Ashes (Post-Apocalyptic Fairy Tales #2)

Chapter 1

These ruins used to be some sort of grand indoor market, but now they’re nothing but rubble and the crushed remains of what used to be inside.

Looters scavenged all the food and essentials at least two decades ago, so no one even bothers anymore.

No one but me.

I left home at dawn, and it’s now almost noon. In all that time, I found only a pair of ugly, dirty shoes and some thick fabric I stripped off a smashed piece of furniture until I managed to push over a thick metal cabinet.

Beneath it was a windfall.

Jewelry. And not the brittle type that’s now all broken or scarred. This jewelry was of a sturdier make. It’s definitely nicer to look at. Gold and silver metalwork and glittering stones in vibrant colors. Each one still perfect even after being buried for so many years.

With a surge of excitement, I grab piece after piece—necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and so many rings, plus one ornate hair ornament that looks like a crown—and place them in my scavenging basket.

There must have been an entire room devoted to jewelry in this pre-Fall market the way I’ve found for clothing and books.

Why else would there be so much of it here in one place?

There are far too many pieces to offer on one market day. I’ll have to stow most of it in my second-best hiding spot and only bring a couple of pieces to Lorraine, my stepmother. Otherwise, she’ll let it go too cheaply all at once and we won’t get what it’s worth.

Surely these pieces are rare and beautiful enough to be sold in the Capitol. In fact, I should keep the nicest ones in my very best hiding place, the spot where I keep my finest treasures. That way, if I ever summon the will to run away, I’ll have something to sell or use for bribes.

I tied up the long skirt of my dress in a knot near my hip to keep it out of the way before I started scavenging, but now that I’m done, I untie and smooth it down.

Lorraine won’t spend her credits on clothes for me, so I have to improvise my own wardrobe from what I find from the old world.

Today I’m wearing a faded blue dress with a pretty flower pattern on the fabric.

It’s a little too big for me, but it’s better than trying to salvage what I was wearing six years ago when Father died.

I was nineteen then. Annabelle, my sister and only true companion, was seventeen.

Now she’s married to a manager in the Capitol, and I’m still here in the village, living with Lorraine and her daughter, Aria, and earning my keep by cleaning the house and scavenging supplies for them to sell in the market.

Maybe one day I’ll get out of this village.

Maybe one day I can join Annabelle in the Capitol.

Maybe one day someone will love me and not leave.

A depressing line of thought, so I surrender it to the brutal winds of reality as I reach my very best hiding place in a hole halfway up a mostly dead tree in the woods near the village. I have to climb to reach it. No one will ever stumble on it, which is why I’ve been using it since childhood.

After hiding the crown, the gorgeous necklace of red stones, and a couple of rings with huge clear jewels I suspect might be diamonds, I climb back down and walk ten more minutes to reach an ancient motor turned upside down and overgrown with vines and weeds on the edge of the woods. My second-best hiding spot.

I open the door and stow the rest of the jewelry inside.

I scan the assortment of items collected there to decide what else to bring to market and finally fill most of the extra space in my basket—it’s big and made of pre-Fall plastic so it’s virtually indestructible—with dozens of balls I found in the ruins last year.

They’re weird little balls that were housed in disintegrating tube-shaped containers. A vivid yellow-green color and soft to the touch. They bounce delightfully. I uncovered so many that I’ve brought a bunch of them to the market three times already, and they always sell quickly.

Pleased with the day’s efforts, I hike ten minutes more through untended grassland and into the village.

Mondays and Thursdays are market days, so the streets and main square are crowded today. The guards at the gate know me, so they wave me in without questions. The younger man, Gregory, is friendly and freckled, and he gives me a wink as I pass.

He wanted to marry me when I was twenty, but I needed Lorraine’s permission since I wasn’t yet twenty-one, the age of majority in the Central Cities. She said no. I was too young.

Annabelle was convinced it was because she didn’t want either of us marrying before Aria, but whatever the reason, it was a deep disappointment.

I’ve always liked Gregory just fine.

And I desperately wanted out of that house.

