Charon must have caught his glance and meaning, because he said, “They won’t bother us. Not unless we bother them first. Last month I accidentally squished one on the ground with my hand. It stung me twice and my fingers were swollen for days.”
He was still holding Eiland’s hand. Eiland pulled it away.
They stood side-by-side, a few feet apart. After the silence stretched too long Charon said, “Once I was traveling downriver from here. There were lots of trees along the banks and I had to push a lot of branches out of the way, but I, they kept sticking to me. To my hands. It was too dark to see why—it was night, I mean. Anyway, I finally stopped and lay down, and when I woke up the next morning the trees were covered with a huge spider nest. I could see hundreds of them moving around above me, just starting to wake up. I had to jump in the river to get away.”
Eiland stood very still. Inside he wanted to shriek with horror and hop around, running his hands through his hair and over his clothes to be sure there was nothing on him. He wanted to interrogate Charon on where, exactly, this giant nest could be found, and secure a promise that they would never, ever go in that direction.
Yet he stubbornly kept his mouth shut and his expression blank. He hadn’t said more than “yes” or “no” to Charon in two days. He wasn’t about to start now.
Eventually Charon snorted. “I should just tie a log to my leg and drag it around behind me. It’d be better company.”
Eiland bit the inside of his cheek but did not rise to the bait. When Charon started walking again, paving a narrow path through the tall grass, Eiland waited for as long as he dared before he followed.
They traveled on. The sun rose behind them, beat hard on their backs and heads, blinded them in the afternoon, and was swallowed up by the mountains that grew ever nearer. The grass rose on all sides and stretched to every horizon, so unalterable that Eiland thought the sight alone would eventually drive him mad.
They stopped when Charon stopped walking, sometimes in a patch of low grass, sometimes in the thick of high stalks. Either way, Eiland would sit down wordlessly and set out his bedroll and blanket. Sometimes he tied the highest stalks of grass together, forming a little makeshift bower between himself and the night sky.
Charon slept on his back with nothing over him. He must have been used to it by now.
By day, very little needed to be said. They walked. Eiland followed Charon. The grass went on and on. Sometimes they passed through thin groves of trees, and Eiland smacked away the bugs that landed on his bare skin; Charon didn’t bother. There was very little that Charon seemed to bother with.
The sun lightened the ends of Charon’s hair, turning them golden around his face. Eiland hated himself for noticing.
It was hot. That odd pressure grew in Eiland’s throat again, at the back of his mouth; this time he knew it was all the words he could be saying but held back. It was not in his nature to be silent. His mind wandered, thinking of home and herbs and clouds, anything to break the monotony of every footstep.
Occasionally the land dipped down into shallow creeks or small ponds, but even those seemed so alike that Eiland wondered if perhaps he’d died and the gods had condemned him to forever wander the same stretch of hot, empty, repeating land, with Charon as his only company. That, he thought, must truly be some branch in the many-forked hell. As a child he’d imagined that place, with some vindictive excitement, as fire and cold and endless pain. Now he wondered if it was simply this: the grind of his hips at every step, every step adding to a mile, every mile adding to his day.
So he was rather startled when the grass parted.
A pair of tracks drew a feeble line through the thick fields of wheat. Eiland turned his head to look in one direction and found nothing, just the faint path surrounded by grass. Overhead, clouds had grown heavy and dark with the promise of a storm.
He looked in the other and saw a small cart trundling in his direction.
Eiland glanced quickly over his shoulder. Charon wasn’t in sight—Eiland thought he’d been walking parallel to Eiland away to the left, but he must have seen the cart first and dropped down into the grass.
It was too late for Eiland to do the same, so he stood next to the track and waited as the cart drew nearer.
Soon he could make out the driver, a young woman with black hair. Eiland hastened to pull his shirt from where he’d tied it around his waist. He struggled a little with the neck hole and was still ensnared when he heard the cart come to a halt next to him.
Someone snickered.
