Begin Again

We watched one another decay. First, our words disappeared from our tongues and then our memories from our minds, one by one. Decaying. No one could remember why it was happening. How had our world gotten to this point, with starving, broken bodies and dying language? The ones who offered the Reward knew. They knew every detail, never lost any words. They said that if one of us found the Reward, then we could be the same. Everything would come back. We wouldn’t be hungry — for food or language — anymore.

So we hunted.

I was young when the Hunt began; a child. Both my parents had already perished, destined to wander in the Vacantness, until they starved to death or were killed by someone else who was almost starved to death. Fraser took me in. He told me I was an anomaly and called me “Prairie,” his vast field of language and memories. Fraser was an anomaly too, a grown man who, somehow, still hadn’t begun to Decay.

We hunted with Jasper, Clementine and Georgie. Georgie had some language, and she could still write words she couldn’t speak. Fraser said Georgie’d been born like me — full of words and memories — but as she got older they seemed to chip away like brittle stone. Clementine was Fraser’s own daughter. All of her language was gone, but somehow, her memories remained and so she found ways to communicate. Jasper was Fraser’s nephew. He’d lost nearly all his language, but was a natural-born killer whose smile sent a vapor of warmth into your body. I remember reading the Reward with him. I explained the words as carefully as I could, held his hand while helping him trace the numbers with a chunk of charcoal on the battered shred of paper I’d found that day.

2 0 0 0 0.

“What mean?” He asked.

“Money,” I replied, “Part of the Reward.”

Then he was silent for a moment, thinking.

“Part of?” His head cocked to the side and red hair fell into his eyes.

“It’s more than money. They will give us back our language…give us back our lives.”

“How?”

Jasper’s eyes were wide now.

“Through the thing we’re hunting. A small, black notebook,” I explained.

“How?” Jasper asked again.

I shrugged. It was ironic that the answer to our world’s problems came in the shape of something so small and ancient, so rare. Paper had been all but abandoned centuries ago, kept only for posterity. Our world became nothing more than zeros and ones. Virtual realities and artificial intelligence. Circuits instead of flesh. Yet, somehow, it was a notebook that would save us from the Decay. I couldn’t see how it was even possible.

That next morning, we continued the Hunt after a breakfast of brown, wilted grass and willow bark tea. Jasper and I strapped our bows and arrows across our backs. Georgie gripped her hatchet in her left hand. Clementine had no weapons, but she was quick and her hearing was remarkable. Fraser carried a gun — it had only three bullets left. He’d used the rest a week or so prior, saving our camp from a pair of Vacants. They were two men who’d managed to retain whatever instinct drives hunger and rage, and they came upon us while we slept. Thankfully, Fraser awoke before it was too late, but it cost him those bullets. The attack wasn’t for nothing, though. One of the men carried a piece of paper in his pocket. I was able to read it despite the spattered blood.

“It’s a map,” I told them, “for the Hunt.”

I traced the thin, black lines with my fingertips. There was writing scrawled in shaky, inconsistent print around the edges. Signs of the Decay.

Follow red dirt. Find Fault Line — Fractured Earth. There, notebook.

The path led East, where no one wanted to go. The east had become desolate, ravaged. The sun didn’t shine if you traveled far enough that way; everything was lit by a dull, grey orb instead, and there was never enough daylight. As we decayed, so did the world, and it was in the east that the Decay began. So subtle at first, until all anyone knew was chaos.

We followed the red dirt — the new soil that dominated the ground — thick and malleable, and more rust-colored than red. It smelled like copper. We continued onward along the black and red, broken, dead land, and were undeterred for more than two days.

Clementine heard the noise we’d been hoping for. We stopped as soon as she did, then followed her eyes to an ashen, lifeless tree not a mile away. There it was, a lone squirrel — rust colored like the dirt beneath our feet. Dinner.

As my arrow pierced the squirrel’s eye, Georgie’s scream pierced the air. Jasper’s arrow was still strung in its bow as he twisted back to see what happened. I found myself torn between the squirrel and Georgie, but it was only a moment before I realized there wasn’t really a choice. Fraser was already on the ground, probably breathing his last. Georgie and Clementine were surrounded. We’d become prey in another group’s Hunt. The Reward could only belong to one family, after all. Jasper and I ran as fast as starving humans could, slinging arrow after arrow. There were twelve of them and only four of us, then three as Clementine fell.

The attack stopped as suddenly as it began. Jasper and I stood back-to-back a few feet from Georgie, encircled by the hunters, who were all staring at me.

“Birthmark,” several of them whispered in echos.

Instinctively, I touched my left cheekbone. The birthmark stretched from there to my forehead. A raised, brown streak like spilled ink.

“You are spoken of,” she continued, “you are written. Find you, find Reward. Hunt over.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“It is written,” she repeated, taking a cautious step forward.

Georgie leapt to my side, hatchet raised. The girl raised her hand, palm forward. She pulled out a crumpled paper from her pocket, held it out toward me. “You are here.”

