I told myself it didn't matter, but a ping in my heart was remorseful.
Snatching the blanket off the side of the flour sacks, I shoved it into his hands. "Go back to sleep." Standing up, I moved to walk away.
He snaked his fingers around my wrist. Not tightly, but firm.
"You're right, I don't know your world."
I felt empty. "It doesn't matter."
"It all matters." Not letting go, but not pulling me closer, he asked, "Sit with me?"
The room was still thick with darkness. It would remain cold for many hours to come.
He let go as I sat, this time placing myself to his left.
A shiver ran from my legs up to my spine. The night air had grown colder than I wanted to admit, even with a jacket, and a scarf wrapped three times over my neck.
"Here." I searched inside a few crates to my left, pulling an extra blanket out. It was hand stitched by someone I traded with often. She had used dozens of men's flannel shirts that were too bedraggled and holey to wear. Each one had been carefully cut into small squares and sewn onto a larger piece of fabric. It was even stuffed with dog and horse hair for warmth. It was one of my most prized possessions. One of the few I refused to give away, though I eventually would.
Shooing him out of the way, I laid it over the flour sacks. "We can lay on this. Just don't bleed on it!" I warned.
"But the window seat is so comfortable." He tried to sound as sarcastic as any human was able, but my outburst had left me barren of emotion.
"Come," was my only response. I was still so tired, and the day would be a long reminder that nothing comes without a price.
Scooting over, he finally laid down on his back. It caused shooting pains in his shoulder, but I'm sure the rest of his muscles were pleased.
I pulled the blanket over our bodies, pressing close to his left side.
He rested his head on a balled up shirt I gave him and sighed. "Why don't you have a fireplace?" The question was motivated partly by an underlying curiosity and partly by frustration.
"Because I don't want to die in a fireball a hundred feet off the ground."
"You should write children's stories." After laughing at his own joke, he added soberly, "You can't live like this when winter comes."
Against my better judgment, I smiled at the joke. What would be the harm? He couldn't see it.
I confessed, "These extra cold nights weren't due yet. I've been searching for a zero degree blanket. If I don't find one before the full moon, I'll have to move to my snow lodging."
"A zero degree blanket? Do you mean a sleeping bag?"
"It zips?"
More assured, he answered, "A sleeping bag."
"Then yes."
"I might be able to help with that if I know where we're going."
"We'll talk more in the morning."
He fell asleep before I did. It was hard lying next to someone again. Memories buzzed my brain before I was finally able to sleep, accepting them into the woven strands of my dreams. Familiar voices laughed and spoke over the lightening cracks of gunfire. Guns, the preachers of Armageddon. When the gunfire began screaming wildly like a beast uncaged, I ran. Faces surrounded me, reeling with distorted grins, though tears tumbled down cheeks. Running to the wood's line, I turned back. The bygone merriment of people vanished in a stream of blood, and I saw Deacon's face struggle to emerge from the quicksand of a nightmare. A face that had been lost to me since twenty-one-I-think.
My eyes snapped open. I was struggling to accept Deacon's memory, something I didn't often entertain. The morning light had chased away the darkness some time ago. I would see him all day now. His memory would haunt my mission.
"It's time to get up."
My stranger groaned.
"It's time to learn where you're going."
This got his attention.
"Well, thank Her," he mumbled, his eyes barely open. When I heaved a sigh, he answered, "If I knew your name, I wouldn't have to praise you like a saint."
"Is that supposed to be an incentive?"
He smiled, sitting up with a bit of trouble, trying not to show that he was in pain. "Let me guess, we're hiking up a mountain for ten hours and then wrestling a den of black bears? I bet I can wrestle more bears than you can."
Before he stood completely, I was already folding the horse blanket and stuffing it into a crate. "If that's your idea of a good day, no wonder you have as many scars as you do." Once he cleared the bed, I folded my favorite blanket, as well as the flour sacks, exposing the corks underneath.
He pointed right at them. "What's that?"
"The breakfast table."
He threw his hands in the air and nodded, as if to say, "Of course!"
I opened one of the white tins on the countertop and pulled out four muffins. "Two now, two later," I stated, putting two in my draped bag by the door and handing him one. He ate half of the wheat muffin right away in two large bites.
"Why don't you use my name?" he asked before taking his last bite.
"When?"
His eyebrows rose. "Anytime. When you're telling me to get out of the way. When you're telling me to sit down. When you're telling me to stand up. When you're…telling me, I guess, because that's pretty much the extent of our interactions."
I had barely touched the muffin in my hand.
"You're the only other one here. I don't need to use your name."
"Maybe I would like to use your name." As I opened my mouth to speak, he quickly stipulated, "And don't ask why. It's a thing. It's just what people do." He was feeling exasperated by our exchange. The deepening lines in his forehead told me that much. "Do they call you anything besides Her?"
I nodded. "She."
He must have thought I was lying.
"That's it!" He held up his good arm, waving his hand in the air. "Isn't there a normal human being out here?" He crossed his arms gingerly to his chest. "All you throw in my face is "the wall," "your wall," "that wall." Meanwhile, you're stealing people and vehicles. You're throwing rations out of a tree in the middle of the night. And they're looking up at you like you're God. But you look at me like I'm crazy because I want to know your name."
