Julia Dream Read online

  She sighed and closed her eyelids, rolling around restlessly. Thoughts seemed to trip on the invading notes of that afternoon’s music; fleeting and elusive, they refused to shut up or regularly flow in the memory of a consistent melody.

  The girl placed her right arm on her forehead, as if the gesture could clear her thoughts.

  IV

  She flies on the floor, pushed by invasive hands, a sudden intense light shatters her eyelids. Face on the ground, she slams knees and elbows, attempts to turn, but then the first blows arrive - kicks, strong, on the floating ribs. Breathing is broken and she doubles up, curls, tucks her head in her knees and shoulders seeking to avoid the blows raining in from all sides.

  “What did I do? What did I do? WhatDidIDo?”

  Panic explodes vocally in a thought expressed without conscience or control, but instead of answers, more blows and hands, hands that in between one blow and another force the shoulders open, block trembling wrists around her back, yank her head back by her hair and force the new darkness of a black hood on her eyes.

  Unable to move and defenseless, Julia relaxed without further resistance. She tried to breathe regularly and calm her racing heart, while a solid grip on her arms dragged her away. After seconds she was thrown to the ground, in a corner probably, since she had slammed her head on two sides. From the vibrations of the environment she guessed she was moving.

  Trying to ignore the pain, shock and fear, she released all of her muscles trying to control their shaking, forcing her mind to work.

  Voices closing in interrupted the slow, confused but constant stream of her thoughts.

  “Looks like she fainted.”

  “Follow the procedure.”

  An increase in the vibrations of the floor warned Julia of approaching footsteps, and she found herself shivering subconsciously, trying to curl into a ball. She was startled by a cold hand grasping the back of her neck – she could feel herself invested by a wave of fear, then a small sting.

  

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  The harsh voice shattered the darkness of unconsciousness. Behind her, the smell of damp earth, recent rain. She winced, struck by a gray artificial light, eyes blinking and teary when they removed the suffocating and stuffy darkness of the hood. She barely acknowledged the question, following with her gaze the two men which were flanking her, before taking position in front of the door she had just crossed.

  The figure that had spoken was sitting at a desk, composed, impersonal, a talking uniform with a blank voice.

  “Do you know what you have done?”

  Julia remained motionless in the empty hall, shrugging and crossing her arms, realizing she was cold, a cold that made her limbs shake, her hands rigid - a cold paralyzing her in the inappropriateness of her thin frayed shirt.

  The calm in the face and voice of the officer at the desk was thinning, and he went up to the girl, inspecting her contemptuously.

  “Shall I add insubordination to the list of your charges? I demand answers. Do you know or imagine why you are here?”

  Julia stared at the ground. Words were having a hard time coming out.

  “I… I didn’t do anything.”

  The officer shot her a penetrating look, then started circling around her, hands crossed behind his back, his voice once again blank.

  “Nothing? So why do you think you are here then?”

  For the long moment while she stared in the eyes of her interlocutor, looking at him from down to up, Julia was once again the Champion of the Empire, winner on the field against the professional Maxim. Cold and sharp as a blade, her eyes carved in ice.

  “I believe my presence here to be part of my training.”

  She raised her head, tilting it slightly backwards in a rush of pride.

  The officer placed a hand on her shoulder and unexpectedly smiled.

  “Correct. And look…”

  He indicated the door behind Julia, which opened on a courtyard marked by a handful of wooden huts. It was embraced by a palisade, and sported a conspicuous gate protected by two guards.

  “The door is open. You can leave this place whenever you want, and give up on your training.”

  The girl turned around, following the movement of the hand on her shoulder, guiding her to contemplate that sight. She squinted because of the glare of the natural light and tensed her muscles, expecting a trap or an imminent blow, but nothing happened.

  Only a light pat on the back.

  “If you decide to stay, just know it’s not going to be easy. Few resist.”

  

  A drop of water fell on the naked skin of her shoulder, waking her. She opened her eyes and grimaced because of the pain coursing in her limbs, cluttered with bruises following the entire color scale of injuries, from violet to greenish yellow.

  She curled up with her knees close to her breast to compensate the shiver of cold which followed, but soon another drop fell on her arm. She raised her eyes to the ceiling - it was raining in the hut once again.

  She sat up from the dust bed she had prepared in the driest corner she could find, doubling up almost immediately because of a deep, chesty cough. The dryness in her throat and the weight on her forehead suggested a fever. Standing up uncertainly, propping herself with one hand on the wall of the hut to balance the weakness in her legs, she ventured out in the open with a couple of unsteady steps.

  The clouds which were gathering were a glaring light gray which hurt her eyes, and the drops falling out of the sky were still rare, even if huge.

  Julia tilted her head backwards and opened her mouth, oblivious to the quality of the water, interested only in quenching her thirst. The first day after her arrival she had waited for a ration of something - water, food, pills, anything - but there had been nothing. The second day she had decided she was going to make do with the rain.