Eiland pulled the shirt down and peered at his audience. Two young women sat on the bench of the covered cart. They were both young, maybe even younger than him, with curly black hair and oddly-shaped eyes.
Eiland had never seen people who looked like them before, even among the traveling clans who passed through Summerton, and he couldn’t help but stare.
The girl with the reins regarded him with a faint smirk, but the other smiled in a friendly way. She spoke, but the words made no sense. Her speech was full of “sh” sounds and seemed to come out of her nose.
“I don’t, um,” Eiland stammered. “I’m sorry, what? I didn’t understand.”
The two girls conferred briefly with one another, murmuring back and forth in that same strange way. They seemed to have no problem understanding one another.
The girl with the reins turned back to him and said, slowly and with that same nasal timbre, “Hello. Do you know way to Col-town?”
“Um…no? I’m sorry.”
The girl with the reins frowned and conferred with her companion again. She was passing on what he had said, Eiland realized: the strange “sh” noises was how they spoke to one another. Eiland had heard of people speaking other tongues before, but he’d never understood what that meant until now.
“We are going to Col-town,” the girl with the reins said. “We will make home there.”
She examined Eiland as if expecting a reaction. Eiland only blinked and looked around for her husband. Or the smiling girl’s husband. Any man. There didn’t seem to be any.
“Are you going alone?”
“Yes,” said the girl with the reins, her chin rising.
“Well,” Eiland said, at a loss. He glanced over his shoulder then shrugged. “I’m pretty much alone too.”
Apparently that was the right thing to say, because when the girl with the reins translated for her friend, they both smiled at him, making little “ah” noises.
Encouraged, Eiland asked, “What’s in Coltown? And where is it?”
“North. We do not know what is. We will be—” She frowned and broke off into her own speech, biting her lip. “We will…make new home. Gooder home.”
A number of belongings peeked out from the edge of the covered wagon. They meant to go without men, Eiland realized, without any husbands or fathers or brothers to build their new homes for them.
He opened, then closed his mouth. Part of him wanted to convince them to turn around and go back to wherever they had come from; he doubted whether either of them had ever built a home before. He couldn’t imagine what a home for two young women would even look like, whether it would have a hearth where the supper would warm or the children could play.
Instead he said, “Good. It’s good that you’re going. I’m on my way somewhere myself.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” That, too, was apparently the right thing to have said because both girls smiled and nodded approvingly. Eiland didn’t think he’d ever met such a strange pair.
He talked with them a little more—they pointed out the darkening clouds and warned him about the storm—before Eiland departed with a wave and kind farewells. The cart rattled off through the fields, following what meager tracks had drawn themselves across the plains.
Eiland waited, but Charon didn’t reappear. Frowning, he doubled back, seeking through the tall grass until he almost tripped over Charon, who was on his hands and knees on the ground.
>
“What are you—” Eiland cut himself off.
The sound of Charon’s breath was harsh and loud enough to be heard over the rustle of the grass around them. The wind had started to pick up. Eiland checked but the cart had moved far down the trail by now.
There was no one else for miles, nothing but the drone of insects, the distant rumble of thunder, and the sounds of Charon struggling to stand up.
He managed it, with his jaw clenched tight and his skin ashen. The wind blew his hair against his sweaty brow; through the sweat-dark strands he looked at Eiland and the single look held so much pain and fear that for a second Eiland felt his own breath go fluttering away over the ground.
Charon turned and began walking away. Above him the sky was turning strange, alarming colors.
Eiland followed.
Ahead of him Charon weaved through the grass, his hands lifting occasionally as if to seek purchase in the bending stalks around him. Eiland walked slowly in a parallel line; several times Charon turned his head as if checking Eiland’s position, but he kept stumbling forward as if he intended to crawl if he had to.
In the distance, lightning struck. Eiland didn’t think the main storm was heading their direction, but its edges already hovered overhead.
Under that troubled sky, Charon finally pitched forward, disappearing back into the grass.
