A sequel to The Giver, takes place directly after the book ends. Jonas reaches Elsewhere, but after time he knows the only way he will be able to live with himself is if he returns... J/F
I have always adored The Giver, even long after I first read it when I was in the 6th grade. I am now a senior in high school, and plan to finish an old idea I had: A Giver sequel. I hope you enjoy it.
Luv Mah Readers,
-TraipGoddess
Title: A Desire from Beyond the Barrier
Book: The Giver
Fic By: TraipGoddess
Rating: R. Mentions of rape, sex, probably violence, maybe swearing, controversial subjects, and all around good quality wondrousness.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Giver, Jonas, Gabe, Lily, The Community, Jonas' parents, Asher, Fiona, you know, anything you recognize, but I own the town Greenside, and the idea, and some new characters, but I will claim them as they come up.
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A DESIRE FROM BEYOND THE BARRIER
(This story picks up directly when The Giver ends. Jonas is just 13 years old. Gabe is just 2.)
Chapter One
Bittersweet Victory
Jonas struggled through the intensifying wind, Gabriel like ice against his chest as he trudged though the knee high snow towards the nearest house, the light from it's windows cutting through the thick sheet of precipitation.
"Hang in there Gabe, we are almost there, almost there!" Jonas whispered urgently to the toddler's limp form, trying to convince himself as well with the seemingly assured words. His mind and heart raced, his blood surging with a second wind at the sight of civilization. But what would such a thing mean? What if they wouldn't accept him? He still had memories of segregations, of people being rejected because they were different. What if they sent him back, because he came from a Community?
He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, he was almost to the door, was Gabe breathing? He had to get there, to the warmth…
He raised his numb, thin fist to the door, and lowered it to the door three times. He heard movement from inside, and the door opened. Jonas squinted against the light that came streaming out of the doorway; he saw the figure of a tall, strongly built man who looked to be about his father's age. He was saying something, but Jonas couldn't hear his words, there was an odd buzzing in his ears. Jonas fell to his knees, the man stooped to help him, but everything went black and Jonas knew no more.
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"Jonas! Jonas!" It was Fiona. How strange. He began to search for her, he could hear distant gunshots. He knew where he was. He was in the field from the memory. The memory of war.
"Jonas! Please, help!" He could hear her voice, oddly echoing, close by; he searched the array of bodies with his eyes from where he was, on the ground, his arm bleeding freely. He saw her, next to him, where the dying soldier should have been. Fresh blood glistened on her pale gray uniform.
Jonas' eyes widened in horror, if this was like the memory, then Fiona was going to… No, he wouldn't let her. He tried to get closer to her, to help her, to give her water, to keep her alive.
"Jonas…" Fiona croaked, gasping with effort, tears welling up in her dark brown eyes. Jonas sat in shock as a tear fell down her dirty face, a face he had never seen cry, a face that had never known pain, until now. Her red hair was filthy and matted; Jonas reached up and pushed some of it out of her grimy face, which was contorted with suffering and pain. "Jonas, please…Please stop this…"
"Fiona, I'm sorry." Jonas choked, cradling her in his arms. There was nothing he could do, this was all his fault, all this suffering that his gentle friend was going through…
Fiona looked at him, her eyes begging him for help, when suddenly her body went rigid, then limp. Her head slowly dropped to the ground. Jonas recognized the blank look on her pretty face, she was dead.
Jonas awoke with a start, covered in cold sweat. He was in a dark room; he sat up, looking around wildly for Fiona, she couldn't be dead, there was just no way…
"Calm down, child. You are safe. Lay back down now, you are going to make yourself dizzy!" Said a soothing elderly voice, not unlike Larissa from the House of the Old.
He turned his head slightly to the left and saw an old woman sitting in a chair by his bed. His eyes slowly got used to the dim light from the candle on his bedside table. He gazed at the woman, she was much older then anyone he had ever seen, at least 10 years past the time of release. Was she a grandparent? She held a damp cloth in her hand, and judging by the soothing cool dampness on his forehead and neck she must have been trying to bring down his fever, which he felt raging all over his body.
"Where's Gabe?" Was all he could choke out.
"Oh, is that the baby's name? It's lovely. Is he your brother?" The old woman said kindly, trying to calm him and ease him back into the pillows.
"Please, let me see him, is he ok?" Jonas begged. He was going to add, 'Is he alive'? but his tongue wouldn't allow the words to form.
"Shhh, honey," The old woman said. "You just relax. I'll run and fetch him." With this, she left the room. Jonas' body was scorching with fever. He glanced around the room; he seemed to be in a small child's room judging by the collection of comfort objects. The walls were painted a light pink, and on the bed he was sprawled out upon there was what he knew from his Receiver consciousness to be a quilt, many, many little squares of brightly colored fabrics all sewn together seemingly by hand. Jonas marveled at why someone would spend so much time on an item of such simple usage. He also noticed square mountings on the walls, which seemed to hold papers with images on them. The images were astonishingly crisp, not at all like the diagrams that Jonas had seen in his workbooks at school. These images were of people and creatures that Jonas realized must have been kept by the people. 'Pets,' he remembered.
"I see you are admiring my quilt, my grandmother made it for me when I was small." Said a young, yet mature feminine voice from the doorway. Jonas jumped in surprise. The young woman seemed to be about 5 years older then him. Her shiny blonde hair hung nearly to her waist, something Jonas had never seen before. All hair in The Community was cut short because it required too much unnecessary maintenance when let to grow. Jonas thought briefly how beautiful Fiona's red hair would look long and tousled about her shoulders, but his thought was cut short when he noticed that the young woman was holding a bundle that had begun to stir.
