The Book of Kell

by Amy Briant

  “No need for pretty out here,” she said.

  The tide was receding from the boulders but was not yet at its lowest point. It was frustrating to have so much undrinkable water in view. Water was constantly on my mind, constantly guiding us or limiting us. There were ways to get drinkable water from seawater or even out of kelp, but I was foggy on the details. It rained often enough in the Bay Area that I’d never needed to try those methods.

  “Kell, look!” East cried excitedly, pointing at the boulders where the tide surged, then retreated. Crabs! Several decent-sized crabs could be seen in the cracks and crevasses between the boulders. I was able to snare a few after I found a long stick and added a loop of utility cord. East was loath to carry the live crabs in the pot, shrieking when I went near her with the first one, its fierce-looking pincers slowly flexing.

  “Get that thing away from me! Can’t you kill it?”

  “No, you have to cook them live or they can make you sick. Come on, you’re the Food Carrier. Besides, how am I supposed to catch any more unless you take it?”

  We worked it out. When the pot was full, I stood on the topmost boulder taking a quick visual survey of our surroundings. There was still no man or beast in sight, save the sea birds. No boats on the bay. Something shiny glinted out of the corner of my eye. The sun on the water? No, it had been closer than that, down below me on the sand. There was kelp and driftwood together in a heap at the foot of the rocks. Then the breeze picked up and I saw the gleam again—clear plastic fishing line tangled up with the kelp! With a whoop, I jumped down from boulder to boulder until I reached the sand.

  “What is it?” East asked.

  “Fishing line,” I told her gleefully. It was beyond tangled, all clumped and knotted into a ball nearly the size of my fist, but with patience and care I thought I could extract a useable length of it. Hooks would have been nice, but I could carve those out of wood or maybe find some bits of metal that would do. Even a hard shell could be used as hook material.

  East was digging in the sand where I’d found the fishing line. She uncovered a chunk of driftwood. Underneath that was something plastic. A horseshoe-shaped handle, semi-transparent, maybe four inches long. I think we both thought it would be like her blue glass wine bottle neck, but as she tugged and dug, she found herself pulling out a true buried treasure—a one-gallon water jug with the cap still firmly attached. The jug was empty but in great shape. Say what you will about those Before people—they knew their nonbiodegradable plastics.

  “Good job, East!” I was thrilled at the find. She looked startled at my enthusiasm, but pleased as well. The water jug was a major boost to our scant belongings. Now all we needed was some water to put in it.

  We scouted the bushes and trees on our way back, hoping for a creek. No such luck, but we did find a huckleberry bush heavy with fruit. As I filled up one of the big pockets on my cargo pants, I offered up a silent “thank you” to the universe—I knew how fortunate we were to find all this food. We would eat well, sleep well and be fortified for the trek on the morrow.

  We walked deeper into the woods, but found nothing more. I headed due west thinking it would lead us straight to the tent. So much for shortcuts—a large rock formation blocked our path. It wasn’t a jumble of boulders like the beach, just one enormous chunk of rock, almost as big as Gran’s cabin. The trees overhead, thinning as we neared the shore, provided some protection from the sun. That gave me an idea.

  “Hang on,” I told East. “I want to check something with this rock.”

  “What, the local snake population? Let’s just be safe and go around, all right?”

  I had my head thrown back, still studying the rock.

  “Kell,” she added plaintively, “I’m starting to smell like crab.”

  I laughed at that. “It’ll just take a sec.”

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  I climbed up the rock, keeping an eye out for snakes like I always did, but I was in search of something much more desirable. Water. I was thinking of all the different ways you could get water. Obviously, you find fresh water in streams and lakes and springs. There is pure cold water flowing underground in inaccessible black rivers. There is water in small but drinkable amounts in certain kinds of plants. There’s water in the early morning dew. And sometimes water falls right from the sky.

  That’s what I was after—rainwater. After a storm, you might find a pint or two in depressions in rocks or even the boles of trees. Wait too long and it will be nastily stagnant and growing skeeters or have evaporated altogether, but we were still within a reasonable timeframe, I thought. And if we could find some water, we had the fire to boil and sanitize it.

