Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A Time of Division

`Hello father,´ I said.

They all jerked around to look at me.

Malfoy smirked slightly, and folded his arms as though to say `told you so´. My father gaped for a while before turning his head right away and saying, in a voice filled with malice and bitterness, `You´re not my daughter.´

`Why not?´ I said, straining not to cry. This was a special moment for me. In fictitious tales he would say `Meggy? My little Meggy?´ and run down to give me a huge hug...

But this was life and not some game. He didn´t believe me, and it wasn´t fair. I tried so hard not to wail with sadness, but my eyes were brimming, and my voice cracked.

`Why not, father?´ I pleaded.

`I´m not your father. My daughter is dead,´ he said, and I could almost see him drawing himself into his shell to nurse his sorrow.

`What happened?´ I said, trying to bring him to a point where I could say `that was me´ without any excess speaking. My throat was so tight I couldn´t speak without wobbling.

`She was taken by the Death Eaters,´ he said shortly.

`I was taken. They put a spell on me and let me go. Then they used me to spy,´ I said, choking on a large sob that broke free. I blushed.

`My daughter had brown hair,´ he sniffed, not looking at me. He was plainly still trying to deny it.

`I do, it´s dyed this colour.´

`My daughter looked like me,´ he said quickly.

`She does, sir,´ Malfoy said earnestly.

`What was her name, then?´ he said hotly, standing. `Do you know her name, girl? My daughter is dead, and nothing you say will change that!´

`I was Megara Kelwaedd, and you are my father.´

`How do you know that name?´ he demanded.

`It´s my name!´ I shouted, angry.

`You said you were Rae!´ he pointed out.

`We changed her name, you stubborn old git!´ Malfoy said, coming to my side and embracing me, looking over my head to talk to Rhodry. I cried into his muddy coat, hating myself for changing. Hating myself for finding this memory. Why did I have to know this?

`Leave here now, Death Eater,´ Rhodry snapped. `Get away from the Dragon-Child.´

`If you trust the Dragon-Child, wouldn´t you be proud if she was your daughter?´ Malfoy demanded.

`I would, but she isn´t.´

`I´m tiring of this,´ Malfoy said coldly. He drew himself up, one arm still around my shoulder. `Come here.´ There was an odd buzzing with the words, and Rhodry was lifted into the air. He drifted down to us, then Malfoy dropped him on the floor.

`Look into her eyes,´ he commanded. Rhodry jerked to his feet, and looked at me. He held out a hand, and traced it along my jaw line.

`She isn´t mine,´ he breathed.

`No, she´s mine, but you´re still her father,´ Malfoy hissed.

Rhodry seemed to do a double take, and I felt an odd fuzzy tingle along my scalp. My hair was glinting, and flowing with that ginger-brown colour again. My eyes flicked out of focus briefly, and I knew they were green again.

`Meggy?´ he breathed.

`Father,´ I said.

Draco released the spell, and the colour he had restored drained back out again, except for my hair. When he let that go, it lightened, not darkened. It went up to a sort of treacle colour. He lifted a handful of it, and said `Karma. Didn´t show before, I guess.´ I looked at my new colour.

`You drained my dye,´ I accused softly.

Rhodry was still staring at me in disbelief.

`You look nicer that way, anyhow,´ Draco smiled, kissing my forehead.

`Daughter?´ Rhodry frowned.

`Father,´ I said, turning back to him.

Now, as you can imagine, it got all sentimental after that, and we exchanged life-stories, blah blah blah. It´s very dull, so I´ll cut that out. We settled into the life of El Karem, the Waste City, very quickly. It was all training for the war, and more people came in every day. It was my home so suddenly, but it all made sense. I spoke to my father a lot, but like I said, you´ve heard everything I said to him already. I´ll take this convenient time to tell you what was going on outside of Rae-Land.

The Death Eaters had swept through Africa during the winter, and now held the entire planet apart from, let´s see, some really high parts of the Himalayan Mountains, the outlying islands around Australia, Taiwan and Madagascar. You can see that we had very little to work with, and much to work against. It was too much to contemplate for now. The trouble was that all the Muggle defences were fine, but the wizards loyal to Voldemort ate them away at from the inside. All the rebels had to flee to the islands, mountains or Taiwan and Madagascar. We were losing a war that we weren´t yet fighting.

I think it was around my eighteenth birthday, in April, that Osme Salime came to power in London. He was a cold-hearted man, and it was the third day he was in power that he cancelled all the names in London. A twenty-foot high wall was erected magically around the city, cutting off the Wasteland and El Karem. It was guarded day and night by a huge army of wizards. That ticked us off, I can tell you. We had to think of ways around that, but that wasn´t important. What was important were the `sectors´. London was separated into seven sections in as many days. Huge walls with guarded gates divided the city, and every citizen was numbered. Not only was this disgusting, too fast and unfair, it meant that we would have even more trouble travelling in the city. We had to get through numerous gates and scanners. It was foolproof, but we weren´t fools.

