The One-Hundred: Part 1 - The Above (Book #1) by K. Weikel
“You see the water?”
I turn to see Nan-ah walking up to me, her hair flowing in the breeze. We stand on the edge of the cliff where my village sits. The sun is beginning to set, casting several colors out onto the dark liquid stretching as far as the eye can see.
“You can never touch it,” she goes on, her voice soft and musical as she sits next to me. She dangles her feet over the edge as I do. “Not even once. Because if you do, trouble will find you wherever you go.”
“Why can’t I?” I wonder aloud, asking the single question that has burned in my mind for the past eight years.
She takes a moment before she answers, my impatience growing. “Because if you ever do, trouble will find you wherever you go.”
“Why, Nan-ah?” The anger rises inside of my eight-year-old self. “What’s wrong with it?”
She looks at me, her eyes contemplating my query. And as if she was the wind herself, she turns back to the water. Her hair twists in the soft breeze.
“The water is a dark place for people like us, Cressa-la.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Nan-ah.”
“Cressa-la,” she begins.
“No,” I stand, the eighteen-year-old growing uneasy inside the mind of the eight-year-old me. This is where it all went downhill. This is where I branched off and became a lone wolf. “I’m tired of everyone telling me to wait until I’m older. Answer my question!”
I hear my voice crack and the tears start to well up in my eyes. Don’t do it, Cressa-la, I urge my younger self. Don’t do it.
“Cressa-la, come sit back down. Let’s talk this out—”
“No!” I stamp my foot. “I’m through with ‘talking it out’, Nan-ah! I want the answer to my question—to the question everyone wants to ask and yet no one knows the answer to. What is wrong with the water? We bathe in the boiled version of it and we drink it. So why can’t we touch it? What’s wrong with it?”
Nan-ah looks at me, her eyes showing the battle she’s fighting inside herself. She takes a breath and tries to speak. Stops herself. And then decides to finish speaking.
“Magic, Cressa-la. Magic is what’s wrong with it.” Her eyes are sad and long for me to understand. I see that now. “We boil the magic out.”
I stare at her for the longest time. The eighteen-year-old me cringes. The eight-year-old me scoffs.
“Thanks for being honest,” I spit sarcastically and turn away. “I thought that’s what mother figures were supposed to do.”
I walk away. The eight-year-old me is furious, wants to keep walking. But the eighteen-year-old me freezes. I watch as my young body disappears into the village, my heart hammering in my chest. I had been so angry… I had always thought I was right, that she had lied to me. This is the argument that pulled us apart.
But now I know she hadn’t been lying. She was telling the truth—but who would have listened if they had heard her say that? None of the recent tribes had ever believed in magic. It was the old ones that had stories about it.
I turn back toward her and sit down on the cliffs’ edge with her. She turns to me, startled, her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re back,” she sniffles, pulling me into a hug.
I smile, a tear falling down my cheek. I wipe it away, aware that I’d start glowing if I didn’t. The liquid finds a dry place on my clothing, keeping my secret safe for now. In her arms I feel safe. She’s the closest thing to a mother I could ever wish for… and now she’s gone.
It’s hard to look at her, even after all these years of not speaking. My heart squeezes inside my chest and I choke out a ragged sob. Nan-ah’s eyes are questioning as I wipe my eyes and dry my hands on my clothing.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “And—and I wanted to say thank you and that I didn’t mean what I said and that… that I love you.”
She smiles a sad smile, a tear falling down her cheek. “I love you too, Cressa-la, to the moon and back.”
I sniffle.
The world around me wobbles and returns to the present.
“Good,” Tani-mah grunts. The crowd cheers.
That time I had, seeing Nan-ah and talking to her and apologizing… it felt like closure. I feel complete.
I take a sigh, letting the warmth inside of me expand and reach every part of my body. I hope Nan-ah’s looking down at me, and I hope she heard my apology. And I hope she accepts it.
“Number four,” Kan-ner says, walking forward with Lup-mem. They share an awkward glance. “This is the toughest one yet, Cressa-la.”
“And we wanted to let you know,” Lup-mem says. “That we would never do this to you or let this happen to you in real life.”
I glance around, everyone else seeming to do the same.
“What is it?” I ask, scared.
They sigh and begin to walk. I follow them.
They take me into one of the houses and shut the door behind them, directing me to the center of the house. They ask me to sit. I obey, uncertainty crossing my face.
“No one watches this one,” Kan-ner says. “The only thing they know is if you’re struggling to walk, it means you passed.”
Uneasiness sinks like a rock in my stomach as I switch my gaze between the both of them. They put their hands up to their temples like the rest of the Tribe Leaders have and close their eyes. And then they hum.
