CHAPTER 3-1
Heinrich
Heinrich arose with the sun and before everyone else, as he had the previous morning, and quietly shuffled down to the beach to sit by the tideline again.
A stiff westerly wind ruffled the waves as the sunrise bled gold across the surface of the water far to his right. As so often happened when surrounded by the beauty of nature, Heinrich felt himself relaxing, as the anxieties that accompanied him everywhere he went receded for a little while. The rhythm of the ocean's breath, inhaling and reaching out towards him, exhaling and pulling away, helped to soothe the fears that had followed him into wakefulness.
Because last night, the nightmare had come again.
He'd had the same one countless times in the years since the cataclysm, and always awoke from it suffocated by a crushing sense of foreboding. The nightmare, in fact, was usually more of a memory than some crazed confection of his traumatized mind; perhaps some of the peripheral details were occasionally inaccurate, but the events of the dream, its "plot," as it were, were all real. And because the events were real, the dream served as a reminder, each and every time it came, that the events of that terrible day could all happen again.
The cruel soldiers of the Empire could come and take Phoenix away from him.
Again.
It always started on a bright, clear day in the wheatfields. He and Phoenix had been pulling invasive weeds all morning and were heading back to the house for a break to cool off and have some water. But they never even got that far, because the trucks and the Rev Raptor had arrived and were waiting for them. Tall people, so much taller than little Heinrich, sometimes so big they were taller even than the Rev Raptor, spoke words that he didn't understand. Phoenix grew agitated, then angry. Someone handcuffed Phoenix and pulled him away, and Heinrich cried. Someone hit Phoenix in the head with the butt of their pistol, drawing blood, and Heinrich screamed. And then the Rev Raptor shot Heinrich with some kind of special weapon that glued his feet to the ground. Phoenix was yelling and struggling and trying to come back, but they pulled him away, pulled him away, pulled him away, pushed him into the back of one of the trucks, and slammed the doors shut. And little Heinrich stood there, in the middle of the road, his feet cemented down, as the trucks and the Rev Raptor left. He waited, as the horrid ringing silence left in the wake of their departure was filled once more with birdsong. He waited, as the sun went down. He waited, days, nights, weeks, in the middle of that road, feet immobilized, but the trucks and the Rev Raptor never came back.
And when little Heinrich realized this, realized that they would never return, he took in a great, deep breath, and, with everything his small body had, screamed "PHOENIIIIIIIX!" into the sky, into the stars, and that was when he always woke up.
Early this morning, when the terrible dream had released him from its clutches for the time being, he had awoken with a start, as he always did, and then immediately looked to his right for Phoenix in his bed across the room, as he always did, to confirm that his brother was still there. But this morning, Phoenix hadn't been to his right, where he always was, and Heinrich didn't recognize his surroundings for a few moments. When it all came back to him - the vacation, the island, and that Phoenix was on his left instead of his right, still deeply asleep - Heinrich just sat there in that confused aftermath, panting hard, sweating, and had to wait several minutes for the adrenaline surge to dissipate.
Phoenix already was and always would be a deserter in the eyes of the Imperial Army, and deserters were put to death as a warning to others. Someday, the Army could come back. Someday, Heinrich might wake up and Phoenix wouldn't be there anymore. No warning, nothing he could do about it: Phoenix would be gone, this time forever.
A more ambitious wave than the others shocked Heinrich back into the present when it reached past the tideline to douse his feet. A startled cry escaped him, and just like that, he was panting again, the deep terror circling him like a predator closing in on its prey. He took a few steadying breaths, timing his inhales and exhales to the ocean's until the fears temporarily receded again.
The most awful part of feeling so afraid all the time was that none of his apprehensions were irrational or impossible. He couldn't simply self-soothe by reminding himself that it was only a bad dream. No, the Army could track Phoenix down, could come for him and for Fuzzy, who was technically still their property. There were no comforts to be had to banish these fears. And Heinrich now realized for the first time, at just that moment, that unless Phoenix were to predecease him, these fears would be with him for the rest of his life.
The sound of rustling sand reached his ears just then, and he turned to see not just Olwen, but all three of the triplets shyly approaching. Olwen already had her jacket on, he noticed, and was puffing up her chest proudly, showing off her winner's pin as much as she could manage. "It looks good on you," Heinrich said by way of greeting, nodding to it.
Olwen's tan face lit up with her grin.
"It should've been me," one of her brothers - Heinrich wasn't sure which - groused as they settled down in a row beside him.
"Why?" asked the other. "You didn't do anything special."
"Neither did you!" retorted the first. "And neither did she!" He pointed at Olwen.
"I did too!" Olwen protested. "You heard Áthas!"
"Yeah, well, why'd you have to assign me as helper?" the first brother complained. Ah, so this was Osian. "You should've picked him."
"Why?" demanded Owain. "You're way more deserving of punishment than I am."
"No, I'm not!"
"Yes, you -"
"Hang on a second, everyone!" Heinrich finally cut in before the bickering could escalate any further. The triplets silenced immediately. "Just hang on a second. Wow. I don't know where you three get the energy this early in the morning, but I can scarcely hear myself think."
