Nowhere to run

Alysa was eleven when they chased her for the first time. They’d caught her with a group of her friends, gathered in one of the wrong parts of town, and one of them had decided she was the ringleader. She’d been tempted to protest at first, but if she was honest, they weren’t far from the truth. She hadn’t decided where to meet but the gathering had been her idea. Most of what they’d talked about had come from her too.
There were ten of them: ten officers on their motorbikes, the lurid red of their uniforms glowing in the near-darkness. They’d pointed their guns at her and told her to stay perfectly still if she wanted to see another dawn. She’d done the only thing she’d known how to do.
Run.
She’d always been fast; the bikes were faster but they couldn’t turn as quickly as she could. The officers didn’t know the alleys and side streets like she did either. By the time they’d reached the other side of town, she’d been gone from it ten minutes already. They’d caught sight of her again as she drew near to the harbour, probably assumed that she’d taken a wrong turn and laughed to one another – the road ended at the harbourfront; there was nothing beyond it but the beach. From the beach, the land vanished into the deep, swirling waters of the Yanna Sea.
Alysa had smiled then. The bikes couldn’t go near the sea; the salt would ruin their engines. Even if the officers dismounted, their clothes would take on water too quickly and pull them under.
When they reached the shoreline, their quarry had vanished. Alysa had known how to disappear into the water for as long as she’d been alive; before the officers had even ridden onto the harbourfront, she’d vanished beneath the waves. She swam out to Westward Rock a mile from the shore, then crawled onto the lowest of its ledges and resurfaced, out of sight of the beach. She’d known she was safe there. The officers would assume she’d drowned, give up the chase and return to their base, claiming the victory.
The wind had been cold on her skin for the three hours that’d followed, the salt drying onto her shirt in a thin crust that made it hard to move, but she hadn’t cared. Anything was preferable to being caught by the East Quarter Police.
Morning had come and she’d returned home, reclaiming her coat from the beach and strolling casually back through the town as though she didn’t have a single worry in all the world.
 
The Yanna Sea had always been the beating heart of the East Quarter; for towns like Zarnak, it was simply life itself. The children played on its shores in the fresh sea air, whilst their parents fished in its waters and gathered crab, shellfish and seaweed from its rock-pools. In the summer, whole families would row out to Westward Rock and spend the day picnicking, sunbathing and swimming. Everything in Zarnak depended on the sea.
There’d be no Zarnak without Yanna, Alysa had been told at the age of four. Her great-grandmother had stopped in the middle of one of her many stories and turned, slowly, to stare out of the window, at the deep green waters glinting in the low winter sun. You can’t have one without the other, she’d said, in a voice that sounded far from her own, Zarnak needs his Yanna. Town and sea were brothers, she’d explained – brothers who could only survive together. If one fell, the other would follow.
Alysa remembered the rest of her family laughing, but there’d been a strange look in her great-grandmother’s eyes that day, one that she’d never seen before and would never see again. She hadn’t said anything to anyone outside of the family, but the story had stayed with her through the years. It wasn’t the kind of story to let yourself forget, she thought.
She spent her teenage years meeting with her friends in all the wrong places and getting chased through town by the officers; every time, she made for the beach and threw herself into the water. She never took the same route twice. Every chase ended in failure and, if the streets were busy, humiliation for her pursuers.
In the year she turned twenty, the East Quarter Government announced their plans to build a new town three miles from Zarnak, with a road between the two running along the Yanna Sea’s northern coastline. If more fish could be caught and more rockpool creatures gathered, the Quarter’s food production would double in just a few short years. And think what that’ll mean, people were already saying. More trade, more exports, greater quantities being exported – it would all bring the money the East Quarter desperately needed.
