11. Hope
11
Hope
F rom her spot in the wide circle of beings that surrounded the Trading Table, Hope looked to Nina on her right, who half smiled. A smile on a pretty face that might have meant pure innocence to a stranger, but Hope knew exactly where Nina’s daggers hid in her boots.
Hope looked to her left and saw her mother staring at the sandglass and if looks could kill, that sandglass would have already exploded. Her mother’s curled lip was a promise of death. To anyone that would become a danger. To anyone who would be in their path. To the Rulers, for playing these stupid games with desperate people.
The sandglass suspended in air right above the Trading Table kept dropping grains of sand, marking the remaining minutes until past meridiem, apparently unaware of the hate that surrounded it. Every trader had assumed by now the raw reality: that the Trading was not about getting a stomach full or finding useful devices that would make their lives easier. No. The Trading had become a trading of their lives. A weekly civil war with just one rule: do not approach the table until the cloth drops.
Hope repositioned the belt with the four daggers she was wearing on her waist. She readjusted the two swords on her back, tight to her body and as comfortable as they had always been. They were not her preferred weapon by any means. Too big, too bulky, but a clear sign to anyone who dared to even think about becoming a nuisance. She would not be messing around. Not today, with her mother and Nina by her side. Hope had not counted the weapons her mother had equipped herself with. She knew she could only see half of them, anyway.
No distractions. Find clothes for Nina’s mission with the Roix. Find more red vials, providing how effective they had proved to be. Grab some food to briefly satisfy their already used-to-starve stomachs.
No pity. Not after anyone who came to the Trading knew what could happen. Not after there had been more people dying every single week for the past few months. Not after the attempt on Nina’s life. Not after her mother almost bleed out two weeks ago. It wouldn’t happen again, because she would kill them first.
Focus . In and out. And their job would be done. And they would go home. And they would be safe.
The sandglass marked less than five minutes left until post meridiem, when the sun would be above them in a straight line. Less than five minutes to analyze the unusually flat shape under the massive cloth hanging on top of the long Trading Table.
The previous week, Hope had only seen one big mountain shaped lump under the cloth, which then turned up to be a big pile of clothes, and the rest of the table was an uneven surface under the white textile that later revealed warm food with stomach-aching delicious smells, and lots of weapons and a big chunk of random things.
Four minutes left. Today, from her distance to the Table, Hope could only see a flat-line covering all the length of the huge rectangular table that spread horizontally in front of her, and two tall pointy ends right at the end of the table, the cloth then dropping to the floor.
Three minutes left. The Table was annoyingly symmetrical. In a place full of nature like Verdania, such perfect bilateral symmetry was not unseen, but it was unusual. She had seen stunning flowers in full bloom and the mirror image of the trees reflecting on the still waters of a small lake that seemed to challenge perfection.
Two minutes. The Trading was nothing remotely close to perfection. Hope looked around the wide circle of people surrounding the Table. More than a hundred had come. Maybe over two hundred. Everyone was waiting for the last grain of sand to fall and the cloth to drop before making the run. Before being exposed to the fights and kills that would take place. How many of them would still be alive at the end of the Trading? How many people would end up dead today because the Rulers kept playing this wicked game every single week?
One minute. Nina was doing small jumps next to her, a final last attempt at warming up her body. Nina had been one of the first eleven people to reach the Table the previous week. She had been positioned right in front of Hope across the Table. Hope felt her mother move to adapt to the position of a runner about to sprint. Hope half kneeled her back leg to get to run.
The last grain of sand fell down. And the cloth was gone.
“What the…” Hope breathed in, unable to move as she saw an empty table. An empty table with two tall poles on each side, in front of dozens of people, waiting to get what they needed.
Aurora was running, already a good few meters ahead, Nina a few steps behind her but close enough that they were likely to reach the Table at the same time.
“Hope, run!” her mother shouted over her shoulder with an angry voice, as if she couldn’t believe Hope remained still on her starting spot. “Right. Fucking. Now.”
Hope, taken aback as if her face had been slapped, wasted no time and ran as fast as she possibly could. She had to be faster than usual to catch her mother and Nina, as they had a few seconds of advantage. A few seconds that would separate them from the rest. That would prove vital on a normal Trading Day.
Hope was not sure if it was wise to run to an empty table, but everyone else was running to it. Had the Rulers decided to stop pretending they were generous by giving Verdania’s villagers weekly provisions? She trusted her mother, and if she was running, so would Hope.
A tall blond man in his twenties was going to reach the Table first. He was merely a few meters away, right across the middle of the Table in front of where Hope, Nina and Aurora were going to be soon. And then Hope saw his face slammed against an invisible wall and he was on the floor, out of her visual reach.
