Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Carrson
I’m dreaming again.
The part of me that knows it screams, claws, and unleashes a long string of cuss words, the kind that would make a sailor weep.
It does no good.
I stay asleep.
Fine. Ugh.
I resign myself to reliving yet another of my past horrors.
Dream me can’t see anything. There’s a burlap sack over my head. Of course The Order would pick the roughest, itchiest, most obnoxiously scratchy fabric in existence to blind me. It scrapes my cheeks raw. My breath is trapped inside, recycled and hot and suffocating.
My hands are tied in front of me. I hold them out, trying not to trip as I walk across uneven ground. I’m outside. There’s birdsong in the distance, and the sun warms the tops of my shoulders. Judging from the angle, it must be around noon.
Other footsteps clomp around me. I’m not alone.
I listen.
My tracking instructor’s voice echoes in my head. Focus on smell. Sound. Texture. Pressure. Heat. He’s been drilling that into me for months now, teaching me to read the world without using my eyes. To survive without seeing.
Someone on my right drags their foot just slightly. That’s Richardson. He broke his leg falling off a bike when we were ten. It healed with the left leg just a bit shorter so now he limps. It’s subtle, but there.
A cough sounds ahead of me, and my shoulders loosen. That’s Thomson. His cough is deliberate, meant to tell me he’s here.
I clear my throat in response, projecting the sound.
Our code. His signal. My answer.
We worked it out years ago. While other kids played video games or practiced kissing on pillows, our sleepovers were war games. Escape drills. Survival scenarios.
“You’re hanging from a noose,” Thomson would fire out. “What do you do?”
“Climb the rope with my feet. Go upside down. Wrap my legs around the rope and pull to get slack. Then wiggle my head free,” I’d answer fast. No hesitation.
Breathless, I’d wait for his verdict.
“Good,” he’d say. “Great job, Carrson.”
It warmed me when he said that. Praise was a rare treat. One to be savored, since it sure as hell never came from my father.
This, however, was no slumber party.
This, I felt certain, had to be a test. They give them to us every couple of years.
When we were six, it was who can hit a baseball the hardest?
I won that one.
When we were ten, they laid out fifteen tiny cups, each filled with a different liquid, and told us to pick which one was poison.
Marcson got his stomach pumped that night.
There’ve been other tests too. Fighting in rings. Racing motorbikes. Breaking codes.
Now we’re twelve. I knock into the kid in front of me, which lets me know we’ve come to a stop. The bags are ripped from our heads, taking strands of hair along with them.
Adult me and young me look around together.
Sleeping, adult me swears some more. I hate this one. It’s the first time one of us dies.
Young me doesn’t know that yet. All he sees is that we’re in a clearing. Man-made. The trees press in all around us except here, in this perfect circle of broken earth, where machines have dragged the forest away. Tractors, diggers. Their claw marks are still fresh on the ground.
The air smells like soil mixed with motor grease and something sweeter.
I see the source of that scent. There’s a cluster of tiny white flowers on the opposite side of the circle.
Mosquitoes buzz in my ears and nurse on my blood as I blink in the bright sunlight.
I was right. The sun is directly overhead, illuminating a cloudless sky.
In front of me are at least a hundred tall wooden poles, each staked into the ground about a foot apart, clustered in the rough shape of a circle. They’re narrow, just wide enough to stand on. High enough to shatter something when you fall.
That’s strange, young me thinks. Why so many poles?
Old me already knows the answer.
There are only twenty-five of us in my cohort, Sons of The Order, all born the same year. Such a neat, perfect number. Too neat. Even back then, young me found that odd. Adult me still thinks it strange.
Now I hear more shuffling noise, the crunch of leaves and sticks, the low murmur of voices.
It’s another line of blindfolded and bound kids being led in.
These ones are smaller. Some are curvier.
One of them steps on the white flowers, crushing the delicate petals, grinding them into the dirt.
My chest gives a small, involuntary twinge.
I catch myself.
Seriously? I’m upset over a fucking flower?
I clench my jaw. Force the feeling down. Break it apart. This isn’t a place for gentleness. For weakness. Not even the kind that smells sweet. By twelve, I’d already learned the most important lesson, anything soft in this world either gets used or broken.
The other group keeps coming, single file, their line stretching far back into the trees. There are so many of them. At least three times more than there are of us.
