riven by maggie morris (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📖

Bryce. And Claire. My foster parents. Ben, even. Adam, Grandpa, and my biological parents. Everyone was there.

But at the same time, they weren’t. Because they were dead. Somehow, though they were there for me to see, and though they looked alive, I knew they were dead.

And when the vultures came, it was set in stone. The vultures flew in circles around me. There were hundreds. Thousands, even. When they swooped towards me, I screamed again.

One spoke. “Alicia Grace Forgie-Hillman. You have done this. You have brought death upon those you love. We bow down to you. As birds of death, you are our queen.” Shrieks of triumph filled the air. I shook my head, unable to believe it.

They flew closer and clutched me in their talons. The vultures flew me towards my friends and family. My dead friends and family.

Bryce floated forward, so close I could’ve kicked him.

And then, the vultures split. Half stayed to hold me above the waves, and the other half flew at Bryce, pecking his head with their hands. At first I screamed in protest, but then a wave of terror washed over me once, and just like that, my fears were gone.

In the place of my fear stood anger. Anger at everyone who had ever left me on my own. This time, as the vultures pecked at Bryce, I laughed maniacally.

Until the vultures finished him. Then they turned towards me. And the terror was back.

 

* * * * *

 

“Alice! Alice, wake up!” Somebody was shaking me.

“Bryce?” I asked groggily.

The shaking stopped. “What? No! It’s me, Liam! The Sanctuary is under attack!” That got me up.

Liam quickly explained that a gracher had gotten past the defenses and resisted the scent of the shoe polish.

“Now it’s trying-and currently failing-to jump the walls of the Sanctuary. We would kill it, but we can’t get a clear shot. Do you think you could try to tame it like you did Bramble?”

“I’m on it.” I grabbed a ponytail holder from the floor-somehow I had ended up in a bedroom-and quickly braided my medium-length hair. I tied it with the rubber band and looked up to see Liam staring at me. “What?”

He blushed and looked away. “Nothing.” We sat awkwardly until I was distracted by how his red plaid shirt both fit his chest very nicely and brought color to the grey environment. He looked back at me and we looked into eachother’s eyes.

Suddenly, I was leaning forward. My lips parted. Liam came closer. His hand reached up to brush a stray strand of hair out of my face. Then Liam closed the gap between. He lips touched mine for less than a second. He gave me a half-smile and walked out the door.

I wanted more. My first kiss with Bryce-I winced-was longer, but my first kiss with Liam was better. But he left me hanging.

Feeling angry, I pulled the covers off of my legs and stormed after him. However, when I reached the hall, Bryce was nowhere to be seen. Sighing, I weaved my way to the exit of the building.

I had forgotten all about the gracher until I walked outside. People were rushing around frantically, and gunshots were going off. I could tell by the frequency of the bangs that none of the shots were hitting their mark. Quickly, I ran towards the spot where the noise was coming from.

It wasn’t that hard to find, being that the Sanctuary was small. A group of men and women with crossbows and shotguns were crowded next to a spot on the wall. I could hear claws scratching against the bricks and knew that the gracher would be inside the Sanctuary soon.

Acting fast, I found some rope inside a storage shed. I picked a rock-grey, of course-off the ground and fastened the rope to it. Finally, I tossed the end with the rock over the wall, hanging on to the empty end.

The crew with the weapons looked at me strangely. I just winked and turned my attention toward the rope. The scrabbling on the other side of the wall stopped abruptly, and I felt a tug on my rope. I knew the rope wouldn’t hold the gracher’s attention for long, to I planted my feet against the wall and began to climb.

My weight pulled the rope down slightly, but the gracher tugged back on the other side. The jolt made me lose my firm plant on the wall. Suddenly, I was dangling ten feet off the ground by my arms.

My breath shortened, and gripped the rope tighter. I took a deep breath, replanted my feet, and started climbing again. With only three feet left, I easily was able to pull myself on top of the wall.

I took a second to steady myself, then looked out. Instead of dealing with the gracher, I became hypnotized by the view. It was nothing, but still something. It was dark, like always, now that the sun was gone, but I could see the forest of grey trees that we had come from. Grey dirt stretched in all the other directions as far as the eye could see. But what struck me most was a tiny speck of light in the sky.

It was a sun. I remembered it from my time in Inaceia before I left to go to Sortryn. This was the reason that we were still alive. The heat from this distant sun was three million times that of our old sun.

We had studied it profusely for over three years before I went to Sortryn. Though the sun had extreme heat radiation, it was at its farthest point, out by Uranus, and we were currently experiencing ‘winter’, where the highs were only about fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

A squeal beneath me caused me to look away. It was the gracher. I held my rope in my hand and prepared to jump onto the gracher’s back. Suddenly, I saw something hanging out of it’s mouth. As I looked closer, I realized that it was my ribbon, with the rope dangling next to it.