A team was established the moment it happened, and we set to work on it immediately. Needless to say, Draco and I were a part of this. Both of us had extensive insider knowledge of the Death Eater security, and that would be very useful. We knew, for instance, that the Death Eaters would avoid Muggle technology with their lives. All this was magical, and every spell can be reversed, in theory.

Hang on, I´m getting ahead of myself a little. If you aren´t familiar with London then I should tell you more. The city was big, but all contained closely in a ring, now walled. The Ministry was right in the middle, and that had its own perimeter wall now. We found all this out by flying over, I should add. It was even more guarded than the main wall, but we expected that. Salime was a nervous man. Political tyrants often are. He hid himself as best he could. Then the circle remaining was split into seven by those high walls going out from the Ministry Wall like a sliced pie. A train ran all the way around the inside of the London Wall, as it was called, and that avoided guards, but passed through regular scanners. Laser scans ran over the city between the walls, so we could hardly get down into the city.

But, as I began before I interrupted myself, they were magic scans and lasers, and we could use all sorts of technology. There would, we decided, be a control room somewhere for all the spell sustenance systems. If we could get someone in there then we could shut it all down and storm the city. That was what about five of us focused on. It fell to Draco and I to work out what we had to do, and do it, and others to work out how. The other three were nerds, and they couldn´t have run fast enough to do what we needed, so we left the research to them. Draco´s intelligence was making us, both hereditary fighters, smart enough to work it out. Malfoy and I developed a link so strong that we could know things simultaneously. That would, we felt, be very useful in the end. The spell had burnt a hole right through me and slotted Malfoy in. It was okay, I suppose.

The lasers worked on a pattern. We observed this, and I sent the thought down to Draco in El Karem. They would spin, fold, spiral and flick across alternately. We could, hopefully, fly through that, but we needed fake IDs to trick the scans once we got in. The walls weren´t magical, but they had been put up by magic. Once we evaded the lasers and scans and floodlights and searchlights all we had to do was kill the guards and, in theory, we´d be at the gates. We didn´t know how the gates were guarded. That was what we had to deal with, but if we went in and killed the guards and blazed a lovely trail, they would work it out, and change things. One way or another, we had to know exactly what we were looking for before we went in.

We agonised for ages. No one could go in, and no one could leave. They knew the war was coming, even though I don´t think they knew that five million skilled fighters lived underground right outside.

I think that was what made us think of it. Osme, for all his blustering and destruction, was a stupid man. He wouldn´t think, we hoped, of underground. Either way, we could only risk putting two or three inside the Ministry Wall, the rest would have to be let in. We still had to test all that, and there were over a million rebels living in the city who could help us. We needed to bust them out. It was simple reconnaissance first of all. I can´t remember when Malfoy told me what he was planning. I just suddenly knew.

`Draco?´ I frowned. I hadn´t started that thought.

`Yes dear?´ he said absently.

`You aren´t going to do that, are you?´

`I might have to,´ he said, not taking his eyes off the circuit board he was wiring. It was after dark, and he bent over it with his electric lamp flickering and attracting flies.

`You´ll die,´ I warned him.

`You´ll die too,´ he replied, picking off a screw.

`I know,´ I said.

`I won´t endanger you unless there´s no other way,´ he told me, biting a wire to bend it.

`I know you won´t. What would you do it for, though?´ I asked. `You don´t need to do it, no one expects you to.´

`I know that,´ he said quietly. `It would help, though. I could cut off power to the entire city if I could reach the magic generator.´ His eyes filled with that fire of enthusiasm. He was really into this idea. `I could let you all in, and then there would be no defence! If I cut the power to the Ministry system then we don´t need the rest of the city. We could storm the Ministry and kill Salime and all of them, then I could regain control and pretend that I´m one of them, but all the rebels could know the truth. I could order the armies to stop, and it would be a stalemate. Then I could reinstate it all and there would be no war!´

It was sound. There was almost no way that it wouldn´t work, but it would be hard.

`That´ll be difficult,´ I said.

`But it would make it all better,´ he insisted. `The rebels could pretend conversion, and I could accept them. We could all be happy!´

`What about Voldemort?´ I said.

`He would have to be got rid of,´ Contar said firmly.

`I thought he was immortal,´ I frowned. Don´t get me wrong, I really wanted this to work, but we had to iron out the creases. All of them. This was mine and Malfoy´s lives at stake, on top of all the others. Nothing could be allowed to go wrong.

