White

Chapter Two - Part Two

(Picture of what Maeve looks like)

Bess doesn’t ask questions, just follows silently as I make sure no one is looking then crouch on the floor and head face the Blacks. Bess is only a few steps behind me, her hair knotted as she glance back and forth every few seconds. When we have both made it into the Garden, I stand and pull her back into the wall beside me.

“Quite,” I whisper to her and then step away, moving through the plants.

I have to find Maeve, warn her that her cousin was right, they’re looking for the older Whites. I have to tell her to get away if she hadn’t already. As I step over the desert sand, I find myself looking back at Bess, who is facing the entrance to the Garden. I speed up as the sounds from the dining room grow louder, it may have been my imagination, but if the Blacks were checking everyone, everywhere, they would no doubt come here to see if someone was hiding.

“Maeve?” I whisper as I step past the bench we had been sitting on and head to the far back of the Garden, were the flowers were grown.

“Louanna? I’m here.” I glance in the direction I heard Maeve’s voice come from and find her, her face and dark brown hair peeking out from behind a sheet of White material. Her eyes were cast downward, but I knew she was looking toward Bess and the entry.

“Maeve, you have to go,” I say as I step in front of her. “You have to run now, there are people, Blacks, here.”

Her eyes widen and she looks over my shoulder, motioning for Bess to come to us. I can hear Bess’s footsteps even though the sand muffles it. Maeve watches us both closely as she speaks, “We need to leave, but we have to hide now, wait till their gone.”

“But we can’t hide, they’ll come in here soon,” Bess points out.

“Over here, there’s the store room,” Maeve replies hurriedly before dropping down on her knees. The store room was the only place I hadn’t been, that I knew of, only Matrons knew where it was and fewer still were allowed in. The Matrons were sure that the starving Whites would steal the food if they knew, was my theory.

“Where?” Bess asks as Maeve, her knees red, knelt in the dust, looking at the White fabric of the main tents side.

“Here,” Maeve says just as she manages to put her fingers through a crack and pull up a small flap. Inside is a thin corridor of fabric, but at the end, I can see a dark hole in the floor.

“The store room is in a hole under the bedrooms?” I ask but both Bess and Maeve put their fingers to their lips to silence me. I clamp my mouth shut and wait until Maeve has crawled through till I move.

“I think they’re coming,” I hear Bess whisper from behind as she pulls the fabric back over the hole from the inside.

The tunnel, as the light from the entrance dims, leaves the three of us in a red tinged light that seeps through the white fabric of the walls. The air catches in my nose as I suck in some of the sand beneath my fingers, making my body wrack with a silent cough.

“Follow me,” Maeve whispers once Bess has caught up with me. Maeve’s pants are now completely red, and the ones I had been given this morning were almost as bad. Maeve moves forward and then she is gone from in front of me. Shuffling forward slowly, I lower my head to look into the store room for the first time in my life. My hair hangs in ringlets that are tinged red, reminding me of when I bleed after fights.

The hole in the floor is a little wider than my shoulders and, through it, I can see wooden shelves, lined with ceramic jugs which I guess are full of food. Directly below me is Maeve, who looks back up at me with a smile.

I run my eyes down the single ladder which is haphazardly balance in the centre of the room. It is too deep for me to jump, so I slide through the hole and then wrap my hands over the first rungs of the ladder, the splitters already burying themselves in my palm.

I wince but manage to get down to the floor without stopping. The air is thick and it takes most of my concentration to breath as Bess comes down, her tall form blocking the light for a few second, making my heat beat wildly.

“Stay down,” Maeve whispers as soon as Bess is sitting down, leaning against the shelves opposite me. I tap my finger on the floor, silently, as I try to keep my breathing even. It was too small, not enough air, in the room. Maeve does not seem as affected by the enclosed space as Bess and I are, for she gives us both a few glances and then climbs back up the ladder to watch the tunnel above.

I squint and look at Bess’s red face, I cannot tell whether it is the light or the lack of air which is making her the same colour as the sand. “Bess, this place…”

“I know,” she replies slowly, sucking in deep breaths. “We’ll be okay though.”

I nod and look back up at Maeve, who watches patiently from her perch. “How will we know when their gone?” I ask no one in particular.

Bess shrugs and lowers herself onto her back, looking at the stiff, dense, sand which is smothered in with mud to make the ceiling and the walls.

A ceiling so different from the White fabric of the tent. This one is some much heavier and precarious. “Will this collapse?” I ask Bess quietly.

“Think about something else,” Bess tells me instead of answering.

I glance around the store room, trying not to look upward at the ceiling or at Maeve. The jug beside me is covered in tiny patterns, which I draw with my eyes to keep my mind busy.

“What if the Blacks come back? If they don’t find us, or whatever they are looking for, won’t they just come back tomorrow?” Bess asks as I begin to trace the second jug, a large creamy coloured thing with carved flowers growing up the side.

I stay silent, staring at the jug. I really didn’t know. The Blacks were after Maeve or someone her age, but they weren’t after Bess and I. What mattered, though, was we couldn’t leave Maeve by herself, to run away as she had decided she would. Was I expected to run away, did Maeve want me to?

“We’ll run. All of us, go to another place, there are forests out there, water,” Maeve whispers from the ladder, her voice reminiscent.

