Zahyra Read online

  “Just climbing trees,” Zahyra mumbled, unsure whether she should mention the wild dog to her mother.

  “Astra was out by the treeline earlier picking some herbs and she said she heard a lot of shouting and hollering coming from in the forest. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that would you?”

  Zahyra stared at the ground sheepishly. As it often was in their camp, someone found out about everything sooner or later. She also suspected Asher would have difficulty keeping his mouth shut and knew the truth would be better heard from her than however Asher chose to tell his version of the truth. Zahyra was fully aware that Asher had a flare for making even the most boring stories sound interesting, she could only imagine how he’d try to vamp up the tale of their afternoon.

  “Well?”

  Zahyra’s mother raised her eyebrows expectantly, looking as if she was already aware it was her children who were responsible for the noise.

  “We got cornered by a wild dog.”

  “You what?”

  Zahyra’s mother’s head snapped to the side and she quickly gave her daughter her full attention.

  “Tell me what happened Zahyra.”

  “It’s not a big deal I swear,” Zahyra hurriedly tried to calm her mother down. “Me and Ash were just climbing trees like we always do, and as we were making our way back down a wild dog came out of nowhere and starting clawing at the bottom of it.”

  “Just one dog?”

  “Yeah there was only one,” Zahyra continued. “Asher had the idea to start shouting at it and throwing twigs down and eventually we scared it off so then ran back here. Nothing more than a few scrapes from the trees like normal, you worry too much.”

  Zahyra’s mother leaned forward and put her head in her hands for a moment. “You children will be the death of me I swear,” she muttered before wrapping her arms around Zahyra in relief.

  “I can’t believe you managed to scare it off though,” she continued after a moment, releasing Zahyra from her embrace.

  “It was all Asher really,” Zahyra credited. “He had the idea and just, kind of went for it.”

  “That boy,” Zahyra’s mother laughed. “Oh and now here he comes, soaking wet and in need of new clothes no doubt!”

  Zahyra looked up to see a sodden little boy walking towards them, still with a big grin plastered over his face.

  “What’s this I hear about you fighting with wild dogs in the forest young man?”

  “Zahyra!” Asher whined at his mother’s question. “I wanted to tell her!”

  Zahyra laughed. “I feel like a part of her already knew…”

  “Well?” Their mother looked at Asher expectantly, playing the disappointed parent card out a little longer. But with the smile on Asher’s face only growing larger at the chance to tell his story she couldn’t help but laugh, pulling her son down to the ground beside her.

  “It was awesome mum,” Asher mumbled as he pulled off his wet jacket and nestled into the side of his mother. “The dog didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Hmm, I’m sure it didn’t,” their mother played along. “We have been having more problems with the wild dogs recently though, they seem to be coming closer to the camp a lot more these days. They’re growing bolder due to the moving treeline I think.”

  “Why don’t we build another wall?”

  “What?”

  “We should build another wall,” Asher continued. “All the smells and activity from the camp blows downwind towards the wild dogs at the moment. If we build another wall over there,” he paused and pointed off to the right, “then we should be more protected.”

  Zahyra looked up to her mother and pondered Asher’s statement. It was remarkably simply but it also made a lot of sense. It had only been a couple of months ago when the camp was suddenly swarmed by wild dogs one night. It followed some travellers delivering more livestock to the camp, but the dogs must have quickly caught the sent and raided the camp later that night. Zahyra remembered wrapping herself up tightly in her blanket in bed, listening to the howls of the dogs outside and the occasional scream from someone else within the camp.

  That was the only downside of living in a camp of lowly ranked mutants. When there was something that required power or strength to defend it, they often fell short of what was needed. There was one Gen 3 within the camp, making him the highest ranking mutant. But as far as Zahyra was aware his mutation was something to do with being able to sense how other people were feeling and control their emotions to an extent. Nothing that was helpful during a wild dog attack or anything else remotely dangerous.

  The next morning it was revealed that an elderly couple had been dragged off into the woods by the wild dogs. The camp elders had of course done their best to stop them, but with the few old rifles laying around the camp the best they could manage was to scare the dogs away from the young children. Thinking back to the terror Zahyra had felt that night she agreed that Asher’s idea of building another wall was a very good one. Anything to help protect their small camp a bit more.

  The idea quickly spiralled, with Zahyra’s mother taking Asher to inform the camp elders of his plan the next morning. Asher also got another chance to tell his story about the wild dog trapping him and Zahyra in the treetops and his eyes glistened as he remembered how exhilarating it had felt.

  As Zahyra watched on she realised how proud she was of her younger brother but her mind also wondered about what the future would hold for him. His Turning Age Ceremony was technically still two years away, but if Asher was to develop a mutation of some kind he should start showing symptoms soon. Zahyra wondered whether his intelligence was going to have something to do with the mutation he developed and the ranking he was given on his tenth birthday.

