Belladonna

Bella

Bella scrambles through the sterile hallways, boots slipping on puddles of faintly yellow mucus on tiled floors. She swallows the bile that rises in her throat and clutches her worn rucksack a little tighter. 

The building is eerily silent. Odd red lights flicker from obscured corners of laboratory rooms, dust creep along every surface—

“—and not one blasted source of water,” Bella mumbles. The sink handle screeches against rust as she closes off the black stream dribbling from the faucet. It stinks of sulfur and apprehension. 

This is pointless, Bella decides. 

An ominous, rolling nausea overtakes her stomach, and Bella steps back, wiping her hands on her pants. She shifts back and forth on the balls of her feet, uneasy. 

A deafening crack splits the air. 

Bella drops to the ground, clapping her hands over her ears. Her gaze scurries around the darkened laboratory. A gunshot? But there are no footsteps. Her heart thunders wildly, ribs rattling against her lungs. She clutches at her chest, afraid someone might hear—frozen by the fire in her tense thighs. 

But round-eyed, sitting ducks are shot first.

Bella moves. 

*

I blink. 

The room is white-tiled and blinding, with a rectangular darkness on the far side. I blink, again, and stare at the piece of curved shell beneath me, cupping a clear, viscous liquid up against my bare legs and body. I sit between two roughly split halves of a giant egg. The air is frigid against my wet skin and scalp. 

The largest shell fragments are still swinging back and forth on the tile. Ripped, translucent membrane sticks to my calves, and I peel it off. Restless, I start shucking the wetness off my limbs. 

It doesn’t strike me to try to stand on two feet until I see her. 

She’s standing in the darkness, crimson hair down to her waist. Her eyes are wide and framed in beautiful red lashes. Ugly cloth draped around her. Ugly blocks on her feet, and they hover above the layer of water that floods the room. I stare at my own feet, pale and colorless, perched on the edge of the piece of shell I’m sitting in. I wiggle my toes. 

“Hello?”
I move my head up and down. My lips stretch back, baring my teeth in an odd crescent, and my gaze traces over her furrowed brows, eyes, the slope of her nose, her quivering pink lips.

“Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

“Hello,” I echo. The word escapes me in a gasp, jarring, unlike the melodious tilt of her’s. I frown, and try again. “Hello.”

“Hey,” she says, and she moves closer, gingerly stepping into the thin liquid on the tile, which ripples in curious patterns. Her back is hunched, and she looks nervous. “Was that…?”

I follow her shaking pointer finger, and it lands on the shell of the egg. 

I am eager to please. I move my head up and down. 

The girl lets out a breath, and I try it, too. Hold the air tight to my chest, then release. 

“Okay. Okay. Let’s not stay here for long. This lab is three days away from my base, and it’s not safe here.” Sounds are pouring from the girl’s mouth, but I am distracted. I trace fingers over my breasts and stomach and knees, and shrink back from myself because it feels strange. She shrugs off one of the cloth pieces draped over her shoulders, rummages in a pack for another piece—this one small and triangular—and holds them out to me. 

“Here. Jacket and underwear.”

I make no move to take them. Strange, I think. Ugly.

“Hey, we have to get going. Or I’m leaving without you.” Her voice is sterner, angrier. I take and shrug on the cloth—jacket— as the girl had, and tuck away the triangular piece into a pocket on the side. 

“Oh my—you put it down here,” the girl motions to the space between her legs, her cheeks reddening. “Put your legs in the holes. Don’t you know—ugh. You have to cover it.”

The girl strides towards me and snatches the triangle away. She unfolds it and stretches it so that two holes appear, and instinctively, I place my left foot into the left hole, and right foot into the right. She pulls the cloth up.

“What,” I manage. The word gargles on my tongue. 

The girl seems mildly surprised, but shakes her head. 

“Oh, you poor thing. Follow me.”

She darts outside the room, swift as a passing beam of light. The flood in the room trembles in her passing. I follow, and I leave the broken egg, white tile, and water beyond water. I leave behind everything I have ever known. 

*

“We’re going to follow the river for three days,” the girl tells me.

“Okay,” I say. 

I leave the laboratory—as the girl says—behind, and its shadow loses its grasp on my shoulders. Outside, slightly beyond the line of giant trees, branches rich with leaves and spiny bark, a great roaring fills my ears. My eyes do not feel large enough to take the sight in, but the girl moves quickly, and I follow. 

The blades of green under my feet hurt, and the warmth from the blue sky is odd, since the blue of the river is cold. At the river, the girl flicks a handful of water at me, and I hiss when it hits my skin. Our clothes lie below a tree dipping into the bend of the river. She laughs, and draws up the roaring water into her hands. When she does, the water calms, and she wipes off sticky liquid from the egg off my legs and stomach. I shiver not at the cold, but at her touch. 

“What’s your name?” the girl asks, and there is a name that tumbles out of my throat. 

“Lune.”

