The Sun Dwellers (The Dwellers Saga) by David Estes
I shut my eyes so tight I feel like I might squash them in their sockets, will myself to awake from this nightmare, to return to a place where I’m warm and safe in Tristan’s arms, a place where my friends are alive.
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
WAKE UP!
My eyes flash open to murky darkness, broken only by the flickering glow of soft candlelight—our night light. I’m breathing heavily, almost panting, my heart racing unnaturally in my chest. As I deepen my breaths, Tristan’s long, slow exhalations whisper next to me. We’re no longer tangled together, but I’m still warmed by the waves of heat radiating off his body.
Warm and safe.
For now.
Although I’m pretty sure I’ve only slept for a couple of hours—if I’m lucky—I’m wide awake now. My eyes feel like they’re being held open by matchsticks, unable to close even if I want them to.
I sit up and Tristan stirs, his eyes fluttering for a moment as he rolls onto his side, away from me, but he remains sleeping. The others are asleep, too, Tawni the closest, on her stomach, her arms along her side. My heart rate’s back to normal, but with my normalized breathing comes an empty feeling inside my gut. It’s not hunger, I realize, but loneliness, a loneliness I haven’t felt since before I met Tawni and Cole in the Pen. I know it doesn’t make sense because I’m surrounded by my friends, but it’s there, like a creature of evil inside me, eating away at my soul.
My father’s face flashes into my mind and tears well up before I can even consider holding them back. The loneliness is because I know I’ll never see him again, never hear his words of wisdom, his heavy laugh.
Grief’s a funny thing. You think you’ve got it under control, and then it’s right there again, creeping up on you when you least expect it. It seems like no one really knows how to grieve, or even if there is a good way to do it. Me, I stayed in bed for a long time, but when I got up, I wrongly assumed I’d left the grief in the bed. Really it followed me like a shadow, waiting for a moment of weakness to pounce.
I wipe away the tears, thinking of how to best distract myself. I consider waking Tawni so I have someone to talk to, but she needs her sleep. My hand absently fumbles through my pack, extracting items and returning them. Then my fingers close on an unfamiliar item: a book. The diary my father gave Tristan, which he gave to me. I’d read maybe twenty pages of it since, and was shocked by the truth of Year One, of what the girl, Anna, had to go through. It’s just the distraction I need now.
I flip to the earmarked page and begin from the top of the entry. It reads:
Today the President assigns me to my new family. I don’t see the President, but that’s what the big soldiers say when they come for me. They say my last name is Nickerbocker now—except I like my old last name just fine. I don’t say that though, because no one argues with the soldiers.
The Nickerbockers are all right, I guess. They don’t say much, just stare at me and at each other. They explain everything when I move into our new “house,” which is made of stone and barely big enough for us all to sleep in. Mr. Nickerbocker—“Call me Dad”—isn’t exactly married to Mrs. Nickerbocker. He was assigned to her after we moved underground. His real wife and three kids were left aboveground, so they’re probably dead, just like my family. Mrs. Nickerbocker—“Call me Miss Fiona”—wasn’t married when she got selected in the Lottery. Neither of them smile much, but then again, neither do I.
I cry today when I think about my real family and how they were left above. My last memory: their faces, cold, harsh, and devoid of emotion. I know they did it to help me be strong, but it only makes it hurt more. Their smiling, happy faces are lost to me. When the tears start falling, my new dad tries to calm me, by telling me stories and singing to me. Miss Fiona tells us both to shut up, which makes me glad I don’t have to call her Mom.
Later the Nickerbockers let me go out to play. The streets are crowded, full of kids and adults milling about with zombie faces. Under the dim light of the candles and flashlights everything is an awful, bland shade of gray. A few kids try to get a game of tag going, but no one seems too interested. Me, I can barely will one foot in front of the other. Before I left, my mom told me that time would make the pain go away, but I’m not so sure.
