by Teresa Rook
I work to exhaustion, until my legs are jelly and I can't feel my hands. I jump to catch the rope it hangs on, and I summon the last of my strength into my arms. I haul myself up until my midsection hangs over it and shimmy to the side so I can pull myself ashore.
I lay on my back in the dirt, eyes closed. I focus on my breathing. The clarity that fighting brings, the place my body goes where my mind can't follow, slowly recedes, leaving the inside of my head clear and sure and grounded. I sigh and close my eyes.
Or not.
As the adrenaline drains away, it reveals the anxiety still lurking below. I thought I'd punched it out, but all I’d really done was boxed it in for a time. The fading high sets me back inside the twisting of my stomach, the pounding that was waiting to crawl back up my throat.
I groan. I don’t do anxiety. I don't know what's wrong.
I lie on the ground all night, awake.
two
My eyelids scrunch tighter in response to a warmth on my face. I crack one eye open and see the sun above me. Surprise helps bring me back to the waking world. I guess I did sleep.
My body isn't happy at the abuse I've heaped on it. It can handle a beating, thanks to many years of long days by the river and sparring with the other young people, but then it needs a bed.
Thanks to the Tilly situation, it had been a few days between sessions. How quickly our bodies will turn on us if we don’t stay vigilant.
The coarse soil, flecked with shards of stone, has nestled into the skin of my hip, my shoulder blades, everywhere there's an angle. And with food so scarce, there are a lot of them. I hoist myself to my feet and absently wipe the grit off my elbows. My limbs and my core both scream at me, the muscles tight and stiff when I try to move, but I don’t regret it. I have to take care of myself.
Part of that is finding something to eat. I make my way slowly towards the storehouse. I’ll feel better in a few hours if I treat my body gently until then, let it stretch back out on its own time.
There's a Chiral wagon parked outside the storehouse when I arrive. The driver slouches, old, faded reins limp in her hands. Beneath a layer of dirt and grime, her dress is bright red, and expensive fabric and a fancy cut. Her eyes slide towards me, and then away. This rich kid is half my age.
Her indifference is mirrored by the muscled Chiral inside the storehouse, who lifts a crate of potatoes despite my father’s waving arms. I watch from the open doorway as my father, ever reasonable, gestures with a strained but polite expression for the muscle-bound man to return the crate to its place along the wall. The man just grunts and ignores him, so my father tries to get in his way. The Chiral shoulders him aside. Not roughly enough to hurt him, but not gently, either. My nostrils flare.
My father may be frail and silent, but I am not. I plant myself at the top of the stairs, arms spread wide across the open doorway. “Welcome to Barnab,” I say in a tone that isn’t very welcoming. “Do you have business here?”
The man barely glances at me. “Let me pass, girl.” He feints climbing the stairs but I hold fast, and he has to stop, one foot on a higher step. Put it back down and he'd be conceding, so he balances awkwardly with our forty-pound crate of potatoes. “I'm collecting on behalf of Salis. This food is ours.”
“You’re early. Come back in two days.”
“What?”
“This food isn't yours for another two days.”
He practically snarls at me. “I’m passing through now. I'm not making a separate trip in two days. Move.”
I catch sight of my father behind him, looking up at me from the sunken storehouse. He shakes his head. Not worth it, he's telling me. Don't fight.
And he's right, as much as it burns me up to admit it. I don't move right away, though. I lock eyes with the Chiral and wait for the first wobble. I’ll let him past, but nothing says I can’t get a small victory first.
The box begins to tip in the Chiral’s arms, and he has to readjust his arms. I smirk and push myself away from the door just as my mother emerges from our cabin. She catches sight of the wagon and does a double-take. I see her lips moving as she makes a beeline for us, no, no, no, no, no, no.
“You're early,” she says to the Chiral, who's now loading the potatoes into the back of the wagon. His head falls backwards and he inhales deeply, as if asking the sky to share its patience.