  Although she naturally wanted her brother to embrace his intelligence and be the best he could be, she also worried about it. Mutants who developed mutations based on their intelligence often were ranked as more powerful than most of the residents in their current camp. In fact, the only Gen 3 in the camp was rather similar to her brother Zahyra realised. He was clever but quiet, kept to himself but also had ideas which had greatly helped the camp in the past. And Zahyra believed his mutation stemmed from a certain level of intelligence – allowing him to read other’s emotions and carry empathy for everyone.

  If Asher was a Gen 3 that would be just about manageable. Zahyra imagined they would probably stay within the camp if that happened, there being no real reason to leave the relative safety of their home. Quite often the more advanced mutants moved away by the age of sixteen, but Zahyra had already decided she would stay with her mother. With her real ranking of a Zero – and her fake ranking of a Gen 1 – there were few places in the desert wastelands where she would be safe.

  Hearing a call for help Zahyra pulled herself from her daydreams again and looked over in the direction of the voice. Everyone around the camp had sprung into action quickly with Asher’s idea of a new wall being approved by the camp elders. Trees were being felled and dragged over to where the wall would be built. Zahyra could see the voice belonged to a couple of children around her age, struggling to drag a large log to where it needed to go. Flexing her muscles Zahyra jogged over to help, the manual labour around the camp always managed to keep her in fairly good shape.

  As they reached the side of the camp closest to the forest where the wall was to be built, Zahyra caught sight of Asher standing half way up a hill. He was watching carefully as the older and stronger residents of the camp started laying the foundations for the wall, and although he was stood in the distance Zahyra could still make out the smile on his face.

  She knew it would be unlikely for him to involve himself much in the building process. Asher was all about the ideas and now he had given that he would be allowed to stand by in peace. For Zahyra however, a day of heavy labour and hard work was ahead of her.

  She worked tirelessly helping drag wood across the camp from where it was being cut down. Her arms ached and her swe
ater began to stick to her back with sweat, but she had never been someone willing to give up. As the wall grew inch by inch so did the smile on her brother’s face, who had now been joined by their mother – her superior eyesight enabling her to keep watch over the forest. It was the only concern that more wild dogs would be attracted to the camp by the loud noises of the wall being built, but with her mother on watch Zahyra felt safe.

  As a Gen 2 Zahyra’s mother was able to see many miles further than any other mutants. She could apparently make out the finer details in the mountains Zahyra often saw in the distance from the treetops, although when Zahyra looked they were only generic grey rocks she looked upon. It was because of her mother’s mutation that Zahyra’s fabricated one related to eyesight as well. With the help of her mother they had both agreed that was a safe enough mutation to try and feign, her mother adamant that she must never tell anyone the truth about her lack of mutation.

  Thinking about it while she worked, Zahyra didn’t know whether it was normal for children to develop similar mutations to their parents. She smiled at the possibility of Asher’s eyes mutating and granting him the ability to see the spectrum of colours she claimed to see. That would be something he would truly cherish. The other possibility – if mutations were in some way hereditary – was still unknown to Zahyra. While she remembered the face of her father and some of the moments from their past, she knew very little about who the man had actually been.

  Her mother rarely spoke of him but Zahyra could still remember how devastated she had been when he left. It had only been a few days after Asher’s birth, a time when Zahyra had been forced to quickly grow up and help take responsibility for those around her, despite only being six years old herself. Why her father had left was a mystery, but with Asher growing older and having smart new ideas every day, Zahyra found herself trying to remember her father more and more. Perhaps it was finally time to ask her mother about him again.

  Chapter 3

  Zahyra waited until Asher had fallen asleep before sliding silently off her bed beside him and out of the room they shared. She wasn’t sure what she was going to ask her mother specifically, but since the thought had come to her earlier that day she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her father.

  She had very few solid memories of him. Perhaps the one she thought of most was an evening they had spent together just before Asher was born. She had been sitting around the fire with her parents, curled up in her mother’s arms as they watched the sun set over the horizon and the fire dance in the wind. That was actually the moment Asher had received his name. Zahyra had often tried to catch the little flecks of ash as they rose up from the fire in the wind and that evening while her parents had been discussing names, she had asked whether Asher would be a suitable name for a boy. When her mother gave birth just a few days later to a beautiful baby boy, Zahyra had been so pleased that Asher was the name given to him. It was one of the reasons why she felt so protective of her little brother, as he had been a part of her life even before she had met him.

  Her memory of the timeframe after Asher’s birth was patchy. But Zahyra still didn’t think it could have been more than a week until her father left. She remembered waking up one morning to her mother crying, with a few of the other women in the camp gathered around her. She remembered her mother crying for so long after that day, perhaps even for months before they finally began to become a tight family group of three.

  Zahyra had asked her mother about her father on several occasions shortly after his disappearance, but every question just caused her mother more tears. Eventually Zahyra stopped asking, but something had reawoken in her that day that left her itching for answers.

  Exiting the room she and Asher shared, she found her mother just moving towards her own bed in the only other room of their hut. Zahyra remembered they used to have a larger home, but after her father leaving and the camp constantly acquiring new members they were forced to move into a smaller hut.