“What the Cardinals’ fuck?!” Hope heard the blond man shouting at the sandglass right above the Table, as if it were alive and would respond to him.
The other faster runners had slowed their pace. Some people behind them had completely stopped, not daring step closer to the empty surface that was waiting for them on the Table. Hope would not be surprised if some people had turned around altogether and gone home, feeling like she was surer by the seconds about the high chances of this being a trap or some sort of damned joke.
Her mother’s hands turned upward, palms vertical against the invisible wall that was preventing them from reaching the Trading Table. They were less than a step away from the center of the Table. The expensive wooden surface shone under the sun, completely empty. Save for two long wooden poles at the ends that seemed to be part of the Table as they emerged right from the surface.
“What is happening?” Hope asked quietly between Nina and her mother, looking from one side to the other of the wide table, as more people were approaching it and stayed carefully behind the invisible wall. The blond man managed to stand up and was right in front of Nina, on the other side of the Table. His face showed an enormous bruise beginning to form across the middle part of his forehead, chin and nose that appeared broken.
Hope looked at both sides of the table, to the poles, then at the sandglass hanging in mid-air a few meters above them. The sandglass had always been there, since Aurora’s first Trading. But this? Whatever today’s Trading was about had never happened before. Or at least not in any of the over a thousand Trading Days her mother had attended during the last twenty-four years.
“Hope, stay here. Nina, move to the pole on your side. Discreetly. Now.” Her mother’s voice was quiet but firm, with no hesitation. It was the voice of a captain. The voice of someone used to command people. The voice of someone who had been used to having her orders obeyed without questions asked.
Before Hope could ask what they were meant to do, Nina was walking to the right end of the Table and her mother towards the left, both swiftly moving across the multiple people lining around the Table that they could not touch. Hope looked behind her back and saw at least three people standing right behind her. If she needed to leave, she would have to go through them.
The sound of the last few running steps on the back faded, as if everyone who had decided to join this Trading had already arrived at the standing crowd. Some people were looking at each other. There were lots of brows frowned and lips in flat lines, a few people taking deep breaths or cursing in lower voices. No one seemed to dare speak out loud. Not as everyone standing around them had weapons as well.
Hope had been gripping the hilt of one of her sharp daggers since her mother had signaled for them to stop from running into the invisible wall. Her other hand was ready to grab one sword on her back as soon as she needed to.
The sandglass above them made a metallic clicking noise and started turning sideways. Hope looked at it carefully, as if it were a wild animal about to attack her. A voice resounded around the Trading arena, as if it was coming from it, from the sky and from the ground at the same time. It was a voice old and new, male and female, sharp and soft.
“Esteemed guests of the Trading Table. With great aspirations to restore the harmonious communion of Verdania, we take immense pleasure in offering you the fulfillment of your most profound necessity. It is imperative that you partake of this gift in privacy. With the warmest of regards, The Ruling Body.”
Hope felt her blood freezing in her veins. She forced herself to stop looking at the sandglass and looked at the Trading Table. Right at the same moment, a thick depth of green grass covered the table, and dozens of unique roses appeared sticking from it. The last grass space of the Table was covered with a specially short but large white rose with no leaves but massive thorns.
“Are they taking the fucking piss?” said the blond man in front of her, his eyebrows raised and his jaw tense.
Hope said nothing, but couldn’t agree more. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Had the Rulers seriously swapped the Trading for… A full-on fucking flower festival? Everyone else remained still and quiet, as if waiting for the voice to say something else. But it didn’t.
The blond man slowly stretched an arm in front of him and tried to reach the Table. And he managed to do so, the invisible wall gone.
Hope took a step forward and looked at the roses in front of her, and then she saw it. She saw her name elegantly written in dark green ink ink on a petal of a beautiful blood-red rose.
Hope Nevada
Traders around Hope showed recognition on their faces as they read their names on the petals or stems of their respective flowers. Some villagers grabbed theirs and started moving across the crowd to leave. The crowd was pressing around the Table, everyone eager to find their assigned rose.
Hope couldn't see her mother or Nina from where she stood. People around her were bending to get their own.
A teenager on the other side of the Table looked at his rose from a very short distance and frowned. He went to remove a petal of the flower.
He vanished at the same moment the petal left the rose. Completely gone, flower with him, as if he never had stood there. A young woman who had stood next to him screamed, wide-eyed and fear in her eyes as she looked around to see where he'd gone.
It is imperative that you partake of this gift in privacy , the voice had said. Hope felt anger rising inside her.
The teenager was gone. Gone . Because he hadn't listed to the Rulers' cardinally stupid conditions.
