Outsiders

The apple tree's rough bark rubbed Autumn's cheek. Her heart thumped in her ears.

She made the mistake of looking down.

The blossom-covered ground was a dizzying twelve feet below.

“I- I can’t do it!”

Lucas smiled down on her from the canopy. “Just grab my hand!”

Autumn eyed his calloused, golden palm. To grab it, she’d have to dislodge her right foot from the trunk.

She reached up, and… grabbed his hand. She shrieked. Her legs were dangling in the air; Lucas’s hand was the only thing supporting her.

The veins in Lucas's arm flared as he pulled her up.

“Gotta… keep… pulling…”

 ***

Autumn woke with a start.

Her face was coated in thick yellow dust. A bell was tinkling somewhere. The bitter grime clung to her tongue, making her cough. She wasn’t tree-climbing. She was lying on a deflated plastic pool float on hard ground.

Somebody was pulling her hand – but it wasn’t Lucas, it was Lily-Rose. The little girl skipped from foot to foot, yanking Autumn’s arm.

“Mummy, hungry...” she said.

Autumn came to her senses. The roughly taped-up entrance to their tent had been ripped open. Through the hole, a hot Outside wind blew in. That was where the Dust came from.

Nobody remembered exactly when the Dust arrived. One day it simply appeared, piercing soft pink throats and burrowing into lungs.

Autumn leapt to her feet, grabbed her duct tape and patched up the hole. Finally, the warning bell – taken from the red collar of a gold-wrapped chocolate reindeer – stopped ringing. She couldn’t remember the taste of chocolate. Or what a ‘reindeer’ was.

“Lily-Rose! What did I say about opening that door?”

When Lily-Rose answered, she addressed her only toy, a wire doll with a bubble wrap skirt. “But I was h-hungry, mummy.”

Autumn sighed, wiping her face clean with a rag. The grimy white tarpaulin of their ‘tent’ was the only thing protecting them from the harsh Outside.

As Autumn put on her protection suit - a patchwork of plastic bags stuck together with duct tape - a word was itching at her tongue. What was it?

She opened the Cat Flap and went round the back of the tent. She dug up the steel crate containing their food. As she dragged the crate back to the tent, she was still wondering.

Em- Emer-

Then it came to her.

“Emerald Isle.”

She chuckled drily. Back inside, she stripped off the suit, ignoring Lily-Rose’s confused expression. This cracked, brown desert country used to be called the “Emerald Isle”.

It hadn’t been called ‘the Emerald Isle’ for 4 years, 152 days.

And the city they lived next to – it had been called London. Now, it was just Inside 3. Nobody said London anymore. Not since the Leak, when every plant in the world died. At once.

London, Paris, New York… what did it matter? There was simply Outside, and there was Inside.

And Autumn and Lily-Rose were most definitely Outside.

Autumn pulled out a food bar, peeled off its red plastic covering. She counted the little red treasures in the crate. 2 bars left.

Dammit. She didn’t get her payment – 30 bars, for a month’s work cleaning houses Inside – till the next Firstday.

And it was only Thirdday. Payment was still four days away.

A sudden impulse made her nibble the edge of the bar. She shouldn’t have done it – she was meant to be saving the bars for Lily-Rose.

The taste of the squishy brown bar sparked a memory.

***

“Say Ahhhh….”

Lucas bumped the spoonful of shiny lettuce leaves against Autumn’s lips.

“Ugh, remind me why humans eat leaves?”

Lucas kissed the swell of her belly. “Come on, babe. Doc said you gotta be healthy…”

Autumn rolled her eyes. “Nice try! Now give me my hotdog back.”

“For her?” Lucas begged, his brown eyes puppy-wide.

Autumn groaned, but gave in, opening her mouth. “For her.”

***

Autumn’s chest squeezed with pain. It infuriated her. Lucas already haunted her dreams; how dare he ruin her days as well!

Her eyes flicked to Lucas’s portrait at the righthand edge of the tent. His dimpled smile was in pride of place in her shrine, between the scrappy drawings of her mother, father, half-sister, neighbour…

However, the memory didn’t just hurt her; it reminded her of something.

“Lettuce! The food bar tastes like… lettuce,” Autumn mumbled.

Lily-Rose grabbed the bar from Autumn’s hands. As she chewed it, jumping up and down, she asked, “What is lettuce?”