Without fanfare, their sacks are pulled away.
I gasp.
It’s the girls.
This is new. We’ve never been tested together before.
My eyes find Samantha’s across the circle. She mouths, what the fuck?
I shrug, trying to act calm, but inside I’m a little awed she said it so boldly.
When I swear, my father washes my mouth out with soap.
Literally. He pries my jaw open, wedges in a bar until I gag, then pours water down my throat until I’m choking, convinced I’m going to drown on dry land.
I’m left soaked and sputtering, bubbles foaming at my lips.
Swearing around him has become my own private rebellion.
I do it quietly. Half-hoping he won’t hear.
Half-hoping he will. Because then, at least, he notices me.
Samantha turns to Thomson next and mouths the same thing. She gets the same response.
I’m never quite sure what to think of her.
Sometimes she’s kind, like the time she split a slice of cake with me at Marlene’s birthday party after mine fell on the floor.
Other times she’s cruel, like the last Fourth of July, when she pushed me off the dock in front of everyone, laughing as I hit the water.
My father had been so furious. He got out the whip and lashed me across the back, spitting out angry words with every strike. Said it was shameful. Said a real Ashford doesn’t get knocked down by a girl. Said next time I better push back.
A hush falls over us, the children gathered in this circle of desecrated earth.
We shift on our feet, fingers absently rubbing the rope burns on our wrists, like we’re trying to erase how we arrived here.
Across the clearing, the girls break rank.
They gather in clusters, talking and gesturing with bewildered expressions.
They get tested too, but not like we do. Not like this.
“What’s going on?” a boy whispers farther down the line that we still hold. His voice cracks a little.
“Maybe it’s a scavenger hunt,” Sampson murmurs. “Like the one we did when we were eight.”
Someone snorts, tense, skeptical. “They blindfolded us for a scavenger hunt? How does that make any sense?”
A nervous laugh from someone. “Maybe it’s a sparring match? Or archery? Shooting?”
“No gear,” another mutters. “No weapons.” That’s Johnson. I recognize the edge in his voice. He’s scared.
Beside me, Thomson leans in, his voice barely audible. “Whatever it is, it’s not for fun.”
He says it softly, but it cuts through everything.
We all go quiet after that because we know he’s right.
Then they appear. The Fathers. The Mothers.
The entire High Council.
Twenty figures in total, twelve men in gray robes and eight women in white. They move in silence, a sea of fabric and unspoken threat.
Unease stirs, tickling and tightening the back of my throat.
My father steps forward and pulls his hood back so we can see his face. The same face as mine but aged, more lined.
“Children of The Order,” he announces, his voice loud and commanding. He turns his head slowly as he speaks, sweeping the circle with his gaze. “Sons and Daughters. Welcome to your next test.”
He lifts a hand toward the towering wooden pillars before him.
“This is the Test of Ascension. As you rise from youth into young adulthood, so too must you rise here. These poles represent your journey. Your struggle. Your worth.”
His voice turns colder. Sharper.
“The path to power is a perilous one. A balancing act, between duty and desire, strength and restraint, and, just like in life, to ascend you must climb.” A long pause. Almost gently, he adds, “Also, as in life, once you’re at the top there’s only one way down.”
My head snaps up to the poles. They must be twenty feet tall. Falling from one would be like plummeting off a two-story building.
Could I survive it?
Maybe.
Without injury?
Hell no.
My throat goes dry. Every breath feels too loud, too strained. Around me, the air grows thick with tension. No one moves. Even the girls have gone quiet.
Father gestures to the field of pillars. “One by one, you will climb. You will stand. You will endure.” A beat. “You may not speak. You may not assist. You may not intervene.” He lets that hang and then delivers the final blow, “The last one standing wins.”
That’s it. No countdown. No instructions. Just stand, until you fall or everyone else does. Which makes sense, in a way.
Because in The Order, survival isn’t the point.
Dominance is.
Father gives a dramatic pause and then, almost gently, whispers a soft, “Go.”
We explode into motion, the boys leading the pack, the girls flooding in from the opposite side. Dirt kicks up underfoot. Pounding footsteps and breath and heartbeats all blur into one.
I don’t hesitate. I sprint for a cluster of poles on the outer edge. My strategy was formed the moment my father opened his mouth.
Your mind is your sharpest weapon.
The third rule my father taught me.