by Kay Camden
Rex is standing across the stream, glaring at me. His buzzed hair blazes gold in a beam of light angling through the trees. I shouldn’t be so relieved to see him alive. He looks the same although more angry—impossible, I know, but there you go. That dirty T-shirt is still wrapped around his wounded arm. His cargo pants hang lower on his waist so I can see the tops of his underwear. Which makes us almost equal—he can see mine swinging in the breeze. He probably eats like a king at home. A couple days of starvation in the woods and he’s withering away and about to lose his pants.
I break eye contact first because I’m not a creepy serial killer like him. I lay a pallet of fern fronds beside my huckleberries and start a hunt for a set of stones I can use for grinding. I find a nice flat one, slightly concave as if weathered just for me. It takes longer to find a perfect pestle. By that time, my underwear are dry enough to slip on behind a tree. My leggings are still soaking wet so I leave them. I reemerge. Rex has finished washing up and has resumed his psycho killer stare from a spot on the ground at the water’s edge. I sit on my fern seat, facing him, and eat a handful of berries. The key to surviving in the forest is to eat nonstop, a lesson he’s obviously never learned. As soon as my eyes meet his, my amulet heats against my chest. The rest of me goes cold.
My amulet knows it’s not just anger he’s shooting across the river at me. Being deaf has taught me to read faces and what I see isn’t good. He’s finally decided there’s no hope for his arm wound. His arm is collateral damage. He is withering away, and the longer he waits to kill me the harder it will be. He leaps up, my recognition of his intention like a spark at his feet. Shirtless, he’s more threatening than when we first met. His muscle tone alone makes our fight unfair. His added height and weight, his hearing—all features that didn’t matter before but now that I’ve spent so much time alone I’m losing my connection to my family. I’m faster than him, I remind myself. Smaller, more balanced, more nimble. Impossible to catch. A choke builds in my throat because does any of that matter against a hate-fueled rage beast? I’m second-guessing everything Bevans stand for, everything my family taught me. Their confidence in me. They selected me to fight Rex and end the Moores, but no one ever mentioned whether I’d be going back home.
What did they see in me? What do I do here that stops the Moores from killing my people? They’ve taught me how to do so many things, but they never told me what to do.
Rex starts pacing along the water, talking to me, or himself, or whatever forest creatures are still on their side or under their power. He’s moving too much for me to catch any words at all, but if it’s spell words I’m running out of time. I scramble on hands and knees toward a puddle of mud by the water and smear my arms and chest. Then I close my eyes and pass a palm down each arm, inscribing the design my dad taught me. I do the same to my chest. With the mud on my fingers, I paint lines across my cheeks and chin. If this battle goes to the woods I will blend, and he won’t just have to catch me—he’ll have to find me first. An awareness scatters through the design, uniting me with the elements and awakening my ancestors within my blood. It reminds me who I am and why I’m here. I’m found again. I’m home.
He’s stopped pacing to stare at me again. Instead of firing anger, now he’s released a fierce curiosity. And clear offense to what my family knows, what his has lost. I curl a finger at him. Come over.
He eyes the mud at my feet, lingering a few breaths before shifting his attention to the wildflowers I’ve gathered, then to my makeshift mortar and pestle. I’m not sure I want to fix his arm anymore. He takes a step toward me but one knee collapses—the sore one. He drops, catching himself with his good arm. Oh? A weak moment I can take advantage of. I take a step; water laps at my toes. I see it all in my head: my rush toward him, my leap knocking him facedown. My arm around his head, clutching it tight against my chest. Then the twist. I’m strong enough to snap his neck. My dad and I practiced the move repeatedly for years with dummies he constructed of wood and soccer balls, with bungee cords to level up the strength of the “neck” until I could snap the wooden braces on the tightest one he could build.
If my fantasy plays out in real life would that be the end? Would the Moores surrender a millennia-old war?
He’s back on his feet, clearly angered by the exhaustion and sickness he’s fighting, along with battling me. My amulet pulses once, a warning, any more and it would burn me. I don’t know what magic he’s using but it’s sensing something.
