The Archer: Arrow's Flight Book # 2

by Casey Hays

  “What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”

  “The baby is sick,” Justin replies.

  He slips into his jacket, pulling the hood up tight, and gathers the pans. At the door, he flips the bolt and plods out into the downpour. A streak of lightning flashes across the night followed by thunder just before the door slams closed.

  Ian squats next to me, pressing a finger against Tabitha’s cheek.

  “Whoa! She’s really hot.”

  Diana closes her eyes, rocking more fiercely as the shivering Tabitha moans in her tiny, baby voice.

  “It’s all right, baby,” she croons. “You will be all right soon.”

  Ian lifts one of Tabitha’s eyelids, peers at her eye closely, flashlight in hand. He stands and grips his chin in thought. He seems worried.

  “What?” I stand and face him.

  “Her eyes are cloudy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s sick. Really sick. And probably dehydrated. She needs an I.V.”

  “Ian, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  He squeezes my arm. “Let’s just stick with she’s really sick.”

  He goes to the fire, stokes it, and adds a log while I settle in next to Diana to lend what comfort I can, which isn’t much. She’s silent with Tabitha against her shoulder. She rubs her hand up and down the baby’s back soothingly, and still Tabitha cries—a wheezy, coughing sound.

  Justin bursts through the door, drenched, sopping rainwater all over the floor. He balances three full pans, and he lines them next to the sink.

  “We need to soak her. Bring her over, Diana.” He peels out of his jacket. “Ian, find something to plug the sink.”

  The sink is covered in dirty grime, but we have no options. Ian digs through his pack and brings over a shirt and a thin blanket. He shoves the shirts into the drain, doing his best to plug the hole completely. Then he lines the sink with the blanket to keep Tabitha from touching its filth.

  Justin pours all the water in and takes the baby. Diana presses her hands to her lips and watches, her eyes glazed over in worry.

  The moment Tabitha touches the freezing water, a scream fills the cabin, shrill and unnerving. Neither Max nor Jesse can sleep through it, and soon all of us gather in the alcove around the poor baby who shivers uncontrollably, completely immersed up to her chin. Diana cries, her hands pressed to her chest, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders.

  “We need to keep her in for at least fifteen minutes,” Justin explains, ladling up a handful of water and trickling it over Tabitha’s head. She cries on, the raspy noise growing worse in her lungs. “The fever is the most dangerous part of sickness. We can’t let it spike too high.”

  “It’s too bad we don’t have ice,” Jesse suggests. “That works faster.”

  The others mumble in agreement. We wait, and I am certain I have never endured so long a time in my life. And Tabitha’s quivering cries pierce all of us.

  Ages later, Justin lifts her from the water. Ian brings her blanket, warmed by the fire, and Justin wraps her and places her shivering body into Diana’s grasping arms.

  “Did this help her?” she asks with more pleading in her voice than I’ve ever heard. “Did you make her well?”

  Justin tests Tabitha’s forehead, a forlorn look creasing his brow.

  “The fever is only slightly reduced.”

  I connect with Ian. His blue eyes darken, and his face screws into a tense mask. She is no better. I can sense it in the tension that floats all around. Justin reaches a reassuring hand toward Diana, but she backs out of his reach, clutching Tabitha even closer.

  “What do we do?” Diana’s voice fills with pleading. “What do we do for her now?”

  Justin’s defeated expression unseats my heart. He pinches at his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger. “She needs a doctor.” He and Ian exchange a wary glance before he faces Diana again. “Her best chance is in getting her to Eden. But in this storm, it won’t be possible.”

  “What if one of us goes on to the next town?” Ian suggests, and we all turn. “See if we could find some medicine or something. To bring the fever down.”

  Justin shakes his head. “You won’t find anything.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yeah, Ian, I do. This place is wiped out. It’s been over a century since the Fall. Anything that could help her was scavenged long before now. Eden is the only place that has real help, and you know this.”

