The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  Quinn and Alice were brought back to our house, and after Alice had cried for at least a half hour with her face rather awkwardly buried in my chest, she fell asleep, and I could finally consider lying down beside James. As I laid Alice back on the couch beside Quinn, I pictured stripping out of my sweaty, mud-covered clothes and being engulfed in the steam and blissfully blistering hot water of our shower. I thought so passionately of the smell of the honey and vanilla soap and coconut shampoo. I could almost feel the rush of cold air that would envelop me once I switched the shower off and stepped back into my bedroom, how that cold air would dry the sweat from my glistening clean skin… After I had washed off the grime that had accumulated over the previous twenty-four hours, I would slide on my favorite soft shorts and tank top, and crawl into bed with James. I would lay my head on his strong chest, and listen to his slow, monotonous breaths come in and out as he breathed. Because he was a light sleeper, he would know that I had finally come to bed, and his strong arms would wrap around me, holding me to him as I drifted off to sleep…

  Of course, all of that would have happened, if there had not been a most unwelcome knock on my door. Savannah was at her house, packing up all that she, Ellie, and Oliver needed to bring with them on our journey. I suspected that it was her, and that nagging suspicion gripped me, erasing all of those pleasant ideas of what the rest of my day would be like. But when I opened the door, I found, to my great surprise, that it was not Savannah but Don.

  “Hey.” He said, and that was all. I raised my eyebrows at him, telling him without words that I was expecting some reason for his appearance on my doorstep, but he didn’t answer.

  “Hello, Donald. No, you cannot come in. I have six people here who are fast asleep. But I can come outside.”

  I stepped out of the door and closed it behind me quietly, so as not to wake the others.

  “I can’t stress to you just how much I am on your side in this.” He told me, looking into my eyes intently. “I have been thinking that breaking from Adam is necessary for a long time now. I’m sick of being under his thumb. We were ruled by people like him on Earth, and I don’t think we should have to suffer through that here. Not when we’ve been given this second chance.”

  “I agree. Is that all?”

  “No.” He looked at me, “You do understand, Brynna, that the only way to break from Adam is to beat him, and the only way to beat him is to win this war.”

  “He started this war. Our victory in it will do nothing but start the next phase of it. The first phase is us versus the Old Spirits. The second phase is Adam versus us. Our winning the war will do nothing to stop his hatred of us. It will not beat him. It will merely encourage him to beat us.”

  “No. I don’t think so. He’s enmeshed in this now. He’s emotionally invested, though I don’t know why. It might just be because he hates Tyre so much… I don’t know. But whatever the reason, if we are the ones who kill Tyre and Rich Bachum and Paul, and all of their loyal supporters, we’ll have done what Adam has been unable to do all these thousands of years.”

  “And what? After thousands of years of being king, he will bow down to us? Say that we are now the leaders of Pangaea? We, the lowly Earthean scum?”

  “He won’t be able to think those things anymore.”

  “So, let me get this straight, as they say… You came all the way over here, when you are still visibly woozy from your illness, to convince me that we must do Adam’s bidding in order to win back his good favor?”

  “No. I came here to tell you that we need to end this war, and that by doing so, Adam will, hopefully, leave us alone, and we can finally live in peace here. And I’m also here to tell you that the only way to go about doing that is to talk to the woman you brought in. The one they led you to believe was your…”

  “Thank you. We do not need to discuss that.”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t have to discuss what I almost just said. But we do have to discuss the woman.”

  “She is physically incapable of talking, Don. She is missing half her tongue. When I tried to get any kind of answer out of her, she just stared at me and cried or scowled. Of course, she has every right to cry and scowl after what she has been through. I have not seen such terrible physical mutilation since you and your thugs very cruelly tortured and killed Maura.”

  His head snapped in my direction, and in my peripheral vision, I saw that his eyes were wide.

