String Lights

Part I: My name is Specter (Chapter 3)

･･･⛧･･･

Nonetheless, with her minor flaws, slight mistakes, and our worst argument put aside, Mother was as close to perfection as any parent could be. Though she lived with a heart that had been broken by my father's passing, and pierced by countless other hardships besides, she had still, all this time, managed to hold room to shelter Lia and me from the harsh world and reality.

My sister truly took after our mother in many aspects which I yearned to, but did not, have. Sweet, shy, and good-natured, I doubted whether Lia had ever felt the tempting pull of revenge in her lifetime. She'd become noticeably more reserved since her accident, in which she had lost most of her right leg. Sometimes the joint was so stiff Lia could hardly even move, but she never spoke of the pain, never complained at the fact that her condition was incurable even by the cleverest Consonarists of Chronicles. On the rare occasions when she did leave the house, she usually covered her metal leg with a particularly long skirt or pair of knee-length boots. Most people couldn't see too well in the darkness, but we had to be careful anyway: There were always watching eyes, and because of her disability, Lia was targeted by the government nearly as much as me.

Drew Erebus, you see, didn't like imperfection.

But he did like to get his way.

In Chronicles, you came of age at twenty years old. At twenty-three, girls were forced into arranged marriages by the government, boys into the army. So on my elder sister's 23rd birthday, which was coming up in half a year, we would be celebrating not the anniversary of her birth, but the day when she would be dragged away to become the wife of an Ereban soldier, who would always be to her an enemy, rather than a husband. It was a terrible fate in store for beautiful Lia, but I wasn't too worried. I knew—we all did—that my sister already had a kind young man looking after her.

Carson Lansford was two months from his twenty-third birthday. He had moved into our countryside village several years ago with his parents and younger sister. Between exchanging food packages and the occasional useful rumors, friendship bloomed easily between the Lansfords and the Havens. And both families, it seemed, were so relieved with having made good friends that their minds had room for nothing else, making everyone completely oblivious to the special bond which had, during that time, quietly formed between Lia Haven and the Lansford boy.

Now, Carson dropped by our house every afternoon, always with a smile on his face and shining eyes which refused to look at anything or anyone aside from the girl he loved. He and Lia often left home for long periods of the day, and I knew they were spending time together walking on the beach, hand in hand, discussing the Future Plan, as they always seemed to do.

This "Future Plan" was an idea they'd had for some time now. Lia and Carson had decided that before their twenty-third birthdays, when they would be separated and banished to miserable lives, they would find a way to break free together. Whether it meant that they would flee the country to seek refuge somewhere else, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that the day was approaching, because they'd planned to leave before Carson's birthday.

"The preparations are almost complete," Carson said often, sharing secretive nods with Lia.

I was more bothered about their special relationship than I wanted to be, but I knew better than anyone that this was Lia's life. We all trusted Carson to guide her toward a much more promising future than the one the dictator had in store for her.

The last member of my family was the only absent one, and this was my father. I'd never met him, for he had died several months before I had been born. To me, his death had always been an unanswered question, a math problem to which I had never found the appropriate formula, much less the solution. Every time I'd tried to ask about it, Mother had shunned the topic, or else snapped at me. After a while, I'd given up on pushing the subject, merely hoping that whoever my father had been, that he'd died a noble death, not the death of a traitor.

Lia had told me that my father had lived in our current home before his death, but there were such few traces of him that it hardly seemed that way at all. The floors he'd walked on, the items he'd touched, and the girls he'd called daughters were the only last vestiges remaining of Cyrus Haven.

And along with those, there was a present which he'd left in my possession before he died: a very old, unremarkable, dusty box containing a long chain of string lights.

･･･⛧･･･

By the time I started my return trip back home, two glowphids were buzzing around in the clear glass jar in my hand. With each about the size of my thumb, their abdomens giving off a bright light that could last for multiple days or even weeks at a time, these glowphids were the only source of light available to the Chronicle citizens. Why or how these bioluminescent insects hadn't lost their light after the Blackout, was unknown by all except, of course, the one who was personally behind the spell that had cast all this darkness.

Soon, the path I was walking on narrowed. The tall trees parted, revealing our town. As I passed by, friendly villagers shouted out greetings, and though I returned their grins and waves, I remembered not to stop to chat. Mother had always taught me to avoid showing my face or exposing my voice excessively out in the village. There were still many in our town whom we were not familiar with. If word somehow reached the wrong person, I could be in danger of being caught, arrested by the government as a lawbreaker.

With such a reward on someone like myself, it was easy to see why people would want to turn me in.

Chronicle currency was unique in that it used fine powders made out of granulated gemstones, which we measured in what were called "pinches," or, in larger quantities, "spades." There were two different types of powders that could pass as money in our country: Candiden, the more expensive of the two, resembled pure white sand; Obascus, on the other hand, had the appearance of tiny, black, sparkling particles.

Turning in a Specter to the government got you a reward of 200 pinches, or ten spades, of Candiden. 200 pinches was a fortune, especially for those struggling through this challenging period of our country. I often found myself wondering what I'd do with so much money if it ever fell into my hands. Sometimes it seemed we ourselves needed that Candiden the most.

I passed the village town square, where shops were closing down for the day. Claiming the very center of the square was an old white building with a domed roof. This was our town Centrum, the place where all of the villagers went to learn, study, and borrow supplies and books. Mother always insisted Lia and I spend at the very least a couple of hours in the Centrum each day, listening to important lectures and studying different subjects. Most students attended the modern academies in the city for their studies, but Mother had despised the thought of sending us there. Bright as we both were, she had known that all we'd learn in those academies would be how to live a life loyal to the dictator.

Turning onto our lane, I spotted Mrs. Lansford on the deck of her cottage with her daughter on her hip. I waved hello and she nodded with a smile, though she seemed a little down for whatever reason. With our home now in view, I was reminded again of the unfinished book I had left in my bedroom, and with this new thought entering my mind, I was distracted from further questioning Mrs. Lansford's low spirits.

Swinging the jar of glowphids in my hand, I skipped down the street and climbed up the steps to the front porch. There I stopped, watching in wonder at the way the glowing jar I was holding illuminated everything around me. Of course, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness after all these years, and I had no problem reading words or distinguishing faces. But nothing could describe the strangeness of how the light brought out the hues we weren't able to see in darkness: the red of the patch of fake roses Mother had planted by the side of the deck; the orange of the rubber ball sitting on the neighbor's porch; the yellow of my sister's hair as she peered out the window to see whether I'd returned; the green of our artificial lawn, which had been used as a replacement after the real grass shriveled up from a lack of sunlight; the pale blue of the threadbare dress I was wearing; the purple of my next-door friend's bicycle, which, having not been used in years, was gathering dust.

I didn't think Erebus had meant to turn our world colorless, too, with the removal of light. I did know, however, that he most likely did not care that he had.

It remained a mystery to me, how a person could have so much to do with the color black and yet still not tire of his affection toward it.