Jonas tried to ask for Gabriel, but his words got caught in his throat as his eyes brimmed with tears, so he simply reached out his arms. The young woman smiled and walked over to Jonas, lowering the bundle of blankets slowly into his waiting arms.
"We were very frightened for that little guy. The pair of you were nearly frozen to death." The young woman said. "My name is Kailee, you just met my grandmother, Eulanda. I don't know if you remember my father, he was the one who met you at the door, his name is Horton."
Jonas was listening to Kailee, but he couldn't take his eyes of the small, warm, clean, well-fed sleeping form in his arms. A glowing sense of pride filled his being, he had saved him. He had saved Gabe from death, and worse. He had saved him from a life without warmth or love or feeling.
"Where are we?" Jonas asked, tearing his eyes away from the content little face so like his own.
"You are in the border village of Greenside. You are from a Community, aren't you?" She asked. Jonas nodded. "I've never met someone from a Community before." She added in an awed, curious voice.
"They aren't at all like me. Do you know much about Community life?" He asked her; he was hoping to get some answers, to find out what was going on back there.
"No, I don't personally, but my father says that when you are better and rested up that you are to stay with the Professor. He is an old man that lives just over the hill. When we went to him for advice when you came, he knew right away that you must be from a Community. We are the last of our kind of village before the Community property begins. He knows much more about the things you probably want to ask." She said.
Jonas had never encountered someone who talked so much, and so much on the uncomfortable subject of differences. Jonas almost laughed out loud at what his instructors would think of her, but that started a gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach, wondering what was happening, if the Giver was helping…
"When can I see him?" Jonas asked. He should feel better in the morning, and if he didn't, he would fake it. He wanted answers, wanted to know what was happening, where he was, what this Greenside place was all about.
"When you are rested." The girl said with a smile, unabashedly showing two rows of rather crooked teeth. Jonas glanced away quickly, but inside he marveled at the imperfections that seemed to be embraced here as symbols of individuality.
"I am rested." Jonas lied, trying to bring himself up in the bed, to make him seem taller and more powerful. The girl noticed and laughed rather loudly. Jonas shifted uneasily; no one was ever to laugh at another's expense in the Community… 'But I'm not in the Community now, am I?' He wasn't sure whether his mind registered the knowledge as a good or a bad thing.
The bundle in his arms started to stir, and just as Jonas looked down Gabriel's blue eyes that mirrored his own fluttered open.
"Yonas!" Gabriel murmured in delight. His tiny face, now clean, breaking into the first true smile Jonas had seen from him in a long time, his golden curls surrounding his face, so alive with energy.
"He has been saying that all week!" The girl said with a laugh, tossing her head and causing her sheet of blond hair to glide away from her face. "Is that your name? Yonas?"
Jonas laughed out loud. "No, no. My name is Jonas, he can't pronounce the 'J'." Jonas explained, and Kailee laughed as well, very noisily and punctuated by several loud snorts.
"Well Jonas, you have spirit, if nothing else. If you really did walk from the nearest Community, there must be more to you than meets the eye. I think you can probably go and see the Professor tomorrow, you seem healthy enough."
'Good, she bought it!' Jonas thought.
"You get some sleep now, and then after breakfast you can go see him."
Kailee reached out her arms to take back Gabriel. The toddler whimpered slightly and clutched to Jonas' chest.
"He doesn't seem to want to leave, does he?" Kailee chuckled "We should really wait until your fever goes down a bit, we don't want the baby to fall ill."
Jonas said nothing, only gazed back down at Gabe, who had folds of Jonas' shirt clamped tightly in his pudgy fists. He had hoped that they wouldn't take Gabe away from him again… He felt Kailee's eyes on him, and he looked up at her pleadingly. Her kind face smoothed from a worried glance to a soft smile.
"Just call if you need anything." Kailee whispered as she rose from the chair beside the bed, crossed over to the doorway, and left. Jonas sighed with relief and happiness.
Jonas sat up late into the night gazing at the dozing face of the glowing toddler in his arms. Jonas realized with a jolt that Gabe wasn't a newchild anymore; he would have become a two at the last Ceremony. And that would make him, Jonas, thirteen years old.
'I don't feel thirteen; I feel a thousand years old.' Jonas reflected bitterly. Thoughts of what must be happening back at the Community raced through his mind as well, all those memories, floating around, where anyone could have access to them… He shuttered to think what the fun-loving Asher would think of starvation and discrimination, and he couldn't even imagine what gentle, kind Fiona would think of terrible things like murder and rage.
"Fiona," He whispered into the darkness. Gabe stirred slightly against his chest. He wondered if she ever thought about him. He wondered if she took the pill yet, if she had yet experienced the Stirrings, and if they had been about him…
Jonas embraced Gabe lightly so that he wouldn't awaken, and he fell into a deep sleep, dreaming of laughing with Asher and Fiona, talking with the Giver, and imagining the answers this professor would give him to his thousands of questions.
I know that this has been posted before, but I'd like reviews before I post the next chapter. All I ask is that if you hate it, tell me why. Let me know anything you noticed as being wrong or against the book, and I will see if I should change it. I want to be as true to the author and book as possible. Many reviews (good or bad) More chapters, sooner!
-Traip Goddess