The Warrior

by Kay Camden

  The hand tightens on my mouth. A glance at her face tells me my silence is a life or death situation for some reason, and even though she is who she is, I’ve got a screaming sense telling me to listen to her. And the pain in my arm—it’s a hell I’ve never known. I clamp my teeth and bite down because someone please get me a chainsaw. It would hurt less to just cut the whole thing off. And those birds. What the hell is she letting them do to my arm?

  She’s shaking her head at me now, pleading with eyes so hypnotizing I see how pointless it is to struggle. It’s Bevan magic, too powerful to fight. This is why we want them all gone. Our knowledge died, theirs survived, and they’re so dangerous they’re unstoppable. This is the end of it all. I’ve failed. My people have lost. And if she and those birds are killing me, it’s a mercy I’d ask for if I could.

  I try to wet my lips but my tongue is too dry and glued in my mouth. Somehow I still taste the chalky dirt from her palm. And something bitter like she’s been picking weeds. It’s the last thing I’ll taste before I return to the earth, and I’ll take it.

  *

  I’m jarred loose, painfully aware and alive. But dreaming for sure because I’m back in the nightmare again. Sloane Bevan stands above me, her hair waving in the breeze except for that one long braid hanging against her chest like a grounding wire. Her face paint is a harsh set of slashes against her skin. And that painted arm runs red with blood dribbling down, cooling a part of me I lost sensation to until now. It’s dripping right into the heart of the too-hot-too-cold that’s overtaken my whole body, and this crawly liquid heat of her blood is deadening that mess of nerves one drop at a time. I catch sight of a blade in her hand. She’s about to end me, and if I could speak I would say, “Le do thoil, do it.” It’d be the first sincere ‘please’ I’ve ever said.

  *

  The gurgling stream is back. Faster now, in real time, not slowed and echoing like it was before. Other sounds begin to register—birds calling mid-flight so the sound bends around me, the wee-ooo of cicadas, the soundtrack of summer. I sit up, my empty stomach a new pain that’s gone off the chart. I scratch at the dried blood splattered on my chest and stomach. There’s a black elastic cotton bandage around my arm. I peek underneath it but can’t see a damn thing so rather than disturb it I leave it alone. My strength will be better used getting something wet to soothe the death that is my throat.

  I’m not alone. I drag my wrist across my eyes to clear them and look around. Sloane Bevan watches me from her side of the water. Something about her gaze makes me uncomfortable. She’s newly clean, her wet hair combed away from her face so it hangs straight down her back. Without bangs she looks like a different girl. One notch down on the goth scale, one notch up on Girl Scout. And there’s no sign of the Celtic warrior paint I saw in my dream. All she’s wearing is her long gray T-shirt, sleeves ripped lengthwise at the shoulders but not from our combat. It’s a fashion statement. Her amulet is back but her tight pants are missing. I eye the black bandage on my arm and suddenly hate it.

  I get up like a stiff old man, my knees popping. Let’s take care of the thirst so I can think straight. I guzzle water that hasn’t yet given me the shits, so points for that. Thank you, water.

  “Don’t fucking look at me,” I say to her when I straighten. I can’t believe how rotten it makes me feel. Damn her and her eyes. She goes back to whatever she’s doing—building something out of leaves in her lap.

  More water. It’s too good. I splash my face, my whole head, my neck. A shaved head dries instantly in the heat so I do it again, carefully avoiding my bad arm and bandage that needs to stay dry. I’d love to lose the pants and get completely in the water but with her right there—ah, screw her. I drop the pants and wade in, my bandaged arm held high. The current curls around me like a friendly pet. This stream is the fountain of youth. No one ever told me we had this on our land. I don’t stay in long because it’s too annoying to hold my arm up. When I emerge, my underwear clings all over my junk. I risk a glance across the stream. It’s true that I’m out here to kill her, but I’m no pervert. She’s busy with something on the ground, her side to me. I have nothing to change into and don’t want to put the pants back on in this heat so I simply sit down.

