by Travis Smith
He eventually acquiesced to slumber, and he was awakened in the early morning by Olivia’s stirring and continued weeping.
“We could have helped them,” she said, her face buried in her arms as she lay on her stomach in the leaves.
“No,” Patrick said, laying a consolatory hand on her shoulder that felt as ineffectual as a one-winged bird. “There were too many of them. We have no weapons.”
“We could have followed,” she said. Her tone was pleading, as though she were attempting to will time backwards with her words. “We could have never left in the first place.”
Patrick felt a sickening internal confliction at her words. Part of him, too, wished they had been behind to help or to have stood guard, but part of him knew that would mean they’d likely be captives now, too, or worse. Another part of him thought of her hips against his, and, although he would never admit it, he wouldn’t have traded that for anything.
When the pair finally approached the ashes from their campsite, Olivia came to an abrupt stop, causing Patrick to run into her from behind. He reached out to take hold of her shoulders, but she twisted from his grasp and turned around. She fell to her hands and knees, retching.
Patrick turned back to the campsite and immediately saw what had distressed her. The body of their friend lay in a limp heap. A single hole was above his eye, but a much larger hole disgraced the back of his skull. A pool of congealed blood and brain matter spread out beneath his head.
“It’s Philip,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and he felt as though he needed to gag for Olivia’s sake, but he’d seen much worse …
Olivia finished puking and sat back upright on her knees, facing the mountains. “He died because of me,” she lamented.
“No,” Patrick said, walking over and kneeling next to her, “you mustn’t think that way. There was nothing we could have done to change this.”
“Brandon kept saying we should have moved. We just sat out here bickering in the open like fawns in a field.”
“We wanted to go through with the plan,” Patrick reminded her.
“Well, what good is that plan now?” she snapped. “They risked their lives for me, and now he’s dead because of me. Brandon and Jake are captured because of me!”
Patrick sighed. “Everyone knew the risks. We are all in this together.”
“Not last night,” she said in a choked whisper.
Patrick knew she was speaking out of guilt, but the regret he detected in her voice weighed on him heavily.
“We get them back,” she said matter-of-factly. With that she stood and started walking south.
“How will we do that?” Patrick followed close behind her. “We don’t even have a weapon between the two of us.”
“We shall find a way.”
“We don’t even know where they were taken!” Patrick said.
“Fanxel.”
15
That evening Olivia excused herself from their campsite to get sick again. Neither had eaten all day, and Patrick gathered a few berries before night fell, but Olivia ate hardly any at all. In truth Patrick had little appetite as well, but he knew how it felt to be truly hungry, and he did not wish to return to that place.
When she came back, Patrick could see heavy bags under her eyes by the dim light of the fire. “Are you okay?” he asked, but she shrugged him off and lay down to fall asleep. He contemplated curling up next to her for a while, but it felt improper to be intimate in light of what had befallen, so he settled to sit up alone and watch for wanderers.
When they awoke the next morning, Olivia looked far worse. Her skin was pale and slick, and her eyes appeared sallow and sunken in her skull. She rolled over in the early morning and vomited again, this time not bothering to leave for privacy.
“You must eat something,” Patrick told her, getting a handful of berries from his satchel.
Olivia took three of them and slowly took them in without sitting up.
“We’ll stay here today. You clearly need rest.”
“No,” Olivia groaned. She tried to stand upright, but couldn’t make it past her hands and knees.
“Look at you. You’re too weak to even stand. We can’t go anywhere.”
“We need to get to Brandon …”
“He’s not going anywhere if he’s at the prison. I’ll come up with a plan while you rest here for a while.”
When Patrick finally convinced her, she rolled over and closed her eyes again. He put a hand on her cheek to find without surprise that she was full of fever. He sighed and watched her breathing with some concern as she slept.
16
Olivia slept through the day. Patrick sat by her side with his head propped on his knees. He wept—for himself, for Olivia, for his fallen friend, for his captured savior, for his family, for his lost cat Stora. As the sun was setting, Olivia stirred and began dry heaving again. Patrick looked on with a pained expression of helplessness. He laid a hand on her back when she stopped, but she did not acknowledge it.
“Olivia?” he asked.
She made no response.
He checked to ensure she was still breathing and finally lay down next to her to wait it out.
When he awoke the next morning, she had hardly moved. Her body was still impossibly warm, and she was breathing slow, shallow breaths.
“Olivia,” he said, more forcefully than the previous night. He shook her.
She groaned and seemed to ask, “What?”
“You’re very ill. I have to find someone. I need to look for a healer.”
“No,” she mumbled. She continued speaking incoherently. The only other word that Patrick could make out was home.
“You want me to take you home?”
She nodded slowly, her eyes closed.
Patrick struggled with this for much of the day. He ate some berries and tried to get her to eat, but she made no response. He spent some time gathering more food close by and weighing the pros and cons of taking Olivia back to her home. They were at least a day’s walk from her town, and that time would double if he had to carry her. He wondered if having the life she was accustomed to living was any better than dying of fever in a field. Surely anything was better than that, but … he recalled the bruises on her thighs.