I’m thrown into a dark room, the only light from the moon above, shining into the hole at the top of the building. Two men with black cloth covering their faces stand above me. My hands are tied to a wooden pole sticking up from the ground. I try to escape.
I can’t.
“Where are they hiding?” The first man shouts in my ear. I cringe.
My brain fills in the gaps with images and words and sounds, probably by the work of the Tribe Leaders. My tribe is underground, hiding from the Wurn Tribe and the Revli Tribe. They had teamed up and they’re coming to destroy us—but they have to find us before they can carry out their plan.
“Why? What are you going to do to us?” I ask, the words flying out of my mouth and dripping with venom.
There’s a hot, searing pain, followed by a crack of something on my back. I cry out and fall to the ground. The second man holds a long rope-like weapon. Its end glows red with heat.
The first man takes ahold of my wrists and twist my arms to where they’re crushing my lungs. I can’t breathe.
“Where are they?” He hisses.
“I’ll never tell,” I wheeze.
Another crack of pain against my back.
I cry out.
Another.
The back of my shirt rips open and warm blood trickles down my skin, agony wrapping its fingers around my flesh and its fingernails slipping beneath it. Death seems to brush by me as another lash cuts into my spine, making my body spasm. My energy drains as I peel myself from the dirty floor.
“I’m sure the little girl—what was her name—Lily-something?—would appreciate you living, since you’re the one that is supposed to care for her.”
“Leave her—leave her alone!” I shout, squirming against the ropes and the tall wooden pole.
The men laugh.
The first one hits me across my face. I’m slung onto my side.
I’m hit again by the weapon. More blood. More torturous pain stutters through my system at alarming rates. Black appears around my vision. I could swear I’m dying.
The first man places his foot on my face. Pushes down.
“Last chance, princess.”
I spit out blood and attempt to breathe with my heavy lungs, dirt and dust swarming into my mouth. A bizarre sort of strength slithers into my body, swelling from my core. Somewhere inside of me, I find a chuckle and let it out.
“You want to know where they are?” I say. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
There’s a pause. Have I won? Do they need me that bad?
“Very well,” the first man says.
Dread seeps deep into my body.
He hold
s me down with his foot. Man number two strikes me over and over. I cry out. I sob. I bleed.
I die.
The first man lifts his shoe to get a good look at me. My vision is blurry. Everything throbs with a dull light. The world is surrounded by black, by darkness. It’s all ebbing away.
“Farewell, princess,” the man sneers, and lets his foot down one final time.
My eyes bulge. My lungs struggle to breathe. The whip hits me and slams against me over and over again. Death calls to me. Darkness grasps me. The end envelops me.
All is dark.
Suddenly light blinds me. I bolt upright, my lungs gasping for air. I clutch at my body, making sure I’m alive, and my eyes frantically dart across my surroundings. Lup-mem and Kan-ner stand above me, their eyes filled with concern. I push away from them and press against the wall. They were the men. They did this to me. My body hurts. It’s sore. Their fault.
“What did you do to me?” I rasp. “Why did you do that to me?”
I sob. They bend down to comfort me but I shove them away, living in the nightmare for a few minutes longer.
“We were making sure you wouldn’t give away anything important, especially if it was the location where we would be hiding in a situation like that. We’ve all—”
“How can you do that?” I interrupt, holding my knees to my chest. “How can you make me see all of that—feel all of that? It’s impossible…”
Tamir shifts to the front of my mind. Suddenly I want him here. I want him comforting me, holding me. But he can’t. He lives in the water. Even if he did only touch me, his body would be wet and I’d glow. And if I glowed… that means I wouldn’t become anything other than banished. And if I were banished, Lily-flor… I’d never see her again.
I inhale deeply and remove the tears from my face as I realize I am beginning to glow. I hope they didn’t notice…
“Would you like to stand now?” Lup-mem asks.
I take a moment and close my eyes, focusing on my breathing. I remind myself it was a test, and that it wasn’t real. None of that actually happened and it was a fabricated scenario. It was only a test.
I nod.
Lup-mem stands before helping me up. I use both of them as support as they guide me out the door. My whole body spasms with pain as I take hesitant steps toward the door. The tribespeople cheer as food is handed to me to replenish my strength, and it disappears almost as quickly as it had appeared. Once I’m finished eating, I realize the pain has almost completely disappeared, only a small amount of soreness whispering in my muscles.
Rai-si calmly strides up to me, a small smile on his face. He’s the last of the Tribe Leaders—the head of them all.
“You have one more test.”
“It’s nothing like the previous one, right?” I ask, my voice trembling. The crowd chuckles softly, obviously holding no knowledge of what I had been through inside of that house. If they had…
“No,” he grins apologetically. “It’s even more terrifying than that.”