“Ma’am, this food belongs to Salis.”
“It does not. We've not negotiated a contract.”
He looks at her like she's insane. He speaks slowly. “You signed one in the spring.”
She shakes her head. “That contract was made under different conditions. Nobody anticipated the extent of the summer drought. You can't collect on that. We’ll starve. I'll go with you to Salis to renegotiate with the Wolf.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, the contract is valid. The Wolf cannot be held accountable for fluctuations in weather. I'm taking our share, and a representative will be sent in the spring. You can negotiate a new contract then.”
I bite my tongue, because my mother is the businesswoman, not me. She stands ramrod straight, boring into the Chiral with her accusatory, long-suffering stare. He walks past her, back down to the storehouse for another load.
I can't watch this. The Chirals would have come for their tax soon, and realistically, two days won’t be the difference between life and death. It feels like a control thing, the Chirals showing us our deals are only valid so long as they’re convenient for them. If they want to collect two days early, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. I want to knock the Chiral man flat, but it would do no good.
To get away from the temptation, I go to the barn. The comfort it usually offers is slight due to the worry of a sick mare inside, but it’s still better than watching a Chiral wagon load up with the food we’ve broken our backs to grow and harvest.
Tilly is still breathing, that same laboured inhale-exhale of the past few weeks. Her food trough is half full. I dump it and give her a fresh bucket. She resists when I tug on her halter, so I leave her in the corner and muck out the stall as best I can with her still inside. The smell is bad, worse than it should be from a healthy horse.
A polite knock at the front of the barn makes me turn, rake still in hand. It's the girl from the wagon. Her demeanor has changed. Rather than disinterest, she looks at me with a slight curiosity, a repentant slinking that says she knows she shouldn't be here.
“I came to see the foal,” she says shyly, still just peeking around the barn door.
I bite my lip. “Foal’s not here yet.”
The girl hangs by the entrance, her little hands clinging to the door frame. She looks at me with wide, earnest eyes. I sigh. I recognize that look.
“Come here.” I gesture her over to me, outside Tilly's stall. “This is Tilly. See her belly? The foal’s inside her right now.”
The girl peeks over the side of the stall, eyes wide and mouth gaping. “She's so big.”
I smile, because her back’s to me and she can't see. “You would be, too, if you were carrying around a whole other person in your tummy.”
“How did it get there?”
“Er.” I rub my eye, not really wanting to answer that. “Do you have parents?”
“Of course I have parents,” she says, haughty.
“Maybe be a little nicer when you answer that,” I suggest, a light, teasing admonishment. “Not everyone does.”
“Don't be stupid. Of course they do. Or else how would they be born?”
How privileged is this girl that she’s never encountered an orphan before? She speaks with a sharpness not heard from the children in Barnab. Blunt, a mini city person. “Maybe they had parents once, but they don't anymore. I remember when I didn't have parents.”
She leans her back against the stall, torso pushed out, rolling her shoulders around the wood. “But the silent man and the nervous woman. Those are your parents.”
I nearly laugh at how apt her bare descriptions are. �
��Yes. But they weren't always. I had different parents once. And then I had no parents at all, before my real parents found me.” I get flashes of memory sometimes, mostly scent and feeling: cold. Cold, cold, cold. And an endless desert, the desert outside the farm, the desert that's the rest of the world. But from a different vantage point, lower. In my memories, the ground is closer and the horizon is farther away. And I'm afraid.
“Oh.” She is quiet, contemplative. Then she shrugs and turns back to Tilly. “When will the baby arrive?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Why?”
A new voice interrupts us from the doorway. It snaps the girl’s name. “Bretta.”
She jumps up and runs to the man’s side, his silhouette intimidating against the morning sunlight. I bristle. “I hope you don't think you've come for my animals.”
“No, just my driver.” He glances down at her with a brief fondness, and she clings to his leg. She's ready to go home. I wonder how long they've been on the road.