  “I thought you had forgiven me for that. I thought you had understood that I had lost control, and that…”

  “I understand those things, Don, but I do not accept them. I told you that I would never forgive you nor would I ever forget what you did. But that is not what we are discussing right now. We are discussing this woman, who more than likely knows nothing, but has certainly had a very rough time of it here of late. Therefore, we should not be disturbing her, asking her for answers to our questions that she does not have. And now my thoughts have come full circle, because Maura more than likely knew nothing, but had certainly had a rough time, and you asked her for answers that she did not have.”

  “Brynna, she’s the only chance we have. We have to try.”

  “No, Don, we don’t. What can she possibly tell us that we don’t already know?”

  Savannah came up the stairs at that point, and immediately, she backed up a few steps, seemingly stunned to find Don where she had been least expecting him.

  “Stay away from me. Don’t talk to me.” She told him fiercely.

  “I’m not going to. Think about what I said, Brynna. That woman is the only link we have to answers. Who knows what she has overheard? Who knows what she can tell us? Meet me at the infirmary in three hours. Try to get some sleep.”

  “Don, we have much more important things to be doing if we are going to be leaving tomorrow night!”

  “Yeah, really.” Savannah added, “Bullying answers out of some poor woman who has been through hell? Well, it’s not surprising that you would want to do that, Don, given your history. Just leave her alone. She needs nothing now but rest and peace and quiet. Let her be.”

  “Three hours, Brynna. Trust me, she is going to tell us so much that we need to know. I know she will.”

  “If anyone were to know anything in certainty, it would be me.”

  “Three hours, and that’s an order.”

  “An order? An order?! Now you’re ordering me around? Now you are demanding that I follow after you like I am your scrappy, obedient sidekick?”

  “If you want to think of it that way, that’s your own problem. But you are my second-in-command, so I am your boss, so if you want to keep your job, I recommend you meet me at the infirmary in three hours. Clock’s ticking; go get some sleep.”

  He kept walking, and I looked at Savannah.

  “You don’t honestly think that woman can tell us anything, do you?” She asked.

  “I don’t think that she can physically speak, but I do think that she might know some tidbits about their daily lives, all of which are completely unimportant. Also, may I point out, that if she were a man, Don would not even be thinking of bothering her with questions?”

  “Of course not.”

  Silence fell between us, and as the awkwardness of it prickled my skin and left me feeling a great urge to run away, Savannah looked at me, her face lacking any emotion but a resolute determination to get to the truth.

  “What did she say?”

  Her voice was quiet, filled with dread, and my suspicions came that much closer to being confirmed.

  “Why? Is there something you should tell me before I tell you what she said, Savannah?”

  “Of course not, Brynna, and deep down, you know that. What did Mary Beth say?”

  “Oh, so you do know her. I had suspected that you did. Rather, I had suspected that she knew you. While I appreciated that she was under extreme stress, I knew that her fixation on you was peculiar.”

  “She knows me, because we were neighbors
up north in the mountains. That’s all.”

  I ignored her and continued talking.

  “As you can recall, her eyes were wide, and she was gasping, which was an obvious indication that she was under a great amount of emotional stress, specifically that she was very afraid. You probably did not hear this, as your powers are only just now forming, but her heart was beating at an alarmingly quick rate…”

  “The things they tell us about all of you are terrible, Brynna. She was just afraid that we were…”

  “She was fixated on you. Absolutely unable to look away. And as she looked at you, her heart started beating even more quickly. I know that you remember the look she was giving you, Savannah, because you had to leave the room to escape it. So that suggests that even if what she told me after you left is true, you are not impervious to all of it. It still affects you.”

  “What did she say, Brynna?” She asked me again, and now, she was starting to get upset again. The tears streaming down her pale face were being wiped away quickly by her shaking hands. Her mind was synced perfectly with her heart, and I could feel her fear that I would turn her over to Don again, and what would happen to her children then? What would happen to her? She had not done anything. Really, she hadn’t. Mary Beth was lying because of what had happened…

  “After you left, she said ‘one of them.’” I told her, thinking that perhaps if I just said it, she would stop crying, and my discomfort would dissipate as a result.

