The Bright and The Dark by Michelle M. Welch

Author:Michelle M. Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307418388
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2009-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

12

THERE WAS NO HIDING JULIAN ONCE THE TRANSPORT came to evacuate the work camp. They came sooner than anyone expected, the two clerks who were allowed to go for help fearing for the safety of the third, perhaps. An enormous wagon pulled by four tired-looking horses arrived at the camp only two days later. The clerks were bundled inside, along with half a dozen Public Force guards and their assortment of weapons. The guards in their gray uniforms filed out of the wagon, gazing disapprovingly at the black remains of the barn and the condemned workers who did not look sufficiently intimidated by their pistols. They didn’t recognize how greatly the fire-induced threat of starvation overshadowed any fear of gunpowder.

“I don’t know why they’re evacuating all of us,” Aron muttered. He was hanging back in the dormitory, kicking at bunks. The Public Force had neatly relieved him of his leadership, ordering the workers and guards into queues, leading them out of the building and ushering them into the transport. Aron was once again a discarded lesser son, barely a step above the prisoners he had supervised. “They have to rebuild the camp. They’re going to send out a crew to build a new barn. They have to store all of us somewhere until it’s done. Why don’t we build the new barn? Why don’t they let us do something, other than just sit here, eating and shitting, running around in circles? We just work to keep ourselves afloat out here, that’s all. What kind of pointless work is that?”

In the bitter cold Julian had almost completely covered himself in too-large garments, and these disguised him enough that the Dabionian crew had not yet taken any notice of him. He trailed Aron quietly, almost idly, straightening out the bunks that Aron kicked out of place. “What else would work be for?”

“Is that it?” Aron growled, throwing a savage kick. The blow missed its mark, his ankle jarred against wood, and he swallowed a cry of pain. “That’s how you’re going to be the whole way back? I’ll throw you out of the wagon if you keep talking like that.”

Julian paused to lean against a crooked bed frame. “You’re angrier now than you were before,” he mused.

“Why?” He watched for a moment as Aron paced back and forth across the room, limping, then he smiled. “You’re angry because they’re taking the camp away from you.”

“See what you know,” barked Aron. “I’m angry because they’re sending me back to my father!”

And as soon as he said it, that was all that filled his mind. He was being sent back to Dabion. The others might be relocated to work camps in other parts of Karrim, but Aron was going back home. No matter how he tried to get away from that white square house, from his worthless fate, from his father and all the questions he wouldn’t answer and the eyes that did not know his son at all, Aron was always going back.

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