"It's all Olwen's fault," whined Osian.
"Shush!" she scolded him.
"Alright. I need to know," Heinrich said gravely, "how to tell you two apart." He pointed to the two brothers. "Because I can't take this anymore. It's way too confusing."
To his surprise, the triplets suddenly were giggling to themselves. "We get asked this a lot," Owain informed him. "You really can't see it?"
Heinrich looked very, very carefully at both boys, his gaze flitting back and forth, back and forth between them, trying to find a difference, any difference whatsoever, but the brothers seemed to be completely identical.
"Want a hint?" Olwen offered. "Look closer at their eyes."
"Here, look when we're facing the light," Osian said, and both he and Owain obligingly turned to face east into the sunrise.
"Oh," Heinrich breathed. Finally. There were unmistakable flecks of gold in Osian's brown irises, whereas Owain's were a rich but uniform brown like Olwen's.
"You see it?" she asked, giddy.
"Yeah! I do!"
"Now you know our secret," Owain said with a grin. "You can't tell anyone, okay?"
"Then how did..." Heinrich trailed off as he recalled their first day on the island. Áthas had been able to tell the boys apart right away, hadn't she?
"Áthas?" Osian asked with a furrowed brow. "We're not really sure. We've never had anyone peg us that fast before." His siblings solemnly shook their heads.
"Good morning," a new voice said. Everyone looked up to see Fynn standing there, grinning almost as shyly as the triplets had when they'd first approached Heinrich. "Mind if I join you?" Heinrich's heart was suddenly pounding as Fynn settled into the sand beside him. Why? "Sure is nice here."
"Sure is," Owain agreed.
"Anyone know what we're going to be doing today?" Fynn asked.
"Oh! I know!" Osian exclaimed.
"What? How do you know?" Olwen challenged, giving him a shove. "You don't know anything!"
"Maybe so, but I definitely know this," Osian replied with a mysterious - and smug - smile. "Áthas told me last night while I was helping her with the dishes."
"So, what is it, then?" Owain demanded.
"Not telling."
"That's because you don't know," Olwen said with an eye roll.
"Will you tell me, at least?" Fynn asked him.
"Okay." Osian crawled over to the older boy and whispered something in his ear.
Fynn's eyes grew big, and he cast a sly glance Heinrich's way, setting Heinrich's pulse racing again. Why was he always like this? "Oooohh. Now that is going to be a lot of fun." Heinrich was about to ask if Osian would tell him, too, when another new voice came from behind them.
"Good morning! What're you kids up to over here?" It was Acair addressing them, with a smiling Siân beside him.
"This is our kids-only sunrise watch party," Olwen informed him seriously, without missing a beat.
"Is that right?"
All eyes turned, inexplicably, to Heinrich. He swallowed, his mouth painfully dry all of a sudden. "I mean, yeah," he finally choked out. "That's what it is. Our sunrise watch party." He could feel the glow of Olwen's adoring smile without even turning to see her face.
"Breakfast time, everybody!" the assembled group heard Áthas call from further up the beach. Heinrich got up, dusting sand off of himself, and saw that Klara, Emyr, and Phoenix were over by the bonfire with Áthas. Phoenix seemed to be laughing at something Áthas had just said; he was so focused on her, in fact, that there may as well not have even been anyone else nearby.
Hmm.
"I'm glad to see you kids spending some time together," Áthas said, nodding to Heinrich, Fynn, and the triplets as they wandered over, Acair and Siân in tow. "That will be coming in handy very shortly."
"It will?" Osian asked, eyes wide. "Wait, do you mean -"
Áthas nodded again, and Osian now looked as though he might absolutely burst from the rapturous, self-satisfied delight of knowing something his siblings did not.
"Mean what?" Olwen demanded, her stormy gaze darting back and forth between Áthas and Osian. "What?"
"Kids versus adults. You're all going to be on the same team for our activity today," Áthas said simply, as if she were commenting on nothing more uninteresting and self-evident than the warm weather this morning.
"You mean we get to be on a team with Heinrich and Fynn?!" Olwen screamed. Heinrich scarcely had time to steady his feet before she and Owain, both gleefully shrieking, had leapt onto him, swinging from his shoulders as if he were a piece of playground equipment. Just before he was about to buckle from their sudden extra weight, they mercifully let go and nearly tackled poor Fynn into the sand. But Fynn laughed heartily, turning the tables on his two attackers, and wrestled them both down before Osian, apparently needing to be included as well, joined the fray.
Heinrich just stood there a couple of feet away, blinking, unsure what was happening and what to do, before Owain bellowed "Three against two!" with surprising volume, and Heinrich felt someone yank his ankles out from under him.
"Help me, Heinrich!" Fynn gasped between peals of laughter that sounded as though they might consume him entirely. "They'll never respect our advanced ages and let us be in charge of the group if we don't beat them!"
Heinrich found himself laughing too, regardless of his enduring confusion and all the sand now in his mouth, and through all the frenzied thrashing, he managed to grab onto the nearest limb of child-sized circumference.