Keepers of the Moon

Nova 2020 C.E. (4)

My confusion and fear soon made way to anger and hatred. The feeling was overwhelming and all consuming. I didn’t know what to do with it, it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was burning inside of me, tearing my memories apart and filling me with terrible purpose. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to deny the very last part that I’d managed to keep. A slice of innocence. To survive without resorting to violence. But I would no longer be able to do that. Einar had taken that from me.

I felt it.

I knew it.

My heart yearned for it.

Revenge.

Justice.

‘That’s not even the worst part that I found out.’ Mere looked at me now, her eyes piercing through my scattering thoughts. My jaw was clenched shut, my knuckles white, while blood was rushing in my ears. I could barely keep all my colliding feelings at bay. Mere noticed it, but didn’t say anything about it. I gathered that she must’ve felt the same thing when she found out about it.

‘What do you mean?’ Ilse sounded scared, because what could possibly be worse? I knew it, Mere knew it, now we all needed to know it.

‘We’re being hunted. Einar wants us dead.’

There was a deafening silence filling the corridor, casting deeper shadows, dimming the flickering lights of the candles. The breeze carried more filthy smells from further down the sewage, while a dreadful cold filled my limbs and froze me down onto the floor. Ilse swallowed hard, her hands were also shaking.

‘I just really hoped it wasn’t true…’

‘You knew?’ My voice jumped in astonishment, Ilse just looked hurt.

‘I had my suspicions when people started avoiding us. That someone was actively trying to erase our existence, maybe to protect Einar. Maybe because they found something and they don’t need us anymore. I have no idea.’

‘Ilse, the rest needs to know this! They need to know that they are being hunted!’ Mere was right, I knew it in my bones. If we wanted to survive this, we needed to be prepared. The only way we could prepare ourselves if we all knew what was coming for us.

‘We can’t tell them who’s behind all this. I won’t risk an all-out war between Nordlys and Caledonia. Not even if it wasn’t our fault in the first place.’

I buried my head in my hands. My head was spinning and I felt like throwing up. Ilse was right, Mere was also right. How were we going to deal with this? How could we prepare ourselves if we couldn’t tell anyone what was happening.

‘Then we don’t. We just keep it simple. Someone is after us, we need to prepare for war. We don’t tell them anything about our past, or who is after us. It’s not like they have Nordlys written on their foreheads, it doesn’t matter if we don’t tell them what this is all about. It’s just a group who is done with all those kids roaming the streets, stealing from honest shop owners. All they need to know is that someone wants to wipe us from existence.’ Mere’s voice was shaking, though there was a strength in her words that I hadn’t noticed before. She was right. We didn’t have to tell the rest anything. But we could prepare them. No chance of war, still a chance to survive.

‘Then this is what we are going to do. It is our only option.’ I tried to put the same strength in my words, hoping to convince Ilse. But she was still buried inside her own head, her eyes empty and afraid. I could only imagine what it must’ve been like to keep a secret this big, for so long. All to protect the world against a war, even though telling the truth would be justified.

‘Ilse, this is the right thing to do. We don’t have a choice. Nordlys is leaving us no choice.’ I scooted over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. To my surprise my own hands were steady now that they had a purpose. Now that I knew what I needed to do.

She looked up with a tear-stained face, her blue-grey eyes showing too much whites. I could still feel her doubt, like every vein in her body was protesting against taking action. I knew that we had to do something, that we couldn’t keep this from the others. Ilse knew this too, I could see it in her eyes. But the thought that we found out what had happened to us, made her realise that any of us could find out about the truth. Telling about the dangers that were ahead of us, was bound to raise some questions. If we didn’t do this right, people would try and find out for themselves. That would be the end of it. It was a scary thought indeed.

‘We need to be very careful about this. People must be prepared, but they cannot know. They cannot start asking questions themselves. If anyone finds out… that would be disastrous.’ I could see the way Ilse reacted to my words, they were exactly what she needed to hear. I voiced her true doubts, let her know, that we thought this through. That this wasn’t a rash decision.

‘Then we need a plan.’