Page 46 of The Brightness Between Us

Part Three

MINERVA (SAGITTARION BB)

YEAR 18

YARROW

Chapter 1

The moment she appears on the horizon, I can tell Owl didn’t find the mystery beacon. It’s not like she’s dragging her feet or sobbing or anything, but I know my sister’s movements better than my own. She twirls her spear in the air, experimenting with the heft of it. Trying to convince herself that she’s unbothered.

I open the gate and stand in the broad plain outside the settlement, pitching my shovel into the soil so I can rest my chin on the handle. The polycarb bends under the weight of my head.

“No luck, huh?” I ask once she’s near enough.

Owl blows past, giving her head one furious shake.

I know not to push when she’s feeling hassled. Instead I tail after her, letting the shovel drag behind me.

I keep myself within view of Owl as I return to my day’s task, which is the same task I had yesterday and will have tomorrow: shoveling. We need to process many tons of hydrocarbons to make our bunker, in addition to the chromite Father and Rover (and sometimes Owl) have beentowing back and forth to the settlement. Dad and OS are making refinements to the blueprints to turn theAurorainto a refuge. All of that is more exciting than my task, but I’m the one who requested shovel duty. I don’t trust myself to do anything else. So I spend my days in a quiet pit, with the feel of tools under my hands and the cool breeze on my skin. Alone with my thoughts.

Here, away from them all, where it’s safe. Where they’re safe.

Everything is better when I’m alone. When I’m in the flow state of shoveling, I don’t imagine them dead as often.

Neither Father nor Owl is towing metal at the moment, which means I get Rover’s help. We’re running two different tarps back and forth. I work on filling one, while Rover shuttles the other to the processor, returning with an empty tarp that I then begin to fill. I count the shovelfuls, to keep my focus on work. Twenty-three is my standard before Rover returns. Sometimes I get as many as twenty-six in before Rover starts hauling them away.

This latest one is just nine. I let my thoughts distract me. If Rover notices, it makes no sign.

One. Two. Three. The soil makes a pleasant rasp against the tarp as it scatters on the surface.

Four. Five. Six.Thwisp, thwisp, thwisp.

Seven. Eight. Nine. Heads, caved and cratered. A rasping cry. Hair and blood.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve. I let out a long breath, control the speed of my shovelfuls. Bring air back in slowly. Try to make each shovelful contain the exact same amount of soil.

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Minerva, open-sky beauty. Our home.

Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. My calluses creak and shriek. Good.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. The tarp stretches over Father’s face. He clutches at it, trying frantically to free his airway before he suffocates.

Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. It’s Dad who’s dead now, his corpse dangling from a fence post.

When the visions started, they were just bodies laid out, death without murder. Now sometimes I’m standing over my family, my muscles aching with the effort of strangling them all. After I’ve pushed the vision from my mind, the feeling of exertion in my muscles is as vivid as if I really have just done it.

Every time I banish one thought, another arrives. But when I’m alone I don’t feel like I need to hide them as much. The violent visions aren’t intruding then. They’re just visiting.

Because I know now that these visions can come true. Like removing part of the perimeter fence. I saw that a day before I did it.

It’s not like my family is too suspicious of me, evennow—or if they are, they’re not at the point where they’re going to restrain me. But I have noticed that Father always directs me toward dig sites within monitoring range of OS. It’s a smart move. I’d have done the same if faced with the awful prospect of me.

I also noticed they didn’t mind that I requested doing this meditative, simple labor. What could I sabotage here? Nothing. I’d have to be really clever to figure out how to ruin soil.

Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. This vision is of Owl. It looks like she’s fallen from a great height. Her eyes are unseeing, her mouth in a scream, blood coming out of her ears.

“Hello,” Rover says, laying the empty tarp out beside me, whisking it in one efficient motion so it lies flat.

---