`We´ll find a way around it,´ he shrugged. `I´ll be all night with this, so sleep tight, and I´ll see you tomorrow.´

I wasn´t sure, but what could I say. It would avert war so we could only win. The only thing that worried me was that both Draco and I would die if one of us were injured. I wasn´t worried about Draco letting me die, but I was unsure about myself. I only had some of his talent and the hereditary instinct from my parents. I had to train hard to get into this. On no orders would I stay home while they played Cowboys and Indians in the city. They couldn´t keep me back.

When Malfoy told father what he intended, father was very enthusiastic. We all were, I guess. He said that we´d need about two hundred of the best to come. The generals of the different companies had to submit a hundred from each division. I think that gave them five hundred to go through. I was shocked that I was among the hundred of EKD3. We had EKD1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, standing for El Karem Division, then the number. EKDs were groups of a million, and I stood a one in a ten thousand chance of being picked. It was insane. I knew Malfoy would be chosen, as it was his idea, and we were almost inseparable. If they had both of us, then information could be passed from area to area before it had even happened. I think he put in a good word for me, but I would need to pass the trials.

There were four trials, eliminating a hundred each time. I spent all my time before it training up with Draco. He knew he would get in, simply because he was the best, not just who he was. I suppose I should feel awed to have fallen in with such amazing people, but I didn´t want to. The horrible thought that all of this was my fault was snapping at my heels. If I had never gone with Harry then I wouldn´t have met Draco, and he wouldn´t have had to tell me, and I wouldn´t have killed him, and everything would go on as it always had. But life´s not like that, is it?

The first was a simple race. We had to run a course set across the waste. It involved a lot of climbing and jumping. I had done that all my life, so I came in as one of the first hundred over the line. I can´t remember much of it; I was too busy concentrating. Many were down because they slipped and broke their legs. I was okay with that, but there was a lot I couldn´t have done without Malfoy being in my head. Not to boast, but I think my bog-trotting influence helped him out a little, too.

The second task was to shoot a hell of a lot of targets. I think that was when I met Cloud again. Remember him? We were next to each other in the queue.

`Rae?´ he said incredulously.

`Cloud!´ I squealed, hugging him.

`We thought you were dead! Where did you go?´

`I was spying in the Ministry, then I killed Malfoy, but I brought him back to life. Now he´s one of us.´ I was totally overjoyed.

`Good thing too,´ Cloud said, nodding at Malfoy being amazing and god-like on the firing range.

`Is Rhea okay?´ I asked, a twinge of guilt pinging my stomach.

`I think so, she´s here,´ he said. `We´re together now.´ He looked very proud.

`Where is she?´ I said, looking around.

`She´ll be somewhere further back. She´s in EKD4. I should tell you, Tyger´s here too.´

`How is she?´ I asked nervously.

`She´s dying, Rae,´ he said quietly.

I closed my eyes, fending off the grief silently.

`What´s wrong?´ I asked quietly, opening my eyes and wiping the resulting tears off my face.

`She´s just not working,´ he said. `None of her has ever functioned as it should since... well, you know.´ He shrugged. `They´re trying to save her, but we don´t know. She´d like to see you.´

`When is she going to...?´ I trailed off, closing my eyes again.

`They say she has a day or two.´

`Can I go now and do this later?´ He shook his head. `I´m going after this,´ I told him. `Where is she?´

`South EKD5 hospital,´ he told me, watching me as I screwed up my forehead, telling myself it would be okay. Why does all this happen to me?

I didn´t do too badly in the firing range. They let us use any weapon that fired like wands, guns, arrows, etc. I chose my gun, obviously. I shot them all down, but had no idea how long it took. You only got one shot at each one before it went down. I think I came at hundred-and-fifty-ninth out of four hundred, but I had had practice.

I ran to EKD5 hospital the moment I got my score. They watched me barge in, kicking down doors, with a kind of detached sadness and sympathy. I dived into the ward she was in and skidded across the floor on my knees when I fell down. I pulled myself up and saw her lying there, smiling.

`Sunshine?´ she croaked.

`It´s me,´ I panted, taking her hand. `I´m here.´

`Where go?´ she asked.

`A lot of places,´ I said, holding back tears.

`Left Tyger,´ she said mournfully.

`It wasn´t my choice,´ I insisted. `Harry took me to the Ministry.´

`Harry gone,´ she told me.

`I know.´

`Rhodry lead now,´ she said.

`My father,´ I smiled.

`Proud,´ she whispered.

`I hope so,´ I smiled.

`Tyger dying,´ she said. She swallowed, and forced out, with great effort, `I´m dying, Rae.´

`You can talk?´ I frowned.

`Hard to break a habit,´ she said ruefully.

`Of a lifetime,´ I smiled.

`I´ll always love you, Rae,´ she croaked. `You saved me.´

`I tried,´ I choked.

`Don´t cry,´ she said. She smiled. `Happy.´

`Happy sunshine,´ I whispered. She turned her head away, and didn´t turn it back.