  “‘One of them?’” She asked, and after a quick sniffle and another wipe of her tears, she laughed somewhat heartily. “That’s it?”

  “Yes,” I said, perturbed by her sudden change, “That’s it. Is that not bad enough?”

  “No, it’s not, and that’s why it’s funny. She could have said so many other things about what happened between us. When we were getting exiled, she and her family were also up for exile. Tyre said that whichever one of us could argue best why the other family should go would be able to stay. Mary Beth did all the talking for her family and said that we had done all sorts of immoral things, like stealing from the stored crops, praising all of you to children in the camp, trying to convert people to your ways and run away… All sorts of utterly ludicrous things. Tyre didn’t believe her and said she would be exiled for lying. When it was our turn, despite everything Mary Beth had said, Ronnie said we would not say anything against them. But I told the truth. Mary Beth was sleeping with Paul, when she and Paul were both married. Paul got nothing but a slap on the wrist, and Mary Beth got locked up for six weeks. We still got exiled, Ronnie was livid that I had stooped to such a level to save us from those people—he wanted to leave; he was glad we were being exiled—but I had only been thinking of our children. I didn’t want Mary Beth to have told you about that. I wanted to tell you myself. I wanted you to know how guilty I feel about it and how if I had known then what I know now, I would take it back. It was wrong of me to speak up. Phil had been right; if we had just been quiet and let them exile us, we would have beaten them in our own little way.”

  “That is what you were afraid she had told me?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I remained unconvinced that that was all there was to Mary Beth’s proclamation.

  “Was I afraid that she had told you how I heartlessly outed the fact that she was having an adulterous affair, and with a member of their nobility, no less, when that generally meant execution? Did I want you to know that I knowingly almost sent a woman to her death? Of course I was, and of course I didn’t!”

  She turned away from me, crying again.

  “Look at her now. Look at what they’ve done to her. And God only knows what happened to her husband and children. They might be dead, for all I know. If they are, it’s my fault, because if I hadn’t said anything about her and Paul, they would have only been exiled. They would have had a chance. A slight one, but a chance nonetheless.” She paused for a long time, and I narrowed my eyes at her back, trying to read her mind. Once again, I picked up only her guilt-ridden thoughts and after venturing further, I came across her heart that was besieged with regret.

  “If you were going to hear all of this,” She said with a final wipe of her eyes, “I wanted it to be from me.”

  “Is there anything else she can tell me that you don’t want me to know, Savannah?”

  “No. There is nothing she can tell you at all. I promise. They would never let her know anything or even overhear anything. Even Mary Bachum and Paul’s wife and Tyre’s wife don’t know or overhear anything. Mary Beth is just a civilian, and even when she was their prisoner, they wouldn’t have let her overhear anything.”

  “Well, she can at least tell us if there were any discernible landmarks in the forest that could tell us the whereabouts of their camp.”

  “Landmarks in the forest? Like trees?” She asked, and I scowled at her more darkly than I intended. “I’m sorry, but you know it’s true. Plus, how do we even know they’re still there? After the trebestia attacked them, they probably high-tailed it out of there. There’s no place safe in the woods.”

  “Yes, but they might be as incapacitated as we are currently. In fact, I am almost certain that they are. If they feel it is a suitably ethical practice to attack while their opponents are completely incapacitated, then we will think the same.”

  “Did you learn nothing from the story I just told you?”

  “If you are suggesting that we should not ‘stoop to their level,’ as you said earlier, then you are in far greater need of rest than I am. On that note, I am going to try to take a nap for the next two hours and forty-three minutes. If you would like to come hear what Mary Beth has to say, then meet us at the infirmary.”

  “Brynna…” She grasped my wrist before I could get even halfway through the doorway.

  “What?”

  “Don’t let this change our relationship. Please. Things were going well before tonight, and now you’re pushing me away. It can’t all be because Mary Beth said what she said. It has to be because…”

  “Because what? You’ve gotten close to me? There was a certain degree of vulnerability that was exhibited on both our parts last night? Your age and your demeanor and the fact that you have children remind me of my mother, whom I believed for a brief moment was still alive? Do not be such a psychologist for a few minutes. It has nothing to do with any of that. It is just suspicion, and after I rest, it will more than likely dissolve. Well, as long as Mary Beth doesn’t have any more stories to tell. I will see you later.”