“But none of us have ever left this place, we wouldn’t know where to start,” Bess rebukes. Bess leavers herself up on her forearms so she can get a better look at Maeve, who’s silhouette is the only thing I can make out of her. Bess was right though, we had no memories of ever been outside of the White Tent. All our memories were from here, I didn’t even know how we can to be here, it was as if Whites just appeared out of the sands of the desert. There weren’t enough pregnant women in this encampment to have given birth to all the girls who rotated through the White Tent, so many of us must have come from somewhere else, but I had no idea, I had never even tried to think about it.

Many things were just too hard to process, all I needed to know was I would live here, and I would someday win a fight and become a Brown and, as a Brown, I would marry. Whites couldn’t marry, and even though I hated the idea of marriage, I knew that would be expected of me if I was a Brown.

“It’s the end of the festival, we can ride with one of the farmers,” Maeve says, her voice smothered as a loud clank and some yells echo in the room. I can’t tell if they were from the Garden or somewhere else.

“And what do we do when we get there without money or food?” Bess implores, grasping for Maeve to understand what she wants to convey.

“It won’t work,” I sigh, my shoulders relaxing as I watch the jug again, my eyes blurring so I can’t make out the pattern anymore.

“Louanna! It will work. We just need a solid plan and then we can get out of here,” Maeve calls to us as she climbs down the ladder to sit in the middle of the room. We are silent for a bit, me with my blank mind and Maeve and Bess, both of which are gazing at the sand, ideas swirling in their eyes.

I try to think of something, a way to ensure that, wherever we end up, we won’t starve to death. Nothing comes, my eyes burn with the effort, but there is nothing I can give to them. I do not know how we would get money or food. Stealing would work, but I knew Bess would never agree to such an idea.

“We get outside help,” Maeve mumbles as if mulling over the idea, then her back straightens and she looks straight at Bess. “My cousin, Keenan, he got here somehow, he must have money!”

“Yes, but we don’t know where he is,” Bess tells her.

“And he may not give us any even if we do find him,” I add.

Maeve is still smiling as she looks between us both. I can make out her uptilted face in the red light, her freckles and straight brown hair her most predominant features. “He’s here, near the White Tent. We can find him. I’ll find him, don’t worry,” she tells Bess before standing and pulling a jug off the wooden shelf.

“And we have food. Look, this is a store room. We can take some when we leave,” she tells us as she opens the one she had just pulled off and placed on the ground.

“We can’t do that!” I shout and dive toward the jug, pushing the lid back on and holding the heavy pottery to my chest.

Both Maeve and Bess stare at me, eyebrows drawn together in identical looks of confusion. “Whites are already running short on food as it is, we can’t take any more from them,” I explain as I carefully place the jug back on the shelf.

“We’ll only take as much as we would have eaten if we had stayed,” Bess tells me soothingly. Maeve and Bess both stand above me as they talk, both looking imposing though Bess is far taller than Maeve and Maeve a foot taller than me.

“But it’s not fair on them! If we aren’t White, we don’t eat White food.” I silently beg either of them to understand. It’s White food, for Whites only.

“Louanna, it’s unfair if we don’t get our share,” Maeve says soothingly before stepping away and looking back up the hole. “I’ll go see if their gone.”

As Maeve climbs back up the ladder and begins crawling, I feel Bess move closer to me, making the air warmer. I breathe through my nose as I turn to face her, my eyes watering from the dryness.

“Bess, you have to understand. It’s wrong!” I tell her as I lean back. Having both Maeve and Bess against me is harder than I thought, my two friends both find some things easy to overlook. I don’t though, I can still remember the day when we finally did run out of food.

When the day had started, the Head Matron walked into the dining room, I had been eight then, so I had had to stand on my seat to be able to see her. She had briskly told everyone that there would be no activities that day and that we were all expected to sit in our beds or on the floor. I didn’t know why we had done it, but I had sat and draw pictures in the sand. Then it had been dinner, but none of the Matrons came to collect us and we had gone to bed without food. The next day had been the same, and the next.

I push myself into a standing position in front of Bess and waited for her to tell me otherwise. She doesn’t, instead, she nods in understand, as if she too can remember those few days. We had been friends back then, but we had had separate rooms and hadn’t seen each other until the Matrons had found some food by begging the other Tents who had plenty, for a little. “I don’t want to do this, Louanna, but if it helps us get away, I’m sure that no one will mind,” Bess tells me.

I nod back, even though I know it isn’t true. If I pretend, though, that Bess is right, it almost feels that way.

The sound of scattering sand alerts us to Maeve’s return. She looks down at us both and leans down so that we can hear her when she speaks. “There’s no one in the Garden, though there are shoe marks all over the place. They’re gone for now,” Maeve tells us before crawling back out of sight.

I let Bess climb the ladder before me and only begin up when I see her bare feet disappear down the tunnel. As I climb, I make sure that I avoid the splinters. I get to the tunnel and suck in a breath, staring at the open Garden which I can see at the end. I use it as a guide, following the tracks made by Bess and Maeve.

As soon as I am out, the sunlight that shines through the wire of the cage that encases the Garden, burns into my eye. I wince and look down as I pull myself into a standing position. The room is empty apart from me, both Bess and Maeve have already walked back into the dining room.

I try to quench my disappointment as I walk back into the dining room for the second time today.