REDEMPTION

CHAPTER 5

We continued like this for a week.

Everyday we would start at the break of dawn and sleep around midnight. Derek was quiet most of the time and I tried to fill the silence between us by chattering incessantly. I told him all about my life and my grandfather. I told him about Azure and Andy. I told him about the time I received my Iris bracelet and finally I told him about my parents and how they died.

I had never talked openly about my parents before. The only person I talked to so freely was Azure, but she was gone now. I never pestered my grandfather for details about my mother because that would always make him sad and unpredictable.

One time when I was ten, I asked him how my mother was like when she was small. I asked him if she was beautiful and smart. I had seen pictures of my mother when she was young in our old photo albums which grandfather kept stored away in the basement and aside from the fact that I had green eyes like her, I could not find any physical similarity between us. She was beautiful and had deep brown hair with twinkling eyes that always looked as if she was up to some mischief.

Grandfather had shooed me away but I kept pestering him. He was washing the dishes when he suddenly yelled at me to stop. He told me I was rude and disobedient and ordered me to go up to my room. When I didn't budge he threw one of the dishes to the ground, shattering it to pieces.

I cried all night. The next day my Iris bracelet arrived. Grandfather baked a cake to celebrate the special day and he invited Azure over to spend the day with me. In the night after Azure had left he sat me down on the sofa and he stroked my hair and apologised to me for his reaction the previous night. I knew talking about my mother made him feel choked and lonely and resurfaced all the memories he tried so hard to keep buried. After that I steered clear of that topic as much as I could.

Derek listened to me quietly, sometimes inserting a question here and there or murmuring an agreement, but he never offered to tell me about himself and I never asked because I could tell he wasn't ready to share his life story and that was okay with me. After all, he had lost parents as well and I knew all too well the dizzying grief that accompanies talking about losing someone you love, or could have loved, as in my case since I don't remember them.

After two or three days in the forest I suddenly realised that we had not come across any flesh eating plants or animals, that were presumably supposed to be out here. I mentioned this to Derek and immediately his face twisted into a look of disgust.

"Of course there are no flesh eating plants", he said. "They don't exist. There are animals who eat flesh, but most animals do not attack humans unless they are absolutely delirious from hunger, and besides, no human has ventured into these forests for decades, the animals here probably don't even know that humans exist anymore.

"But if flesh eating plants don't exist then why were we told that they do? And why was Detrix then surrounded by a magnetic force field?", I asked.

"To keep us in".

"What do you mean?"

"The Protector lied to us and has been lying for generations. The magnetic force field is there so that no one tries to explore what is on the other side. The Rangers are meant to protect us but they kill people without a second thought, almost as if they aren't human and have no compassion. We are under constant vigilance and have no privacy. We were locked in Detrix like prisoners and we were devoid of so many of the experiences that the people before us had known. Books from Before are banned and so many people are oblivious of the things we are missing. There are so many holes in this story and no one has ever wondered why we were kept from those things. Everyone says the Protector is supposed to protect us but he is a tyrant and not worthy of that title", spat Derek.