  I closed the door before she could respond. Carefully, I maneuvered through the living room full of sleeping children. Violet and Nick were cuddled together on the couch; I knew she was positively delighted that James and I had said he could sleep over. Alice and Quinn could not share a couch because Alice moved around too much, and she would have pushed Quinn right off onto the floor, so he slept on the floor beside her. Alice was lying on her stomach, her hand pressed into Quinn’s chest, and his hand was rested over hers. After pulling the blankets up on them all and opening the window a little more so the breeze could cool the room, I turned the lock on the door and slunk off to check on Penny.

  Violet had said that she had slept for only a couple of hours over the course of the night because she had been afraid.

  “She just kept saying she missed you and James, and that she wouldn’t go to sleep until you got back.” Violet had told me when I had sprung her and Penny from their temporary prison. “I was like, ‘What am I, chopped liver?’ What does that expression mean, anyway?”

  I walked past Violet’s open door and saw that Elijah had left. Begrudgingly, I had allowed him to sleep over, but only after James had insisted that we all stick together, despite all that had occurred. If he had known that Elijah had been the one to push me into the woods, he never would have asked that of me. Elijah had snuck off to be with Janna, no doubt; I had made a point to mention that I had not freed her from the restraints of her hospital bed.

  When I opened Pe
nny’s door, I immediately panicked. She was not burrowed beneath the sunflower-print quilt that Eury had made for her, where I found her every morning when I woke her up for school. She was not playing with her action figures and dolls in the corner, where I often found her on weekend mornings or late at night when she was supposed to be sleeping. My heart skipped several beats, and I could see steadily growing black clouds thumping outwards in the corner of my eyes with each of those beats. Though action was called for, I could not move. Every limb was frozen, every possible movement unfathomable.

  I don’t just want your life now, he had said, Now I want your soul.

  He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Penny was best friends with his son. She had played at their house so many times. Plus, Adam could not hurt a child, even if it was the only way to truly cripple me, to truly have my soul…

  When I felt hands on my shoulders, I jumped and spun around, swinging my fist as hard as I could at the exact height that I would need to reach if I were going to punch him in the head. But it was not Adam, the giant, standing there behind me; it was James, the half-giant, so my punch was too high, at the crown of his head, not in his cheek, where I would have wanted to strike Adam, had it been him behind me. James ducked easily to avoid being struck by me.

  “It’s okay. She’s with me. She came in to sleep in bed with us. That’s all. She’s fine. She’s fine. I promise, she’s fine.”

  This is true of humans as well as us, so you might be familiar with this, but when adrenaline drains from one’s body very quickly, which only occurs when it has found no target on which to wield its power, it leaves a sickening heaviness and undeniable urge to cry or scream. My body collapsed into his, and even though my face was in his chest, I was still covering it with both of my hands as I started crying. Though there were many tears streaming down my face, I bit my lip to stop myself from making a sound. James was apologizing, telling me he should have gotten up and told me so I didn’t panic, and I was shaking my head. He told me not to worry, that no one was going to hurt Penny, he would never let that happen, not ever, and no one was ever going to hurt me, either. Not any of the Old Spirits. Not Adam. I nodded.

  “I know.” I told him, and I raised my head from his chest so I could press my face against his neck. “I know, James.”

  He lifted me up, and his arms trembled because he was still so weak. But despite his weakness, he carried me into the bedroom, and laid me down on his side of the bed, because Penny was lying on mine.

  “I need to take a shower. I’m disgusting. I probably smell like one-part dumpster and one-part sweaty adolescent boy who hasn’t yet discovered deodorant and just left a particularly grueling gym class. I don’t even want to make a clever simile for what I must look like.”

  He laughed at that.

