Once I close and lock the door behind me, Poppy’s right there with the boards to reinforce it. As he hastily hammers nails into the wall, almost catching his thumb more than once, my conscience pangs with the guilt of how stupid it was for me to waste time spying on Nico, on the Dogio feast. How Poppy must have been watching each grain of sand drop through the hourglass waiting for me to return.
Worse, right beneath the guilt of worrying him so is a sickening humiliation over being caught by Nico, which only makes me more ashamed.
And all of this on the most dangerous night of the year.
The Night have lived in opposition of the Imperi, hidden underground in what’s believed to be a complex series of tunnels, for as long as the Imperi have been in power. Since before the Great Flood that overtook our island on this day centuries ago.
Dogio celebrate with candles and sweets and sunrise flowers.
Basso huddle in their boarded-up homes.
The Night have their Night of Reckoning.
And the Imperi guard their weapons cache, the High Regent, and powerful Dogio citizens and villages like Nico’s.
Honestly, who knows what came first—the Imperi, the flood, the Night, the Sun himself? I just want Poppy and me to live through to first light. To have food on the table. To not have to work all hours in order to afford six measly pieces of candied fruit to stick in the middle of a yearly loaf of sunrise bread.
A final series of bells echoes over the island the moment the Sun fully sets each night—vesper bells. Tonight is no different.
“Downstairs. Now—” are Poppy’s first and only words after he shoves the hammer through his belt loop. He then crams a chair under the door handle and checks to be sure I’m carrying the lamp oil I was sent for what feels like forever ago.
His expression alone—tired, concern lining his forehead—is punishment enough for my sneaking. When this is over, I’m going to catch him a fish twice as big as the pantera this morning and then cook his favorite stew to go with the sunrise bread.
I pull the rug that covers the basement door aside, as a series of windows breaks from somewhere down the street.
It’s begun.
And it was a night similar to this that my parents were taken. It was the attack that spurred the first war. The Night surfaced, revolted.
Somewhere during those hours of terror, they snatched my mother and father up in the dead of dark. Dragged them away and tortured and killed them in Sun knows how many horrible ways.
Poppy blows out the lamp on the kitchen table, the sudden blackness sending a visceral shiver down my back. I force my fear, my nightmarish memories conjured from Poppy’s stories of the last time he saw my mother—his daughter—aside. He’s only once spoken of my father. And in an expletive-laced rant under his breath, no less. Poppy didn’t know I was listening outside his door when he lost his temper. There was mention of my father, that my parents died before they could marry, and that if it wasn’t for him maybe things would have been different. Not too long after, I worked up the nerve to ask him about it. He apologized that I’d overheard, that he’d used such language. There was truth to his words, he admitted, but also explained he’d been angry and missing my mother. My grandfather completely buried the subject from that moment on.
Aside from that memory, I know nothing of the man.
Vincent. His name was Vincent. That’s all I’ve ever gotten out of Poppy.
I’ve not been able to glean a whole lot more out of my grandfather about my mother either. She was kind. Brave. We share the same dark red hair. There’s only one photo of her in the house, stuck in an old book Poppy likes to read about sea navigation. In it, she’s standing tall, strong, holding a weapon she used for hunting. An atlatl, Poppy explained when he caught me staring at it one afternoon. It’s a long wooden thrower with a hook that flings thick, sharp spears.
She also used it to protect her and Poppy against the Night.
I slide open the wood-planked basement door. We hurry down the ladder, Poppy pulling the carpet back over, locking the door behind us.
Within the cellar is one lantern, a jug of water, jarred food, and a couple of blankets.
The space is cramped, no larger than a broom closet, but it’s the safest place right now. Last year when several homes burned to the ground, the only saving grace was that the families hid in their cellars. They lived. If you don’t have a cellar, on this night, you know someone who does.
I stare across the short distance to Poppy. His eyes are heavy; he’s probably exhausted from the work of getting the house boarded up, worrying over me cutting things much too close, on top of laboring the day away selling worms at the bait stand.
I wish I could give him a barrel of candied lemon.
“You sit,” I say, pushing the one stool toward him. He doesn’t protest. I hand him a blanket and I sit on top of the other on the floor. “Will they ever stop?”
“Afraid not,” Poppy says through work-weathered hands as he rubs his eyes. “Not until they get what they want.”
“What more could they possibly want? I know they hate us, but to what end?”
“Power, my Veda. It’s all about power.”
“I don’t get it. Who the hell cares about all that?”
Poppy snorts in that way he does when he agrees with me and also eyes me for saying hell. “The Night. The Imperi. Those who already have it and fear losing it.”
I roll my eyes. “At least the Imperi protect us … Sort of.” But do they? Sure, they’d insist they do, but with each day that passes, each morning I have to sneak out for bait, it feels less true. More and more I can’t help but feel we’re just pawns to their king. We do all the work while they roam wherever they please, laughing and celebrating, bellies full of candied lemon. Yeah, they’ll recruit us to fight, to tend their gardens, to bake their bread, but never—never—to share their gold-linen-adorned table.
“Mmm…” Poppy nods. He takes my hands in his and is about to say something, go into one of his stories from my childhood, probably, when there’s a blast above. What I assume is the back door, those boards Poppy so hastily used to barricade it, left a mess of splinters on the floor.
The noise travels down into the cellar, rapping against my ribs. Poppy’s eyes are wide, his forefinger hovering at his mouth. I blow out the lamp.
The world is painted pitch black.
Booted footsteps knock against the planked floor over our heads.
The darkness is so dense, so all-encompassing, I can’t see even inches in front of me.
More footsteps. There must be at least six Night soldiers marching around our home as we wait like sitting ducks below.
Something falls over. A shelf? Our kitchen table?
I pull my knife from my boot.
Poppy squeezes my shoulder as if reminding me not to do anything reckless or hasty.
A window breaks.
Another.
More boot clatter.
Another item crashes to the floor.
Then … silence.
My heartbeat is all I can feel. All I can hear, the thump-thump-thump between my ears.
I’m about to dare a whisper to check on Poppy when something slick and cool drips through the slats of the ceiling onto the top of my head. Then again.
Poppy must feel it too because he strikes a single match for light. I glance to his face, gasp, and then look down at my hands where I’ve wiped the warm liquid off my head. It’s red.
Bloodred.