I go back inside without looking at my new parents, who are ignoring each other across the room, staring into space. I huddle under the tiny blanket on my thin bed pad, willing myself to another place, to another time, when bedtime meant a story from my real dad and a tuck-in from my real mom.
My new world vanishes beneath my eyelids and for just a moment before I fall asleep, I smile, the first time all day.
I finish reading Anna’s passage and close the book. Anna. My mom’s name. I still have my mom, my sister. Although the pain of losing my dad continues to ache in my chest, the empty pit of loneliness in my stomach disappears. Anna lost everything: her entire family, all her friends, her way of life. Everyone has struggles, and although mine might be more than most, there are those who have worse things happen to them. Now is not a time to languish in grief while a power-hungry madman destroys our way of life. Now is a time to act.
It’s strange to think about how things work out sometimes. Despite all the terrible experiences I’ve had since leaving the Pen, I’m still alive, still fighting, against some pretty slanted odds. I mean, if Tawni hadn’t spoken to me that day, I might still be in the Pen, Cole might still be alive, Tristan might still be just a celebrity in some faraway land…
But instead I’m in that faraway land, fighting for something worth fighting for. Doing my part. Trying to—
“Couldn’t sleep?” a voice says from behind me.
I glance back and spot Roc’s brown skin, which is even darker with the candlelight as the backdrop. He’s grinning slightly, the way he seems to be a lot of the time. He’s a good-looking guy—with full, dark hair, serious eyebrows, and three days of black stubble. Tawni could have done much worse, that’s for sure.
“No. You?”
Roc shakes his head. “Too many things for this active brain of mine to think about. I can’t seem to shut it off.”
I laugh. “I know exactly what you mean. Although I think mine’s broken sometimes.”
It’s Roc’s turn to laugh. “Hey, do you want to get something to eat?”
“Sure,” I say, relieved I’m not the only one awake anymore. Perhaps Roc can save me from my own thoughts.
We shuffle over to the unused fire pit, where a single candle provides a bobbing halo of light, and sit on a right angle to each other. Roc digs through his pack and eventually pulls out a small bundle of paper. I eye the parcel curiously as he unwraps it delicately, like it might shatter into a thousand pieces. Once the paper is peeled away, I get my first look at what’s inside.
“What is that?” I ask.
Roc grins. “Dried fruit,” he says. “I’ve been saving the last of it since we left the Sun Realm. I guess now that we’re back I don’t need to save it anymore, as we can get more of it quite easily now.”
I’ve never had fruit. Occasionally, a shipment of it would come into our subchapter, and all the kids would gather around and watch as those who were able to spare a few Nailins would buy brightly colored fruit they called apples, red and yellow and green. I never asked my father whether we could have any because I already knew the answer.
When I asked Dad how they made fruit in the Sun Realm, he told me they grew it, from trees and bushes and such.
Trees? Like in the books grandma reads me?
Sort of like that, Adele, but these are underground trees. They have technology in the Sun Realm that allows them to grow things underground.
Daddy?
Yes?
I wish we could grow things down here.
Me, too, honey. Me, too.
“Uh, do you want one?” Roc says, snapping me out of the memory. He’s staring at me strangely, holding out a piece of dried fruit. I wonder how longs he’s been holding it like tha
“Yes, of course, thank you,” I say, hastily grabbing the crispy morsel from his hand.
“It’s not the same as fresh fruit, but it’s still delicious,” he says, crunching on a piece.
I don’t care if it’s been dried, kicked around the yard, soaked in water, and then stepped on. I’m barely able to stop from shoving it into my mouth like a half-starved madwoman. Instead, I turn the coin-sized piece of fruit over in my hand, examining it, committing it to memory, for that’s all it will be in a moment.
I pop it in my mouth and just hold it there for a moment, allowing the flavor to reach my taste buds. It’s sweet, but not overly, with a taste that I can’t compare to anything I’ve ever tasted before. It’s…it’s…
“Delicious,” I say around the hunk of fruit in my mouth, copying Roc’s word from earlier. “What kind of fruit is it?”