“Bramble?” I whispered. His ears perked up and he started running around in circles. “Hang on buddy. We’ll get you away from that shoe polish.” I calculated the speed at which I would fall, and how much pressure would be on Bramble’s back when I landed.

Once I knew I wouldn’t break his back, I scrambled to a good angle, inhaled quickly, and jumped.

I landed in the perfect center of his back. I slid the rope into place.

“Thanks for coming to me, Bramble.” He pawed at his nose. “Oh, yeah, sorry. Forgot about the polish.” I snapped the reins and guided Bramble to the glass entryway.

Like usual, Lol was there. His eyes widened.

“Is that...the gracher?” He pointed at Bramble through the glass.

I nodded. “He’s tame.”

“I’m trusting you on this, Alice,” Lol frowned as he pushed the button. I waited until the gate was fully raised before guiding Bramble inside. Murmurs rose I rode into the Sanctuary.

“Alice, I mean no offense, but what are you doing?” Dad asked me, walking up with Mom at his side.

I cleared my throat. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Bramble. Yes, he is a gracher, but I tamed him. As I told you in my story last night grachers are very easy to domesticate. We don’t need to fear them anymore. And fact, I suggest that the constructors build stables for grachers. We won’t have to worry about transportation anymore!”

People stared at me blankly. Dad stepped forward.

“I agree entirely with my daughter. Chris, Jeff, Kiana, I would like one stall built in the stable by tomorrow. Bramble can sleep on the ground for tonight. Thank you, Alice, for solving yet another one of our problems.”

Then, just to me, Dad whispered, “They’ll warm up to the idea.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” I stood on my tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “I love you.”

 

* * * * *

 

“You’ve arrived just in time for our Collection day. It happens only once a month, and is when everyone except the guards leave the Sanctuary to collect what natural resources we can find,” a woman named Gina explained. “We’ll split up into groups of five and take different regions of our territory. Jason, care to divvy the groups?”

“Sure, G. Okay, let’s see…Sam, Liliana, and Kansas, with me. Yetta, Jynnifer, and Carly, with Gina.”

He rattled off about thirty more names, then sat down. I gaped at him.

“But you didn’t call any of our names!” I protested, motioning to my group.

“Of course not! Newcomers don’t get to come!” Jason scoffed. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this guy.

“That’s not fair! I’m way smarter than you could ever be, you, you-”

“Alice, calm down.” Liam’s soothing voice stopped my tirade. “Let him get a word in.”

Jason sniffed. “I was going to say, if newcomers must go, then I’ll take everyone with me, including Shadow. Except for you. Obviously, a little girl such as yourself can not handle herself in a ‘situation’.”

I nearly screamed right there. But instead, I kept my cool, and calmly-well, angrily-stormed off to my room.

I wasn’t going to give up that easily. As soon as all of the talking faded away, I peeked out into the middle of the Sanctuary. Nobody was there, though the guards were circling the bottom of the wall.

I quickly slipped around a building, and without being seen, came to the place where Bramble was being kept. His tail wagged when he saw me, and I rubbed his ears as I untied the rope around his neck. I climbed onto his back and flipped the reins.

Bramble weaved in and out of the buildings and came to a stop in front of the glass gate. Lol was nowhere to be seen, so I hopped off of my gracher and pressed the button.

The gate lifted. I was grateful that our cutting-edge technology had supplied the wall with a silent elevator system. None of the guards noticed as I left the Sanctuary.

The outside was just as barren and lacking wildlife as I remembered. However, Bramble seemed perfectly at home. Without any notice, he suddenly let loose a howl. Now, I’m no animal expert, but if I were to guess, I would say that he sounded lonely.

“What’s wrong, boy?” I stopped him and patted him on the back. He whined and tugged his head to the right. “You want me to go right?” I swear, he dipped his head in a nod.

Sighing, I pulled the reins. Bramble ran faster than ever, his feet pounding against the ground at an unbelievable speed. I smiled as the wind whipped through my hair, caressing my skin and cooling me down.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat, escaping before I could stop myself. I hadn’t had this much fun since...well, since before I moved to Missouri. The last time I had had fun was when me and my closest friend, Abigail, went to Colorado and went skiing down Lynx Mountain. It was so cold that I had to wear three pairs of socks, but we still had lots of fun.

I shook my head snapping out of the memory. A few minutes had passed and in the distance I could see a hole in the ground. Within seconds we were upon it. Bramble skidded to a stop.

I climbed off his back and peered into the hole. It was about the width of him, maybe a bit wider. It was a tunnel that led underground.

“There’s no way I’m going in there! I’m claustrophobic!” Bramble whined and looked down at me with pleading eyes. “Oh, fine, but just know that I will never do this again!” Even though I had crawled through a vent, I still hated enclosed spaces. “You first.”

Bramble excitedly walked into the tunnel. I followed behind him. The tunnel wasn’t was about twenty feet in length, but I couldn’t see what was at the end because Bramble was blocking my view. He walked quicker, making me have to run to keep up with him.

He stopped, and I figured we had