I hear myself whimper as I swallow the last bite of my food.
“Come,” he says, handing me my bow and arrow.
I turn to see Nan-ah walking up to me, her hair flowing in the breeze. We stand on the edge of the cliff where my village sits. The sun is beginning to set, casting several colors out onto the dark liquid stretching as far as the eye can see.
“You can never touch it,” she goes on, her voice soft and musical as she sits next to me. She dangles her feet over the edge as I do. “Not even once. Because if you do, trouble will find you wherever you go.”
“Why can’t I?” I wonder aloud, asking the single question that has burned in my mind for the past eight years.
She takes a moment before she answers, my impatience growing. “Because if you ever do, trouble will find you wherever you go.”
“Why, Nan-ah?” The anger rises inside of my eight-year-old self. “What’s wrong with it?”
She looks at me, her eyes contemplating my query. And as if she was the wind herself, she turns back to the water. Her hair twists in the soft breeze.
“The water is a dark place for people like us, Cressa-la.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Nan-ah.”
“Cressa-la,” she begins.
“No,” I stand, the eighteen-year-old growing uneasy inside the mind of the eight-year-old me. This is where it all went downhill. This is where I branched off and became a lone wolf. “I’m tired of everyone telling me to wait until I’m older. Answer my question!”
I hear my voice crack and the tears start to well up in my eyes. Don’t do it, Cressa-la, I urge my younger self. Don’t do it.
“Cressa-la, come sit back down. Let’s talk this out—”
“No!” I stamp my foot. “I’m through with ‘talking it out’, Nan-ah! I want the answer to my question—to the question everyone wants to ask and yet no one knows the answer to. What is wrong with the water? We bathe in the boiled version of it and we drink it. So why can’t we touch it? What’s wrong with it?”
Nan-ah looks at me, her eyes showing the battle she’s fighting inside herself. She takes a breath and tries to speak. Stops herself. And then decides to finish speaking.
“Magic, Cressa-la. Magic is what’s wrong with it.” Her eyes are sad and long for me to understand. I see that now. “We boil the magic out.”
I stare at her for the longest time. The eighteen-year-old me cringes. The eight-year-old me scoffs.
“Thanks for being honest,” I spit sarcastically and turn away. “I thought that’s what mother figures were supposed to do.”
I walk away. The eight-year-old me is furious, wants to keep walking. But the eighteen-year-old me freezes. I watch as my young body disappears into the village, my heart hammering in my chest. I had been so angry… I had always thought I was right, that she had lied to me. This is the argument that pulled us apart.
But now I know she hadn’t been lying. She was telling the truth—but who would have listened if they had heard her say that? None of the recent tribes had ever believed in magic. It was the old ones that had stories about it.
I turn back toward her and sit down on the cliffs’ edge with her. She turns to me, startled, her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re back,” she sniffles, pulling me into a hug.
I smile, a tear falling down my cheek. I wipe it away, aware that I’d start glowing if I didn’t. The liquid finds a dry place on my clothing, keeping my secret safe for now. In her arms I feel safe. She’s the closest thing to a mother I could ever wish for… and now she’s gone.
It’s hard to look at her, even after all these years of not speaking. My heart squeezes inside my chest and I choke out a ragged sob. Nan-ah’s eyes are questioning as I wipe my eyes and dry my hands on my clothing.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “And—and I wanted to say thank you and that I didn’t mean what I said and that… that I love you.”
She smiles a sad smile, a tear falling down her cheek. “I love you too, Cressa-la, to the moon and back.”
I sniffle.
The world around me wobbles and returns to the present.
“Good,” Tani-mah grunts. The crowd cheers.
That time I had, seeing Nan-ah and talking to her and apologizing… it felt like closure. I feel complete.
I take a sigh, letting the warmth inside of me expand and reach every part of my body. I hope Nan-ah’s looking down at me, and I hope she heard my apology. And I hope she accepts it.
“Number four,” Kan-ner says, walking forward with Lup-mem. They share an awkward glance. “This is the toughest one yet, Cressa-la.”
“And we wanted to let you know,” Lup-mem says. “That we would never do this to you or let this happen to you in real life.”
I glance around, everyone else seeming to do the same.
“What is it?” I ask, scared.
They sigh and begin to walk. I follow them.
They take me into one of the houses and shut the door behind them, directing me to the center of the house. They ask me to sit. I obey, uncertainty crossing my face.
“No one watches this one,” Kan-ner says. “The only thing they know is if you’re struggling to walk, it means you passed.”
Uneasiness sinks like a rock in my stomach as I switch my gaze between the both of them. They put their hands up to their temples like the rest of the Tribe Leaders have and close their eyes. And then they hum.
