flew in feathers then

I remember, I remember, the fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance, but now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heav'n than when I was a boy.

- Thomas Hood

For many weeks, they had kept the children in an old shipping container on the edge of the Wastelands, where they would at least be in the shade, and over the days the other boys disappeared, all of them, quite gradually, until there was only maybe ten of them left in total, out of what had once been more than thirty - seven of the children in the container, and three, slightly older, children left to guard them. Like Lord of the Flies, Demetri had said, thinking himself quite insightful, and had been rewarded with quite the blank stare from both Gabriel and Yenifer in response.

He thought Yenifer would have given him such a stare even if she knew exactly what he was talking about - she delighted in making a fool out of him when she could, him and everyone else. She wasn't even meant to be there. She was the only girl there. The General had put her in with the others in a fit of exasperation, when he could find no one else in the local militia willing to take charge of the little captive, who was prone to spitting and biting and using words no child should have encountered before they had lost all of their baby teeth. So the General put her into the cage with the rest.

It was that, or put her in the ground.

Some days, Demetri thought that he rather would have preferred the latter.

Well, he didn't mean that. He couldn't mean that. Yenifer was not nice to him, but she would not stand for anyone else to be mean to him either. She had slashed at Uzohola with a broken piece of glass, earlier in the week, when the bigger boy had shouted at Demetri, and would give Demetri her food when she thought he was looking hungry, and was forever convincing Raphael to give them this or that, little things that the General wouldn't let them have, like the gold chain that had been taken from Demetri after his kidnapping that he said had been his mother's or the raggy coat that Gabriel still couldn't sleep without or Yenifer's screwdriver, with which she had stabbed Thiago Wesick in the shoulder several weeks ago and which she now used to draw pictures in the sand. "What are you drawing, little sparrow?" the General asked her once, when he had visited to see the boys were being treated well, and Yenifer had pulled a face and said "Steve McQueen, boss, Steve McQueen".

The General always went to great lengths to assure Gabriel and Demetri that they were not prisoners, not captives, but just being kept safe. Then he always sighed and put a hand over his face and pointed at Yenifer and said "but she is a caged dog".

Yenifer had barked.

Gabriel had not been able to hold back his laughter, and after a moment neither had the General. Demetri always looked very serious, and rarely smiled, but he had patted Yenifer on her head, which was his own way of being funny, and the indignant look on little Yenny's face had been enough to make the General laugh even harder.

Demetri liked the General. When he came to visit, he would give Gabriel a copy of the Axiom to pore over to practise his reading and a red marker to point out all the mistakes ("see how they don't mention the massacre in Waverly?"), and slip Yenifer a few sweets that struck Demetri as far too bitter to truly count as candy. He would pat Demetri on the shoulder and ask him how he was doing, and sometimes when Demetri was listening in on the General's chats with Uzohola and Uzokuwa and Raphael, he would overhear the General using the sorts of phrases that Trajan always had. It was familiar. It was nice. And anyway, the General was nicer than the generals he had known in the palace, like Liara's stern, imposing father who always looked very angry and always pushed past his daughter and wife at state functions, all the better to speak directly to the king and queen.

Liara.

Demetri liked Yenifer and Gabriel just fine, but they were pale facsimiles of what Demetri had known at the palace, like when Ysabel had replaced Demetri's favourite goldfish after it had died, like they were interchangeable, like he wouldn't know the difference. Gabriel was friendly and funny, but he was not Mordred. He was not Demetri's brother. Yenifer was sharp and bold, but she was not Liara. She was not Demetri's best friend. They never would be. And he knew that they were not looking for him to be anything in particular, did not care if he took a role in their trio or didn't - Yenifer had pretended not to know what the word "friend" meant, when it was first mentioned, and Gabriel had his sisters, of whom Raphael was just one.

Demetri thought Raphael was very pretty, and that seemed to annoy Gabriel and Yenifer equally - Gabriel, because no little boy wanted his friend to think his older sister was pretty, and Yenifer, because she wanted Demetri to think she was pretty. But that was different - Yenifer was the same age as he was, and perpetually grimy, like she had just rolled in soil, her hair wild, eyes scowling, clothes torn, dead rats in her pockets. Raphael was tall and blonde and nice. She reminded Demetri a little bit of Ysabel, how she always knew what to say, and always knew when it was best to say nothing.

Demetri missed Ysabel. He missed everyone at the palace. He wanted to go home, but the General always said that it wasn't safe. He had shown Demetri a letter from the king, Demetri's father, asking for Demetri to be taken away and kept safe far away from Angeles. Demetri would have known the wax stamp of his father's ring absolutely anywhere - he had always been fascinated by Trajan's signet ring, how heavy and imposing it was, how intricate the carving on its face, and quietly delighted when his father had promised it to him. "When you become king, this ring will be yours." They had been sitting in the study, very near Demetri's bedtime, and the only light in the room had come from the fire under the mantelpiece and the lone candle that Trajan always kept lit on the windowsill as a tribute to Jael.

