Unhooked

by Lisa Maxwell

“They promised our sacrifice would be the last.” Rowan pauses, as though gathering his courage with his words. “I should have expected that would be a lie as well,” he says darkly. Then he releases me and sets to work adding more debris to the fire. He is careful not to look at me as he speaks. “The day Michael turned eighteen, he enlisted, of course. I was so bloody jealous of him the day he left. My mam was crying her eyes out, but Michael’s smile lit his whole face. I didn’t see him again for almost a year, when he was on leave. He looked so completely different—my Michael and yet not. There he was in his starched uniform, all gleaming with the bits and bobs he’d won for doing what soldiers do. When my time with him was over, he put me on the train for home, but I didn’t go. I found myself in a recruitment office, telling the man behind the desk I was nineteen years old. I could tell he didn’t believe me, but it didn’t matter. He took my name, and I signed the paper, and it was done.” “How old were you really?” He glances back at me. “That was the spring of ’17. I’d just turned sixteen the month before.” Sixteen—he looked older than that now, but not nearly as old as he should have looked. “And they took you? Without any proof?” “And why wouldn’t they? They needed men, and I was close enough.” His eyes turn back to the fire, and I know he is there, reliving his brother’s death again. “I never imagined it could be like that. They’d told us tales of blood and glory, of ad...