  Two or three drops fell on her parched tongue and lips: she would have cried in frustration, had she held enough liquids in her body to produce tears. Then her eyes fell on a puddle nearby. She strode over to it with a determination that for a moment made her shine with dignity, there under the bored derision of the camp guards.

  She let herself fall on her knees at the border of the small muddy hollow, and would have lapped up the water like a dog in absence of a better idea. She sank her hands just below the surface, trying to filter the mud and let at least some of the dirt deposit.

  She remained there as long as it was necessary, kneeling, drinking one sip of dirty water at a time - she stopped only when she started feeling a movement and an increasing pain in her digestive system, violently awakened. She passed her tongue on her gums, trying to clean the dust out of the sores that had come out where she had cut her inner cheek with her teeth.

  She closed her eyes for a second, banishing any motion of self-pity as utterly useless. When she opened them again, she fixed her determined gaze on the muddy soil. She would use it later on to fix the water infiltrations in the hut.

  

  Light, white and cold; it breaks the damp semi-darkness of the room. She curls up but no blows arrive - hands pick her up, lift her to her feet, push her out. She trips in the mud but does not fall, held back.

  The lighting beacons hurt the eyes, confused footsteps in the barracks’ rooms, as Julia is pushed face-forward on a bright white wall - the palm of her hands breaks the fall, not without repercussions the muscles of neck and shoulders.

  “Stay here. Don’t try to move.”

  The snarl of an unidentified voice.

  Julia falls to her knees, is about to turn around, hands grab her and pull her up again.

  “Stay still and don’t move!”

  Hands resting on the wall, she blinks in the painful glare, closes reddened eyes, and her head falls forward, forehead on the wall.

  1, 2, 3 seconds of peace. A yank in her hair, her face against the wall, another yank.

  “Stand up and don’t sleep!”

 
Julia started counting. The 9 times table, keeping her mind active to forget the uncontrollable shaking of her legs, the cough, the pain, the distance from any affection, serenity or peace.

  “This is what you want, right?”

  Cleo’s voice emerging from the abyss of distance in space and time, clear and remote in memory.

  “I thought I wanted it, I don’t know anymore” Julia argued in tears, at number count 11727.

  The undecipherable voice of the Secretary, that distant day in his study.

  “You’ll have time to thank me.”

  Marcus knew, he knew what they would put her through!

  The meticulous chain of numbers in Julia’s mind was interrupted by an explosion of anger and she could feel a wave of despair overwhelming her - even though she had no tears left, her trembling increased, no longer kept at bay by mindful reasoning.

  She slumped to the ground, senseless.

  

  She was woken up by a circular, constant sound; a siren. She was once again in the wooden shack. She crawled for a few inches to look out of the hut without having to stand up, an action far beyond her forces.

  Beyond the invasive noise, there was nothing unusual in the camp - the guards at the gate had a bored look on their faces, while other pale, spectral figures like her dragged themselves out to lick some muddy water. She noticed for the first time that there were other prisoners in the structure, but this vision didn’t alleviate her solitude or fatigue in any way.

  The siren stopped, abruptly as it had started. Julia relaxed the muscles of her shoulders which were keeping her perched at the door, falling heavily with torso and head on the floor. She shut her eyes, yearning for the peace of sleep.

  Already her mind was travelling on dreamy paths, when a high-pitched and insisting whistle pierced her thoughts - she woke up, falling in a state of tired awakening, but the whistle did not leave.

  Recruit Mayne clenched her fists and rested her forehead on the floor: this new, jarring noise was coming from the same loudspeakers that had been broadcasting the sound of the siren earlier on.

  Painfully, Julia curled up with her knees to her breast and covered her ears with her hands, clenching her elbows - at first she didn’t even notice the tears of frustration that were inexorably rolling down her cheeks. Feeling the dampness slide down from her face to her forearm and wrist, she bit her lip until she could taste the blood.

  The call ended. She slowly took her hands away from her ears, unsure in the new-found silence. It was merely three seconds, before the whistle started again, loud and teasing. Julia quit the idea of sleep, and turned the sound in a spindle for spinning her hate.

  

  The noises, different and prolonged, lasted for two days and two nights. When at last the cry of the loudspeakers provided a truce, Julia slept an anxious and irregular sleep. Her eyes would snap open after brief intervals, expecting the hateful siren, only to heavily drop for the deep fatigue. Before cold and fever claimed her consciousness, she wondered what else were they going to take from her.

  She would stare at the open gate of the camp, an exit to the dense green surrounding the structure. For a long time she looked at the dirt path that led from the opening down into the Forest.

  She could leave all that pain behind. But to go where? To a humiliating return to the Ministry? To head out alone and unarmed in Terrorist territory, in her condition? Or perhaps was it a quick firing squad that awaited those who were foolish enough to trust their jailors? The open door inflicted the acute torment of choice - fear of future pain clashed with the terror of the wrong decision.

