Red Rising

Then the HC flashes black for several moments. It has never gone to black before. And Octavia au Lune comes back on with the same old message. It almost seems as though someone has hacked into the broadcast, because my wife flickers onto the giant screen again.

“Break the chains!” she cries. Then she’s gone and the screen is black. It crackles. The image comes back. She cries it again. Black once more. Standard programming goes up, then it cuts to her screaming one last time and then there’s me pulling her legs. Then static.

The streets are quiet as I make my way to the Common. The nightshift will be returning soon. Then I hear a noise and a man steps into the street in front of me. My uncle’s face leers at me from the shadows. A single bulb hangs over his head, illuminating the flask in his hand and his tattered red shirt.

“You are your father’s son, little bastard. Stupid and vain.”

My hands clench. “Come to stop me, Uncle?”

He grunts. “Couldn’t stop your father from killing his bloody self. And he was a better bloodyman than you. More restraint in him.”

I step forward. “I don’t need your permission.”

“Nay, you little squabber, you don’t.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t do what you’re gonna do, though. It’ll break your mother; you might think she didn’t know you’d slip out. She did. Told me so. Said you were gonna go die like my brother, like your girl.”

“If Mother knew, she would have stopped me.”

“Nah. She lets us men make our own mistakes. But this ain’t what your girl would’ve wanted.”

I point a finger at my uncle. “You don’t know a thing. Not a thing about what she wanted.” Eo said I wouldn’t understand being a martyr. I will show her I do.

“Righto,” he says with a shrug. “I’ll walk with you, then, since your head is full of rocks.” He chuckles. “We Lambdas do love the noose.”

He tosses me his flask and I fall into tentative step beside him.

“I tried to talk your father out of his little protest, you know. Told him words and dance mean as much as dust. Tried squaring up with him. I squabbed that one up. He laid me down cold.” He throws a slow right. “Comes a time in life when you know a man has his mind set and it’s an insult to gainsay.”

I drink from his flask and hand it back. The swill tastes strange and thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me finish the flask.

“Your’s set?” he asks, tapping his head. “Course it is. I forget, I taught you how to dance.”

“Stubborn as a pitviper, wasn’t that how you put it?” I say quietly, allowing a little smile.

I walk in silence for a moment with my uncle. He puts a hand on my shoulder. A sob wants to come out of my chest. I swallow it.

“She left me,” I whisper. “Just left me.”

“Musta had a reason. Not a dumb girl, that one.”

The tears come as I enter the Common. My uncle takes me in a one-armed hug and kisses the crown of my head. It’s all he can offer. He’s not a man made for affection. His face is pale and ghostly. Thirty-five and so old, so tired. A scar twists his upper lip. Gray streaks his thick hair.

“Tell them hello for me in the vale,” he says into my ear, his beard coarse against my neck. “Give my brothers a toast and my wife a kiss, specially Dancer.”

“Dancer?”

“You’ll know him. And if you see your gramp and gran, tell them we still dance for them. They won’t be long alone.” He walks away, then pauses and without turning says, “Break the chains. Hear?”

“Hear.”

He leaves me there in the Common with my swaying wife. I know the cameras watch me from the can as I walk up the gallows. It is metal, so the stairs don’t creak. She hangs like a doll. Her face is pale as chalk and her hair shifts slightly as the ventilators rasp above.

When the rope has been cut with the slingBlade I stole from the mines, I grab its frayed end and lower her down gently. I take my wife in my arms and together wend our way from the square to the Webbery. A nightshift is working their final hours. The women watch in silence as I carry Eo to the ventilation duct. There I see Leanna, my sister. Tall and quiet like my mother, she watches me with hard eyes, but she does nothing. None of the women do. They will not gossip about where my wife is buried. They will not speak, not even for the chocolate given to spies. Only five souls have been buried in three generations—someone always hangs for it.

This is the ultimate act of love. Eo’s silent requiem.

Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo’s face, to touch mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife through the tight metal space, taking her to where we made love beneath the stars, where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I hold her lifeless body and hope her soul sees me in a place where we were happy.

I dig a hole near the base of a tree. My hands, covered with the dirt of our land, are red like her hair as I take her hand and kiss her wedding band. I place the outer bulb of the haemanthus atop her heart and take the inner and put it near my own. Then I kiss her lips and bury her. But I sob before I can finish. I uncover her face and kiss her again and hold my body to hers till I see a red sun rising through the artificial bubbleroof. The colors of the place scald my eyes and I cannot stop my tears. When I pull away, I see my headband poking from her pocket. She made it for me to take my sweat. I give it my tears now and take it with me.

Kieran strikes me in the face when he sees me back in the township. Loran cannot speak, while Eo’s father slumps against a wall. They think they failed me. I hear Eo’s mother’s cries. My mother says nothing as she makes me a meal. I don’t feel well. It’s hard to breathe. Leanna comes in late and helps her, kissing me on the head as I eat, lingering long enough to smell my hair. I must use one hand as I move the food from plate to mouth. My mother holds my other hand between her calloused palms. She watches it instead of me, as though remembering when it was small and soft and wondering how it became so hard.

I finish the meal just as Ugly Dan comes. My mother does not leave the table as I’m pulled away. Her eyes stay fixed on where my hand lay. I think she believes if she does not look up, this will not happen. Even she can only bear so much.

They hang me before a full assembly at nine in the morning. I’m dizzy for some reason. My heart feels funny, slow. I hear the ArchGovernor’s words to my wife echo.