"Like the kingdom will be mine?"

"No. The kingdom will never be yours, Demetri. It will never belong to you. You will be the kingdom's. You will serveit, not own it."

Semantics, as far as Mordred was concerned, when Demetri had told him the next day, just adults mixing up words like they always did and being pleased with themselves at how very philosophical they were being. Liara had looked a little more thoughtful, but had conceded it meant nothing to her, not in any real meaningful sense.

Of course, Gabriel had known exactly how to explain it, prefacing his sentence, as he always did with, "well, my sister says..."

"Which sister?" Demetri and Yenifer always asked.

Sometimes Demetri thought Gabriel was just making these names up, because he would just fling one out ("oh, it was Eremiel" or "oh, it was Zadkiel" or "oh, it was Mike") and continue on, quite undeterred, each phrase pronounced with an unerring confidence: "anyway, my sister says that the monarchy is a reactionary institution that appropriates from the commons of the proletariat and that anyone who claims to lead a nation should be a servant of the worker classes."

Demetri had thought about this pronouncement for a long moment, trying to parse the long words.

"Your sister clearly has a larger vocabulary than you, Gabe," Yenifer had said, quite bluntly.

Gabriel had made a face at her, and Demetri half-thought that the two were about to fight one another, as they frequently were on the verge of doing (and Uzohola was about to place a bet on Gabriel losing badly, as he was wont to gamble liberally on the outcome of absolutely anything) but instead Raphael had called them over for their lunch and the childish insult was forgotten for the rest of the day.

Eventually the time came for them to be moved from the shipping container, and Gabriel had insisted quite forcefully that the three of them be put together, so they were: Gabriel, whose entire family had turned to rebellion, and Yenifer, who was not of the rebellion or of the Crown but something different and wilder, and Demetri, the boy king. Another of the boys, Herry, was put into their group, so there was four altogether. They mostly walked, as they had mostly walked before, when it had just been the General and Demetri walking away from the palace, away from Illéa. Sometimes they travelled by car over the border, the boys together with Raphael pretending to be their mother and the General in the car behind them with Uzohola and Yenifer.

Every so often they slept overnight at rebel camps, sometimes in sleeping bags outside underneath the stars, sometimes in bunk beds that would shudder as though in an earthquake anytime someone got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Yenifer wasn't able to sleep if any of the rebels were staying in the same room as them; she said she could feel them staring at her during the night, even when they had their eyes closed. Demetri would be half-asleep in his assigned bed and feel her climb in next to him, and say, quite stubbornly, "we're gonna Shawshank this place, Demusha, just you wait and see" and Demetri would say, "I still don't know know what that means, Yenny" and she would make an exasperated sound and make an abrupt attempt to snatch all of the blankets that usually ended in one of them falling out of the bed and Gabriel almost falling out of his, wheezing with laughter.

Yenifer was fond of making these pronouncements, but Demetri had never quite known what they meant until they were staying in a rebel encampment very close to the capital city of Paloma, so close that he could see the smoke rising from the chimneys of its houses, see the glint of its skyscrapers, almost feel the buzz of movement, of peoplewithin. They had been at the camp for six days; their guard, Uzohola, was starting to get restless and talk about moving on. The children were usually left to their own devices, and Yenifer had taken to milling about beside the chicken-wire fence that encircled the temporary settlement; they were staying in what had once been an Illéan military base, and still bore the signs of the same - the barracks were much nicer than any the boys had been given before. Demetri always thought of them like that, the boys, and counted Yenny among their number, and it was so automatic an assumption that when he woke that night and found her missing, it was an automatic realisation, utterly unquestioned. Yenifer wasn't there. Where had she gone?

She almost made him jump when she appeared at the side of his bed, looking like a wraith in the dark, her eyes little black pits. "You ready?"

"Ready?" It was Gabriel who spoke, from the bunk across the room. "What do you mean, ready?"

"Rita Hayworth, baby!" Even hissed, Yenifer's excitement was almost palpable. "Let's rock, let's roll."

Their whispering had woken Herry, who was a pale and pinched boy with almost white-blonde hair and a tendency to fret when things went wrong and when things went right. He began doing so almost immediately ("we're meant to be asleep, Uzohola will be so angry if he hears us") but Gabriel did what Gabriel did best, which was ignoring people Gabriel didn't want to deal with, and put on his shoes immediately, saying to Demetri, "do you know what she's talking about?"

He didn't.