“I’m Bella. Hi, Lune,” she says, softly, and although my hair is heavy and damp on my neck, I feel it prickle. “It suits you. The white hair, your skin. Look.”

She’s pointing into the water, and I do not know how to tell her that I am standing right next to her, and not where she gestures. Then, the sun shifts, I squint, and then I see. 

A girl, as white as light, stares back at me from the surface of the river. I cannot define the discomfort that runs up my spine, but the girl seems afraid. Her lashes are colorless and her irises are a sickly, watery red, not the brilliant scarlet of Bella’s hair. I do not like this girl, I decide. I clamber out onto the riverbank, so that the girl exits the water that Bella stands in. She is golden, glowing. I shy away when she follows me. 

“Where are you going? We need to stay hidden from the bad guys,” Bella says. She grabs a handful of dark, black mud along the shore. 

“No, stop,” I protest as she starts to rub it into my hair. “I don’t like this.”

“Too bad,” she sing-songs. “You can never be too careful. Soldiers get bored after wars, you know. They’d snatch you up, you pretty little thing.”

Bella had mentioned the war before. The one that tore through her town and cast her into the borderland. The one that set soldiers on her tail, since nations were not fond of resources that they could not control. The one that was the reason she was applying black paint over my cheeks. I found that I didn’t mind the war, much, if Bella would crouch on her knees with her hands on my face, and call me a pretty little thing. 

“I’m sorry about the war,” I say. 

“Never mind it,” she responds, and I agree. 

*

The sun dies over the horizon and dips everything into an orange wash. We’re nestled between two trees that grew apart at the base, with Bella’s blanket over a pile of leaves, and the river gurgles by, some distance away. I knaw on old, dried meat from Bella’s rucksack, while leaning against her side for warmth. My knees are drawn up to my chin, scraped from the thorns and underbrush. The torn pair of socks on my feet are reduced to patches of cotton, and my feet are battered and bruised underneath. 

The evening wind has a bite to it, but Bella tells me I’m lucky it’s not winter. 

I ask about winter. 

“Snow, as far as you can see. It’s this fluffy thing, so soft but so angry and cold. You die so numb that even if I do this”—Bella pinches me, hard, and I yelp—“you wouldn’t feel a thing. I worry every winter.”

I wince, and rub at the spot on my arm, over the jacket. I lean back against the mess of foliage and blanket underneath us, and Bella does the same. I stare up into the branches.

“It sounds like war,” I say. 

“It is, in a way. As inevitable and damning.”

“And it happens after this time—after summer? Always?”

“Yes. But it’ll be a little warmer this year.” 

“Does the year end after winter?”

“Sure, if your life doesn’t end first.”
“How do you keep living?”

My question stops Bella’s breath, and I turn to her. Her expression is stricken, but eases over quickly. 

“You find a way.” 

I decide not to press her. It is summer, now.

“Look, a firefly!”

Bella points out, into the darkness. A glimmer of green-yellow light pops forth, then disappears. I cannot believe my eyes, but it happens again, a few feet away from the first one.

“What!”

“They’re bugs, Lune. It’s good luck to see them on the way back home. My mom used to say they were the best way to tell if somewhere was worth living or not.” Bella turns onto her side, facing me. 

“What is that—‘mom?’”

“What a loaded question,” Bella laughs, but her eyes well with tears. I reach out and touch the corner of her eye, and warmth seeps out, drips down my hand.

“This is called crying,” Bella whispers. “It happens when you’re sad. Or, maybe happy, or angry.”

“What is… What does that feel like?”

“You know what happy is, I told you earlier today.”

“I don’t understand the water coming from the eyes.” My tongue feels dumb in my mouth, and I am agitated, since more tears spill past Bella’s wet lashes. My eyes are dry, and at once, I feel as if they should not be. 

“What you’re feeling now, is probably sympathy, or that you feel bad for me, and sorry that I am crying,” Bella whispers, voice hoarse. “It might be guilt, because you said something that made me cry, but it’s not your fault, so you don’t have to feel that way. Sorry, this is confusing.”

“I understand,” I say. I don’t.

“When someone is crying,” Bella says, and she reaches out to caress my hand. “You want to make them feel better. You want them to feel good.”

“Yes,” I say. She intertwines her fingers with mine, and my mouth goes dry. There is a mess of boiling heat in my stomach that spreads. 

“Do you want me to show you what I mean?” 

I notice Bella is not crying anymore. I don’t understand, but she is staring at me so intensely that I find that I cannot move. There are fluttering birds inside me, beating their wings against my gut. My throat closes up. 

“Stop me if you don’t want this.”

I don’t stop her. 

*

I don’t want this. 

Her lips are against mine, and I am dizzy. My eyes do not stay open, and keep closing, and my chest feels tight. Her hands, like her hair, are all red-hot and fiery. They snake towards the space between my legs, and I cannot move. There are sparks when she touches me and I shudder. The air is frigid.

I don’t understand. 