  From time to time Julia would rest her forehead on the floor, trying to distract her eyes and attention from the fixed thought of the gate, from the whirling conjectures of her tired mind. Her will to resist, to pursue her goal, was eroded by doubt - that the right answer could be the simplicity of escaping from such a terrible place.

  But it was in the nature of soldier Mayne to be inclined towards persistence, stubbornness and suspicion, rather than opportunism - in her mind, anyone could leave the structure, without necessary calculating the risk, and very few would remain… so to pass the test she would have to stay. A desperate and recurring analysis.

  She mustered all her will to force herself to stand up and take a few steps, to fight the pain in her muscles and the whirl of her thoughts.

  The slow, yet constant, steps betray her – lead her to the gate, where Julia notices one of the guards for the first time, not only a blank voice or a heavy hand, but a person, an obvious individuality. A young man, deep and warm black eyes, uncontaminated by indifference.

  Words slip out of chapped lips.

  “I can’t stand it any longer. I’m dying.”

  And then an answer resonates in the air, before the unconscious truth makes its way in a muddy, miserable conscience, cuts the silence like the hint of a secret smile.

  “Don’t worry. It’s almost over.”

  Julia felt stunned as she returned to the hut, spending her last energies trying to make sense of the bizarre conversation. Those words and their elusive subject floated in her brain, almost reduced to mere sounds in the ebb of her feverish thoughts.

  For even if the basic question was disquieting – what was almost over? – she could no longer worry about the answer. Because music had arrived.

  Sequences of notes, heard by chance or casually, melodies coming from training with Skintilla, enriched in her mind with new and ephemeral harmonies. Music burst in, unexpected and inescapable like destiny, de-structuring every form of reasoning in feverish delirium, all consistent thought in elegant series of notes.

  V

  The first strange detail to float at the border of her consciousness was that she did not feel cold. Initially she felt a slight and diffused warmth, then a light weight on her back, and a sinking feeling on a soft surface.

  “I believe she is waking up.”

  The familiar voice shook sleep off her, as she connected the dots in her mind. Marcus. The sudden contraction of her stomach, followed by the warm sting of acid up her esophagus, sent its metallic aftertaste all the way to her clenched teeth. She breathed out slowly, relaxing her jaw and opening her eyes. She was struck by the whiteness of the pillowcase of her soft headrest, of the blanket that covered her.

  She painfully turned in the direction of the voice, fixing a firm glare on Marcus, who answered by lowering his head in an obvious admission of guilt, as the doctor with whom the Secretary had been talking hurried out of the room without a word.

  At that point Julia let her head fall back down on the pillow, and spoke staring at the ceiling.

  “And now, what are you going to do to me?”

  Marcus looked up and shook his head, attempting a small smile.

  “Nothing. Your training is over. You’re only missing your nomination.”

  She stared at him coldly.

  “You were right, had I known I would not have thanked you.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Still not looking at him in the eye, the girl arched her back, stretching the muscles of her shoulders and arms as to test them. She spoke in an absent tone that betrayed emotions she could barely contain.

  “Sometimes I feared the test was to simply be smart enough to leave. What did you do to those who left the camp?”

  The Secretary tilted his head slightly while answering her, as if surprised by the question.

  “Nothing. The camp is just a few kilometers away from the base. They will be able to keep on working here in an intermediate position between their old rank and the Advanced Corps.”

  “Oh.”

  He noticed she had gone white, and then had blushed.

  “Why do you ask?”

  The girl looked away, her eyes clouded at the memory of recent pain.

  “I feared you would unceremoniously execute those who abandoned the camp, as a punishment for their failure.”

  For the first time since
she had known him, Marcus stared at her speechless, truthfully appalled - when at last he found his voice, his tone made it clear the Secretary was truly scandalized.

  “I will have to engage in a little talk with Yrenes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because her superficial and trivial ways have done incalculable damage.”

  Julia could feel tears starting to burn behind her eyes and in her throat, in the face of the exemplary yet incomplete truth of this statement. The Secretary kept on pouring salt in the wound.

  “Do you remember why the Empire was created in the first place?”

  “To unite, reorganize and save the human race.”

  Marcus nodded.

  “And what did humanity do for the Empire?”

  “It abandoned its superstitions and gods, because they had led only to folly and nonsense. It wasn’t a god that saved our ancestors, but the idea they created for themselves of an Empire that could reunite them.”

  Marcus nodded again.

  “Exactly. At least they did teach you this. You really think the Empire would put down precious human resources only because they don’t show exceptional skills?”

  The hatred in Julia’s eyes dampened into a cautious and very tired look.

  “I guess not.”

  Marcus was forced to accept that, and even as he smiled at her, he was obviously worried.

  “Good. Remember that.”

  The Secretary looked at her straight in the eye.

  “What you had to bear was harsh, but there are worse things.”

  Julia suppressed a snarl, and nodded ironically.

  “So I suppose I should thank you for what you didn’t do to me?”