The two of them turn away without another word, although Bretta cranes her neck for a last glimpse of Tilly. They leave the barn doors wide behind them. I shiver despite the heat.
Maybe the dread was tied to knowing the Chirals would come soon. Now that it’s already come to pass, perhaps I’ll be free of it. I’m already looking forward to the good night’s rest I’ll get come sundown.
#####
I wake up again to the same knot in my stomach. I groan, thoroughly sick of feeling sick. I can’t deal with this. Why do I feel this way?
Maybe it’s because I know what winter holds for us.
I feel guilty as I slink out of bed, as I believe in sharing what we have equally. Better that we each be a little bit hungry than for half of us to be comfortable and the other half dead. But everyone steals a little bit here and there, for their kid’s birthday or to take the edge off some heartbreak. It won’t be the end of the world if I bring something to share with Mhyra, a peace offering.
I go to the barn in the early-morning dark and take the torch hanging inside the door. The flint switch inside it goes click-click-click and eventually spits to life. I check on Tilly while I’m here. Sleeping, swollen. I leave her and go to the hens’ cubbies, where I reach under their warm bodies and feel for three small eggs. I gently pat the last hen, a chubby brown lady who’s beginning to stir. She tilts her head, and her beady eyes follow her egg in my fingers. I seal them all in a pouch on my hip and leave the barn, hanging the still-warm lantern on its hook as I pass.
But in its faint glow, just as I’m shutting the valve to cut off its air and douse its flame, I see prints leading off to the left. I snatch the lantern back from its hook again and try not to breathe while I wait for it to catch. Click-click-click-click-click-click-click. There: tracks, from a wagon, and the unmistakable crescents of horse hooves in a tiny patch of now-caked mud, softened earlier by a spill from the water brought in for the troughs. They lead west along the train tracks, away from central Barnab and opposite Salis. There’s nothing up that way.
Nothing but Mhyra’s.
I hold myself to a jog, knowing it's nearly an hour along the silver tracks before her little cabin is in view. I tell myself there’s no reason to panic. What could the Chiral possibly want from Mhyra? But he must have wanted something, or else he wouldn’t have come this way. And Mhyra’s probably terrified: who’s this at my door? Who has come for us? I picture her crouched in the corner of her cabin, Abadiah cowering behind her. Her big butcher’s knife in hand, lips thin and steady. Measured breaths, body low. Like I taught her.
I pause just outside the door, her last admonishment suddenly playing over in my mind. I don't have space for you, Darga.
I knock urgently, praying I'm waking them up. My gut twists, a noose. I knock again and again. “Mhyra!” I shout through the gaps in the patched-together wood. I try to look through the cracks, but it's too dark. “Mhyra, open up!”
The door opens so swiftly I nearly fall in. Mhyra steps out into the cold night air. She shuts the door immediately and soundlessly behind her. “What?” she hisses.
I'm so glad to see her angry and unharmed that I reflexively put a hand to her cheek, the lightest in Barnab, a vivid contrast to my own brown skin. She knocks it away steps back, still glaring.
“I had a bad feeling,” I say, somewhere between self-deprecating and defensive. I suddenly feel silly. Mhyra narrows her eyes further.
“Feelings come from you. Inside. You don’t get to push them onto me.”
“I know. I just had to check. I had to make sure. Wagon tracks, see?” But there’s nothing to point out. The ground here is too dry for imprints.
The obvious flaw in my logic snaps into place. There’s only one train track that passes Barnab, and the wagon had to come from somewhere. It wasn’t headed here next. It had simply passed by on its way from the wider Carnigan desert.
Wow, Darga. My brain saw what it needed to justify this visit, a difficult task after the way we left things nearly two weeks ago.
“You nearly woke Abadiah.”
“I know. I'm sorry. Just…it's good to see you.”
She crosses her arms and turns her face away. “I told you, Darga, there's no point in continuing this.”
I try to keep my voice from turning petulant. “I still don't understand why you think that. What do you know that I don't?”