  On top of the big rock, I was elated to find two hollows full of yesterday’s rainwater. The first was nearly a foot deep, but only about five inches in diameter and tapering toward the bottom.

  “Toss me up your water bottle,” I called to East, who looked bored and grumpy. She brightened, however, when she realized I’d found some water. I filled her bottle as best I could and then tossed it back down to her. I warned her not to drink it yet, which bought me a glare and more vile words muttered not so under her breath.

  My canteen wouldn’t fit in the hole, but there wasn’t much left in it anyhow. I turned my attention to the other spot. This was not so much a hole as a shallow depression, about three feet long, three inches wide and maybe two inches deep. There was a good amount of water there, but it was so shallow and narrow and awkwardly angled, I couldn’t scoop it up with any of our containers.

  “Are you coming down?” East sang out from below.

  “There’s more water here—I just need to figure out how to get it.”

  “I’m coming up,” she announced.

  I went to the side and peered over the edge.

  “No, East, you can’t leave the food—it would only take a second for a dog or something to sneak up and steal it.”

  She looked around nervously. “A dog?”

  “Look, I’ll be down in a minute, as soon as I figure out—oh.”

  It had finally dawned on me how I could transfer the water out of the depression and into the canteen. If I soaked up the water into a piece of fabric, I could then squeeze the water out of the fabric and into the container. I looked down at my T-shirt. It was filthy. Plus, I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  “Hurry up, Kell!” East said with some urgency. Her shirt looked a whole lot cleaner than mine. She looked up at me, shading her eyes with one hand. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Take off your shirt.”

  “Excuse me?” she replied, cocking an eyebrow at me. Looking like she didn’t think I had it in me to form those words into a sentence.

  “I need your shirt,” I said impatiently, although conscious of how my request must have sounded to her. “To soak up the water so I can squeeze it into the canteen.”

  Still she hesitated, peering around like someone might materialize, point a finger at her and shout, “Aha—nudity!”

  “We need the water, East,” I said neutrally.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she replied, sounding dubious, but peeling off her top and throwing it up to me. I caught it and got to work on the water. Which is not to say my brain hadn’t registered the sight of her, standing there in her beige bra, her skin pale, her form slender and yet with the definition of muscles showing in the arms and torso as she tossed the shirt up to me. I added it to my stock of mental images of Elinor Eastman, a girl I hardly knew until a few days before. And did I know her now? Was she being nice to me only because she needed my help to survive? Was she manipulating me, the way I’d seen her manipulate guys at the Settlement? For all our differences, I wondered if she kept her true self locked up inside her just as tightly as I did.

  The shirt idea worked like a charm. I could almost feel Gabriel’s hand on my shoulder, her voice in my head congratulating me. It wasn’t gallons of water, but it was way better than the nothing we’d had before.<
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  I climbed back down to ground level and gave East her clammy T-shirt, doing my best not to gawk. Hiking boots, jeans riding low on her hips, hint of abs, beige bra, tousled head of long, dark brown hair and those uncanny navy blue eyes. I could have stared at her for hours and still not have drunk my fill. Be cool, I told myself as I bent to pick up the crab pot—I knew she hated carrying it—and the eggs.

  “Back to the beach?” she asked.

  I nodded, tongue-tied again, and gestured that I would follow her. I thought she would put her shirt back on, but she merely slung it over her shoulder and started down the path. Dappled sunbeams streamed through the tree limbs, the path winding sometimes through light, sometimes through shadow. I loved looking at the curves and musculature of her bare back, particularly since I could stare unreservedly. She probably knew.

  Everything looked as we had left it back at camp. Even the fire was still faintly burning. After lunch, our bellies full, we rested, alternately dozing on the sand and splashing in the shallows, relaxing in the warm October sun. I took advantage of the time off to do some dry fire training with East. I had no intention of sharing the gun with her, but if something happened to me, she needed to know how to shoot. I drilled “breathe, relax, aim, slack, squeeze” into her head until she seemed to have it down pat. It wasn’t the same as actual target practice, but it would have to do.

