Dreams of Seventeen

When Seventeen slipped and fell through the ice, Mumma was nearly hysterical. She begged the elders to send out a rescue team to save the girl, because Seventeen was the only other female of breeding age left in our clan. Mumma had been eagerly awaiting the reprieve from child bearing next year when Seventeen became Eighteen, and therefore old enough to procreate. Life had been hard on Mumma. Breeding every year for the last two decades had nearly broken her, but she, like the rest of us, knew her obligation to the clan: populate or perish.

I’m Fourteen, and I hoped to be allowed to breed with Seventeen next year after I became Fifteen. Even though I knew others would be chosen before me, a boy can dream. Nineteen and Twenty-two were already bragging that they’d been chosen. They hadn’t. The elders kept careful records, and were the only ones who could choose who breeds and when. There’s so few of us left that the gene pool must be carefully conserved and controlled, lest inbreeding produce mutants. The elders are responsible for the future of our clan.

One day, I would be old enough, and I then hoped to be chosen to breed with Seventeen. Therefore, I wasn’t upset when Mumma tied me with a long rope and asked Forty-three to lower me into the freezing chasm to rescue her.

Light bounced back and forth in the icy cavern, streaming through the small hole that Seventeen had made when she fell. The bright sunlight reflecting off the walls of ice and snow was blinding. To protect my eyes I squeezed them shut and tried not to focus on the discomfort as the rope cinched around my middle nearly cut me in half.

As I descended in jerky, painful motions, I braced myself for the sight of Seventeen, possibly broken or lifeless at the bottom. Surprisingly, upon landing, I realized I was alone. I hollered to Mumma and Forty-three to tell them that I needed to search further in the caverns, but I wasn’t sure if they heard. I hoped they wouldn’t abandon me and remove the rope. Time was of the essence. If I didn’t act quickly, there was a real possibility, that I’d be stranded down here. Mumma would get a scolding and Forty-three would be punished—standard protocol. The rule was clear: no single life should be jeopardized to save another. Collective well-being was more important than the safety of one person, even if the individual happened to be the only other available breeding female.

This far beneath the surface, the ice was eerie, frozen in shapes and patterns that were disturbing. Chills ran down my spine, and not just from the blistering cold. Shivering, I rubbed my arms briskly and contemplated what I should do next. How could I decide which direction to search? The caverns down here were dark and foreboding in every direction, the cold so deep and still that the air puffed like hot smoke from my mouth. I blew on my fingers to keep them warm while holding my hands cup-like to warm my face and nose.

All around me, slivers of light pierced the darkness and glittered off the edges of ice encrusted stone. The dazzling display beckoned me forward. I shuffled and stomped my feet; the sound rebounding all around in dull, wet echoes. Without consciously choosing a direction, I allowed what little light there was to dictate my steps, following the fascinating prisms that caused rainbows to dance in the darkness. Hopefully Seventeen had been lured in the same direction.

The frozen ground beneath my feet was not flat. It undulated and twisted, causing me to slip more than once as I stumbled through the caverns.

“Seventeen!” I called, the echo peeling off the ice and stone.

There was a soft sound in reply, but I wasn’t sure if it was her voice, or just an echo of my own, so I forged ahead through a particularly narrow crawl space. It opened up into an enormous cavern, higher than I could see in the little light that filtered in. But it wasn’t the sheer size that caused me to catch my breath. It wasn’t even the play of light that streamed in like spears in the darkness, bouncing off ice-crystal encrusted rocks. It was Seventeen, her face transfixed in horror as she stared at an ice wall. I couldn’t see what she was looking at, but her expression caused my stomach to clench. Weaponless, I fought the instinct to run. I’d been taught to preserve myself first in such situations. It was how our clan had survived, after all. Sacrifice the one to protect the many. But I couldn’t leave her, even if I could save myself.

Cautiously I crept out into the dimly lit cavern and held my breath as I scuttled from one rocky outcrop to another, flitting from shadow to shadow. From the new vantage point, I could see what had Seventeen transfixed, and I froze, my mouth gaping at the sight. There, encased in a wall of ice, were two humans, one had its arms flung wide and head thrown back in a frozen gasp, the other sprawled upon the ground.

“What…?” I didn’t even know what question to ask.

Seventeen turned, her eyes glistening with unshed tears in her pale face. Her nose was reddened and her lips were tinged blue. Long dark hair tangled in disarray around her face, and she was covered in small scrapes and cuts, but even bedraggled and bruised, she looked beautiful to me. “Oh, Thirteen,” she cried. “What happened here?”

“I’m Fourteen,” I corrected her, unable to stand the thought of her thinking that I was younger. It was a painful, brutal realisation. I knew everything about her, but she hardly knew that I existed. “I’m going to become Fifteen very soon.” It was important that she understood this, that she was aware that I was no longer a child, and was practically a man.

Seventeen ignored me and turned back to the wall of ice speaking softly, “They’re people, just like us. I thought we were the only ones left.”

