Of all my shortcomings, I never believed my downfall would be the fault of my prideful ego.
Surely it was the universe's doing, its sick sense of humor reveling in the idea of giving the disposable village girl a small spark of hope and then crushing the flame before her downtrodden fingers could even grasp it.
It was my own fault anyway. I should have never trusted the insolent farmer boy to be capable of creating anything but a foolish plan with more holes in it than the tattered blanket my sister and I used for warmth during the brutal winter nights. I should have never believed that this world would ever offer me anything but pain and hardship. It was my own fault for expecting something better than what I was given.
But that's what I did. Like an idiot, I believed that there was a chance of getting out of Naturian without being detected. I believed that somewhere on another continent there waited a new future, a new life.
And maybe there did. Maybe there was a whole different world, a better world, waiting at the end of the vast ocean. I would just never see it.
I would have been able to go on through life without the thought of escaping Naturian ever crossing my mind if it wasn't for two things: Tessa and the Garner.
The latter of the two was the reason for my haste, my recklessness in planning an escape for my sister and I. The lack of time before the Garner was the main reason I made one of the worst decisions of my life and listened to Porter's plan, deciding it was foolproof enough to put the fate of both mine and my sister's life into the outcomes.
A fool. I was a fool with a lack of time.
But none of those precautionary thoughts crossed my mind that night as I wrapped Tessa tightly into our father's old brown leather jacket, the only thing we had left of him.
"Wren, I don't feel good about this" my 13 year old sister murmured, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I know, little bird, I know" I coo, grasping her hands in my calloused ones. Thank the stars her hands looked nothing like mine did at her age. Thank the stars my father had been around up until the last two years of her life. "But we need to leave. We have a chance to build a new life somewhere far away. It isn't safe for us here anymore."
"Are we leaving because of the Garner?" she asked, her eyes following my path as I attempted to ignore answering her question by hurrying around the cramped space we called our home and gathering the last of what we would take with us. It wasn't more than a pack for each of us but even so, we weren't leaving much behind.
Our father had left nothing for us other than his name. His disappearance was both sudden and unexpected. One morning I was sitting across from him as he muttered on about the troubling winter headed our way and then the next morning I was staring at nothing more than his rough leather jacket and a note that simply had written on it, I'm sorry.
But the apology didn't change the fact that on my sixteenth birthday, my present was the new and complete responsibility of making sure my sister and I survived. Most nights I went to bed without food. I spent most days helping Porter out in his father's fields for a scrap of money. His family paid enough to keep clothes on mine and Tessa's back. Plus, I had gotten over my initial disdain at Porter's company a long time ago, our initial bond being over the shared tragedy of our mothers having died when we were still children.
Porter was loud and obnoxious when we were kids and though his body grew into one of a man, his character sure didn't. Though I usually found myself scowling at his jokes and immaturity, I suppose I preferred that kind of Porter to one that resembled anything close to the other boys in our village. Distant. Unfeeling. Serious and cold. That was why Porter's expression earlier that day had scared me so much. It was a carbon copy of the calculating and threatening faces of every other man I knew.
"The Garner is in two days" was his form of a greeting to me.
"Glad to see you made use of a calendar for once" I responded, immediately grabbing the scythe next to him and raising it behind my head before setting it deep into the blades of wheat that I held with one hand. "What has it been, only 19 years for you to figure out that holidays are things that happen consistently each year?"
The growl that escaped Porter surprised me enough to pause my attack on the wheat in order to look up at where his stony expression was staring straight down at me. "I'd hardly call a time where those pieces of shit steal and kill our people a holiday" he snarled.
Our people. The people of everyone in this village. The people that were not gifted any of the elemental powers possessed by our rulers. The Gifted. That's what they called themselves, as well as other things. Our superiors, our masters. The Gifted were the ones who ruled over the unfortunate of us who were not blessed with magic in our veins. Their ruling took the shape of six kingdoms: the Wind, Earth, Ocean, Ember, Shadow and Sun Courts. The kingdoms rested on the edges of our continent and split the land into six equal parts. Most of the people like me and Porter who had no magical abilities (they called us non-Gifted. Clever, I know) lived towards the middle of the continent, right on the edges of the different kingdom's territories. We were surrounded by the Gifted like herds of cattle.
And every year, just because they could, they made a spectacle out of selecting 18 women of the age 18 that lacked the possession of magical abilities- non-Gifted- and brought them to their joined court of every kingdom, right in the middle of Naturian, where all six territories met. The Nature Court. There, the Gifted created tasks that the women were forced to endure. If a woman failed a task, she died. They only stopped when there were only six women left alive and competing.
Then was the truly wicked part. Rather than granting these women their freedom and allowing them to go back home, the six kingdoms then each chose one woman to take back to their own courts where they would spend the rest of their lives, a symbol of the Gifted's mercy.
Mercy. They did not think of it as slaughter or imprisonment. They believed that they were granting us mere inferiors a gift. I'd heard the horror stories about the kinds of things they did to the woman once they were brought back in their kingdoms. The thought made my stomach subconsciously whirl.
I looked over the furious boy in front of me. Since our first introduction when I was 7, I had never known Porter to have an angry side. Usually he took what he was given and never complained about it. Never spoke out about the injustices performed on him. But at this moment, standing before me with such fury in his eyes, I knew that if the opportunity presented itself, he would scream of these injustices at the top of his lungs.
"What, you're worried about me now?" I asked him, rolling my eyes at the idea. "Relax Porter, I'm sure if they take me your father will easily find someone else to help you tend to his fields."