Eiland hesitated. He hesitated for a long moment, standing still under the gray-green sky, before he went to where Charon had fallen and knelt down, wrapped one arm around Charon’s ribcage. There was a rare tree ahead, a great maple that stood like a lightless lighthouse in the sea of golden hills. Eiland headed that way, supporting Charon.
Halfway to the tree, the skies opened up and rain poured down thick as a hundred buckets. By the time they reached the shelter of its branches they were roundly soaked. After the day’s heat Eiland thought it a relief, but Charon shivered hard against his side.
Under the maple’s meager protection, he pulled free of Eiland and almost tumbled straight to the ground. “Hells,” he groaned, struggling free of his pack and letting it fall. He looked half-dead, exhausted and hollowed out. “Hells.”
“Again?” Eiland asked, twining his fingers in the straps over his own shoulders. “So soon?”
“It gets worse if I don’t rest.”
“Then why don’t you—” Eiland cut off again as Charon turned his head and vomited in the grass.
It was quick and sudden, almost perfunctory: once he’d finished, Charon wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and bent down to open up his pack, taking out the thin line of rope. It was stained with blood from the game that he’d caught and skinned.
Charon said, “Come here.”
Eiland looked at the rope then at Charon. He thought of cages closing tighter. “No.”
Charon swallowed and straightened to his full height. Maybe he had a couple of inches on Eiland, but he looked worn down to nothing, just the nub of a scarred, half-starved boy. “Eiland,” he started in a low voice.
“No. No. I won’t. You do what you want, but you can’t make me let you.”
“Eiland, I am not leaving you loose. You can either let me tie you or—”
“Or what?” Eiland spat. “You’ll Curse me?”
Charon’s eyes widened. His fingers went tight on the rope. He almost looked frightened. Eiland couldn’t imagine why. He wasn’t the one who could turn Charon’s entire life inside-out with a word—with three words, actually.
“You might as well.” Eiland threw his shoulders back and dared Charon with his chin. His rain-damp hair fell into his eyes, and he shoved it back violently. “You’ve already taken me away from my family. I sleep on a bed of dirt every night, hundreds of miles from any place I might call home. People won’t look at me when they know I’m with you. They treat me like I’m you. I might as well be you.
“So go on, then,” he said, taking a step forward. Charon stepped back, and Eiland felt his lips curl away from his teeth, some instinctive fury responding to the sign of weakness. “Curse me. I’m tired of waiting, go on and do it.”
Lunging forward, he shoved Charon hard. Charon flailed, grabbing one of Eiland’s wrists briefly before he tipped backward and fell to the ground. Eiland stepped over him, expecting a struggle—
Except Charon didn’t stand back up. His eyes were rolled back in his head. His body arched where he’d fallen. He made a choking noise and tumbled straight into an Agony.
For a long moment, Eiland stood over Charon’s twitching body, watching the rain soak through his short jacket and plaster his shirt to his skin.
Then he turned, walked further under the shelter of the maple tree, and sat down with his back against the trunk. All around him, blackberry brambles and nettles grew thick. The ground teemed with ants and small white worms driven out of the ground by the rain.
From this slightly dryer vantage point, Eiland watched Charon twist against the ground, his limps jerking helplessly.
He could run. He had no money but Eiland made friends everywhere he went. He could run after the cart of strange girls, follow them to Coltown. But no, Charon knew the way back to Summerton. Eiland didn’t know if Charon would actually make good on the threat to Curse Eiland’s mother. At the time he’d looked like he meant it…but just now, Charon had seemed as skittish as a small child.
If pressed to guess, Eiland would say no, that Charon wouldn’t be that vindictive. Yet it would still be a guess, and Eiland could never wager with his mother’s life that way.
Maybe Eiland could beat him back to Summerton and get his parents to leave their home. But he couldn’t risk that Charon would Curse anyone else in his family, either, so everyone would have to leave. His mother, his father, his brothers and sisters and their children. It’d make quite the caravan.