“There might be work for us”, came the giggling voice of Jenni, Alysa’s closest friend. “Imagine that – real work that actually matters. It could even get us out of this town, Al”, she went on persistently, when Alysa refused to look excited. “We wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives scrabbling about in rockpools or getting tangled up in fishing nets. Things could finally change…”
The Government’s plans were put into action a week after the announcement was made; Alysa sat on Westward Rock and watched the huge trucks rumbling along the main road, loaded to the brim with concrete and cement. The new road would be built first; once there was a route into the new town, the real progress could begin.
Like everyone who wanted to earn a little extra, Alysa joined the effort where she could. It wasn’t easy finding work; some of the managers knew about her previous encounters with the police, and even the ones who didn’t were reluctant to employ a woman. Their prejudices crumbled when they realised just how much work the new road and town were going to take. Anyone would do as long as they were fit and strong enough – even Alysa.
“See? We’re on our way already”. Jenni was still giggling like an excited child when the road was finished and they were all filthy, hungry and exhausted. “This is the road to the future, Al; you’ll see it one day”.
“I’m sure I will”, Alysa replied blankly, if only to shut her friend up. Her great-grand-mother’s words circled her mind, not for the first time since the work had started. There’d be no Zarnak without Yanna. The two brothers had co-existed in perfect harmony for decades, maybe even centuries. Now Yanna was being forced to share himself with a stranger. Something about that made Alysa permanently uneasy, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.
The groundwork for the new town began within the year. Every man, woman and child in Zarnak who was fit and able devoted themselves to the project; from sunrise to sunset they toiled away, sometimes for weeks at a time without a break. Each evening they trundled back to the beach, to the fishing boats they’d left anchored in the deep waters. Together they hauled in the day’s catch and then, finally, went home to rest.
Alysa spent more time on the beach than most. On days when everyone else had volunteered for the “new work”, as it was being called, she offered to stay behind and watch the boats, keeping an eye out for unfavourable weather. With winter closing in, her offer was gratefully received.
So she spent her days up to her knees in the shallows, wrenching limpets and seaweeds from their rocks and plucking crab and shrimp from the deeper parts. Sometimes, if she was lucky, she’d even find a lobster or an eel. If storms started to gather on the horizon, she swam out to the boats and drove them, one at a time, back to the safety of the harbour. She always left her father’s vessel till last – as they’d agreed she would – so that no-one could accuse her of putting her own family’s income above others.
And every day, when the workers came back, she sat and listened patiently as Jenni brought her up to speed on the latest developments.
“You really should come and see it”, Jenni told her one day, “before it becomes just another town, like this one, and everyone forgets it was ever anything else. It’s history in the making, Al—”
“So you keep telling me”, Alysa returned, forcing a smile onto her face. “I don’t need to see anything; I hear everything from you”.
Jenni went red.
“Besides, someone’s got to watch the boats, haven’t they?”
“True. Oh, that reminds me – we’re starting on the water system tomorrow”.
Alysa failed to see what was so interesting about that; every town needed water. She was tired and cold now, and wanted to go home and sleep, but her friend was still full of a childlike energy that made her impossible to shrug off. So she stayed a little while longer, listening to Jenni prattle on about pipes and water and drainage systems, all of which would help get the new town up and running within the Government’s timeframe.
“Where’s the water coming from?” Alysa had to ask, when she could finally get a word in again. Zarnak drew its water from the Sea; the salinity was low enough that the salt could be easily filtered out. But the system was an old one, built using methods which were now considered obsolete. It seemed unlikely that the ever-progressive Government would return to them for its brand new town.
Sure enough, they weren’t. A new plan had been formulated, one so ingenious that everyone immediately wondered why they’d never thought of it before. The Yanna Sea was fed by three rivers; the largest one, the Eeya, would be dammed and diverted to the new town, to provide the water for its plumbing and drinking.
“It’s perfect”, Jenni finished, almost out of breath. “The water won’t even need to be filtered as much if it doesn’t come from the sea; it’s so simple—”
“What about the Sea, though?”
Jenni looked baffled, as though she’d just been asked the stupidest question ever known to mankind.