  Ian runs a hand through his hair, paces in a wide circle, but he doesn’t argue.

  “The minute the storm lets up, we need to get her to Eden. Ian’s the fastest. He’ll take her ahead of us.”

  “What?” Diana’s straightens, stunned. “Do you mean . . . without me?”

  “Diana, we have no choice.” Justin takes her by the arm. “If she doesn’t get help, she could die. Ian is her only hope.” He solicits me for help. “She weighs nothing. He can move faster with only her.”

  “No!” Diana screams, and she pins herself against the wall. She resembles a trapped animal cornered by a predator and facing the eminence of her own death. “I won’t do it. I will not let you take her without me.”

  My heart aches for her. I’ve seen her like this before, standing on the verge, fearing that her child would be torn from her forever. In her I see the fears of every breeder in my village, each living on the precipice of uncertainty with each birth. Hoping to be counted among the worthy by the vitality of the child they wean. And the women were fierce. They would do anything to one day present a healthy baby to the nursery.

  “Wait.” An answer suddenly comes to me. “Mia knew of a remedy.”

  Diana beseeches me, hope defining her. “What? What is it?”

  “It is a concoction made of yarrow, elder flower, and peppermint leaves. I’ve seen her prepare it before. Crush and mix the dried leaves, boil in water, and drink. And it tremendously reduces a fever.”

  “And you can give this to the baby?” Ian asks.

  “Well, no. It’s not given to babies.” I face him. “But perhaps if Diana drinks it, Tabitha might receive it during feeding.”

  Justin raises his brow. “That could actually work.”

  “One problem,” Jesse interjects. “If we can even find those things, it’s soaking wet out there. We can’t search now, and even if we could, what we find won’t be dry.”

  My heart sinks.

  “Do they have to be dry?” Justin asks. I merely shrug.

  “I’ve only seen them mixed dry. I don’t know. Perhaps not.”

  “Okay then. We’ll have to wait until the rain slows,” Justin concludes. “And then, like Jesse said, hope we can find these ingredients. But Diana, if we can’t, you have to let Ian take her.”

  An enormous tear bubbles up in the corner of Diana’s eye and dribbles down her cheek. She’s trembling fiercely now, her eyes pinned on her baby. Her knees falter, and Justin grasps her elbow to steady her.

  “He’s right,” I reach out, squeeze her arm gently, and I feel all the fight begin to seep out of her. “You have to think of her.”

  “I am thinking of her,” Diana says through gritted teeth. The tears stand in her eyes. “She needs me!”

  Her face pinches in a tortured grimace, and Justin pulls on her elbow, making her look at him.

  “As soon as the rain lets up, we’ll look for the plants. But if that doesn’t work, Ian needs to go.” His voice slips into gentleness. “You have to let him try.”

  Her lip quivers, and she turns away from us and crumples to the dusty floor, rocking her daughter. It’s an overwhelming sorrow, bordering on grief, as if in her mind Tabitha is already dead. I kneel beside her, touch her shoulder lightly. She leans into me, and she sobs.

  Chapter 9

  The rain doesn’t slow all night, and a nauseous feeling invades me by the hour, creeping in like a slowly oozing sore. Tabitha grows worse by morning. She won’t eat, she refuses any attempts
to get her to drink water, and soon, she becomes impassive—simply lying on top of the sleeping bag as still as death itself. Justin tells us she’s lethargic, which is not a good sign. The fever burns on. Her eyelids flutter; she moans in her sleep. And Diana bites her quivering lip and quietly petitions the Moirai to spare her baby, begging Atropos to hold off cutting the thread.

  We don’t want to believe in Fate, but in our despair we must turn to what we know. Tabitha was born in the eleventh month, just as I was. I wonder if this has been the Archer’s plan for her life all along—to cut it short. Or perhaps he’s choosing to aid the Bull in punishing Diana in the harshest manner he can devise.

