I slipped out of bed, wincing as my feet hit the cold dirt floor. The moon was absent tonight, and instead the ashy undercover of night obscured my vision as I dragged my bag out from under the floor and tiptoed out of my room.
I reached the front door. With a slight push, it opened. And just like that, I was outside, the drizzle of rain like ice to my bare face as stony clouds shifted and loomed overhead and flashes throbbed on either side of me. A clap of thunder shook the earth.
Reality had slapped me in the face—and indeed, my skin stung from the chilling cold. What in the world had compelled me to go outside in nothing but my nightclothes and a carpet bag… and plan to never come back?
For a moment my feet were glued to the ground, swirls of water pooling around my toes and mud flowing in both directions around me.
Then I remembered. And my feet began to carry me forward.
As soon as I stepped out from the thatch of my house, the temperature dropped like a stone. But I began to walk faster, away from the village, away from the people there, because I desperately needed to get away and I would do anything to escape. My ankles were caked with mud and shaking from the cold. I didn’t look back.
As I pressed forward, my consciousness blocked out the discomfort of the icy rain and retreated into my mind, back to a single string of monochrome pictures—a silent film—that had been playing on repeat since yesterday morning. Cycling over and over again. Over and over.
Over and over…
A small girl with matted hair and huge eyes, a circle of faceless officials, and a sea of villagers there just to watch the spectacle. When it was her turn, the girl writhed on the ground, her leg crumpled underneath her dress, crying out for someone to please help her get up, but instead the sage of the village demanded for her to be taken to the outskirts of the village and disposed of.
And what was I? I was a monster, just like all the others who wished to blend into the fog that obscured the village’s outlines, who couldn’t speak up even when the guilt in the air was tangible, who wouldn’t sacrifice their dignity when my crippled sister was deemed unfit to be part of the community and tossed out at Sorting time. Every year, the same story. And this time it was my sister’s turn to suffer.
Even as I blindly hurried through the trees, I knew my chances of escape were fifty percent at highest. The officials were aggressive, handpicked from the strongest in the village, trained like wild dogs to capture those who escaped. My lungs screamed for air and my arms burned with a thousand tiny scratches. I felt my legs giving out underneath me.
Suddenly, I broke through the border of trees and burst into full view of the rapidly lightening horizon, a beautiful canvas of glowing streaks of pale pink and lavender and orange… and a faint shape in the distance. In the second it took me to register that the shape was my sister, I had gauged the distance: less than thirty seconds’ time if I ran. I half-heard myself screaming her name and saw my legs running faster, working harder than they ever had in all my years living in this nightmare of a village.
Then I heard a noise—a noise I had been dreading and listening for ever since I left the hut. The noise of heavy footsteps behind me, crashing down on my ears like a bucket of pebbles, and men’s voices, and my name, over and over again, being yelled: “Linh!” With an awful shock, I plunged forward and slipped in the mud, but there was no time to pause. I needed to get to her before they did.
I dragged myself up and forward—bright red blood dotted my dress—the voices were getting louder—I was almost there—and then I was skidding to my knees next to a mass of dark hair and a ragged blue dress that covered my sister’s small, sad silhouette.
Her eyes were closed. Gently, I sat her up, lifted her chin, then took a hold of her shoulders and shook her softly. A strand of rain-drenched hair slipped across her face as she sagged backwards. And now I was really crying, because I could hear the shouts getting louder and my sister getting colder and slipping away just like the strand of hair lying across her cheek now. Just like all the other outcasts and rejects tossed across the border. Dead.
“Linh?”
I looked down and saw a pair of gold-flecked eyes staring up at me. In the next moment, I felt myself trying to scream but my heart had leapt into my throat and blocked my voice, and the tears fell faster than the rain pouring down around us, and I hugged her, and she hugged me back—and I realized I couldn't live without her.
She let go of me after a few seconds, and I heard her voice again, hoarse and cracked. “You need to go.”
“No, I won’t leave you this time—I brought food and clothing—we can escape this nightmare together—”
I saw her gazing over my shoulder, and I knew it before she whispered the last three words either of us would ever hear.
“It’s too late.”
And then the voices rained down on my head, and I caught one last glimpse of my sister before the wild dogs fell upon us.