Born for Silk (The Cradled Common)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Aster

I wander down toward my favourite place.

It’s the setting of my earliest memory, from when I was too small to talk fluently, but too fast on my feet for the Silk Wardeness to keep me in her sights.

I had wandered off the pretty pebbled path and into the depths of the aviary, following a scent that I couldn’t quite place. Like mushrooms with floral notes. Wet, yet fresh.

I walked with flowers in my fist, birds rattling trees overhead, and ladders in my forever-ruined stockings, in a direction without supervision—with freedom.

That was when I saw it.

A body of water that boasted more colours than possible, a light reflecting yellows and oranges in an endless green abyss.

A pond.

It was the first one I had ever seen, and I couldn’t swim for the life of me, but I needed to touch it.

I knelt on the grass bedding by the bank and placed the flowers down on the greenery. I skimmed my fingertips across the moving colours along the water when an odd shape caught my eye.

Blinking at it, I reached across and plucked the strange thing up. It was a baby bird floating on the water. Belly up. Legs awkward. Feet curled over as though they were wilted petals.

“Bird,” I whispered, the feathers tickling my young palm. I remember that it felt so small. Even to me. So wildly insignificant—even to me.

I didn’t know this at the time, but that young bird had hit the glass boundary of the aviary and broken its little neck.

I was too small to understand empathy, but I had a feeling inside my chest that pulled and pulled and pulled. I felt like the bird, all upside-down and tense.

Alone.

It was my earliest memory, but it would become a tradition that lasted for many ages. I would soon spend many days collecting broken-necked birds for my friend.

For my friend to eat.

I reach the bank and wait.

A big raptor-bird appears from the bushes. Its wing is perpetually broken, and its beak is already covered in blood from a first-light of cannibalistic hunting.

It’s not pretty like the other birds, possessing the beastly mutations so many animals have since the Gene Age. Like birds don’t usually have teeth, but this one does. Rows and rows. Thin ones to filter. I sometimes imagine that he is a dinosaur, not just a flightless mutant.

“It’s a big day,” I say to him, because it is nice to speak aloud and be heard. I sometimes forget I have a voice if not. If not for this bird.

I cross my arms over my chest, and he approaches slowly. “You come when they are distracted. Only then. You’re afraid of them but not me. I take offence. I’m terrifying.”

I sit down, and he pokes around at my hand. “I have no birds for you today, but I met the king. He spoke to me.” I look down at my tattoo. “He touched me.”

As though to remind me it’s muck-up day, an evil laugh echoes within the aviary; its shrilling chords cause birds to take to the air.

I stand and watch, wait, scoring overhead for that one little bird too frightened to stop in time before meeting the sheer glass walls that keep us safe from the Redwind.

“They are all celebrating,” I whisper to the air. My black hair and white dress flat down my body as though weighed, reminding me of the lifeless atmosphere. “Do you birds get stronger in here? Or weaker? Because you don’t have any wind to help you glide. You must do all the work yourselves.”

I hear Raptor squark and croon in anticipation of his meal. If the birds drop dead into the water, they will float. I learnt that fat floats and so do birds because they are full of air. And my friend doesn’t know how to fly or swim, so without me, he’ll miss out on lunch. If it’s close enough, I will dive in and retrieve the bird for him. I’m not sure why I started doing this… Maybe because the little bird from my memories reminded me of myself, and food, horrific as the premise is, is still a purpose. I wanted the little bird to have Meaningful Purpose. “They don’t have the vast to discover either,” I muse. “To stretch, to fight for survival. They stay small. I’m a different kind of caged bird, aren’t I?”

“There she is!”

Hiding Raptor, I whirl around to find Iris and Ivy appearing through the foliage, powdered entirely in purple sandules. I don’t hear my friend disappear into the reeds, though I know he does.

“You don’t want to celebrate with us, Fur Girl?” Iris circles me slowly, her fingers curled, cradling something within them. Sandules, probably.