I still do. But no one has asked since Gregory, and he married someone else six months later.

I might have the same pale blond hair and blue eyes as Annabelle, but I’ve never been nearly as beautiful. She took a trip to the Capitol on purpose last year to find a husband, and she found one.

She looks like a fairy princess from a storybook. I’m pale and washed out.

Gregory was my chance at a better life, and I lost it. So unless a miracle falls from the sky, I’ll be doing drudge work for Lorraine the rest of my life.

I don’t actually care for market days. There are too many people all jostling around and talking too loudly.

I prefer to keep my head down and slip through the streets unnoticed, but it’s impossible with all this chaos.

People keep bumping into me. Getting in my way.

Blocking the walkways with long conversations that really should be done somewhere else.

Impatient and exhausted, I finally reach Lorraine’s stall. All my life, she’s had the same position, selling pretty trinkets from the old world to villagers and visitors. I remember running over as a child to peer at the pretties she showcased each week.

That was back when I lived with two parents and a sister.

But eight years ago, my mother walked out after endless arguments with my father about his dangerous political leanings.

She moved to a village about an hour away and found a government official to marry and start a new family with.

That first year, she came to see us twice, but after that she never did.

All she wanted was a safe, comfortable life, and now she has it.

She promised that she loved us, but she lied.

Less than a year later my dad, a kind, brilliant man but completely incapable of living without a woman, married Lorraine. She moved into my dad’s room, and Aria moved into the room I shared with Annabelle.

It wasn’t great, but it was tolerable until my dad died too.

No one knows exactly what happened to him, but he was an intellectual, a thinker, a dreamer. He’d been writing pamphlets criticizing certain policies of the president.

They were supposed to be anonymous, but maybe they weren’t. One afternoon, he fell down dead in the street.

Annabelle was angry at his death and even angrier at the way Lorraine started treating us afterward. My sister has always had a fire inside her that I’ve never been able to summon. Mostly I was sad and scared and anxious to smooth over the conflict.

I wanted everyone to be happy again—at least as happy as is possible in a world without our parents.

But Annabelle never was. Every night, she’d whisper to me about plans she’d made for us to get away—maybe even all the way out of the Central Cities.

A dreamworld where a person might not be killed for speaking the truth.

I’ve never believed such a place exists.

This life is reality. It’s not good, but there’s nowhere better. All we can do is work hard and get through with as little damage as possible.

Lorraine isn’t at her stall when I come into sight of it. Aria is, wearing another new day dress custom-made by the village seamstress. She’s a year older than me. Taller, slimmer, and a lot more striking with smooth dark hair and elegant features.

She’s not married yet either, but it’s not because no one has asked.

She and Lorraine turned down man after man until they decided on Mason.

He was a laborer in the Capitol for years until his parents died in an accident last year.

Then he returned to the village to take over their small farm just outside the walls.

The man has never visited our house. He’s never paid any particular attention to Aria—or anyone else as far as I can tell.

He’s quiet as he sells milk, butter, and cheese at the market every week.

He keeps to himself. But one day about six months ago, Lorraine announced at dinner that Aria was going to marry him, and they spent the rest of the evening giggling about it.

Not my business.

If getting married means Aria leaves the house, then all the better as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I’ll actually get my room back.

And if Mason wants to couple up with a woman like Aria, then he deserves the future that comes.

He’s a decent-looking man with thick, wavy brown hair, strong features, and a big body, but he’s nothing special in appearance.

He owns the farm though. A freestanding cottage and a piece of property.

He sells a product that’s always in demand.

Like everyone else in the cities and villages of the Central Cities—in the middle of what used to be North America—Mason’s earnings go directly to the government, and only a portion is credited back for his use.

But his portion is a lot more than most. He has a comfortable life by village standards, and it’s not surprising that every available young woman in the area has been out to get him ever since he moved back.

He could have done a lot better than Aria.

As I approach, I notice that Lorraine is hovering near his stall. She’s tittering about something—honestly, it looks like she’s flirting with him, but that’s her manner with most men she encounters—and Mason is barely making eye contact with her.