  I also drew Gabriel’s map with a stick, showing East how far we’d come (as best as I could guess) and where we were headed. Although a nagging voice in the back of my head begrudged the lost day, I had to admit it was nice just chilling on the beach. It was probably best for East’s sore knee as well, which seemed to be on the mend.

  As night fell, the question of who would sleep where became the elephant at the fire pit, at least in my mind. A part of me wanted to sleep with her so badly, entwined as one in the dark in the little tent that had become our home. Our haven.

  On the other hand, contrary as usual, another part of me absolutely recoiled at the thought. It was one thing to have more or less passed out the night before and then awakened in her arms. It was quite another to cold-bloodedly (so to speak) worm one’s way into an already occupied sleeping bag. I wasn’t used to being touched much, not even in passing. I’d seen the other kids at school routinely hug and grab and pat. Seen the older ones, who were dating—as much as one could “date” within the confines of the Settlement—hold hands and sneak kisses when the adults weren’t looking.

  People went out of their way not to touch me, of course. God forbid they might catch what I was carrying. With first Gabriel and then Gran gone from my daily life, if someone touched me, it was by accident and usually a shock to both of us. I didn’t like casual touching. I wasn’t the touchy-feely type. Other people seemed to think nothing of it when they put their hands on each other, but to me, there was a kind of unspoken information exchanged with touching. Too much information.

  But it was different with East. I found more and more of my time was consumed with thoughts of touching her. Of her touching me. In ways I’d never been touched before. Ways I’d only read about. Or dreamed about.

  My mind, always creative when imagining the worst-case scenario—and then the worster—went blank when I tried to conjure the picture of what might happen once we were both in the sleeping bag together. In the dark. Would there be conversation? Or would only a dumbass expect small talk in such a situation?

  Would we be face-to-face? Who got to turn first? Where did all the hands go?

  Jesus H.

  And it wasn’t like I’d had any indication from East that she wanted to do anything more than sleep in the sleeping bag. She’d acted like it was no big deal for us to share the bag. She’d said it just made sense, so we wouldn’t freeze. And, of course, she was right. But still…

  Sex. Did you just do what you felt? Or were there rules unknown to me? Probably. Rules about who led and who followed? Eyes open or shut? Maybe there were things that should not be done that I didn’t even know about. Or were these things renegotiated each time? I had a feeling I was thinking about this all wrong.

  Jesus, what in the hell was I thinking? Elinor Eastman could not possibly be interested in me. Elinor Eastman could have her pick of anybody she wanted. Guy or girl.

  Except…there wasn’t anybody else to pick. Just me.

  I was in such a lather, such a welter of confusion by the time bedtime rolled around, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep a wink.

  We were in the tent for the night at that point. The squeeze-as-you-go flashlight was our only source of illumination, propped on top of one of East’s hiking boots in the corner. Clouds obscured the moon and the stars, so it was truly a very dark night. Wind rushed and swelled among the trees and bushes, sounding almost like the sea. Despite the breeze in the treetops, the bay itself was oddly still. Like it was thinking.

  I was still dithering like an idiot about the sleeping bag situation, still fully clothed and my mind nowhere near made up. East didn’t seem to notice my distress. Or maybe she did, but didn’t think mentioning it would improve the situation. She sat cross-legged on the unzipped and open sleeping bag, wearing only an oversized T-shirt of Mr. Giovanni’s that had somehow ended up in my pack, her panties and the wool socks of his that she had reclaimed. With one of those lithe, elegant moves so natural to beautiful women, she reached inside her T-shirt, did a shrug and a twist and somehow magically came out with her bra in her hand. She tossed it to the side, where it landed on top of her jeans.

  I did not know where to look. And it was such a small tent. I shut my eyes tightly and took a deep breath, hoping for…I didn’t know what I was hoping for.

