughter whose opinions on the world were better informed than most, but it did not matter to anyone.
The lion is considering how to kill me—by snapping my neck, by choking me out, or by disemboweling me—and it’s paying me more attention than any person ever has. And I return the favor. Two solitary creatures plotting the demise of the other.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I tell the beast, the sentiment true, but the words uttered as a growl communicating the opposite. “Leave!”
A quick thrust sends the lion’s paws scrambling. It nearly lunges, but spots the spear tip just a foot from its open jaws.
I’m not the first human being this creature has encountered. It recognizes the spear as a threat, which works in my favor. But the lion is also standing before me, which means its previous encounter—perhaps encounters—provided the lion with a full belly.
Spear or not, it’s going to attack.
The lion moves, stalking in a slow circle, as I continue my own, predators both.
But only one of us is a mother.
The male lion has felt pain, but it has never had a life taken from its belly, never experienced its insides tearing away, never shared its life so fully with another living being. My son, Salem, though distant and severely misguided, is my tether to this world. As long as there is hope of his return, I cannot die. He is my strength, and this lion’s weakness.
The cat misreads my smile, hissing to intimidate.
“Come then.”
The cat goes rigid again. I steady myself, taking a deep breath. The air is rich with salt from the ocean, miles at my back, and the sun-warmed scent of pine needles beneath my bare feet. A hand against the spear’s flat base, my feet planted against the soil beneath the pine needles, I prepare for the attack.
Tension builds in slow waves, me bracing, the lion lowering, our eyes locked. There is a moment between us, a kind of kinship, where it doesn’t matter who lives and who dies, where we are partners in a cycle beyond us both. For a moment, I feel love, and respect.
Then I blink.
And the lion springs.
2
Blood is warm.
I remember it well, from a hundred different wounds on a hundred different days, but none as poignant as the tacky wetness that marked my wedding night. It leaked, not from my recently broken-in womanhood, but from a wound on my forehead, tracing a path from brow to cheek, from chin to chest, from bare breast to the deer-skin floor. The gash, delivered by my new husband, was meant to teach me respect.
What it achieved was a delirious stupor. Before that moment, I thought I understood the world and my place in it. Low as my station was, I was confident and proud of my heritage—my father, Jesse, was an excellent elder. At the end of that night, the scales of blindness had flaked away. I saw the world through new eyes. Micha’s word, beliefs, and actions were not to be questioned. As an elder, such things are his right, but I had hoped he would be different as a husband. My father had been fooled by Micha’s charming public persona, and by marrying me to him, had allowed Micha to inherit my father’s position. Being the second son of an elder meant Micha could not inherit his own father’s legacy. Marrying the daughter of an elder, even if she was the eighth daughter, meant he could challenge the elder’s own sons to the right of inheritance, which Micha did.
By the time I was grown, my eight siblings had been whittled down to five. A better survival rate than most families, but two of them were brothers. The first was slain by Micha, legally. The second, an effeminate man, relented his position. My husband took what he wanted through manipulation and force. For a time, what he wanted was me. So I distanced myself, held back my thoughts, dreams, and desires and waited for the opportunity to improve my life by lowering my station.
Three years into my marriage, on the eve of the summer solstice—the only day of the year when elder families from all of New Inglan come together, and imbibing is permitted—I found a man too drunk to recognize me. I allowed him to plant the seed that would become my son, and my freedom from a tyrannical husband—which is not forbidden, but also often leads to death.
The warm blood is mine.
Some of it.
The lion’s grappling claw raked over my ribs, bouncing over the bones to create a series of short dashes.
The rest of the blood, spattered over my face, chest, and arms, belongs to the lion—now impaled on my spear. The cat leapt high, claws splayed wide. It had meant to wrap them around me and hook them into my back while its jaws closed over my face, a suffocating mask. Its teeth would have burrowed into my skull. Instead, I thrust with the spear, its tip sliding through the lion’s open mouth, then the back of its throat, and then its spine.
Momentum carried the predator’s paws around to my exposed side, the claws cutting as gravity tugged them downward, but the wounds are not deep.
Still braced, I grunt as the cat’s full weight falls on the spear. Then I lower my kill to the ground.
The deer are long gone, and they won’t return to this area until the scent of lion piss and scat—currently leaking from the loose-bowelled lion—is rinsed fully away. Months at least. It will take a few days to track them down, but their migration routes, guided by former shepherds, are predictable.
I put a finger to my wounded side and wince. The cuts aren’t deep enough to require stitching, which would mean a return trip to the village, but they will need a treatment of herbs and oils to prevent infection. But that, I can handle on my own.
Before I can tend to the wounds, I need to retrieve my belongings.
Scaling the tree holding my gear is a painful affair, the gashes stretching with each reach, threatening to tear wider. So I move slowly through the branches, climbing into the thick-leafed oak the way a porcupi
ne does. Safe in the leafy canopy, I rest on the branch holding my clothing, wiping tacky blood with a clean cloth and then holding it in place until the bleeding stops. Two loops of twine, tied tightly around my chest, hold it in place. Then I dress. The clothing is well made from wild cotton fibers, dyed black to help conceal me at night, and thin enough for the summer-time heat and humidity. But they’re also loose fitting, easily snagged, and loud when moving fast. I had shed them upon spotting the lion’s approach.
Bandaged and clothed, I put my gear bag—containing a bed roll, water skin, knife, food pouch, and leather boots not meant for scaling trees—over my shoulder and scrape my way down the bark.
Back on the ground, I face the lion once more. Boots returned to my feet, I step on the lion’s head and withdraw the spear with a hard tug.
“You should have listened to me,” I tell the slain beast, and stab the spear into the ground. Then I draw my knife and crouch. Lion is not a preferred food source. No one actively hunts them. But fresh meat should not be wasted. It’s not enough food for me to make the journey home, but I will eat my fill, and then beyond it, stuffing my gut and consuming enough meat to fuel the days it takes me to find the deer again.
My knife is an ancient weapon forged five hundred years ago, when technology wasn’t just allowed, but always advancing and a part of daily life. I draw the sharp blade down the lion’s sternum, slicing skin and sinew. A firm whack to the pommel punches the knife tip through bone. A hard twist cracks it in half. My fingers wriggle between the two jagged halves. The ribs flex, fighting against my pull, but then yield. They crack wide to reveal layers of connective tissue, lungs, and after a few more cuts, my prize. Severed arteries, no longer under pressure, ooze blood as I cut them away and remove the heart.
Some believe eating a lion’s heart infuses those who consume it with the creature’s strength and cunning. I think it’s bullshit. For a lion’s heart to be eaten, the beast must first be slain, and if it is killed by a person, who is truly stronger and more cunning?