  It’s weird. The hunger is brutal but everything else … I feel I’ve been made new. Across the stream she stands. As if convinced of my attention, she does something in sign language, stopping abruptly like she just realized it’s not real talking and I’m not a freak like her and can’t understand it. I have a sign I could give her back, but it’s already been used. And when she so easily returned it, it lost all its fun.

  She goes to the water and walks upstream. Then she catches my eye, releasing the green leaf thing she built in her lap. It finds a current and sails right to me, beaching itself beside a large rock. Because I’m stupid, I get up and look inside. It’s a salad. Or something. What looks like blueberries, leafy greens, and mushrooms. “Where’s the dressing?”

  She fucking smiles.

  I catch myself before I smile back. The shock of my near slipup travels my nervous system in the grossest way. What’s going on here isn’t friendly. She’s not Emily. She’s Sloane Needs-To-Die Bevan. And she’s smiling because I’m about to eat a poisonous salad. Her face looks so pure though. So … honest. As I’m trying to figure her out, her smile has gone all shy, and I don’t know what caused the change. I don’t care either. I get an automatic urge to bloody her nose but the image of it turns my empty stomach sour.

  She points to me, then to her bicep. I shrug. What am I going to say? Yes, your evil Bevan magic healed my rotting flesh wound. Go ahead and gloat. We Moores are oh so helpless in your presence.

  Screw that. This isn’t over. Compassion is a weakness, and she’s about to learn this in the hardest way. I find a stick and a rock and start sharpening. It’ll be me with the javelin this time and it won’t be a dream. I feel great. I don’t need food. She sits on a spread of fern leaves and starts eating from a pile of the same stuff she sent over to me. My stomach actually moves inside me, like it knows I’m not giving in and it’s going to jump ship and go eat the food for me.

  My phone dings. A text from my father: Report

  I have to close my eyes and reconstruct what’s happened since I last saw him. They would’ve found her missing the night I busted out of her room. They should know I’ve been gone since then too. I assume the dogs returned to the house with nothing, but my family won’t know it was because they’d been charmed by the girl they were hunting. She must’ve told them not to report me either. I have no idea where my family redirected their search, but I can’t let them know we’re out here. I also can’t be stupid enough to think they don’t know. It’s suspicious this is the first contact they’ve tried to make with me. It’s also strange they haven’t sent a team of men to sweep the woods after the dogs. I wouldn’t expect them to be so easily fooled.

  The only answer is they’re letting the prophecy play itself out like they should. Leaving it all up to me. That’s the angle I need to play. I reply: Can’t say. Don’t try to find us. Everything is under control.

  I have a million missed reminders about classes and pills—shit, my pills. I pat down my pockets and find the case. If I don’t stay on schedule, I’ll pay. I swallow one dry. It practically ricochets around my empty stomach.

  When I look up, Sloane Bevan is watching me. Her bangs are back. For the first time I notice how uneven they are, cut that way on purpose to make a statement like her shirt. What it does to her face—damn it all. I go back to sharpening my stick. Not much later I get up to take a leak and go dizzy from the upward motion. I’ve never gone this long without food. So what if I eat something she’s provided? Maybe she should be gathering food for me. Maybe I should demand more. We should’ve made the Bevans our slaves long ago. Then we could have all their magic we wanted, and we wouldn’t be in this mess. She’s missing when I return,
and the leaf boat full of forest salad is still waiting for me.

  I eat it all. Even the mushrooms that taste like moldy dirt. I consider eating the leaf boat but don’t—it’s too perfect, and I can’t understand how she could weave something to be waterproof long enough to sail the width of a stream without sinking. I turn it over in my hands, trying to make sense of the construction.

  She’s gone so long I start on a second javelin. It’s not as long or straight as the first but it doesn’t matter. It gives me something to do. The weeds and fungus I ate are hitting my bloodstream, making the hunger worse. If anything was poisonous, I’m sure I’d know by now. I should’ve saved one of each thing she gathered to have something to compare and find my own. My underwear has dried so I unwillingly struggle sticky sweat-soaked skin back into my pants, socks, and boots. I find my shirt in a tree and put it on. It’s hotter than hell but makes me feel like myself again. It makes me feel ready.