When he returned to the campsite, she was in the same position, but her breathing had become painful and labored. Her chest hitched with each inspiration, and she was wheezing audibly. He scooped her up into his arms and set off southward. He would likely be killed the moment he set foot inside the town, but he couldn’t risk watching her die like this.
Patrick hustled as quickly as he could manage while carrying Olivia. When darkness began to fall, he stopped to rest for the night. He ate a handful of tart berries and offered some to Olivia, whose response was minimal. He took out his small canteen and poured a dash onto her dry lips. She licked them and opened her mouth for more, which Patrick gave her. He drank some himself and sat beside her, deciding to forego a fire for the night. They had made it into the denser trails that surrounded Mitten and its outlying towns, and he thought he could make it back to Olivia’s home by tomorrow night, especially if he rested a short while and began moving again before daybreak.
After a while, Olivia stirred. She opened her eyes and looked at Patrick lucidly for the first time in days.
“Thank you,” she rasped.
“For what?” Patrick asked, his head bowed, feeling utterly useless. “All I can do for you is carry you back to your hell of a home.”
She shook her head and struggled to speak.
Patrick put a hand on her chest in a futile attempt to calm her breathing.
“To the north,” she managed. “There is a healer.”
“To the north of your town?”
Olivia nodded.
“How will I know where to go if you’re unconscious?” he asked.
“It’s a small cabin. East of the main trail.”
“Okay!” Patrick said. For the first time, he felt h
ope. “How far?”
She shook her head, indicating she did not know.
He looked up and surveyed the dark trails ahead. They were a day’s walk from her town. If the healer’s cabin lay between them and the town, it could be anywhere. “We should keep going,” he said, but when he looked back down, Olivia was unconscious again. Her dry, cracked lips pursed softly with each haggard breath.
17
Patrick managed to sleep for a short time, but he was up long before the sun and set off on his way again. It was a good thing, too, because he hobbled through the forest carrying Olivia until nearly midday before he had to stop. He gave the both of them some water and took a brief rest before carrying on. After another short break, he still found himself walking by dusk. He hadn’t seen any breaks in the trail to the east, nor any cabins tucked away in the distant woodlands. Nightfall would hit them soon, and he wondered if he was any closer to their destination than the previous evening. He had no idea if he’d already passed the healer, or if Olivia’s thinking was clear enough through the delirium to be right about the location of the cabin.
They approached a small clearing, and Patrick was resigning himself to stopping again for the evening. He laid Olivia down gently in a tuft of grass and stood up tall to stretch his back. He looked up into the darkening sky and noticed a trail of wispy black clouds rising in the east. It was smoke! He craned his neck and looked through the forest, but he couldn’t make out anything through the shadowy trees. A small path appeared to branch off of their clearing headed east of the larger main trail.
“Olivia!” he shouted. “Is this it?” He pointed toward the smaller trail.
She made no response, and she did not stir.
Patrick leaned in close to her sleeping face. He could feel heat emanating from her skin, once so fair, but now a deathly shade of pale grey. He could barely feel her breath or see her chest rising at all.
“Come on,” he said, scooping her up and setting off along the path. Sticks and limbs slapped his face as he bumbled through the denser trail in the darkness.
At last he reached another clearing that opened up around a small, dark cabin. Thin tendrils of black smoke rose from the chimney. What few windows the cabin possessed were dark and offered no hint of what may lie within, but there was a suggestion of dim candles flickering about the cabin’s interior.
“Help!” Patrick called as he stumbled unceremoniously up to the cabin door. “Please, help us!” He rapped upon the wooden door several times with his foot.
Patrick heard the sound of some locking mechanism clicking on the inside, and the door slowly creaked open. Even in the dying light of day, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness within the shanty.
“Enter,” a strange voice spoke in a high-pitched whisper.
Patrick pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. The cabin’s only apparent inhabitant stood across the den, far from the door.
“Please,” Patrick panted. “She is ill.”
The healer’s silhouette stood hunched over what looked to be a steaming cauldron. He turned and stepped toward Patrick and Olivia, his back still hunched and head cocked to one side. His face emerged into candlelight to display careworn, wrinkled skin and long, greasy strands of grey-black hair cascading down around his cheeks. His eyes widened slightly when they fell upon the young couple, and he snapped his tongue in a rapid series of tsk sounds. Patrick found it impossible to discern whether the sounds were of concern or of beckoning.
“Can you help her?” he pled.
“Place her figure on my table,” the man rasped. He motioned with one long-fingered, knotty old hand. “Sss-so young,” he whistled through browning teeth as he watched Patrick lay her down as gently as he could atop the wooden surface.
Patrick stepped back, his mounting unease masked only by his unshakable concern for Olivia’s health. “She’s fallen ill with fever. We’ve travelled for days, and she’s not responding anymore.”