Approaching the ice, I examined the frozen humans more closely. “I think they’ve been frozen for a long time. Just look at what they’re wearing.” The clothing on the humans didn’t seem to be made of animal pelts; instead, it was printed with some primitive pattern, tightly woven, and showed no signs of stitches or seams. “Are they wearing ‘jeans’?” I asked. It’s the only item of clothing that I remembered from history stories. In the dim light, discerning the color of the fabric covering the larger human’s legs was challenging, but the material did appear to be blue, like a clear sky. I’d heard of fabric like this, but it was the stuff of legends. I never believed that fabric could be sky-coloured. What purpose could it serve?

Seventeen moved farther along the ice wall, peering into the frozen depths. 

“Oh! There’s more.” She almost pressed her face into the ice, heedless of the biting cold. I couldn’t quite make them out with any clarity, but there were other wavering shapes, vaguely human sized shapes, deep in the ice. “It’s a whole clan.”

The long dead humans made me feel uneasy.

“We should be going back,” I urged. “Mumma and Forty-three are waiting for us.” Despite the pleasure of spending uninterrupted time with her, I wished her focus was on me rather than long-forgotten frozen humans. Seventeen, however, ignored me. It wasn’t much of a surprise, as she had always ignored me, but it still stung.

“Look,” she said, moving farther along the ice wall. “What was it called when there were two adult humans and their young in one place?” Her eyes stayed fixed on the ice. I stepped beside her, attempting to see what had captured her attention. There, frozen in time, were two adult-sized humans. The larger one, probably male, cradled a small human, likely a Three, while the smaller human, most likely female, held a baby. I searched my memory for the appropriate terminology. Not clan, not pack. “Family?”

“Family,” Seventeen echoed with a sigh that seemed to come from a place deep inside her. “What makes a family?”

I dredged my memory for the answer. I wasn’t the best student. My brain would leap and wander, skittering away from whatever it was the elders droned on about. I wasn’t alone in this; most of us found it tedious to endure their long-winded lectures about the time before the catastrophe A time before the mountain of fire struck the land, causing permanent ice and snow everywhere.

“I’m not sure, but from what I remember, ‘family’ has adult members looking after their own offspring,” I said. That was close to the definition, or maybe it was a partial definition. The elders did say something else about family, that there were different kinds of family, but I didn’t really understand it.

“Family,” she repeated, her voice so soft and wistful. I’d never really thought about Seventeen’s feelings about her future. Although I knew Mumma was tired of birthing babies, she never seemed sad to send them away to be raised, just upset that the cycle would need to start again, a new breeding, a new pregnancy. Seventeen gazed longingly at the little group frozen together for eternity.

“Do you want a family?” I asked, even though I knew what her answer was going to be. I could see the longing in her face.

“I don’t want to give up my baby.” I’d never thought of it as giving a baby up. All children were raised by the collective clan, so that the breeding female was free to commence another pregnancy. It was just the way things were. With such a high infant mortality rate, it was easier to not become attached, or so the elders explained it. It was also important to reproduce regularly. Populate or perish. “I want to raise my own child.”

“You know that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a breeding female.”

“I’m not just a breeding female. I want to be more.”

“What more is there? Being a breeding female is the most important job you can have in our clan.”

“I don’t want to be a breeding female!” She shot me a glare, finally seeing me, and I flinched at the anger in her eyes. “Do you know why there are so few breeding females?” she asked, she didn’t expect me to answer, so she continued. “They die. In child bed. They get worn out, used up, and they die. Soon I’m going to become Eighteen and then I get no choice. I breed until I die, or can’t breed anymore.”

I’d never thought about it. Mumma was tired, for sure. I was not her first offspring, but the first to survive beyond infancy. I had no idea how many pregnancies she’d endured, or how many offspring she’d birthed. She was getting older but she would always be just Mumma because no one called a breeding female by their age, they were all Mumma, or Mammie, or something similar. Eventually she would be unable to conceive or repeated pregnancies would kill her. This was the life that Seventeen had to look forward to.

“But that’s just how life is for us. There is nothing you or I can do about it.” Acceptance was part of belonging to the clan. I’d been told this countless times when I was younger, and was always asking ‘why’.

“What if I just never go back?”

I could barely comprehend the enormity of her words. What she said was unheard of. Where would she go? What would happen to her?

“You wouldn’t survive.”

“How is that any different or any better for me than if I go back?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I tried a different tactic. Perhaps guilt would be effective.

“Mumma needs you to take over from her.”

“I don’t owe Mumma anything. Certainly not my life.” She walked away from me, following the wall of ice, her eyes searching for more humans trapped within. I followed, desperate to change her mind with logic and sound reasoning.

“There’s nothing outside the clan. You wouldn’t have a chance. You’d die, and even if you didn’t, there’s no one out there. You can’t have ‘family’ with no one.”

“I can’t have ‘family’ with the clan, either.” She walked away, leaving me alone in the cavern, staring at the frozen remains of humans from a different time, a different world.

In that moment, I realised that I stood at a crossroad: I could go forward, follow Seventeen wherever she went, or I could go back to where I belong. However, without Seventeen, there was no future for anyone. If I went with her, I’d be sacrificing the many for the sake of the one. On the other hand, returning to the clan alone meant there would be no more females until the children, Five and Eight, grew up. My dreams of Seventeen would be lost

Faced with this dilemma, I had to make a choice. For the first time in my life, I felt the desire to choose the one over the many, even though opting for the one would lead to my certain death.

I was only Fourteen, and I knew that Seventeen was my dream, my destiny and my doom.