  It’s time to end this and go home. I wish I had an ax so I could bring back her head. Put it on a pike on the front lawn. And then go get her father’s and mount it right beside her.

  I lose the grip of myself I just regained when she returns. She’s found a metal pail that’s loaded with leafy greens. Clamped under her arm are two dry pieces of a dead tree. What I’m most interested in is the load in her shirt that looks like more food. She has a moth on her shoulder and a little fox on her heels. None of this is weird at all.

  She lifts her arm, dropping the wood to the ground. Sets down her pail. My pail, really, since she pillaged it from my land. I’m tempted to remind her of that, but she takes a step toward me with that food in her shirt, her face so expectant I’m cursing, and I don’t know why. This is not a truce. We’re not getting along here. She’s thinks she’s going to feed me, but she’s wrong. I’m going to kill her. Then I’m going to return home, demanding that everyone acknowledge the power I’ve gained from killing the Bevan destined to end us all.

  Because I don’t respond, she dumps the load in her shirt onto the leaves she lined up on the ground earlier. It’s everything I ate before, multiplied in volume. I need to follow her next time to see where she’s getting all this.

  No. I need to cross the stream right now and kill her. Why is it so hard to convince myself of that? This paralyzing hesitation must mean the timing is wrong, but how could it be?

  She starts building a fire. I rub down my face, harder than I should be able to after taking all those hits to my face. Nothing’s swollen or tender. No split skin. I get out my phone and open the camera to selfie mode. What I see isn’t right. No bruising, no scars. Face is untouched. Even the line on my nose from that psycho heavyweight I fought last week—gone.

  I tug the bandage on my arm down, exposing what should be a sick-ass wound. The skin is pink and new. Sealed with the faintest scar. No sign of the rot and decay that was eating me to the bone.

  “What did you do?” I holler across the water at her because I can’t stop it. She looks at her fox then looks at me, dropping some kindling and standing fast. The leafy green things she had in the pail lie on the ground at her feet, their giant taproots clean and white.

  I rip the bandage all the way off my arm and turn my bicep so she can see.

  She squats down, returning to her task. Totally uninterested.

  This is so daily to her. She has the inherited immortal blood from her father. Does she not know mortal people don’t heal this fast?

  All at once I realize what’s been stewing in my head since the bouts of unconsciousness and near-death experience. My family wanted her magic, but they never got it. But right now, I have her and all the magic that comes with her. Killing her would be a waste of power that could so easily be mine. The trick is convincing her to teach me. A threat on a family member would surely do it, but her family is too far away to make it convenient. But that fox … I wonder how attached she is to that fox.

  Flames dance in her kindling. She’s started a fire the vanilla way. Probably afraid my family will sense if she uses magic out here. She builds firewood around it then goes to the stream to fill the pail. She pauses to look at me; it strips me bare. I know what regret is, but I’ve never felt it like this, never wanted to come clean to a person about some sick thing I’ve thought.

  She did something to me in that room that night that warped me. It’s time to be real to myself and admit why I’m not waiting for her back to turn so I can jab this javelin through her spine. Whole truth is I just can’t imagine killing her anymore. And I’m so ruined that I can’t even find it in me to get vengeance for what she took. It’s like she grabbed a loose string and pulled a whole web of things out of me, all connected, one dependent on the other.

  But guess what, Rex? What you think has never mattered.

  My job is to kill Sloane Bevan so that’s what I’m going to do. It doesn’t matter that what’s made the idea so easy for fifteen years is now missing. Soldiers don’t think about their jobs, they just do them. I take another pill, knowing it will keep me alert until night hits, and that’s when I’ll finish this.