Hope carefully placed her rose inside her cloth bag. She was expecting its petals to bend or even break in pieces as soon as she wrapped it as best as she could, but the rose didn't seem to break at all. It looked as perfect as it had on the table. Suspiciously perfect. Which reminded her of...
Hope looked at one side of the Table. She saw a head full of white hair moving between the people and felt a small bit of relief at locating Nina in the crowd.
They reached the treehouse in silence, but Hope didn’t place her dagger in her belt until the three of them were inside. She had noticed the tension on her mother’s shoulders and neck all the way through the woods. And how she didn’t leave the daggers at any moment. Nina, walking behind Hope, hadn’t barely made any noise either, just the movement of some rustling leaves here and there. Mother and daughter moved like silent gazelles in the woods, thanks to all the years of practice and preparation they had endured. But they didn’t find anyone on the long way home. Or anything.
Nina sighed, sitting on a chair, and leaving her bag on the oval table. “What the Fifth was that Trading about?”
Aurora walked towards the table and opened her bag, taking her yellow rose out. “I have two theories. I don’t know which one I like less.”
“And they are?” Hope asked as she took her own rose to inspect it. It didn’t look like any rose she had ever seen. It looked much more sturdy, perfect and special. As if the flower had its own characteristics.
“One is that the Rulers are extremely bored in Thyria and they want to play with Verdania’s villagers. Which would mean trouble after trouble because believe me when I say the minds of those people are not in the right place,” Aurora said, and Nina nodded vigorously at the last bit. Aurora continued, “They are sick and evil, and if they want entertainment… That will not end well for us.”
If one thing Hope had learned in her life was that the Rulers, and anything related to them, were meant to be feared. Her mother had told her countless times that fear was a feeling that she had to learn to overcome and live with, not a feeling that would lead to paralysis or subordination. Yet, a beautiful display of roses was not exactly fearful. Even with that teenager disappearing in the middle of the Trading because he hadn’t obeyed the voice’s rules.
“And the other theory?” Hope asked impatiently.
“The other,” Aurora swallowed and continued in a quieter voice, “Is that a Ruler wants to communicate with someone here.”
Hope didn’t understand why the Rulers would want to say something to someone discarded, and why would they go through all the fuss of making a Trading like today’s in order to say whatever they had to.
As if reading the impatience in Hope’s eyes, her mother headed towards the bedroom and said, “Let me check mine out first.”
In case it’s poisoned, or I vanish , Hope knew she thought. But she knew there was no point in arguing with her to take the first place. No way in all the Cardinals would her mother allow Hope to risk her life for her.
Aurora closed the curtain between both rooms, and silence followed.
For a moment Hope feared she would have vanished exactly as that teenager had, the Fifth knew where. But a second later her mother appeared, with her nostrils flared, tearful eyes and pale face. She sat down in the free chair. Hope noticed her mother was clenching her fists.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Aurora nodded, looking at a spot on the oval table. She slowly opened one of her fists and revealed a small paper note. A handwritten note with dark green ink. Hope picked it up swiftly and read it.
It's time.
Time for what?
“I’ll go next,” said Nina. The worry increasing in Hope’s chest was about to break some record.
Instead of silence, this time Hope heard a surprised gasp on her friend’s throat. Nina entered the room almost running, despite only a few meters of distance between them. She held a square of rusted paper in her hand. Nina laid it flat on top of the oval table. It was a map of Thyria: the four petals marking the delimitations of each House, with the central circle uniting them all. The same shape they had seen at the cave, symbol of the Rulers. The same shape that apparently panoms bore on their skins.
Nina put a finger on top of a spot marking the West Petal, and tears started pouring out of her eyes. And then Hope saw it: right in the middle of the West House, next to a small cross, there was an even smaller name handwritten in dark green ink.
Raoul.
“No way, no way, no way!” Hope said, lifting her hands to her mouth as she felt tears building behind her own eyes. Tears of worry at what may await them until they got to him. Tears of tension release. But ultimately… tears of happiness. For Nina.
“There is someone trying to help you, Nina,” Hope cried as she hugged Nina, who was now sobbing, the tears from those ocean-colored eyes wetting Hope’s shoulders.
Aurora was not smiling as she looked at them, a silent tear flowing down her cheek. “There is hope. There is always hope,” she said with a broken voice.
It took them a couple of minutes to let go of their tight embrace, and as soon as they did, Hope grabbed her red rose and entered the bedroom, shutting the curtain behind her.
She looked at the petals and started pulling them one by one, her hands feeling cold with nerves and expectation. She pulled the last petal and the stem and the core vanished, leaving a solid object in its place. Hope felt goosebumps all the way up her legs and the back of her neck when she saw what she was holding between her hands.
It was a compassom.