On the paper was a sketch of my face, the birthmark drawn perfectly. Below my portrait were the words, “She wins the Hunt.” I handed it to Georgie, then she showed Jasper, who understood it was my face on the paper. He traced his finger along my birthmark.

“Take us,” the girl said. “Help.”

I felt anger brimming beneath my skin, then pointed to Fraser and Clementine, on the ground at our feet. “What about them?” I spit through my teeth.

“Too late,” said the girl, then, “Please.”

I looked to Georgie, who nodded. Jasper’s brows were furrowed, his jaw clenched. We were outnumbered, there was no other choice. With deep, staggered breaths, we moved onward again. I looked back at Fraser and Clementine, then forward and nowhere else. Over the next few days, we encountered only non-hostile Vacants, easily avoided. At the end of the third day we passed a sign nailed to a fallen tree.

Woe be upon us.

Just ahead was the Fault Line, at last. When we saw it, we ran until our toes reached the ledge. The red dirt, stretched out around us like a shoreline, muffled the sounds of our steps. The air around us was still, hot and silent. The fracture was more than eight feet wide and deep enough to see lava brewing at its depths.

“See anything?” Georgie asked.

I didn’t. But I would be the one to see something, would’t I? If what they said was true. I closed my eyes and knelt to the ground. She wins the Hunt.

Clementine would have heard it before any of us, the crescendo of anguished moans. I opened my eyes, still on my knees. Sweat dripped off the edge of my nose. The ones who’d killed Fraser and Clementine screamed first. I grabbed Georgie’s hand as she grabbed Jasper’s, and we ran. The herd of Vacants pooled behind us like a tidal wave.

“How so many?!” Georgie cried.

“The Hunt,” I answered in between gasps, “they must have all come here for the Hunt!”

As we continued along the edge of the Fault Line, my mind was racing. If they were right, then why me? What was it about me that no one else has? I halted, the sounds of the Vacants swelling. Jasper and Georgie nearly fell over themselves when they realized I wasn’t beside them anymore.

“P-Prairie?” Jasper called. I could tell he struggled to say my name.

“It’s me,” I said, but not loudly enough for anyone to hear. Circuits instead of flesh…

I held out my hands, palms upward, like I’d never seen them before. Then, everything was instinctual. I ran for Jasper and Georgie, grabbing their arms; before I realized what was happening, I’d pulled them into the air — we were bounding over the Fault Line. Away from the Vacants, away from devastation. We landed without a stumble, then turned to see Vacant after Vacant fall into the lava below. It wasn’t long before my instincts took over again. I found myself walking away from them, looking for the spot. I thought about Fraser and Clementine, wishing… There it was, near the edge of the Fault Line marked by a pile of red rocks, right where we’d left it. I moved the rocks away to reveal the wooden box, and the Reward inside where my father and I had placed it.

I smiled, then pulled out the small black notebook and pen with a deep breath. The words came to me like remembering a dream. Begin again, I scrawled. Heat began to penetrate from the pages, surging through my fingertips. Jasper and Georgie kneeled beside me, their eyes wide with awe. Warm, golden light suddenly surrounded us. Was it coming from the notebook? I couldn’t tell. Words, beautifully scripted, appeared on the notebook’s pages, one after another.

“I can read them,” Jasper whispered, smiling.

“We can speak them,” Georgie replied, her face glowing in the light.

And then I realized, it was from me that the light came. From me, and the notebook too.

“What’s happening, Prairie?” Jasper wondered.

“The Reward,” I said, “you’re remembering language. You’re…remembering.”

“She’s right,” called a voice from behind us.

We turned to see a group of men and women standing only a few feet away. They looked pleased, even joyful. Not hungry or in pain. Not Vacant. The three of us stood, my grasp tightening around the notebook.

“Prairie…is that what he called you?” The man in front asked me.

I nodded.

“How appropriate,” he said, grinning, then turned to the others standing beside him. “Shall we?”

They nodded, looking eager.

“We owe you much more than that notebook,” the man explained, then gestured East. Where there had been only barren land, there suddenly appeared water and vegetation, homes and other buildings. An entire community. Was any of it real?

“Prairie,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to learn who you are — for your friends as well.”

“You’re not just going to give us the 20,000?” I asked, still dazed.

The man laughed. “No, Prairie. We have work to do. But the money is yours, of course, as is the comfort of a home to which you can belong. You’ll not be hungry, or alone, ever again.”

It was more than I could have hoped for, but it didn’t feel right. Still, we followed them. The world we knew — the Vacants, the Hunt, Fraser and Clementine — disappeared behind us, like someone turned off a screen.

“What do you think happens now?” Georgie wondered.

“We hide the money,” I replied.

We locked eyes. She understood, and Jasper did too. The Reward came with strings attached, and we couldn’t fathom what was to come. All we could do was begin again.