“You mean you…”
“Nope. Never had it before.”
“But don’t you get sick? Fruit has all kinds of important vitamins in it,” Roc says.
I laugh. “Vitamins? What are those? There’s a lot of disease in the Lower Realms, but over time I guess we’ve just adapted to a diet without fruit. Every household also receives a vitamin ration every six months. It’s supposed to be this big benefit for paying taxes, but everyone knows it’s just so the men are strong enough to work in the mines.”
Roc smiles wryly. “Well, that changes everything. The one you just ate is banana, but I’ve got apple, apricots, and mango, too. You should have all of it.” He pushes the dried fruit toward me, but I put out my hands to stop him.
“No, Roc. We’ll share it. Please.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he says, animatedly crunching another piece of what I now know is dried banana.
I laugh. “But save me some,” I say.
“Here, try this one. It’s different. It’s soft. We call it mango.”
Eagerly, I snatch the new piece of fruit from Roc, feeling the difference in texture with my fingertips. Whereas the other piece—the banana—was hard and crisp and yellow-brown, this is squishy, sort of gummy, and orange. Mango.
I take a bite. “Mmmm,” I murmur when the flavor registers. It’s incredible and weird at the same time. The taste is incredibly delicious, but it’s also so different than the banana, which is weird. I mean, they’re both fruit, right?
“You like that, huh?” Roc says.
“Mm-huh,” I say, smacking my lips as I chew the mango.
“Here, have the rest of that one. I prefer the others anyway.” This time, I accept the offer, resting the fruit on my crossed legs. For a few minutes we sit in silence, eating dried fruit by candlelight.
Then Roc says, “Isn’t it crazy that we’re here?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, right away thinking of my thoughts from earlier. It’s like Roc read my mind.
He runs a hand through his black hair. “Well, there are so many variables at play, from the timing of events, to the political climate, to what time we wake up each day. It just seems crazy that it all happened the way it did, that we’re here, you and Tristan, me and Tawni…”
“Trevor?” I say.
“Sure. Yeah. Him, too. Do you believe in fate?”
His brown eyes are studying me carefully, as if everything hinges on my response to this question. I never realized how serious a guy Roc is. I always thought he was just a jokester, quick-witted and clever with his words. This is a new side to him.
“I don’t know,” I reply honestly. “I sort of did, but then my mom told me something that made me question everything that has happened.”
Cocking his head to the side, Roc says, “What did she tell you?”
Although I had originally planned to keep my mom’s revelation to myself, I’ve now told Tristan, who may or may not remember it, and I’m about to tell his best friend. But everything about Roc feels trustworthy, like he’s a guy you could share your darkest secrets with and never lose sleep over it.
“She told me it was no accident that Tristan and I met.” My words come out louder than I’d planned, echoing twice off the walls before fading into the night.
“I knew it!” Roc hisses, keeping his voice down.
Huh? It’s not the reaction I expected. “What are you talking about? Knew what?” I whisper, leaning my head in.
Returning the remaining dried fruit to his pack, Roc clasps his hands together, his grin wider than ever. He leans toward me, mimicking my movements. “From the beginning I knew something was off,” he starts. “Tristan was acting so unlike himself.”
“How so?”
“After that first day he saw you, was near you, he was so fixated on finding you again, on testing the feelings he felt for you. There was no arguing with him, which is unusual. Normally, he listens to me, listens to reason. Yeah, he hates the Sun Realm, but to pack up and leave it all for some girl—no offense, but it’s just not like him.”
I frown. So much of what Roc’s saying makes sense. I’d had similar thoughts myself. Everything about the way we met—how he left the Sun Realm, how he tracked me down, how he protected me from Rivet—seemed so surreal that I could barely comprehend it. But with no other explanation available, I’d just chalked it up to our powerful connection and coincidence. But maybe I was wrong.