  East cleared her throat. I opened my eyes. She was staring right at me.

  “Are you all right, Kell? You don’t look so good.”

  She eased herself into the bag and down onto one elbow as I watched. Her long brown hair fell about her shoulders. I was trying desperately not to stare, but my gaze had a mind of its own. It lingered—just for a moment—on the jut of her breasts under the thin cotton of the T-shirt. Her nipples were hard with the chill of the night.

  “It’s getting cold,” she said with a yawn and a shiver. “You better get in. I won’t look if it bothers you.”

  Great. With all my angst about sleeping together, I hadn’t even thought about the part where I’d be taking off my clothes in front of her.

  No problem. The flashlight chose that moment to flicker and fade to black. I quickly stripped down to my T-shirt, underwear and socks, just like her. It seemed like the decision was making itself. It was too cold to even think about sleeping outside. I felt my way over to the sleeping bag, finding its zippered edge with my outstretched hand in the pitch dark.

  “Climb in and pull the zipper,” East murmured. She sounded half asleep already.

  Pulling the zipper meant pressing my body against hers. She was facing me. I squirmed around so that my back was to her front. I could feel her warm breath on my neck. Her thighs pressed against me. Her breasts. She sighed, then withdrew her arm from the bag and put it across me, gently pulling me closer to her. Into her.

  Even if it was all a lie, even if it was all wrong, it felt good in that moment. I breathed in and then out, and felt myself drift away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rain Rain Go Away

  The rain came sometime in the night. At daylight, it was pouring. No leaks in the tent was the good news, plus the chance to fill all our water containers. The bad news was the further delay. If it had just been me, I would have packed up camp and slogged through the rain for several hours. Sitting around on my butt was never one of my best things. But I knew I’d never get East to walk through the torrential downpour. Short of physically dragging her, I had no choice but to wait it out. I could only hope it would quickly pass.

  East seemed glad enough to turn over and go back to sleep. I was restless. Once I was up, I was up. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go. I busied myself
with sweeping the floor of the tent with a sock and otherwise tidied up the homestead. Which took all of two minutes. I didn’t have to worry about waking East—the noise of the rain covered up any small sounds I was making, plus she was out like a light.

  I borrowed the giant-sized slicker which was almost more trouble than it was worth. Outside, I filled everything that could hold water, even the cooking pot and pan, and drank deeply of cold, clear rainwater. I made a trip to the huckleberry bush we’d found the day before and picked the remaining fruit. With no fire, it looked like that was it for breakfast. Lunch and dinner too, maybe. There were no signs of life in the woods except for a few bright yellow banana slugs oozing along the forest floor. All the red-blooded critters were smart enough to stay out of the rain. Except me.

  The sky above was uniformly gray and overcast. No patches of blue to indicate any clearing. It looked like it might rain forever. The bay was angry, dark white-tipped waves frothing higher on the shoreline of our little beach than I’d seen them before. But our tent was in no danger just inside the tree line, which protected it from the worst of the wind as well. If I’d known we would be staying on the beach for an extended period, I would have moved the fire closer to our tent and constructed some kind of shelter for it. As it was, it was a cold, damp morning with no hope of a cheery blaze to warm us.

  Back inside the tent, I sat on my pack and ate some berries. I wished we had some jerky or crackers or—I forced myself to stop that train of thought as it led nowhere good. Be grateful for fruit and fresh water, I told myself. I glanced at East—still asleep. I wished I had a book to read. We didn’t even have Mr. Giovanni’s little red notebook anymore as that was in the pack we’d lost on the bridge. Although re-reading the list of Aptitudes would probably not have improved my mood.

  The Aptitudes…It surprised me that I felt a tiny tug of obligation to fulfill mine. That was dumb. I didn’t owe those people anything. Gran must have instilled some extra honor and duty in me when I wasn’t looking. I still couldn’t believe they’d made me a Messenger. If I couldn’t find Segundo, I might as well just keep on walking, head to DC and give those assholes a piece of my mind.