  “What’s the matter darling?” Zahyra’s mother asked as she noticed her daughter entering the room. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I was wondering if I could ask you something.” Zahyra spoke nervously, hesitant to upset her mother like she had done so many times in the past.

  “What is it?”

  Zahyra crossed the small room and sat down next to her mother on the small bed. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again quickly, struggling to find the words. Eventually, seeing the caring and concerned look in her mother’s eyes she broke the silence between them.

  “I’ve been thinking about my father.” Zahyra’s voice was quiet, not wanting to disturb the air of calm in both their hut and the entire camp. She was sure everyone was sleeping soundly after the tiring day building the wall, a job that had very almost been completed in just a day with everyone’s help.

  Zahyra’s mother sighed. “I had a feeling you might ask me about him again soon. Has Asher been speaking to you about his mutation worries as well?”

  “A little,” Zahyra replied. “I am worried that he could turn out –” she lowered her voice, “like me… But it also just got me thinking. There’s so much I don’t know about him, about my father. I don’t want to upset you, I just…”

  “Zahyra,” her mother reached over and took Zahyra’s hands in her own. “Firstly, you should know that you don’t need to worry about Asher’s mutation ranking – whatever it may turn out to be. There is still plenty of time for him to develop a mutation and even if he does get the same ranking as you, we can protect him. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Okay,” Zahyra nodded. “I just want him to be safe.”

  “I know darling, that’s all I want for the pair of you. If it will help put your mind at ease, you should know that your father was a Gen 1. He was an extremely clever man,” Zahyra’s mother paused and sniffed at a few tears that were threatening to form in her eyes. “I see a lot of your father in Asher these days, especially with all the bright ideas he’s having recently.”

  “What exactly was his mutation?” Zahyra asked curiously. This was the most she’d heard her mother speak about her father in years and she couldn’t stop herself from pushing for every tiny scrap of information.

  “To be honest with you,” Zahyra’s mother smiled slightly, “I’m not sure I ever really understood it properly. He just had a brilliant mind. He could see connections between things that I would have never discovered in a hundred years. A part of me thinks perhaps his mutation was made for a different time to the one we live in; like he would have been more adapted to live in The Before Time.”

  “Do you think the world will ever go back to how it was back then?”

  “I don’t know darling. Anything is possible, but then I think it was because of everything they could do in The Before Time that the world is now destroyed. The more we learn, the more dangerous we become. You can see how that’s true for the most advanced mutants out there today; just because they know more or have more power doesn’t mean they can ever be trusted.”

  “I know,” Zahyra nodded, eager to try and find out more about her father rather than set her mother off on a tangent about The Before Time and the dangers of advanced mutants. She must have received over a hundred lectures on the dangers of advanced mutants. Even Gen 3 mutants she had been told to rarely trust; the man who lived in their camp her mother calling ‘one of the only exceptions’. But the lesson had sunk in well. Zahyra knew a girl like herself could never be safe around any mutants who lived beyond her camp’s walls. As much as she was curious about the outside world and the desert wastelands, she wasn’t foolish enough to wander around out there. Not at any cost.

  “Have you ever met any advanced mutants? Like when you were travelling around before we came here? Or before you had me?”

  Zahyra’s mother shook her head. “Not really. Your father and I did move around a lot when we were younger, as I’m sure you vaguely remember as well. A few camps we stayed in got raided,
but I’ve never come face to face with anyone above generation three.”

  “Why did you move camps so much? And why did we choose this one?”

  “Your father was searching for something. A long lost friend or something, he never did tell me what. He always liked tinkering around and trying to make up experiments – fancy things that I never understood – so maybe he found that here, who knows. Like I said, he was far more intelligent than I could ever dream of being.”

  Zahyra watched as her mother’s face seemed to light up slightly when she remembered what her husband has been like. “He really was brilliant,” she continued with a sigh. “I know you won’t really remember what he was like, but he was always so sweet towards us. He’d spend hours playing with you or an evening simply just rubbing my feet. He knew all the travelling took a lot out of me before we settled here, especially with one of us having to carry you most of the way.

  “That’s why it was such a shock I suppose,” her voice started to crack, “when he left I mean. Even thinking back to it now I can’t understand why he… I don’t know what I did wrong.”

  Zahyra gasped and wrapped her arms around her mother as she began to properly cry. She instantly regretted asking so much about her father, all it had done was create a thousand more questions in her mind. And she still had no idea why he had left so soon after Asher was born. Shaking her head and holding her mother tight Zahyra realised she needed to focus on who was around her, not who wasn’t. If her father had chosen to abandon them then that was his choice. The three of them were a family and as Zahyra held her mother while she cried, she realised that was all she needed.

  “Please don’t cry,” she whispered into her mother’s ear. “I’m sorry I brought him up, I won’t ask about him again.”

  Zahyra’s mother sobbed for a few minutes longer before stiffening up and wiping at her red eyes. “It’s not your fault baby. I’m just sorry he couldn’t have been a better father to you and your brother. I feel like I failed you.”