“But what did my mom mean by ‘no accident’?” My mind is racing. Did someone force us together somehow? Were we hypnotized or given some strange elixir that altered our judgment? Everything just seems so farfetched.
“Has he told you about the fainting?” Roc asks.
“Yes, but…what does that have to do with anything? Any number of things could have caused him to faint. Hunger, thirst, lack of slee—
“But none of those things caused it. You caused it.”
It’s like I’m incapable of comprehending anything Roc says to me. Each new piece of information is like a shard of glass from a broken window, except no matter how many combinations you try, the splinters refuse to fit back together again.
“But I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even sure Tristan saw me. And I certainly didn’t know he was chasing me—at least not until he defended me from Rivet at the edge of the Lonely Caverns.” And yet…yet something about what Roc is saying makes sense, because it lines up perfectly with my mother’s words. There’s something else, too.
“The scars,” I say. My mind conjures up an image so vivid that it’s almost like I’m experiencing it for a second time: Tristan’s naked back as we dressed his wounds after the fight with Rivet, his muscles toned and beautiful, his skin spotted with scars; the exhilaration I felt as my fingertips brushed his skin, working to clean him up; the one scar that looked so different than the others, midway up his back, on his spine, unnaturally crescent-shaped. At the time I was curious about the scar, but I chickened out and didn’t ask him. Then, when Tawni told me about a scar on my back that I didn’t know about—also crescent-shaped and in a similar location—I wished I had.
“What scars?” Roc asks his eyebrows arched.
“Tristan has a scar on his back.”
“He has a lot of scars.”
“But this one is different. And I think I have the same scar in the same spot,” I say.
Roc is silent as he stares at me, processing the information.
Everything is lining up too nicely to just be a coincidence. “It just can’t…” I start to say, trailing off.
Roc’s watching me carefully. “Can’t what?”
“Can’t be true,” I say lamely, a sinking feeling settling into my gut.
“Because if it is true, then that means your feelings for Tristan, and his feelings for you…aren’t natural? Is that what you’re worried about?”
Roc’s perceptiveness once more takes me by surprise. I really didn’t know him at all. He’s got me figured exactly. Mine and Tristan’s “relationship,” although slow moving and separated by hundreds of miles of bare rock and tunnels and subchapters at times, h
“Yes,” I admit.
“You can’t think like that,” Roc says, and I jerk my chin up from where it’s fallen to my chest. “Think of it this way. Different people are brought together in all different ways. It’s what you feel once you’re brought together that matters, regardless of how you got together in the first place. Does that make sense?”
It does, but our situation is different. “Yes, but what if what we felt for each other once we were together wasn’t natural either? What if something was causing those feelings? Then they wouldn’t be real, would they?”
Roc opens his mouth to answer. “I don’t know,” he says, and my head falls once more, because deep down I’d hoped he’d have a better answer, that he’d contradict my line of thinking, come up with some wise alternative.
“What are you guys doing up?” Tristan’s voice asks from the side, and a shred of anger at having been interrupted creases my temple, which is totally unfair to Tristan, who’s done nothing wrong. But the thought of not being able to finish my conversation with Roc, and having to carry on a normal conversation with Tristan, makes me angry for some reason.
Before I say something I might regret Roc comes to the rescue. “We couldn’t sleep,” he says.
Rising from his bedroll, Tristan approaches, glancing from my face to Roc’s, and then back to mine, his dark blue eyes piercing my soul, and for a second I’m worried my doubts are exposed, running down my face and arms like sweat. But then every fear—every doubt—is replaced by a warm sensation radiating out from my heart and reaching every part of my body. It’s the feeling I’d felt earlier when touching Tristan, except this time I’m feeling it just being in his presence. It’s not the tingly spine and buzzing scalp—no, those feelings are long gone—but in a way it’s better.