String Lights

Part I: My name is Specter (Chapter 1)

Seven years ago, I found out the answer to all of these whys—very belatedly, I might add—and when I did, I was horrified. Mother, too, must have sensed my wild, complicated emotions then, because on that same day she had sat me on her knee to explain from the very beginning.

The year of my birth, she had begun, had also been the year of another major change.

A month or so before my due date, Mother had been listening to the radio broadcast with a seven-year-old Lia dozing at her side, a baby eight months old residing in her belly, when the voice making the broadcast had announced a set of shocking, impossible news, instantly making my mother tremble with fear at the mere possibilities.

The news had gone like this: On that morning 15 years ago, Drew Erebus had gathered his Ereban counselors into his grand courtroom as he prepared to publicly announce the establishment of a new law. This law stated that those living outside the gates of Tacedon—in other words, the citizens of Chronicles who hadn't gone over to his side—were no longer permitted to have custody over more than one child per household. That meant that any child who was set to be delivered after the passing of this law would either have to be removed before birth or turned in to the government after. These had all been precautions made on Erebus's end to prevent the citizens from overthrowing him, although it had been carefully disguised as a mere attempt to control the growing population and nothing more.

Once made, the announcement had stirred a variety of emotions in everyone. The Erebans had rejoiced and praised their ruler's success. Thousands of mothers in Chronicles had grieved, and yet there had been others who had breathed long sighs of relief. These had been the parents who had narrowly escaped the conditions of the law. Children born before its establishment would remained unscathed, even if they weren't the firstborns of their families. This meant families like the Grants next door, whose six children had all been born before our colonization, had been able to avoid making sacrifices.

But we, the Havens, had not.

For a few days after the announcement on the radio, Mother had simply tried to convince herself that what she'd heard had to all be another fabrication of the dictator's. But only a week had passed before she had been snapped out of this fantasy into reality. As always, the most important news—traveled out of the mouth of one person and into the ears of many—had been carried through gossip and hearsay. On her way to the market, Mother had picked up a rumor that Ereban soldiers now stood guard at the maternity departments of each Consonary, the Chronicle buildings for treatment and healing. After going to check for herself the following Monday, she had found this was true.

If the fact that Mother had a second child on the way somehow reached the Erebans, she would have instantly been placed under surveillance by the government. Once I was born, I would have been ripped from her arms and dragged away by malicious hands toward a fate unimaginable.

And so Mother had been left with two options: either to let that happen, or to keep me out of sight as she raised me in secret. After several nights of contemplating on the matter, she had come to a decision. My beautiful, compassionate mother had decided she was not going to be cold-hearted. She would take the risk and choose, between the two options, to proceed with the latter.

And that was why, from the moment I entered into this world, my mere existence was deemed illegal. It was against the law for me to live.

There was a word we used to call those like me—children and teens who had been born illegally after the one-child policy was put into action.

The word was "Specter."

That was what we were called—Specters. In other words, we were invisible to the rest of the world, living like ghosts. I had heard people talk about us before, about "my kind" as a whole. Their descriptions and views on us were always the same. We were Nameless. Unnamed. Invisible. As it could be any day before the government burst into our homes and discovered us in hiding, we were regarded as ticking bombs.

We were treated that way, too. No one wanted to associate with people who could land them in trouble, especially not in these dark and difficult times. The cost one had to pay for being on intimate terms with someone wanted by the government was far too great.

Strange as it was, however, my identity often proved to be the determining factor between good people and bad throughout my life. Those who were loyal stuck with our family of three even after finding out who I was. Those who, after hearing the truth, gradually drifted away I considered selfish, people who had only cared about themselves.

And we Specters may have been seen as uncanny, strange creatures by outsiders, but I knew that was only because very few looked far enough. Beneath the fact that we were classified as criminals for every breath we took in and let out, there was something else all Specters had in common—a fact that I was proud of.

We all had mothers who cared more about our lives than their own.