I step away from the pond, drawing their eyes with me. “Muck-up doesn’t appeal to me.”

“You don’t ever want to play with us,” Iris mock-moans, flicking her red hair over her shoulder. It’s wild, like flames, and her skin is pale, like snow.

The two together are a rare beauty.

Or so I am told—often.

“What do you do out here all alone?” Ivy asks, blocking the passage through the trees to the Silk House. She is tall, which is desirable in The Cradle, and she knows it. “Talking to the trees again? Trying to connect with your Fur people?”

“You’re not pure. You’re Common, too,” I spit out, and she throws a handful of purple dust at me. The pretty colour powders my dress. As though that is supposed to upset me. It’s his colour. It’s a symbol.

“Not purple,” Iris hisses. “Not for her.” She squats behind me, but I refuse to give her more than my side profile as I listen to her movements. “She needs something browner. Darker. Like her dirty Fur blood.”

My senses prickle when her fingers dig into The Cradle’s rich crust. I play the scene in my head for a second; she throws the soil at me, they laugh, and then leave.

I don’t care. “It’s muck-up. Do your worst.”

As another girl, Lavender, pushes through the pendulous limbs ahead, stepping around Ivy, a small ball of dirt bursts at my spine.

As I presumed; now leave.

The three girls circle me, slashed and marked in purple dust, proud and wild. Their eyes are arrowed, wicked intent sparking.

I feign calm, but my heart thrashes. I hope they cannot see my pulse drumming in my neck. I feel eyes on me from every direction, then heated laughter that seems to collect and tangle together.

“Iris, let’s get this over with,” Lavender says with an intensity that makes my pulse harder to control. “I just want her out. She makes me break my vows. The way he held her today in the parlour.” She huffs. “ Jealousy isn’t allowed between Silk Girls.”

Want me out?

“Jealousy?” Iris shoots her heated gaze across the ring to her friend. “You might be jealous. I’m not. I’ve got the nictitating membrane. See?” She bats her lashes and shows the sliding lids. “And my line has never lost a baby. Not once. I’m the prize in this house.”

“Of course,” Lavender agrees tentatively, but Iris isn’t happy with the accusation.

“You.” Iris points at her, and I turn my head to keep up, but their circling makes me dizzy. “You do it, and I’ll make sure he chooses you as well. We can live together as Sired Mothers. I know you’re strong, Lavender. You’ll have Meaningful Purpose.”

Do it… do what?

Just breathe.

I want to run, but that seems even more frightening than staying still. It’ll be over soon. They’ll beat me, maybe? Humiliate me. I can take it.

I’m watching them closely, whipping my head around to keep all three in my sights, when the ground becomes a blur. I stumble, and they lunge for me. Kicking at them isn’t enough.

Ivy grabs my hands and pins them over my head. She leans over me, a smile like a mean rat etched to her lips.

Lavender pins one of my legs, but the other jolts around.

“Hold her down,” Iris orders.

“I’m trying!” Lavender whines.

Ivy kneels on my forearms so she can slap my cheeks, disorientating me enough for Lavender to pin my calves down.

Her weight shoots pain through my bones.

More birds flock from the trees around us, not wanting to watch any more than I want to be here on the ground.

Frantically, I fight them, but they are bigger than me. Taller. Heavier. “Stop it. Stop it.”

“Ugh!” Iris gets annoyed with Lavender’s attempts to control me. “I’ll do it then!”

“What are you going to do?” Ivy asks Iris as she drops down over me, eyes cutting me to bare bones.

“We’re going to ruin her seal of purity. We are going to open her.”

He words crush my bravery.

Blinking heat from my eyes, I refuse to cry. I turn to look at the pond, pleading with every inch of need for my raptor to rear up and protect me.

Be my friend.

He has disappeared. The pond is motionless. A mirror that reflects the swaying branches overhead. Is he real? Maybe I imagined him all this time. Imagined a broken creature in my mind to ward off the loneliness.

“She’ll tell,” Ivy hesitates.