“Won’t it cause a problem?” Alysa said to explain herself. “Taking one of its feeders away, I mean—”
“Don’t be daft”, Jenni cut back in, “of course it won’t. It’s got two others, hasn’t it?”
Two that’re much smaller, was the first thought to cross Alysa’s mind, but she didn’t have the energy left to argue with her friend anymore – or anyone else, for that matter. The Government planners presumably knew what they were doing.
When she collapsed into bed an hour later, her great-grandmother’s words echoed in her head once more.
 
Damming the river was an easy enough task. Diverting it proved more difficult, but Zarnak rose to the challenge and once again sent every able-bodied worker it could spare to help dig the new channel and lay the new pipelines. Before the year was out, the waters of the Eeya had ceased feeding the Yanna Sea and were flowing towards the new town at top speed.
The new town grew much quicker after that. With the foundations now complete, work on the buildings themselves could begin. First came the fish processing plant, along with the first flats and houses for its workers. Next were the school and the hospital; following close behind were the harbourside buildings. The new town would have a harbour to match Zarnak’s – another fishing port on the Yanna Sea.
No-one noticed at first that the Sea in question was shrinking.
Alysa saw the warning signs before anyone else, being the one to stay behind and mind the boats. It was a warm summer’s day when she found her first empty rockpool; when she crouched down to take a closer look, she saw dark patches crusted onto the rocks marking the old waterline. Nearly two inches lower, she thought, alarmed. The heat from the sun had left the water too warm for any creature to cope.
When she went out to bring the boats back in that evening, she found she could stay on her feet almost a third of the way to Westward Rock – a year ago she would’ve been swimming long before that. It used to be so much deeper. Something felt wrong.
Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she said nothing about it that day. The managers would’ve only accused her of slacking, and no-one else would’ve listened; they were all still too caught up in the excitement of the new town. It wasn’t worth an earful or another run-in with the police. She’d only recently managed to fall off their radar as it was.
So the new town grew, and the Yanna Sea shrank. By the time the President was on his way to officially name the new settlement, the shoreline had receded by nearly six metres; most of the rockpools were left untouched by the waves and Alysa could walk to Westward Rock without the water touching her chin. Even when the rains came, the water level stayed low.
The boat captains had started to notice the change too by now – they’d found they had to drive further and further from the shore in order to reach the deeper waters, taking more time out of their working day. They couldn’t moor as close to the harbour either. Sailing towards the jetty now brought the risk of running aground.
But their worries went unheard as well.
The President chose the name Yarnak for the new town, after its neighbour and the Sea from which it too would draw its strength and life. This was the dawn of a new age, he said, a great time for the Eastern Quarter’s economy and people. And the people came flooding in from all directions, all wanting to be a part of this “new age”, all wanting to say they’d been there when history was made.
 
Yarnak had been an official, fully functioning town for just over eighteen months when Alysa decided to pay a visit to the mountains in the Southern Quarter. She’d grown restless lately and wanted to try something new – something that didn’t involve scraping seaweed and limpets from jagged rocks in the freezing wind. The mountains were a good place to escape from it all for a while, to leave everything behind and just…be.
Sounds ideal, Alysa decided; within a day she’d made up her mind, packed a bag and climbed onto her motorbike. She rode out of town without a backward glance or even a second’s thought for the life she was taking a break from.
Had she known what was waiting for her, she might not have been so hasty.
For the first fortnight, however, the Southern Quarter’s mountains took every scrap of her attention – they were spectacular, and everything she’d been promised they could be. She walked every path in every direction and trekked up every hill and ridge. Everything was perfect, and nothing could dampen her spirits. She took three days out to rest, eat well and recharge, then set off on a new path.
This kept her entertained for the best part of six months. Once her legs had been re-duced to jelly and she’d crossed off every trail in the mountain range, she decided to extend her break and explore more of the Southern Quarter. She’d never been anywhere outside of Zarnak before; here was the chance to see some of the wider world.