"Stop it!" he snapped, throwing his own scythe to the ground and stepping towards me. "Don't you dare stand there and act indifferent to the idea of being selected by those savage beasts!"
"Well what do you expect me to do Porter?" I snapped back, glaring at him. "I knew at some point I'd turn 18. Being selected has always been a possibility of something that could happen to me eventually. So now that the time has come you expect me to be scared?"
"I expect you to be something, anything but this calm ghost standing in front of me acting as if she isn't the only thing that is keeping her sister alive. As if she doesn't give a shit about her life or the other people in it!"
Porter's breathing had gone ragged but I refused to let him win. To let him stand there and tell me things I already knew.
"Of course I'm scared you prick!" I hissed, shoving the oaf back roughly at my last word. "But what am I supposed to do, huh? You expect me to just pick up everything and run? There are hundreds of eighteen year old girls that are in the same position as me right now. What are the odds that I will be one of the unlucky eighteen that they pick?"
Porter grew calmer as he breathed out, "You're my best friend, Wren. I just don't know what I'd do if the worst scenario happened. If one of those monsters decided you looked like a nice piece of entertainment and took you away forever."
I let out a short huff of air that almost resembled laughter. "Well what do you expect me to do about that Porter? I have no choice."
Porter looked away, surveying the open field around us as if there was anyone possibly in hearing range. His chestnut brown eyes shown with fear and what also looked like, maybe, defiance. "No," he agreed, his eyes moving back to me. "But I have a ship."
Now I truly did laugh. "What a great use of your money Port, seeing as we are surrounded by land and kingdoms that would arrest us before we even caught sight of the ocean."
But my laughing stopped when I saw the seriousness in his intense gaze. His face was barely a foot away as he spoke hardly above a whisper. "I'm not kidding Wren. I bought it off of a merchant in town last week and looked over the papers to make sure it was legitimate. It is currently docked at a remote port city in the Ember Court. If we leave soon and are stealthy about it, we'd be on the ship headed for a new continent by tomorrow night."
My eyes widened at the severity of my best friend's gaze. "You're insane" I breathed out, "absolutely insane if you believe we have even a chance of getting out of this village undetected, nevermind a whole damn kingdom!"
Porter locked his jaw. "So you'd rather stay and take the chance? Let's just say you're right, things go fine and you're not chosen. What about in five years when Tessa is a possible candidate of the Garner? What about your happiness? Is this truly the way you want to spend the rest of your life? Ankles deep in mud and not a single thing to show for it but the piece of copper you immediately have to spend to keep you and your sister alive? Is this truly the life you're okay with living?"
"It's safe, Porter" I replied, exhausted with our conversation. "I'm alive and if the Garner is my only threat right now, I'm willing to live with it."
"Wren," he breathed my name, a dread and sorrow beginning to fill his words. "Not since the day we met have you ever been one to settle. To take what's given to you and not a damn thing more. What happened to my fighter? My dreamer?"
I bit back the angry tears that filled my eyes at his words. "She died when her father decided to up and disappear with nothing left of him but a coward's apology."
"Then let me look after you" Porter pleaded, grabbing my hands. Under regular circumstances I would have swatted him away but the fear and sorrow from his voice were starting to become my own as my vision blurred due to the horrible nothingness that appeared to be my future. "Let me help you and your sister" he breathed into my hands. "We can run away. Leave this world of selfish magic behind. Find a new place, a better place and create a new life all our own."
"You'd be willing to leave your life here?" I asked back, my voice trembling. "Your father? Your brothers?"
"My father has four other sons, he'd hardly miss one" he replied, not with spite but with acceptance, as if he'd known this to be true since he was much younger. "And that means one less mouth to feed. Besides, who do you think is the one that gave me the money I didn't have enough of to buy the ship? He wants a new future for me as much as I do."
I swallowed hard, contemplating the idea in my head. Porter saw the doubt forming in my eyes and bent down lower so that he was looking up at me.
"No more Garner" he muttered. "No more of the 'Gifted'. Just you, Tessa, and I. A new life. A better one."
I studied the flecks of red that shimmered off of his russet hair. Porter had always been a dreamer. Always the optimist that looked towards what was possible rather than what was. But more importantly, he was my best friend. The only person I would ever trust the safety of me or my sister to.
So without thinking the idea over enough to talk myself out of it, I found myself shrugging. "If we were to attempt this horribly thought through plan of yours, when would we have to leave?"
Porter beamed at my question, flashing the whites of his teeth he allowed to show far more than most people. Far more than me. "Tonight" he declared. "We'd start heading out at midnight."
I let out a long sigh before nodding. "Then you'd better be at my front door at midnight farmer boy, and not a minute past."
Porter must have taken that demand quite seriously because as soon as our clock chimed twelve, the door was being swung open as Porter swiftly appeared before closing the door behind him soundlessly.
"Are you guys ready?" he asked, not daring to bring his voice above a whisper.
"Porter" my sister sighed in relief, moving to embrace the boy who held the hope of a better future for us in his worked and calloused hands.
"Hey Tess" he replied, sweeping my sister up as if she weighed no more than a bag of flour. He finally turned to me as I swung the two bags onto my shoulders.
His gaze was both gentle and intense as he shot me a warm smile that helped soothe the panicked thoughts swirling through my head.
Bad idea. Such a bad idea.
But the boy in front of me reflected none of my own doubts as he held out a hand for me. "Ready to start our new life?"
I sighed before walking past him, opening the door to the dark and empty street. "This dream land of yours better be something really special."