I do not know winter, but I imagine this is it.

*

“How was that?” Bella asks, after. 

“It felt good,” I say, because it did. Tears well up in my eyes, and she hushes me as she pats my head, inaudible murmurs against my ear. 

“This must be happiness,” I whisper. The blanket beneath my head is wet, and the night is silent.

I do not know if there is a name for how I suddenly wish I was back in the egg. Floating.

Ungrounded by the pit in my stomach.

*

The second day spells disaster.

“Quiet,” Bella hisses, and I crouch closer to the ground. “Why are they patrolling all the way over here? Their rounds don’t begin until autumn.”

I don’t ask about autumn.

Ahead, the river is split by a pointed, crumbling cliff, and there are two soldiers roughly obscured in the shadow, barely visible from our position on the opposite side of the river. The two men chatter and pull on each other’s uniforms—speckled and decorated with odd symbols. We are in a pathetically awful place, with our bodies barely hidden by bushes and tree trunks. 

I feel my face with my fingertips, but it is not the same pinched, anxious expression as Bella’s. 

“Going around them shouldn’t be difficult. They’re not expecting any people, and they could be defectors,” Bella mutters. She’s not speaking to me. 

“But we need to cross the river,” I say. “To go around them.”

Bella jerks her head over to where I’m crouched, and I see a new expression flash across her face. I don’t know what to call it, but her eyes turn cold and harden. I am scared, now. 

“We’ll just retrace our steps to where we were, then,” Bella snaps. “They can’t see us from further up.”

I open my mouth to answer.

An explosive shock of agony rips through my head, and I collapse. The world careens sideways, and rocks dig into my cheekbone as I fall. A metallic tang stings my mouth, and I hear Bella scream. Someone grabs me by the back of my neck, and blunt nails are digging into my flesh. 

“Two!”

Bella’s head thuds into my line of sight, and a soldier slams the butt of an assault rifle into her temple. I reel. I recognize the weapon. The two soldiers standing above us cut off any chance of escape. Another blow from the rifle nearly splinters my skull apart. My eyes flutter shut, and the ringing in my ears nearly swallows Bella’s next words. 

“Stop—take her—she’s a Conquest!”

She must have said something right, because the soldiers freeze, and draw back their weapons. My chest heaves, and gnarled roots push against my back, where it throbs like my ribs have finally punctured my heart. I touch my forehead, and my hand is foreign—sharp pain and blood blossoming where it makes contact with my skin. Bella sits somewhere off to the side, pushing herself up on her bruised arms.

Bella keeps talking. 

“I’m signed onto Moore’s deal. I’m supposed to have until the winter solstice, for winter.” Bella’s voice is wavering, but growing more confident, and I squint, the words and their meanings flurrying away with the wind. 

One of the soldiers steps forward. His eyes are deep-set, and sunken, with a crooked nose. I don’t think he looks kind. He speaks. 

“You’re Belladonna?”

Bella tilts her head.

“You get what you want, I get what I want, that’s always been how it is,” she says.

“Don’t try to negotiate with us,” he spits. “You are trespassing. This payment is barely enough to cover your tail. But we’ll relay to Moore that there’s a found conquest. How new?”

“Under three days. Her name is Lune, if that matters.”

I blink. 

“It doesn’t.”

“Under three days is impressive, even for your standards,” the other soldier chimes in. He has lighter eyes, a younger face, but the same hunger as the older soldier that I can’t quite place. 

“She’s barely been primed in any way. Free to mold as you like. A little slow, but I know that suits some of your tastes. She barely knows anything.”

“You found a farm, then?”

“No more left there,” Bella says quickly. My voice box stutters back to life, then. 

“I don’t understand.”

All eyes are on me, now, and I shrink. 

Even to me, I sound pathetic.

I know they are speaking of me, of something I do not know. But I know—I know of rolling waves of rivers, of lucky fireflies, of silent night, of burning, aching shame between my legs. I try to cover my bare skin with my hands.

Bella stares at me, hair as brilliant as the day I met her, and tears stream down my cheeks. My eyes are hot, and my heart dries up right in my chest, in its own home, and crumbles into dust.

“This must be sadness,” I say, to her. Her eyes are glassy, and she is looking through me.

I do not know what I am so broken about.

The soldiers take me.

*

Bella

Dear Moore,

I know I’ve been running behind with the deliveries, but your soldiers inflicted harm upon me, especially when I was in possession of extremely valuable cargo. As you know, I’ve already scoured the egg farms from North to South, so don’t ask me again. There aren’t many untouched after the radiation poisoning attack. Make sure Lune is traded across the border at high prices, since she’s of the unaging variety. She’ll stay young for whoever wants her, so I expect at least two year’s worth of winter rations delivered to my base. No less. It’s been half a year since I’ve last seen Mellow, but I hope she’s doing well, too—though she is likely shackled in your basement. Possessive prick. Good day.

Belladonna

Note: This work is an initial draft of a larger work.