I’m thrown into a dark room, the only light from the moon above, shining into the hole at the top of the building. Two men with black cloth covering their faces stand above me. My hands are tied to a wooden pole sticking up from the ground. I try to escape.
I can’t.
“Where are they hiding?” The first man shouts in my ear. I cringe.
My brain fills in the gaps with images and words and sounds, probably by the work of the Tribe Leaders. My tribe is underground, hiding from the Wurn Tribe and the Revli Tribe. They had teamed up and they’re coming to destroy us—but they have to find us before they can carry out their plan.
“Why? What are you going to do to us?” I ask, the words flying out of my mouth and dripping with venom.
There’s a hot, searing pain, followed by a crack of something on my back. I cry out and fall to the ground. The second man holds a long rope-like weapon. Its end glows red with heat.
The first man takes ahold of my wrists and twist my arms to where they’re crushing my lungs. I can’t breathe.
“Where are they?” He hisses.
“I’ll never tell,” I wheeze.
Another crack of pain against my back.
I cry out.
Another.
The back of my shirt rips open and warm blood trickles down my skin, agony wrapping its fingers around my flesh and its fingernails slipping beneath it. Death seems to brush by me as another lash cuts into my spine, making my body spasm. My energy drains as I peel myself from the dirty floor.
“I’m sure the little girl—what was her name—Lily-something?—would appreciate you living, since you’re the one that is supposed to care for her.”
“Leave her—leave her alone!” I shout, squirming against the ropes and the tall wooden pole.
The men laugh.
The first one hits me across my face. I’m slung onto my side.
I’m hit again by the weapon. More blood. More torturous pain stutters through my system at alarming rates. Black appears around my vision. I could swear I’m dying.
The first man places his foot on my face. Pushes down.
“Last chance, princess.”
I spit out blood and attempt to breathe with my heavy lungs, dirt and dust swarming into my mouth. A bizarre sort of strength slithers into my body, swelling from my core. Somewhere inside of me, I find a chuckle and let it out.
“You want to know where they are?” I say. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
There’s a pause. Have I won? Do they need me that bad?
“Very well,” the first man says.
Dread seeps deep into my body.
He hold
I die.
The first man lifts his shoe to get a good look at me. My vision is blurry. Everything throbs with a dull light. The world is surrounded by black, by darkness. It’s all ebbing away.
“Farewell, princess,” the man sneers, and lets his foot down one final time.
My eyes bulge. My lungs struggle to breathe. The whip hits me and slams against me over and over again. Death calls to me. Darkness grasps me. The end envelops me.
All is dark.
Suddenly light blinds me. I bolt upright, my lungs gasping for air. I clutch at my body, making sure I’m alive, and my eyes frantically dart across my surroundings. Lup-mem and Kan-ner stand above me, their eyes filled with concern. I push away from them and press against the wall. They were the men. They did this to me. My body hurts. It’s sore. Their fault.
“What did you do to me?” I rasp. “Why did you do that to me?”
I sob. They bend down to comfort me but I shove them away, living in the nightmare for a few minutes longer.
“We were making sure you wouldn’t give away anything important, especially if it was the location where we would be hiding in a situation like that. We’ve all—”
“How can you do that?” I interrupt, holding my knees to my chest. “How can you make me see all of that—feel all of that? It’s impossible…”
Tamir shifts to the front of my mind. Suddenly I want him here. I want him comforting me, holding me. But he can’t. He lives in the water. Even if he did only touch me, his body would be wet and I’d glow. And if I glowed… that means I wouldn’t become anything other than banished. And if I were banished, Lily-flor… I’d never see her again.
I inhale deeply and remove the tears from my face as I realize I am beginning to glow. I hope they didn’t notice…
“Would you like to stand now?” Lup-mem asks.
I take a moment and close my eyes, focusing on my breathing. I remind myself it was a test, and that it wasn’t real. None of that actually happened and it was a fabricated scenario. It was only a test.
I nod.
Lup-mem stands before helping me up. I use both of them as support as they guide me out the door. My whole body spasms with pain as I take hesitant steps toward the door. The tribespeople cheer as food is handed to me to replenish my strength, and it disappears almost as quickly as it had appeared. Once I’m finished eating, I realize the pain has almost completely disappeared, only a small amount of soreness whispering in my muscles.
Rai-si calmly strides up to me, a small smile on his face. He’s the last of the Tribe Leaders—the head of them all.
“You have one more test.”
“It’s nothing like the previous one, right?” I ask, my voice trembling. The crowd chuckles softly, obviously holding no knowledge of what I had been through inside of that house. If they had…
“No,” he grins apologetically. “It’s even more terrifying than that.”
I hear myself whimper as I swallow the last bite of my food.
“Come,” he says, handing me my bow and arrow.