He sways. Staggers. I see the whites of his eyes, and then he’s crumpled to the ground. Not getting up.
Decision time. I see my dad sign, Warrior, the day Dillon Moore took me away. My dad taught me to fight. To fight or defend myself? I see what my mom has told me many times: Do what you feel is right. My Grandma Sloane: Bevans are warriors, but not all battles are fought with fists.
What do I feel is right? To kill Rex Moore and add another casualty to a war when there’s no guarantee this will be the end? Or to fix a problem I see, a problem I caused, a problem I set off this morning to solve?
I go to my mortar and pestle and grind the honeysuckle and yarrow, struggling to focus and locate the spell words in my head. Which text? The cobalt one. I see the page and the words recalled perfectly from memory. Now I understand why my dad was so dedicated to making me memorize every last word.
With my ground ingredients still contained on my concave stone, I cross the stream, watching Rex for any movement. I kneel beside him, setting the stone on the ground carefully so the fine particles don’t spill.
He’s fallen in the most uncomfortable way, legs twisted, neck bent, but his wounded arm rests right on top. His brain is trying to protect it even when falling into a blackout. I unwrap the T-shirt he’s using as a bandage, holding his arm away from his body and watching his face for the slightest tic. When the shirt falls away, his wound—oh stars. The infection has eaten through healthy tissue and it’s crawling … there’s something inside … little white worms—
I shove backward, dropping his arm. Several worms sprinkle from the wriggling cluster onto the ground. Not worms—he’s neglected the wound so badly it’s become infested with maggots. I scoot farther away, my hand on my throat gripping hard so I don’t retch up all the food I need to stay inside me. Good elements, please help me. I’m in so far over my head.
Deep breaths steady me, so I glance at him again. It triggers a gag so forceful I bend out of reflex and stagger to the nearest tree for support but no, no, no, I can’t throw up. I need the nutrition I consumed. I can’t get dehydrated. I’ll get through this. I’ve sutured many wounds at home. I can handle maggots. I just need to calm down and think because even though they’re repulsive, they aren’t hurting him. They’re eating the dead tissue, which is a good thing. But they have to come out, they just have to. Now, right now. I could sharpen sticks to use as tweezers, but they wouldn’t be sterile. Who cares? The wound is already infected. Is it bad to introduce more germs to a wound that’s already so bad? Probably, but what choice do I have? My worry is getting them all out with such a crude tool. Because I have to get them all.
I turn to face the stream, take in the trees all around, the insects like glitter in the sunlight over the water. This forest is alive with so many things I can use, all I need to do is figure it out.
Poison them. Easy. I mentally flip through my family’s texts for a suitable recipe for poison—but wait. I’d have to pour it into the wound and that would poison him too. There must be a way to draw the maggots out, to charm them somehow. Above me, the hawk circles like he wants to weigh in. If he has any ideas, he needs to tell me because I need help here—
Birds! A beak is better tool than any set of crude tweezers and to certain birds, a maggot is a tasty and nutritious snack. What’s going on in Rex’s arm is a free buffet.
I drop down, planting my palms against earth and calling to the whole forest for the aid of any willing birds
. Two crows immediately swoop down from a half-dead evergreen. They’re pleased to help me, but not the slightest bit interested in Rex. I swallow down all revulsion for the maggots. They’re creatures just like any, filling a role in the elements as meaningful as the crows’ and mine. I straighten Rex’s arm and beckon my helpers, turning my face away, so very grateful but unable to watch.
The smell of sickly flesh hovers in the swampy heat. I press my nose against my upper arm to mask it. I’m afraid if I release Rex’s arm and move away, the crows will be startled and leave. They don’t trust him any more than I do, and they’re doing this for me, not him. A breeze builds, twisting leaves on branches, stirring my hair against my shoulders. I glance at my concave stone holding the crushed flowers for my healing spell, hoping it provides enough shelter for the feather-light ingredients. Air pushes against me and I reach, a second too late. My crushed flowers scatter in the wind.
