I exhaled slowly. Such a beautiful animal should be more aware of the price on its head; she was a predator to us, but the Sweepers had a sinister interest in the bigger animals. Sometimes we heard their cries, echoing through the forest as they were hunted.
I lifted my nose, the breeze was fresher than earlier. It was time to move. I set off in the opposite direction, trying to shake off the darker mood creeping through my veins. Stories abounded about life on the inside, about the mysterious projects they undertook. All I knew for sure was that Sweepers left a trail of devastation in their wake, and always stole life from the forest.
Grandpa said the whispers began the moment the Lifedome started sending out collection committees. Those who’d considered the dome a safe haven began to suspect a scientific-military coup. And then there were suspicions of a new hierarchy based on age, health, intelligence, physical attributes, and more.
Fear spread like a disease, and Grandpa’s Great-Grandfather Thomas was the first to take a group of dissenters into the forest. Many followed, setting up makeshift camps and villages on the fringe, but that only got the Insiders angry.
They claimed to respect the wishes of those who chose life on the outside; but it was all lies. Images on the Lifedome walls shamed deserters, alleging they were not part of the new world effort. Sweepers raided the crumbled ruins of the city, looking for anyone who’d tried to remain. And then they turned their attention to the forest. The Council told stories of a second apocalypse when an army of Sweepers mowed down entire camps, leaving behind nothing but mangled bodies, withered wildlife, and devastation.
That was when Thomas took matters into his own hands.
He gathered together a selection of surviving crops and wildlife, and offered a truce. The Outsiders would supply the Lifedome with occasional samples, in return for an amnesty from hunting us. He didn’t ask what purpose the samples served, and the Insiders didn’t offer any reason. There were always suspicions of scientific research, that the Insiders couldn’t understand how life had survived at all. Yet our very existence was tantalizing proof, perhaps why they sometimes took us too. But no one ever talked about that.
As usual, I waited under the gnarled willow for Eli to appear, and just as the sun began to dissolve into the berry-stained horizon I felt a pair of gentle hands shield my eyes.
I grinned and spun to hug him fiercely. It was always such a relief to have Eli back within reach. I never liked splitting up, especially given his … differences, but we had little choice. Every man and woman had to take turns to forage and hunt in the outside forest; it was one of the village rules and the only way to supplement food.
We’d cultivated small farms and certain crops grew well, but the good soil was still thin. The forest, on the other hand, had been one of the first places to recover and offer up wild roots, vegetables, fruit, berries, and occasionally, a kill. I left the latter to Eli. For all his shy nature and affinity with animals, he was also profoundly practical when it came to surviving. Today he had a small dead boar strapped to his shoulders, which Joe would make last for a week.
‘Grandpa will want to roast that one.’ I nodded at it.
I received a wide grin in response, accompanied by a short flurry of fingers. Our improvised sign language had rescued him from a fortress of silence when we were tiny, and cemented our unique bond. When the other kids had teased, I’d protected him and slowly he’d became the voice of my conscience. Silent from birth, Eli’s differences were lost among the countless impacts of the war, even now, generations on.
I watched Eli swing the boar from his shoulders, and tie its legs deftly with some braided twine, before we climbed up into the old bushy willow – the control tower for our infra-red security system. Thanks to Thomas’s initiative, the Outsiders had foraged enough component equipment to build a basic first-alert system. The technology was rudimentary, but effective. I used my chiselled key lever to flip open the false bark door, and was relieved to see the familiar flashing red light.
Swiftly I flicked the switch upwards, and watched four meters drive straight lines across a small black panel, indicating a clear parameter of three miles. The system was designed to give those hunting and gathering the chance to access the hidden entrance to our valley in complete safety. If a Sweeper or human life was detected in the exclusion zone an alarm was triggered in the village, and those out hunting were not expected to try again until the zone was clear.
‘C’mon, we’re lit up like the 4th of July. Time to call it a day!’
I signed one of our dad’s favourite expressions, before scrambling back down the knotty trunk. It was ironic that Dad’s voice rang bright and clear in my memory, while his face faded a little every day. He had been the village schoolteacher; a quiet man who always made time to read to us beside the fire, but one winter he just kept coughing. Mum made chicken broth and told us he would get better, but by spring he was dead. Eli and I had just shared our ninth birthday, and it was the year I stopped trusting in anything outside of my own control.
We walked over to the familiar crossing stones, visible just beneath the rushing water. This was the trickiest part of the return journey, and timing was paramount. The river lowered twice a day, making the swirling water passable if you followed a specific route. Time it incorrectly, and the current would sweep you away and drop you over a fifty-foot waterfall. Eventually.
Eli went first, leaping nimbly from stone to stone, while I followed closely behind. We reached the other side without mishap, and ducked beneath a protruding rock. It concealed the entrance to a small cramped cave, which always looked so unremarkable at a glance. This was the beauty of our valley home, and its discovery was retold at special Council gatherings, as a rite of passage.
It was while Thomas had been hiding meagre food supplies that he made the chance discovery: a heavy metal disc concealing a slim dark tunnel and ice-cold water. Some believed it to be a disused mineshaft, others part of the old-world sewerage system. Either way, he glimpsed a stream of natural light, and desperate to protect his small following, climbed down into the icy water.
The Council said he likened his first discovery of our hidden world to waking in Eden. I could understand why. I hated the tunnel, but it made the emergence into the sudden light and sanctuary of our valley so special. He named the valley Arafel there and then – lest we forget, he said, the dust clouds we were leaving behind. A few called the Hebrew name spiritual protection, but I suspected it was the solid rock between ourselves and the Lifedome, we really needed to bless.
Taking one last look at the dusky forest behind me, I ducked into the cave to find Eli already sending his kill down the tunnel using our system of pulleys. Once the rope went slack, he pulled it taut three times, the general signal that all was clear, and stood aside to let me go first.
‘Race you to dinner!’ I threw back before dropping like an arrow into the freezing water. The temperature was always glacial, and hit my chest like a rock. I grabbed the guide line and followed it to the dark wall, before inhaling deeply and diving down into the blackness below.
This was the worst part for me, blindly gripping a line and pushing against constrictive tunnel walls that scraped at and dug into my cold skin. And it was always just as my suppressed panic threatened to burst, that the tunnel would rise sharply, spitting me ungracefully into a pool of water at the back of a much larger cave. I swallowed hard to ease my protesting ears, and gazed out at my favourite view in the whole world: Arafel.
The lazy afternoon sun was still bathing our woodland sanctuary, which was completely encircled by high, white peaks. The Great War had left its mark on our landscape, as well as the northern climate, and much of it was unrecognizable from before. Only an Insider Eagle aircraft could chance a glimpse of our village, but the Insiders dispatched them rarely, and it seemed the prospect of a descent through close, angular rock faces discouraged even their most skilled pilots. Thomas had made few rules, but the secrecy of Arafel’s location was