“No, she won’t.” Iris smiles. “Then she’ll be cast out. Wardeness will think she has touched herself and broken her seal. And she will be disgraced.”

I’m shaking so hard it’s impossible to see anything when Iris shoves my dress up and tugs my knickers down. I’m stiff with pathetic fear as she pushes a wooden twig between my legs. The sharp end scrapes along my thighs.

“Get off me!” I scream. I want to gyrate harder, but I’m afraid. Afraid she’ll do more damage. I twist gently to make it harder for her to get inside me.

Between the feeling of sharp stabs at my thighs and the look of pure hatred in Iris’s eyes, I cannot breathe.

Or think.

A squawk from overhead startles the girls enough to loosens their hold. Iris and Ivy stumble back, leaving Lavender alone and holding me. So, I pull my legs free and kick upward, connecting with her chin.

“Oh!” she cries out, and the others gather her from the dirt. They look no worse than expected from today—muck-up day wild. It is normal for the girls to get dirty after our ceremony. They pull Lavender away, and all three disappear into the foliage like wraiths that never were.

Just breathe.

On my back, I blink ahead at the branches reaching in and out of the sky like green fingers scratching a cloudy, grey canvas. We are everything we aren’t meant to be, full of jealousy and bitterness.

Is this life?

I don’t want to look down, though I can feel the wetness between my legs, which means Iris broke skin. The sickening sensation makes my throat burn.

I hear my bird screech; the scent of my blood probably bothers him. No longer alone, I brave the sight. I push to a sitting position; fire explodes along my thighs, snatching a defiant whine from my throat.

I’m hurt.

Stabbed.

My white dress is destroyed, crimson-stained fabric muddied with dirt and purple sandules.

I push off the ground.

Absently, I toe the pond, a snake of blood rushing to meet the water, spreading out like dye. I blink at the water as though he can see the tiny molecules approaching him. “I have to get out of here.”

Without a second thought, I pin drop into the pond, instantly enveloped by watery arms. And it’s so quiet and still, for a moment I consider death. What it must feel like. Cold. Quiet. Weightless. Where do we go? To The Crust? What is The Crust? Is it a place or state of mind? Or are we just sown back into the dirt, food for the flowers. What about my thoughts? Where do they go?

My dress floats around me, dancing on the wings of fluid. I blink, focusing underwater—no stinging. No salt; it’s fresh water. I search but cannot see far, rocks and trees blocking the distant body of the pond.

What will you do?

I resurface with a gasp, and the warm air hisses along my skin. “I will say I fell in,” I chant the plan to an empty bank. “The wound will heal. I’ll pretend it never happened.”

You must go through it, Aster.

Go right through the adversities to the other side.

Meaningful Purpose awaits you.

Walking back into the quadrangle, dress and hair stuck to my body, dripping like a drowned beast, I keep my head high as the other girls turn and stare.

Their clothes are covered in purple. Their hair is tousled by excitement. Smiles are wide, then fall when they look at me.

While I’m an unusual sight, sure, that’s not the reason for the hostility. It’s muck-up day and no one likes me. So, being pushed into the pond is a reasonable assumption for my drenched state.

Low conversing suddenly invades me like buzzing bees, but I stride right through the chattering girls, straight toward my housing.

Vines strangle the sandstone buildings that surround the courtyard, thick green snakes that hunt for something long lost. Something natural. Air. Sun. Wind. Nothing is real in the Silk Aviary. The glass dome shields us from the Redwind, but the vines get so confused. Twisting themselves into knots in search of something more.

At the entrance to my personal chamber, I push inside. Leaning on the beautifully carved oak door, I decide quickly and quietly that today never happened. Nothing good can come from drawing attention to myself in here.

Moving fast, I hide the stained dress and my knickers in the mattress until I have time to clean them in the washroom. I bury the sensation of raw flesh, walking through the ache until I can bear each step.

I pace in the room, flexing my hands.

It’s fine.

I will be fine.

A single tear slides down my cheek.