That was everything I gathered. I know where to find them again but is there time? Rex’s skin radiates heat, his cheeks are reddened with fever. The sweat has darkened his pants from waist to mid-thigh; his face and chest are wet with it. I doubt these symptoms are new. If they’re bad enough to bring a rage beast to the ground, I don’t think he has long to live like this.
Rex’s legs twitch. I lean to look at his face, catch a flutter of eyelid. No, he can’t come around now. I ease his arm into a position I can hold with one hand and clamp my other hand over his mouth. Eyelids flip open then narrow to a squint like he’s lost and trying to make sense of things. He notices me, too groggy to do anything but stare.
Stay down, shut up. I should say it, but I won’t speak, not to him. Never to him. As if figuring it all out at once, he jerks. The crows flap their wings but hold on, and he sees them for the first time. I see a battle light his eyes. I shake my head fiercely, sure he can see the panic in mine, and by some miracle he settles, his eyes going tame. All his breath releases. Surrender. The moment the scared and wounded animal finally takes the piece of food from my hand. The relief of the breakthrough pops the tension inside me. I become aware of the feel of his dry lips against my palm, his clammy hot cheeks against my fingertips. I can’t be helping Rex Moore. What am I doing?
One crow hops onto my shoulder and tilts a cocoa bean eye toward me as if to say, Anything else?
I stroke her neck and she flaps away, her friend following. Rex closes his eyes. Now that his shouting is no longer a threat, I remove my hand from his mouth. He’s as still as a swell in the earth, and I sit and watch him so long I feel the urge to take his pulse but I don’t. I can’t touch him again.
The wound is much easier to look at without the maggots, but holy oak, it’s bad. I’ve never seen rotten raw meat, but I’m sure this is what it looks like. Red streaks in the skin around it are a bad sign. Without the swelling taking up all extra space, I’m sure there’s actual missing tissue and that’s just—I turn my face away, choking down my meager breakfast, trying to breathe—that’s not something I should think about right now.
I try to imagine what my mom would do but first aid requires supplies I don’t have and Rex needs a hospital. I know what my dad would do, but he’d have done it long ago, and I’d be on the road home right now. Aunt Tara—same as my dad but by a more humane method. Uncle Christian—he’d be cracking jokes, unconcerned about the noxious flesh wound. Wait—
I’m suddenly on my feet. Uncle Christian told me something when I was twelve years old I swore to him I’d never repeat. Your dad can’t know I’ve told you this, he said with the agonizing slowness of fingerspelling because he was too lazy to learn good ASL. I decided it had to be a secret from his family that no one else knew. Something he should’ve told my dad but never did.
Your blood heals.
Heals me, I fingerspelled back. My dad had already told me that.
No, I read on his lips. Not only you.
He watched me to make sure I understood. Then he zipped my lips and kissed my forehead, and I never thought of it again.
I stand in the elements, my ancestors’ war paint alive on my skin, syncing to more than just the forest so present around me. Under my feet the earth is cool. Sun warms the crown of my head above. Beyond our day-lit sky spreads the immensity of space, the same stars my ancestors lived and died by. A deeper union stretches back through time and awakens a song in my blood. This is the moment I choose, the moment they predicted. This is why they selected me.
Rex lies corpselike at my feet. Another casualty in a war that’s had so many. His death means nothing but another win for our side, another life to avenge for the other. If no one ends this, it never ends. It continues as long as the stars shine, in as many generations forward as it spans backward, filled with people I sense with me now, so alive in my blood.
If my ancestors appointed me to make this choice, then I’ve already decided. I choose peace.
I slide the straight razor from my armband, open the blade, and slash my palm. Blood oozes free, seeking the easiest path back to the earth. I kneel beside Rex. Blood trickles from my palm to my elbow. Unhurried, its confident flow calms me when all I want to do is scream from the fire of split skin. I aim my palm down, watch the red drips find a home inside his wound. His eyes open at once, but he remains utterly still. I see the surprise register on his face. He’s too feeble to be angry now, and for the first time since I was in his head I see the real Rex Moore. I get a glimpse of how he sees me: a witch like he’s never seen. Earth witch and something else. Something I don’t recognize myself.
