Storm of Ash. Michelle Kenney

purpose?

      Thoughts tumbled through my head, confused and overlapping. I gritted my teeth. It had to be a purpose bigger than us altogether. Was it to make us strong enough to finish what we’d started? To lead the war?

      ‘It was real for me, Talia.’

      And it seemed as though the branches around us leaned in to catch his whisper, and cocoon it within their scrolled leaves.

      We both knew the dangers of the legatio meant his return was against all the odds. Leaving nothing. An enormous silence, when so much had preceded it. Which was why no more words made it into the dead air between us.

      After all, what was there left to say if we’d already traded it all?

       Chapter 4

       Two months later

      I tensed, Harlo’s slingshot taut and short in my hands. The catapult was larger than my old one, and made of a hard wood I didn’t recognize. Harlo called it camphor when he relinquished it, but a borrowed slingshot made of foreign wood was only the beginning. Arafel had been slowly changing since the new Outsiders started arriving.

      Ida’s soft whistle perforated the humid air. I peered through the thick foliage and spied her blue-inked skin gleaming through the giant yuccas a little way off. Lifting my hands, I hooted twice by way of response. Birdcalls were a useful method of communication when the Elders weren’t around to disapprove. They were simple and uncomplicated, which suited us both.

      I retrained the slingshot, as a warm breeze rustled the foliage cocooning me. Ida was a Komodo, one of the first Outsiders to arrive, and a formidable huntress, even among her people. I caught the rise of her hand, just enough to say she’d heard, and nodded once. It was always enough.

      The arrival of her tribe had stopped everyone in their tracks. Flanked by lizards the size of small ponies, and with midnight bodies and long plaited hair, they looked more like gods and goddesses than flesh-and-blood Outsiders. They were also a people of very few words, and though it was the same Outsider community August had described before leaving, their actual appearance had turned our quiet village into a place I no longer recognized.

      August. I exhaled slowly, forcing his image from my mind. It was how I’d survived, volunteering for every possible shift and spending all my days in the outer forest, away from everyone. Denying it all.

      I tucked the slingshot into my leather rations belt and climbed higher.

      The Komodo tribe were some four hundred in number, and brought whole families of naked, inked children with them. Within a single day the outside forest had looked and felt like an entirely new world. They set up ad hoc camps, cut down mature trees for shelter and baited large food for their unusual guard – the dragons, who were also the tribe’s symbolic alter ego.

      The Komodo dragon lizards tested everyone. The huge, lumbering reptiles were constantly hungry and aggressive, particularly to children, so Art insisted they were herded into pens in the outside forest. It had sparked the first real confrontation. The tribe were unwilling to be parted from their reptilian family, and unable to return to their Europa home without stockpiling provisions from Arafel’s forest.

      Art called an emergency Ring, and counter-proposed bringing the newcomers into Arafel, where food and shelter could be shared and a war strategy agreed. The lizards would remain in pens, while the tribe would have the protection of the North Mountains instead.

      There was a long, heated meeting but the motion was eventually passed, and there was no doubt it was a good compromise. The tribe moved into the village, while the lizards stayed in the outside forest, and if they mourned their separation, the pens were built sufficiently close to the river stepping stones to ensure any lovelorn tribe member didn’t have far to go.

      The simple truth was, we were all acutely aware that the Komodos’ arrival was a powerful show of solidarity and support – and that harmonious living was essential if we were to stand any chance against Cassius.

      Yet the new integrated living brought sharper edges to Arafel none of us could ignore. While the tribespeople were an undeniable asset to our hunter army, their physique an easy match for any Pantheonite gladiator, it was less clear whether the outside forest could keep up with their significant drain on resources. It wasn’t helped by the fact the tribe were focused ground hunters, and preferred to work alone when it came to securing a kill, which was too often outside our regular village shifts.

      Another muted whistle reached through the undergrowth, the warning call of a green turaco. I scanned the bushes, but couldn’t see Ida. It didn’t matter; the call was her warning to keep my distance, that she had a scent or a lead. Today, I was content to oblige. I scurried up a few more branches and lodged myself in a fork.

      Everyone knew the new rate of consumption was unsustainable. Our stockpile of grain and pulses had depleted at a frightening rate, even though the Komodo tribe’s diet was predominantly carnivorous. Their survival philosophy was different to ours too. While we tried to strike a balance with nature, their approach was territorial. Food was there for the taking, until it wasn’t. Then they moved on. Art and the Council remonstrated, pointing out that their approach wouldn’t work within a fixed community like Arafel, but there were still too many unofficial dawn raids to number.

      At times, the differences seemed bigger than the similarities. While my people had long, sculpted limbs, adapted for swift passage through our forest trees, the Komodos had developed a muscular physiology that almost matched that of their dragon friends. The tribe had also travelled their lands nomadically for more than two hundred years, while Arafel had been our home since Thomas’s discovery. The Komodo considered hunting to be a right, while Arafel people considered it the blessing of a healthy forest.

      And yet, there was one binding commonality that put us all squarely on the same dirt ground. The Lifedomes of Isca Pantheon. Their ancestors had also passed down myths about the Great War, how the Lifedomes were supposed to be a refuge before the trapped population realized they couldn’t leave. It explained their swift arrival, their unquestioning solidarity and was the first sign the legatio might actually succeed.

      I reached out to pick a few rare bunches of ripe blueberries and add them to my foraged roots and oranges. I’d only discovered two other blueberry bushes in the outer forest before and they’d quickly disappeared. Max would be impressed with this particular crop, especially now the outside forest was supporting so many more.

      I popped one into my mouth, before dropping the rest into my bag. While the Komodos were the first to arrive, they weren’t the last. Less than three weeks after their arrival, two more Outsider communities arrived. First there was a pale-skinned, northern hemisphere tribe calling themselves Lynx – they didn’t say why but I had a feeling their green eyes and shy, nocturnal habits had something to do with it – and they were swiftly followed by a large party of peace-loving Eurasians. While the Lynx had built a life hunting fattened seals and ice-diving for fish, the Eurasians were much more like us – forest dwellers with farming and pottery skills. And it seemed each new arrival built new pillars of hope, yet August was never with them.

      Another turaco warning call whistled through the leaves, followed by the swift and soft impact of an arrow about ten metres away. Seconds later, Ida’s athletic form crept through the clearing below. I watched as she retrieved her arrow from a twisted baobab root and swiftly cleaned it, before melting back into the trees. Hunting was often like this now. The forest animals seemed to understand they were under greater threat, and that the old balance was shifting.

      It was a permanent heated agenda item at the open leader meetings. Art’s diplomacy and leadership were tested more than ever before, and for the first time since Thomas’s days, a penal code was resurrected. The Council called it a temporary measure while communities grew and integrated. But we all knew it was a by-product of the new conflict that was unlikely to disappear, and while the Ring had been nominated as a place where disputes could be resolved – the village grazing field stood in for those