  “You smell like the spring time breeze and the perfume counter at a department store. And your beauty is so divine, I am going blind.”

  I laughed through my tears and swiped them away.

  “How do you always make me laugh, even when my mind is set on being annoyingly hysterical?”

  “It is my gift. It’s my gift to you.” He told me, “No, seriously, it’s your Christmas and birthday gifts from now until the end of time. I hope it doesn’t get old.”

  “It will never get old.”

  “I doubt that. Now, come. I once again will draw you a royal bath, though I will not be joining you in your divine bathing, for I must keep watch over the castle, for I am both your King, though you rule me, and your Knight, always at your command. And you are our Queen and Champion!”

  “That was much better!” I told him through a soft laugh as he lifted me into his arms.

  “Yes, that tea and coffee have re-established my ability to mimic you. I know, I know; contain your joy. It was looking pretty dire there for a while. It was looking like I had lost that ability forever.” He turned on the bath, and I smiled at him.

  “I wish one of them were awake so they could keep watch over the castle.”

  “Why? Does the sight of me so disheveled and sickly, coupled with my mimicry of your brilliant way of speaking arouse you?”

  “Yes, it does. Actually.” I replied instantly, looking at him in the mirror and grinning as I started pulling my shirt off. “But there is nothing to be done about that now. Until we are safe, it would be foolhardy to engage our bodies in any of the various forms of copulation, be it with our hands…” I ran my hand over the front of his boxers, and his entire body tensed, “…our mouths…” Slowly, I licked his neck, and then kissed my way up to his lips, all the while rubbing my hand over the stiffening bulge in his boxers, “or…” I dropped my hips to rub against his, gently at first, but then a little harder.

  “Baby, you keep talking like that… and…”

  “What? What will you do, James?” I asked, and I stood on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “We have advanced hearing and astute instincts, you know. And I have the gift of foresight. If he is going to come here, we will know, one way or another.”

  “You need to sleep. You’re exhausted.”

  “I am not going to sleep until we are safely nestled away in a new place, far from him.”

  “Brynna…” He said, and his voice was very firm. “You need to rest. And when you wake up, you need to eat.”

  “James…” I said, and I kissed him deeply, “You know I appreciate your concern. But shut up, kiss me, and then take off your clothes.”

  “Oh, my God….” He murmured breathlessly. “You’re making it impossible for me to speak firmly to you and tell you that you need to slow down. And sleep. And…”

  “I will. I promise. Just not now. I will as soon as we’re safe. I promise.”

  “What about…”

  “Penny is sound asleep. We must be discreet, of course, but she is in a dream world far from us, and she will be there for a long time.” I told him, “But if you would rather not…” I pulled away from him and walked to the bath, where I turned off the bathwater. All the while, I could feel him watching me, feel his internal temperature spiking, his lust rising, his hands practically tingling to touch me. “I would hate to pressure you. You know that I am practically insatiable, but that gives me no right to…”

  “Come here, Champion Woman!” He rushed to me and pulled me back to him, and I laughed raucously, and then we were both shushing each other, and then we were laughing even harder. He spun me around so my butt was pressed into the sink as my hands furiously reached down and pushed his boxers to the floor.

  “Nothing else.” I tell him, “I’m ready. Just do it.”

  And he did. I was sitting on the counter, my legs spread and wrapped around him, my ankles crossed behind him, and I was leaning back on my elbows. His hands were grasping my hips, pulling me to him while he was simultaneously thrusting into me. We were both exhausted, and he was still sick, but we gave it everything that night. Maybe we knew then. I know that I did. Even if my mind had not accepted the transmission from beyond yet, my heart knew of what was to come. After we had both finished rather gloriously, I found that I was crying. At first, it was just tears falling from my eyes, and my breaths coming in a little more deeply and being expelled a little more quickly. But then, I was whimpering, and pulling him to me, holding onto him with the very last bit of my strength.

  “Hey… What is it, sweetheart?” He asked so gently that I cried a little harder, “Did I hurt you?”