“Just trust me, Darga. I know how these things go.”
But the way she sneaks my name into every sentence tells me she doesn't truly want me gone. I move in and place my hands on her arms, just above her elbows. She keeps her face turned away, but she doesn't take another step back, and I can see the red beginning to bloom above her neckline. “Maybe you're a bit jaded,” I say. “Maybe this isn’t that complicated.”
She gives a sigh that's supposed to sound resigned, but it comes out heady. She gently moves a string of dark hair back from my face. I close the space between us and press her back into the night.
three
She invites me in afterwards, like always. Her thatched door swings closed quietly behind me, and we tiptoe past her son sleeping on his mat. She always tells me she won't let me stay the night, that she isn't here to get attached. But she isn’t half as hard as she wishes everyone would think. Her scowl breaks at persistent kindness.
Mhyra says she wants to be discreet around her son, but after the first few times, she’s mostly let it go. Her desire to keep Abadiah insulated from me has given way to a weary sort of gratefulness. More than anything, her kid needs a friend. I understand him in a way Mhyra never will, and while I think she’s glad he at least has someone now, she must work hard to not be bitter that it couldn’t be her.
We sleep together in her bed, her muscled arm draped over my shoulder. I watch her fingers dangle in the moonlight. I would reach forward and kiss their tips chastely, each one, but any movement in these moments is a flight risk. I sleep still as the grave, and the payoff is waking up just at the start of sunrise to her arm still resting on my shoulder. I smile, close my eyes, and drift at the edge of consciousness.
Later, Mhyra stirs beside me and my eyelids flutter and then open, lazy, onto a giant green eyeball not an inch from my face.
“Gah!” I jerk wide awake and accidentally slam back into Mhyra, who instantly bolts upright, one hand a fist, the other covering a sleepy eye to trick the other into focusing faster. Her foot nestles under my leg in what I imagine to be an appeal to safety. I curl my toes in happiness.
“What? What!?” she says.
I make a false swipe for Abadiah, who rocks back on his heels, cackling. “Don't do that, kid.” His laughter is so exuberant it throws his head back, mouth wide open. He laughs with full and sincere enthusiasm.
Mhyra rolls her eyes and mouths, “You okay?” into my ear. I turn and bop the end of her nose with a kiss. She smiles with narrowed eyes and pinches my cheek. My glow fades slightly. I wish she wouldn’t take every opportunity to remind me how young
I am. I rub away the memory of the pinch with my wrist.
“Aby,” Mhyra says, “don't terrorize our guest.”
His face changes completely at the nickname, morphing into a look of shock and horror. His mouth hangs agape, and he forgets to push the blond curls out of his eyes. “Mom!”
“Aby,” I say, pretending to test out the name on my tongue. “Aby. Aby. Aye-bee. Baby Aby.”
His eyebrows draw together to the top of his forehead, and his lips push out in a pout. Mhyra giggles against the back of her hand. The sound makes me want to press her into the mattress.
“We're just teasing, Diah.” She pushes herself out of bed, lifting herself carefully over me until her toes touch the floor. “Help me with breakfast.”
“Here,” I say, taking the satchel from where I stashed it under the bed. I toss it to Abadiah, who catches it with both hands.
His eyes widen and his face lights up. “Eggs!”
“Eggs,” I agree with a smile.
“What’s the occasion?” Mhyra asks.
“No occasion.” I yawn and lock my hands behind my head to watch Mhyra bustle at the counter, a solid woman who knows exactly where she stands at all times. Her thin skirts, nothing like my mother’s, dance around her calves as she moves.
Abadiah obediently takes the pan and spoon she hands him and sets them on the little table next to the cold black hearth in the center of the room. She piles him higher: bread, tomatoes, butter. “I’m not that hungry,” I offer, but she pretends not to hear me. She needs to show off for me. She thinks the performance of plenty will stop me worrying. She forgets everything she has comes through me. That I know its sparseness.