I involuntarily back-stepped to the counter as he was yelling. One hand was in my pocket, grasping the hilt of my knife, my other ready to gash open his wound if I needed a diversion for a quick escape.
"You haven't been listening at all!" he accused.
"I'm listening," I lied. Truthfully, his words had turned into a jumbled puzzle once I perceived him as a threat.
He shook his head. "Look at you. Hand in your pocket. You're probably trying to decide if you want to stab me again."
Well, damn it, that did make me feel bad. I thought I was being rather sly.
Staring into his crystalline hazel-brown eyes, I informed him, "You're making the decision easier and easier." Without waiting for an answer, I noted, "We need to leave."
"I want a name."
"We need to leave, Ren."
"I want your name."
It was my turn to cross my arms. We stood in silence, his nostrils flaring, my eyes squinted.
Releasing a tense breath, I finally acquiesced. "You'll get one when your feet are on the ground."
I turned my back to him then, collecting a few things for my bag. A short time later, once I was sure no one was below us, I dropped the netting. Securing the door shut, I opened the hatch and gestured for him -for Ren- to climb down.
"Me, first?"
"You have the biggest mouth," I noted.
As he was gaining his bearings on the top of the net, he spared a final glance before descending to the ground. "You do pay attention."
His balance was much more fluid on the way down than climbing up. There was an ease in his stride, even with a wounded arm. I wondered how adaptable he was. Nothing seemed to slow him down for very long, which was fantastic…until that aptitude was pitted against me. We were from different worlds, and I was about to comm
it a crime.
Again!
Chapter Four
Once I locked up and stowed the net, we headed east.
"If we come into contact with anyone, keep your distance."
"Sure. Does She have any more requests?"
A headache was burrowing its way through my temple with every obnoxious sigh and comment he made. I really missed my simple life. The life where I took care of myself, of others, and wasn't expected to steal or maim. But we needed this. We all needed what I was about to do. It was for the greater good.
The world was dying. Our crops were shriveling, and the seeds for the new harvests were shrinking each season. It was law that clans weren't supposed to trade. It had worked until family members and neighbors started going hungry. Then each seed was worth more than the painful deaths of fifty strangers.
The thought of another atrophied growing season left me splintered. Which is where Ren fit into the plan. I needed him, whether he caused headaches or bird songs.
We had walked a good hour before I muttered, "Okay." My voice was a surprise, even to me.
"Okay, what?"
Ren remained to my right, his stride easily keeping time with mine.
"My name is Jolee-I-think."
I didn't make excuses or feel ashamed. I stated a fact. Maybe I was this Jolee. Maybe I would never know.
"You think?"
I nodded.
"You don't know for sure?"
"No." My tone insinuated that I didn't really care.
He stopped, turning his muscular frame toward me. It was awkward to have his full attention under the light of day. What did he see when he looked at me? Did he see a person or something that blew around in the wastelands of Gaia's good graces?
Ren tried to reason, "But your clan would know your name."
"I've been on my own for a long time."
"Too long to remember someone using your name?"
I looked away then. "A long time."
I began walking again. It took a moment for Ren to catch up.
"Why am I here?"
Smelling the dander of fallen leaves and listening to the occasional bird call out through the forest, I surmised, "That is a question I can answer without causing more questions." Inhaling deeply, I searched for the right words. "The clans are fairly self-sufficient. They make more than they take. But the last growing seasons have been hard on everyone. Numbers are falling. A clan to the west said the final goodbye to no less than twenty people last Frost. And during a time when the lost should be honoring their clans with higher food rations, the rations are becoming fewer and fewer."
"Why?" His brow was furrowed, his eyes seeing past me like he was busy processing my words into a macabre image.
"We need more-"
A scream rang out in the distance. The hair on my arms stood straight.
Swinging my forearm across Ren's chest to stop his forward movement, we froze. When I couldn't distinguish the direction the ragged cry had come from, I started circling in place, listening.
The scream came again, followed by another and another. Children's screams.
"There!" I pointed.
Two thin figures were combatting a large mound of thicket bushes thirty or so yards ahead. We ran toward them. I fought through the brush, cursing the time of year, as thorns grabbed my pants and cut my shins and hands. Too late for lush greenery, yet too early for an unencumbered path. Vines tangled around our ankles, daring to trip us, but we persisted. I wouldn't stop until I had them in my arms.
One of the tiny figures wrapped in brown cloth with a crocheted hat made from ripped shirts saw me and yelled, "I see Her! I see Her!"
"I'm coming!" I bellowed, trudging through the briars and hopping fallen trees as fast as I was able. Ren fell behind. Good, he was safer back there.
"Stay back!" I ordered him, not sparing a glance to see if he complied.
Closing the distance, I was able to pull them from a particularly vicious patch of thickets. Falling to the ground in front of me, I kneeled to meet their petrified glances.
"What's happened?"
I knew them. They were from a clan I traded with often.
I knew them. From when they were born.
Ren caught up to us but kept his distance. The girls were too frantic to even care. They knew he was somehow with me, and that was good enough for them.