  I shook my head, and I wanted to tighten my hold on him even more, but I did not have the strength to do it.

  “Just don’t leave me, okay?” I managed to whisper through my tears, “You can listen for anything bad happening from in here. Just don’t go, James. Please. Stay with me.”

  Yes. My heart knew.

  “Yeah.” He pulled away from me and kissed my forehead, “Of course, baby. I’ll stay right here with you. Come on.”

  We had both been quick, so the water was still scorching hot, just the way I liked it. I stepped into the bath
tub and lowered myself down, holding onto his hand all the while. He only left to get me water, because it had been so long since I had eaten or drank anything. While he was gone, I washed my hair and scrubbed myself down with the vanilla lavender oil soap. While he was gone, I berated myself internally until my tears stopped out of pure shame. Ever since I had returned from my time in the woods with Adam, I had been uncharacteristically emotional, and it was not alright. In those newly very troubled times, I would regain my former unbreakable composure, my ice that was incapable of being shattered. I would still be a loving girlfriend to James, a loving mother to Penny, and a loving sister-mother to Violet, Quinn, Alice, and Nick, but I would also start being strong again.

  When James returned, he sat beside me, and I drank the water down that he had brought me quickly, not having realized how thirsty I was until I wasn’t thirsty anymore. My body was rested back in the hot water, and I felt so calm suddenly. The tension of the day was sweating out of me, and every muscle in my body was loosening. With the tips of his fingers, he was pushing my hair away from my face, and I was looking at him, smiling slightly, blinking slowly, suddenly so very tired.

  “You’ve gotta slow yourself down, baby.” He said, returning to the topic of my self-inflicted sleep deprivation because he knew that I would more than likely listen now. “I know you’re worried sick. I know there’s a lot to do. Believe me, I know how bad everything is right now. But you’re not a machine, sweetheart.”

  “There’s too much to do, James. We have so much to pack, and so much to plan for.”

  “I know. But you haven’t slept in over a day. You’ve barely been sleeping at all lately. You’re already starting to look sick. You need to sleep now.”

  “I can’t, James.” I said, “It’s all on me now. Don’t you see that? I caused this, and I have to get our people out of this. I couldn’t bear it if he hurt them because of something I did. If anyone is going to bear his punishment for this, it will be me, and…”

  “It will not be you.” He whispered fiercely, his eyes burning into mine, “Do you understand me? I will never let him hurt you. We’re so strong now, baby. We’re stronger than him. And I love you so much. I would die for you. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded, and tears rushed into my eyes but I quickly wiped them away.

  “I don’t want it to come to that.” I told him, trying and failing to keep my voice steady, “Because what if we’re not stronger than him, and I lose you? I can’t. Not now.”

  He reached down into the water, took my hand, and held his lips to it for a long time.

  “No worries, baby.” He said, “Not one. You got it?”

  When I smiled, he smiled, too, and when I nodded, he kissed my hand again.

  “Good. Now, let’s get you to bed.”

  For once, I didn't get defensive. But then, I knew that he was right, and he was merely voicing his concern because he loved me and did not want to see my stubborn refusal to adhere to my body's needs and cries for mercy make me sick the way I had been after I had returned from carrying Adam.

  Over the course of our conversation, heavy drowsiness had settled on me, and my body sensed that that exhaustion was there to stay. With gentle ease, James dressed me, and after I had quickly brushed my hair, he laid me down beside Penny in our bed. When he covered me up, I was beginning to feel an almost abnormally heavy sleep settling in for a stay. Awareness was fleeing, and when I turned my head in the direction I last knew he had been, I murmured that I loved him.

  When his lips pressed to my forehead, a smile spread delicately across my lips, and that gentle warmth enveloped me in such a soothing blanket of comfort and peace, I almost opened my eyes just to see his face.

  I was too tired, though, to actually do that. But I did hear him speak.

  “I love you, too, baby. More than you know. More than you could ever know. And I’m going to take care of you.” He kissed my forehead, and then whispered in my ear, “We are going to get out of this. I promise.”