The potioner leaned over the young girl and placed a hand lightly on her face. He drew in a sharp and sudden breath that stopped just short of a gasp.
“What?” Patrick asked.
The man steadily exhaled as he glided his hand down Olivia’s neck, between her breasts, and along her stomach. He hesitated at her groin before dropping his hand back to his side. He turned to Patrick and offered a wicked grin. “I will heal her.”
“Thank you!” Patrick exclaimed. He clasped his hands together in front of him in a gesture of gratitude and resisted an urge to run up and hug the unsettling old man. “Thank you beyond words.”
“One hundred paga …”
“What?” Patrick asked, his heart sinking like a stone in the sea.
“One hundred paga,” the healer repeated, his gaze not faltering from Patrick’s own.
“I don’t—” Patrick stammered. “I don’t have any of that.”
“Then she shall stay with me.”
Patrick swallowed hard and for the first time began to survey his surroundings. The den was in disarray. Potted plants lay scattered about, some overturned, some plucked cleanly of their leaves and flowers. Several stands and tables were in various states of disorder around the cabin. Mixing bowls and utensils were strewn atop many of the stands. He stepped one pace farther from the table where Olivia lay and leaned toward a closer stand where a knife and bits of some sort of chopped plant lay.
“I think perhaps we should seek assistance elsewhere,” Patrick said.
“One hundred paga,” the potioner repeated, “or she shall stay with me.”
Patrick side-stepped and snatched the knife off the table. He pointed it at the man and steeled himself, willing a look of fearless determination to paint his face. “Step away from her now,” he growled.
The healer’s grin widened. His face told tales only of disease, not of health. He said nothing, but his eyes flicked minutely toward the door over Patrick’s shoulder.
Patrick heard a sliding, shuffling sound behind him and felt something beginning to wrap around his foot. He glanced down and saw a moderately sized snake coiling its way up his leg. He jumped and shook his leg free, stumbling backward. Before he could even glance back up, the healer was standing in front of him and squeezing the boy’s wrist with impossible force. He winced, and the knife fell involuntarily from his fingers, through which a weakness was spreading.
“One hundred paga,” the man said one final time, his hot, putrid breath hitting Patrick’s face like a ball of fire. “Rest assured I will take good care of your betrothed in your absence.”
Serpents descended from the rafters and thatch above and wrapped their bodies around Patrick’s paralyzed ankles while the man held his wrist. Patrick’s breath hung in his chest. Something about the man’s very touch made it near impossible for the boy to move or speak. His heart raced as the snakes began sliding toward the open door, carrying his rigid body with them. The man dropped his wrist at last and watched as the heavy wooden door slammed in Patrick’s dazed face with finality. The metallic clinking sound of locks clicked on the other side.
18
“You can fight, fight what will
Until your brain and heart both still,
But you may still succeed in life if you just stay.
You can run, you can run
From the setting of the sun,
But there is darkness on the both sides of the day.
So if you must, you must away,
I hope you’ll heed these words I say
And you’ll find comfort knowing what will be will be.
You’re free to go pave your own trail
But it may lead you straight to Hell;
I hope you’ll find resolve and just stay here with me.”
Patrick sat atop an abandoned mine cart in an old rail yard alongside the mountains. He’d travelled for days, lost, alone, and dazed. Once he reached the old steel tracks, it gave him a path to travel without thinking or even looking where he was goi
ng.
Now he sat atop the cart and attempted to find solace in song. His doleful young voice travelled through the canyons and across the desert, as gentle and easy as a slow-flowing brook.
A man appeared around a short cliff in the distance. It was the first person Patrick had laid eyes upon in days, but he took no pause to survey the stranger.
“You can fight, fight what will
Until your brain and heart both still,
But you may still succeed in life if you just stay.”
He glanced into the sheer darkness of a small tunnel at his side and continued his sorrowful song. Would Olivia mourn him, were their roles reversed? If she were awake now, would she yearn for Patrick to kick down the door to her rescue? Or would she pine for Brandon’s touch?
“You can run, you can run
From the setting of the sun,
But there is darkness on the both sides of the day.”
Patrick felt worthless and used. How could he have been so naive to think that a girl like Olivia could have eyes for him? He had been merely an escape from her reality when her true desires had begun to crumble before her eyes.
He’d known nothing but loss since the incident in Onton. He knew deep down that’s all he’d ever know anymore. He’d fought and fought against this new world—been reduced to a single instinct. But how long could he fight against the inevitable?
“So if you must, you must away,
I hope you’ll heed these words I say
And you’ll find comfort knowing what will be will be.
You’re free to go pave your own trail
But it may lead you straight to Hell;
I hope you’ll find resolve and just stay here with me.”
He felt a mercilessness mounting in his gut, and his young, forgiving mind continued to crack beneath the weight of it. He stared at the dark tunnel in the rock wall to his right. He’d run from the darkness far too long. If he ran long enough, he would find only darkness on the far side. He had fought for so long in a battle he could never win …