His eyes are drawn to the open blade in my hand. I snap it closed and tuck it back in my armband. Threat now gone, he closes his eyes. His head rolls to one side, and just like that he’s out again. And I look up from my work and find a spread of wild geraniums have bloomed around us like they were here all along.
I wait until his breathing slows. Then I check his pockets for weapons. I find a pill case full of two types of homemade pills that I put back. Another pocket contains his phone. This might be an invasion of privacy, but I have to see if he’s been communicating with them, if they know where I am. They’d have to know—no one’s come out here to find him, and surely they’re worried about him.
Careful not to wake him, I press his fingerprint against the sensor and the screen unlocks. Missed calendar entries pop up: reminders to take his pill, for training, Latin class, history class, more pills, more training. His most recent text is from Aaron one week ago. A promise to visit, with no response from Rex. I check recent phone calls—nothing. I hover over his pictures, decide not to snoop because pictures you’d rather not see are very hard to unsee.
What I do see that I wish I could unsee are his contacts. Aaron, Dad, Emily, Jared, Mom. Five contacts. That’s it.
Enough searching for me. I tuck his phone back in his pocket. There are many more to search, but I’ve lost the urge. His face is tipped into the light, revealing a white scar interrupting the stubble on his chin like he’s been chipped there. I wonder if he’ll have a scar on his arm after my work, if he’ll ask me about it … if I’ll have to explain. There’s a strange patch of skin on his good arm—not another infection but an old wound, discolored and textured like a large burn. I suppose it could be a birthmark, but its shape is too precise and it wraps all around his forearm like a cuff.
I retrieve my leggings from my side of the stream. Now dry and cut into pieces with my straight razor they make a perfect compression bandage for his arm. After washing his T-shirt in the stream and hanging it in a tree, I return to my pallet of fern fronds and my huckleberries nearly ruined from the heat. Rex sleeps as his arm heals, and I nurse a leaden heart, imagining reasons why that contact list would be so short, why his text and phone logs would be so sparse, and wishing I could undo the pocket search and erase this new knowledge about Rex Moore.
Chapter 6
Rex
The gurgle of the stream is in my ear
s, so close it sounds inserted. Playing through an earbud so it drowns everything else out. My skin is no longer mine. It’s too hot, too cold. I shiver, but I’m boiling alive. There’s no way to move my legs. My thoughts don’t complete. Nerves have been severed. A shaft of sunlight comes through the trees, too bright. Something’s going on nearby. I work to roll my eyes in that direction. There’s a roar in my head as tear ducts release but there’s nothing there. It’s too dry.
I see Sloane Bevan beside me but it’s a dream, a hallucination. She’s an ancient Celtic warrior, painted face and arms, wild hair, ripped tunic and bare legs and feet. I’ve had this dream before. Soon, an army will come over the hill, their feet pounding earth, javelins raised. I’m always alone though. She has an army behind her, and I’m a lone warrior, facing a solitary death no one will remember. Okay, whole truth: it’s not a dream. It’s a nightmare. Graphic, gutting, and recurring.
She stabs my arm. Wait—what? This is new. Awareness crashes down around me. I feel the hard ground underneath, hear the wind in the trees, the call of birds across the forest. I try to move my legs to get up but they’re unconnected. My eyes burn in the light, trying to focus but they’re too dry to move. A hand comes toward me, goes over my mouth. I blink to wet my damn dry eyes and there’s Sloane Bevan for real and much too close. Smothering me. I curse inside, fighting to get up. Glossy black wings flap inches from my face. Two crows are perched on my arm, staring almost human brown eyes at me. Everything comes back in a rush. My totally wrecked arm. Acid hunger. Fever so bad I’m hallucinating. I need to get a grip because I have to kill Sloane Bevan before this shit gets worse.