Forbidden

Finally! She’s asleep.

Brynn grinned at her mother’s soft snoring as she slipped from her bed. She pulled the heart-shaped locket from around her neck and tucked it safely under the pile of rags she used as a pillow. Last night, it pinged against a metal pipe and alerted a nearby drone.

I can’t risk that happening again, as much as I hate to go anywhere without it.

She cautiously made her way across the small living space, making sure to avoid the creaky floorboard near the washbasin. Then she took a deep breath.

Pushing aside the cloth covering that served as a door for their home posed a risk to her adventure. The light from the Sky People city above their home could wake her mother and spoil everything. But sneaking past the cloth just right avoided having the light stream in.

I did it! Woohoo!

She allowed a moment of excitement before continuing. Brynn crouched low and moved quickly through the shadows. If a drone spotted her out after curfew, the Sky People wouldn’t hesitate to sentence her to death early the next morning. Afterward, the blight they sent down to her community would kill many others. If her mother survived, no one would speak to her or even recognize her existence. She would be ostracized.

Brynn’s adventures came with a very hefty price tag.

But it would be worse if anyone found out where she went each night and what she did there. The Gods didn’t play around when an Earther broke such a major rule.

Brynn overcame her fear of getting caught by remembering the whispers she heard in the loud places where drones couldn’t hear individual voices. There were those who didn’t believe in the Gods, those who said they were human. That the Gods once came from the Earth, descended from the same people as Earthers. The riches they had belonged to everyone. And really, Earthers deserved the riches more because they did all the work.

Brynn ducked into an old building with walls that now only consisted of jagged shards of glass clinging to the edges. She held her breath as the near silent whirr of a drone buzzed overhead. When it passed without slowing, she heaved a sigh of relief.

That was too close.

But she was almost there.

She just had to make it across the well-lit open space in front of her. She learned the old name of it a few nights ago, and smiled as the unfamiliar phrase escaped her lips in a whisper.

“Church Street Marketplace.”

She imagined what it looked like before, using the pictures she saw in the forbidden place and filling in the rest with imagination.

It was beautiful, once.

She recently found books and a magazine that taught her about the past of her home. It used to be called Burlington, Vermont. It used to snow.

I wonder what snow feels like. It only snows in a few places now, it’s too hot everywhere else.

She crouched and listened closely for any signs of drone activity. Once satisfied that she could cross the space safely, she darted across the old square to the safety of the shadows on the other side. She had plenty of dark spaces to hide in for the rest of her journey.

Brynn fondly remembered the day she had discovered her secret place. The Sky People bombed or burned anything on Earth that held knowledge of the past. Then they banned all Earthers from reading with a punishment worse than death. But Brynn discovered a magical world a few years ago, and she found she couldn’t stop herself from returning each night.

Somehow, the Fletcher Library escaped total demolition in spite of the attempts of the Sky People. Brynn could enter the old building through a tunnel in the rubble that she cleared a little more each time she visited. By now, she could easily slip in and peruse the books that survived the blast. And there were a lot of them. The way the building collapsed in on itself when it was blasted preserved a large section of the library in a dark pocket under the rubble.

Brynn pulled a candle and matches from a little alcove she created near the entrance to the tunnel. They were rare and valuable items, and if the community discovered she stole them, she would be in big trouble. But the small crime was nothing compared to the crime of reading. Reading led to knowledge. But Brynn loved to read and the risk was worth it.

She lit her candle and started to crawl toward her secret place.

What will I learn about today?

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Brynn is a character from an upcoming novel that has yet to be named, lol. You can read some more backstories from this novel at the links below.