It seemed unlikely, not to mention utterly unfair to uproot his relations and their families just to save himself.
Which left the truth that Eiland had desperately been trying to avoid: this was exactly the chance that his father had instructed him to look for. His hands were free. He could do anything he wanted to Charon. He could stab him or stove his head in with a rock. Several grisly scenarios played out in Eiland’s mind.
It could almost be called a mercy. Charon was in so much pain; the Cursed had no hope of a cure. Perhaps it would be better to end his suffering.
Out in the rain, an especially vicious spasm made Charon arch his back. An awful, guttural noise escaped from his clenched teeth. He lay on his back, his eyes closed, rain splattering on his face and soaking his clothes. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, quickly thinning in the rain; he’d probably bitten his tongue.
Eiland watched him, sitting under the tree with his arms folded around himself. He tried to picture taking the knife out of his bag and going out to—
Everything stopped there. It was as though his mind walked off a cliff into nothingness. He couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing.
Eiland had seen people die before, of course. He’d seen his father lose the battle with fevers, with bloody wounds, and the slow press of age that had taken Granpapa. Eiland had been ten-and-one summers old when Granpapa had fallen and hurt his leg. The fluid of sickness had quickly filled his throat and eyes. Papa had done what he could, his face blank and his hands moving sure and quick, but in the end he had laid down his tools and left the room.
It had been Eiland who sat at Granpapa’s bedside, holding his hand as life trembled out of him. The old man had looked up at Eiland steadily and said, “You have a gift, boy. You may not know it yet, but someday you will. Whatever else happens, never let anyone take that gift from you.”
Eiland sat listening to the rain, and Charon’s cries. He could just keep sitting here and let the Agony happen…but something else rose up in his chest saying no, his father was a healer, and his father before him. Eiland came from a long line of healers, and he had a gift.
It was the will of the gods, the priests had tol
d him, that the Cursed should suffer this way; to even give them aid was a sin. But Eiland could see no gods in this empty plain. There was no Mama, no Papa, no merchants or soldiers or priests. There was only Eiland and someone who needed his help.
Eiland said, “Crickets,” and got back up.
Chapter Eight
Eiland dragged Charon under the paltry cover of the maple tree and quickly gathered up all the dry twigs, grass, and fallen branches he could find.
Once he managed to get a small fire going, he turned back to Charon. The spasms seemed to have subsided. Charon lay still, his face flushed and his muscles slack. His breath rattled in his chest.
Gooey blood stuck to Eiland’s fingers as he eased Charon’s mouth open, peering between his teeth. Two rows of small red wounds swelled on the end of his tongue. He hadn’t bitten it straight through, though, and there wasn’t much Eiland could do anyway. Tongues usually healed on their own.
Taking the small rusty knife from Charon’s pack, he cut off Charon’s shirt. The skin underneath was red and hot, almost feverish despite the damp chill in the air.
Eiland roughly stripped Charon of his pants and examined his naked body. There was no room for embarrassment or shyness in him; his mind had switched to an entirely different place, filled to the brim with all the lessons he’d overheard Papa teaching Marcus and the many hours he’d spent helping Mama grind roots and pluck seeds.
The sores that Charon had shown to Eiland’s father and so desperately treated with salve had not yet appeared, but old scars gouged his skin like long-limbed, pinkish stars. It would be so easy for such a wound to become infected. Eiland had seen many poor souls present his father with simple blisters that festered through neglect. How Charon had managed to avoid that before encountering Papa’s salve, Eiland couldn’t begin to guess.
He leaned down to press one ear against Charon’s bare chest. Chamomile would clear out the rattle in Charon’s breath. Between the scars, Charon’s skin felt dry and irritated. If they were home in Summerton, Eiland would have fetched some beeswax and lavender oil, but out here he would have to find a different answer. He had no idea what to do about the spasms, other than holding down Charon’s shoulders and protecting his head.
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