Darsha, the eldest of the sisters, ten-at-most, had tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks. Tish, six-at-most, had nothing but ghosts in her expression.
"It… It…" Darsha couldn't seem to get the words out.
"It came in the night," Tish finished for her sister.
Tish was borderline malnourished. Her clothes hung from thin limbs, even her coat, which stood out as oddly bright and new. The blue and pink stripes were more vibrant than I could remember seeing on an article of clothing. Nothing was ever new anymore.
"One of them chased us," Darsha confided. "When my pants got wound in the thickets, I thought he had gotten me."
Leaning in, I hugged them tightly. They fit between my arms too well. Before I let go, I whispered to Tish, "Take your sister and follow the river north, until-" I looked up, finding the sun. Pointing almost above my head, I finished, "Until the sun is there. Food and blankets are hidden in the old fallen oak. There will be a shelter."
They nodded, a silence creeping in before my eyes could look away.
Standing, I fought back tears. Shedding tears would do no good.
I could see the unspoken questions trying to form on the girls' lips.
"I'll check on your family." Handing them one of the tins filled with jerky from my pack, and my two knives, I said, "Go!"
Without further discussion, they took off in one direction, and I started walking in the direction they came from.
It hurt to let my knives go. They had solved many problems. Looking at Ren, I couldn't help but think about how they had created one really big one, too.
"What did you tell them?" he practically demanded.
Not looking back as Ren stomped the vines to keep time with me, I shrugged. "I gave them a place to go."
"Somewhere safe?"
"No place is safe."
He scoffed. "I'm betting it's safer than where we're headed right now."
I nodded.
Shaking his head, Ren objected. "This doesn't feel right. You don't run in when people are running out. That's counterintuitive."
"Someone's read a book with big words."
He stepped directly in front of me again, forcing my attention.
"Earth has turned into Pandora's Box. Meanwhile, you live alone. You travel alone. You run towards danger every chance it winks at you."
"Don't act like you're not envious. Behind your wall-"
"Here we go."
He immediately turned and started walking.
I kept pace, angrily scolding him. "You're a bird with clipped wings. A mountain lion without a mountain. But you are not a deer. Feign all you want, but I can see the wild flicker in your eye. Don't pretend my way of life is toxic just because it's out of your reach."
As we walked the rest of the way in silence, I debated tying him to a tree or leaving him to wait somewhere while I did what I was about to do. Glancing his way, he raised his eyebrows at me, daring me to say what I was thinking. No, he definitely wouldn't stay anywhere I asked him to wait. I could still tie him to a tree, but honestly, that would be more for my amusement than for his safety.
"I don't like that look on your face," he noted.
"Smart," was all I replied.
Once we made it to the outskirt of the girls' clan, I slid my bag off my shoulder and decided to reason with him. "If I don't come back, follow the stream south. When it widens, bare right and keep walking until you think you can't anymore. You will find yourself on familiar ground."
"This is bullshit. I'm not a child, I'm coming with you."
"No."
"I heard that little girl say someone cha
sed them. They looked more scared than anyone I've seen in a long time. I don't know what you're about to face but you might need help."
"That isn't your job. I don't need to be saved or helped." Pushing the bag against his chest and leaning in, I pleaded, "I just need you to live. Please. I will not be the reason you die today." Thoughts of Deacon screaming for his sisters in darkness swirled to the forefront of my memories. I shook them away, concentrating on Ren. "Please."
He turned his head to the side, warring with his inner voice of reason. When he finally met my gaze, I knew he would do what I asked. He had squashed that little voice.
"I'll meet you upriver. Stay by the water, but hidden."
"I'd rather work the kinks out of my muscles with a good fight."
One last try. I didn't blame him. He wasn't used to being the knight without a damsel. Who would turn him away? With that cocky expression and just the right amount of brass to be interesting.
Sliding my jacket off, I handed it to him. "I'll come back." Satisfied that he wouldn't follow me, I added, "Don't drink the water."
I made my way down a brambly embankment at the north head of the Bleeker Clanship. The woods opened to a wide dirt road, lined by small cabins. Lean-tos could be seen further off the path, bordering the tree line.
It was too quiet.
Sixty bustling people should have been working hard, talking, moving in and out of the cabins. As I walked down the middle of the road, I could see shadows of faces peering out from behind shutters. No one greeted me. No one said a word. They watched as I kept walking to the middle of their clanship. My shoes scraped the pebbles underfoot through the dirt, causing loud scratching sounds. It was only loud because nothing else existed.
I knew this fear-fueled silence. The sickness had come. It was here now.
Around me.
There was no hope. It had been extinguished with their campfire and the growing pile of bodies.
I was about to turn around -to avoid actually finding a pile of dead- when I heard the creaking of a door open and close. Catching the motion of the door in my peripheral, I walked up to a very small cabin. A thin, lumpy rag had been sat on the doorstep.
Pulling a cloth from my back pocket, I wrapped it around the lump and swooshed it up, cradling it in my hand. The weight rested in the center of my palm as I pushed it around with my fingers. Seeds. The clanship's seeds. This little lump would be everything they had left to sustain them.
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