  The sun dips low through the trees while she works on her side of the stream. Evening frogs start up their noise—it’s so annoying I wish I was deaf. I sit on the ground and watch her like the creep I am. She cuts the leafy tops off the taproots with her straight razor. Her silver armband has relocated to her hair as a holder for her ponytail which means no more sheath for that blade. I need to watch where she stashes it. The heat of the day is dying, but I’m still sweating like hell and she’s over there barefoot and cool. Moores are supposed to be the smart ones, not Bevans. I take off my boots and socks and roll my pant legs up to my knees. Her fox follows her to the shore where she washes the taproots and cuts them up on a flat rock. The pieces go into the pail she’s put over the fire. Her moth flies away; minutes later the sky fills with bats.

  No, this is definitely not weird at all.

  Okay, so she’s the first girl I’ve ever met in real life who wasn’t family. But I’ve seen enough TV and movies to know most girls don’t put bats on security and cook meals with crap collected from the woods. I need to get closer if I’m going to do this. I need to earn some trust from not just her, but from the whole forest.

  Chapter 7

  Sloane

  I’ve just about mastered the task of ignoring Rex’s gaze when he stands. Stalker boy didn’t unsettle me, so he’s changing his play. He throws his boots with the laces tied together over his shoulder, grabs his spear, and wades across the stream. Just like that? He’s coming over?

  I walk around the fire to situate it between us. He dumps his boots and stabs his spear into the ground like he’s claiming land. I can’t decide if he’s talking to himself or talking to me until he turns around with a question on his face. He speaks again as if answering it himself. I don’t catch any of it. The forest is too dim and the firelight too erratic. I’m tempted to suggest he use his phone, but I’d have to get close enough to view the screen. And I’m not so sure I want to be able to talk to him anyway.

  He circles the fire. I stand my ground. My companion fox releases whatever he was chewing on at the shore of the stream and watches us, ears pointed high. He looks simply like a pet dog in this light. Friendly, curious, helpful. Only part of that is true, but he’s a good actor for our guest. After Rex determines wrongly that the fox is no immediate threat, he offers me a handshake. I feel a laugh released on my vocal chords and cut it off fast. His smile is an unsheathed blade—fast, deadly, determined. I shift to the balls of my feet just in case because it feels so much like I’m about to be attacked. Before the next round, there is something I’d like to know, so I point to the smoke from the fire then point in the direction of the house. If they’re looking for us, this fire is a bad idea, and I need to put it out.

  It’s okay, he says, now close enough for me to read.

  But does he understand? Hard t
o know from his deadpan expression. I point to the house again then point to the two of us.

  He swats a hand toward the house. They’re not coming.

  That’s good news. He absorbs my expression like it’s a common ground we’ve reached. That we’re alone out here pleases him too, although not for the same reason. The sadist is glad to know I’m all his. People like him can’t change. What am I trying to do here? This is crazy and a waste of everyone’s time.

  I sign, You’re Moore scum and I should really be killing you right now.

  He points to my pile of berries and mushrooms, his face asking, May I?

  If that will get him sitting, yes. So I nod and hold a finger up then point it to the ground.

  He says, What?

  Time for some charades. I pantomime holding a handful of food. Then I sit on the ground and pretend to eat. He looks confused. Really? The Moores’ chosen king is this slow? I point to him, point to the ground.

  Sit? he says.

  I nod. He helps himself and sits. Every time he gets up for more, I stand with him. I don’t like the looks he’s throwing toward the fox. He gobbles my whole hoard then goes to the stream to drink and wash the berry stain from his hands, trusting me enough to turn his back. Saving his life has upset our roles. Now he knows I won’t actively kill him. I hope he knows I’ll kill him in self-defense because that part is still very true.

  Upon his return, he relocates his spear closer to the fire and sits beside it. The fox wanders close, engaging Rex in a stare-off that gives me a tingle at the top of my spine. Sharp teeth and crushing jaw are useful in combat, but Rex is bigger, meaner, and armed with a human-made weapon. This fight would not be fair. I send the fox into the woods, promising him I’ll be fine. I poke the chicory root in the pail of boiling water, trying my best to judge if it’s ready to eat. A meal of something other than berries and mushrooms sounds better than a solstice feast.