And some of home at the same time, she thought as she rode down unfamiliar lanes, a shining grin plastered on her face. She knew the Yanna Sea extended into this Quarter. Its southern shores would make a good stopping point halfway through her journey.
Her heart singing, she rode into the first town on the shoreline, the mini-city of Muy… and all her joy and excitement withered inside her.
Muy was, according to every source you asked, the largest port in the Southern Quarter, the busiest fishing community on this side of the Yanna Sea. Alysa had seen a photograph of it once; the shores had been so full of people that you couldn’t see the ground. Boats covered the water’s surface, almost blocking it from view.
What she saw now was a ghost town of derelict buildings and empty roads, backing onto a line of fishing boats rusting in the sand. Beyond the boats, a desert stretched away into the distance.
A desert.
The realisation brought Alysa to such a sudden stop that she nearly went over the handlebars. She was standing on the main street of the Southern Quarter’s largest port town and the only water in sight was the sweat dripping onto her shirt. Where children should’ve been playing, there was only silence and emptiness. Where their mothers and fathers should’ve been fishing…there was nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing but the sand, the wind and the sun.
Alysa slid from her bike and crumpled to the ground, fear swirling in her belly. Muy was dead; there was no mistaking it…a town like Zarnak dried up and died.
“Are you alright?”
The voice jerked her out of her panic; she looked up and saw a short, wrinkle-faced woman leaning over her, one hand outstretched in an offer of help. She took the help gladly and allowed herself to be lifted back to her feet, marvelling at the woman’s surprising strength. Her stomach still churning, she asked what’d happened to leave the town in such a pitiful state.
“That government up there in the east”, the woman replied, the bitterness audible in her words. “They wanted to build a new town, didn’t they – birth of a new age and all that rubbish”. She paused and spat onto the ground. “Took our livelihood to do it”.
“How…how d’you mean?”
“My grandson thinks it was the river. When they diverted the Eeya, they took Yanna’s food source; now Yanna’s starving and so are we. He’s dying…that’s what they’ve done to him”. She spat again. “Look at him…look at what they’ve done. Those great and powerful idiots. They’ve killed him”.
And you can’t have Zarnak without Yanna.
Alysa didn’t wait to ask anything else – she didn’t even care to find out the woman’s name at that moment. She climbed back onto her bike, kicked it back into life and turned back the way she’d come, back out of all that was left of the Southern Quarter’s largest town and onto the main road.
When she crossed the border back onto Eastern territory, the police were waiting for her. She’d been to the wrong place again, talked to the wrong person…probably; I’m not going to ask them. Maybe what’d happened to Muy was supposed to be a secret – maybe the old woman wasn’t meant to talk to strangers about it. Either way, she’d come back onto the radar and there was only one place she could think to go.
Take me home.
She hadn’t seen Zarnak in a long time, but she could still remember the shortcuts and side roads she’d always taken when they’d chased her in the past. She swerved violently round the same old corners and down the same old alleyways; the streets were emptier than they’d been when she’d left but nothing else had changed.
Just get me to the sea…just let me get to the sea. Please.
She skidded to a halt at the end of the jetty and leapt down onto the sand. Her coat was already undone; she’d wriggled out of it and thrown her helmet aside before she’d taken three paces. She left them on the sand, as she’d always done before, and ran.
And ran.
And ran.
And ran.
A huge, rugged shape rose out of the sand beside her – one she was sure she re-cognised. Temporarily oblivious to the officers on her tail, she stopped to look.
Her heart froze in her chest.
She’d just run past Westward Rock. Until Yarnak had been built, Westward Rock had been a mile from the shore, surrounded by water so deep that even the tallest of the men had been unable to keep their feet on the bottom.
Now there was nothing but the same empty desert that Alysa had seen in Muy.
Nothing.
Only empty sand and the setting sun.
Nowhere to run…