But he followed her anyway. And Gabriel followed them, and Herry followed Gabriel, and pretty soon the boys were all shivering beside the chicken-wire iron fence that surrounded the base and noticing, for the first time, the sizable hole that Yenifer had cut into it, just large enough for her to slip through. "The main entrances are all guarded," she whispered, and demonstrated just how easily a girl as tiny as her could slip out into freedom just beyond. "But we're only about two or three miles from the city. We could run it."

"Why would we want to? We should go back." Herry again.

Yenifer laced her fingers through the wire on the fence and leaned into it, her face cracked open by a smile. "Why wouldn't we?"

Gabriel sounded like the last thing he wanted to do was agree with Herry but he nodded, quite cautiously. "It sounds dangerous."

"More dangerous than staying here? Ending up on those stretchers?" They had seen injured rebels carried into the camp earlier in the day, bleeding and groaning and crying for their mothers. Yenifer had said "why don't they put a bullet in them to quiet them?" and Gabriel had nearly fought her all over again, his eyes shining and angry at her callous pronouncement. The General had gone to be with the young men as they were operated upon, to hold their hands and tell them how important their missions had been, and the children had been, for a few long moments, quite forgotten. Demetri imagined that it was this lapse in watchfulness that had allowed Yenifer to finish her sabotage of the fence and stash the canvas bag behind that cluster of rocks, which she was pulling out now and slinging over one shoulder.

Yenifer shook her head. "I've been planning this since we arrived. It'll only take us... maybe three days."

"Three days? Three days to do what?" Herry's voice was high and strident, an underlying frisson of panic underlining every word, like he was on the verge of collapse. Demetri hadn't realised it was possiblefor him to become even paler, but he was aglow like a ghost in this moment.

Yenifer sounded like she thought this a very stupid question. "Get back to the palace, of course?"

Gabriel blanched. "The palace?"

Demetri whispered, "the palace?"

She nodded. Her dark eyes were very full of stars. "I know how much you miss them, Demetri." Yenifer's voice was whisper-soft. "Your palace. Your family. Your Liara." How could such a young girl sound so persuasive, so manipulative? What was she going to get out of helping Demetri home? Why did she want to run so badly? Had she seen some reward being offered on the cover of one of Gabriel's copies of the Axiom? Did she just want to just not be here anymore? Or could this possibly just be kindness on her part? "I'll help you get home."

"Yenny, stop it." Gabriel's voice was very low, and almost frightened. "Stop it. You know the palace isn't..."

"I don't know anything about the royal family and neither do you! All you do is repeat what your sisters say. Families belong together. People should be allowed to go home." Yenifer slipped her hand through the fence and reached for Demetri. "I promise. We'll go together."

"Yenifer, stop..."

"You can come with us, Gabe, come on. All of us." Yenifer flung a very desperate look over her shoulder, searching the darkness for anyone approaching. "You really want to spend the rest of your life in a cage? Bleeding for them? Dying for them?"

"I can't... Demetri, you shouldn't..."

Herry's voice, very strained. "I'm going to go tell Uzohola. I'm going to get the General."

"Then go and shut up!" Gabriel had clearly used up every ounce of his patience.

Yenifer said, very softly, "Demetri, don't you want to go home?"

And he took her hand.

Slipping through the fence was almost as easy as she had made it look. The air didn't taste any different on the other side, but Yenifer held his hand very tightly, and the stars were very bright over their head.

"Gabriel," Yenifer said softly. "Please -"

"Gabe," Demetri whispered. "Come on..."

Lights blazed up in the rest of the military installation, white-bright and blinding, like a supernova. Gabriel froze, his face a perfect etching of fear and uncertainty. Demetri wanted to hold his hand out to the other boy. He wanted to convince him to come back to the palace, to climb apple trees with Mordred and sneak cookies from the kitchen with Liara and while away their childhood in simple, innocent ways that didn't involve fake names and blood. He wanted the three of them to run together. To get out. To live.

But Gabriel was rooted to the ground, and Raphael was running towards them, her face etched with fear, shouting not for her young king but for her brother, Gabriel don't do it please don't go and Gabriel was frozen and there were silhouettes moving towards them, maybe seeming closer than they really were, and Yenifer was pulling Demetri by the hand and saying,we have to go we have to go now they're going to catch us if we don't go DEMETRI.

So they ran.

As you have hopefully gathered, this is set in a flashback several years before the current continuity. There won't be too many of these chapters (maybe one per ten of the main story) which will hopefully flesh out some of their background and help you in piecing together some of the mysteries that our Selected girls are grappling with in the present. Please do let me know what you thought of this chapter - if it wasn't your thing, don't worry, we will return to our Selected characters next chapter, with some girls getting their first POV sections!

Thank you!

Hope you enjoyed.

- Izar