Autumn felt a burst of annoyance. At her age, Lily-Rose should’ve been sticking out her tongue and calling lettuce yucky. Not asking what lettuce was.

Why was she getting so worked up? It wasn’t Lily-Rose’s fault. She’d been just six months old when the Leak happened; this was all she knew.  

Suddenly, getting her daughter to understand lettuce felt like a life and death matter.

“Lettuce is a leaf,” Autumn tried.

Lily-Rose nodded knowingly. “Laf.”

“No, leaf.”

“Lef?”

“Leeeaaaaf.”

“Leef?”

Autumn nodded. It was close enough.

Lily-Rose cocked her head to the side. “What is leef?”

Autumn felt a wave of desperation. How could she describe a leaf to a girl who’d never seen one?

She grabbed her mop from the corner. Using the tip of the plastic handle, she drew an oval shape with one pointed end in the sand.

“Like this. But green.”

Lily-Rose frowned, jutting out her pink lip. “Mama, what is green?”

Overcome with anxiety, Autumn scanned the tent, needing to find green.

The duck-shaped pool float they slept on was yellow. The food bars were red. Outside, the endless desert was brown, the polluted sky was grey, the tents surrounding the great steel manholes leading Inside were white.

Where was green?

“Green is a colour, like red or brown. Green is…”

Green is the grass prickling your feet as you and Lucas sneak out to the kissing rock at dawn. Green is the lazy shadow of the leaves as you read to Lucas under your apple tree. Green is the pond that you and Lucas skinny-dip in, even though you’re not allowed.

Autumn didn’t say that.

Instead, she said, “You know that feeling… when the well is finally full, and you splash water on your face?”

Lily-Rose nodded. “Ahhhh,” she sighed, closing her eyes in mock refreshment.

“Yes! That is green. Lettuce is green.”

Lily-Rose grinned. Could it be? Had Autumn finally succeeded in explaining green?

But a moment later, Lily-Rose sat down hard, crossing her arms. Her face darkened. Her eyes scrunched tight.

The next second, Lily-Rose was in tears. “Not fair! Don’t understand!”

Autumn shut her eyes and grabbed her hair in her fists. It was thinning, even though she was only 30. (Or was it 31?)

She’d failed. How could she be a good mother if she couldn’t even explain lettuce? A voice at the back of her head added, what was the point in living if she couldn’t even explain lettuce?

After a few minutes of self-pity, Autumn realised that Lily-Rose had fallen silent.  

She opened her eyes. Lily-Rose had disappeared. Panic gripped her.

Had she been taken by a Seedstealer? They loved grabbing little children, and using their tiny fingers to pick seeds from the pockets of rich Insiders. The Insiders had all the seeds left in the world - and didn't like to share.

Then, she heard her daughter pattering towards her from the back of the tent.

Lily-Rose was gripping something in her hands.

Autumn couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She blinked, but the object was still there. It was a kind of oval, with one pointed side. It was a deep brown, and crackly, and full of holes. It took Autumn a moment to realise what her daughter was gripping.

It was a leaf.

Autumn laughed, out of sheer surprise. She grabbed the leaf too fast, felt its strange yet familiar scratchy edges in her palm.

“Where did you find that, baby?”

Lily-Rose gazed at the back of the tent, where Autumn’s small backpack of pre-Leak possessions lay open. Her stuff was spilling out.

“Inside there,” Lily-Rose answered, pointing.

Autumn realised that somehow, that leaf had survived four and a half years. She laughed again, marvelling at the strange bubbly feeling in her chest.

“That’s a leaf! That’s a real leaf!” Autumn cried, pulling her daughter into her arms and kissing the top of her head.

Lily-Rose tried to squirm out of her grasp. She grabbed the leaf once more. “This is… green?” she asked.

Autumn shook her head.

Gazing at the bright gap where the bottom of the tent touched the ground, Autumn said, “No, baby. I’ll show you green.”

Autumn was torn between laughing and crying. Her chest was filling with something golden, something buoyant. She could do this. She could give her daughter what she was missing!

She sized up her meal bars, her flask of water, the Escape Bag she always kept packed but never used. It would be a long journey. Maybe futile. Probably fatal. But the green had to be somewhere.

She whispered it in her daughter’s ear, till Lily-Rose shivered and giggled in delight.

“I’ll show you green.”