  As the hours pass, Diana begins to lose hope, and her despair tears at me in gut-wrenching fashion like teeth gnawing on a raw bone. My heart grows angrier by the minute. I curse the Archer under my breath, but I want to scream at him, to lash at him with my fists if I could. Are his threatening arrows of lightening not enough? Must he consort with the Moirai to take Tabitha’s life, too?

  It takes all that I am to keep from bursting into tears, and I can’t hide my anguish. Ian tries to comfort me with a smile that twitches briefly and quickly fades. There is no room for smiles in this cabin, and the expression I cast him in return is full of anxiety.

  I sit near the back wall—alone with my thoughts. Ian joins me, and we sit in silence for the longest time before he takes up my hand in both of his and wraps it securely in their warmth. I lean into him, needing his strength.

  “I’m going to have to take her,” he says quietly. “There’s no point in trying the herbal remedy when she’s not eating. Eden is her only chance. But . . . I don’t know if they can save her.”

  I’m silent, staring at Diana across the way. She has curled her entire body around her daughter protectively—as if this gesture alone might take away all the sickness.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers.

  I shrink closer to him, lay my head against his shoulder. I despise the very thought of him not being here with me for even a single minute of this fearsome journey. But we can’t afford to be selfish.

  “Will you be safe?” I ask. “With the Set-Typhon lurking? What if they attack again?”

  “We’ve seen no sign of any more people. I put miles between us and whoever threw that knife, and with the storms, there’s no way they were able to travel anymore than we were. And this time, I’ll be running. They’ll be hard-pressed to hit a moving target even if they tried again.”

  “How far are we from Eden?”

  “Ten days, if we run a few hours every day. Eight—if the rain stops. And if we don’t run, twice as long.”

  The last bit of my hope drains at his words. Tabitha can’t possibly last a day, let alone eight.

  “I can get there in two if I need to,” he proclaims with calm assurance. I lean back, stunned.

  “How can that be?”

  He shrugs. “I just won’t stop.”

  “But . . . you have to stop. What about sleep?”

  He furrows his blond brows. “You haven’t been paying attention, have you? I can go a few days without sleep.”

  I toss him a skeptical look, but he simply smiles.

  “I can.”

  He pauses a beat, squeezes my hand.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you some things. Things about . . . me. AndEden.” He pauses again, and I perk up. “Do you remember what I said about, you know, why I’m so fast and all the other stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there’s more.” His eyes darken with a sure regret, and my body tenses. “I mean, there were things released in the air during the. Toxins,” he adds as if trying to help me understand more clearly. “But they didn’t make us into this.” He sweeps a hand out indicating his body, and his voice is soft when he adds, “Toxins only kill.”

  I stiffen, a slow, shocked anger seeping in. “So . . . more lies?” My voice is flat and cold.

  “Not really,” he shrugs. “I just . . . I haven’t told you some things. I didn’t see the point.” He sighs and leans his head back against the wall, his eyes falling on Tabitha briefly. “I know I talked big in that titanium cage back in the Pit. I was trying to look brave—for you. But there was a moment when I wasn’t sure we were going to survive.”

  I falter in my anger, and I’m suddenly whisked back to the cage. It’s the morning of my execution. The air is comfortably cool, and Ian is with me. He calls me Sleeping Beauty with a kiss on my cheek and promises that he will do all he can to save us. He never seemed afraid.

  Now he pours out confessions he wouldn’t dare admit then. Not with Death close enough to hear them.

  My heart taps a hurried rhythm, suddenly vexed. What will he tell me now? My breath stills with a cool anticipation, and I try to pull my hand away, but he holds fast.

  He fidgets uncomfortably, avoiding my eyes. I am not certain he will tell me anything more—and I’m afraid that he will. My heart tosses these compelling thoughts back and forth, weighing which is worse. A ball in the hands of my emotions.

  “I want you to know the truth about Eden and about me and everything else, but—" He breaks off suddenly, his eyes darting toward the other boys.

  Justin sits near the fire. Other than his size, he appears unremarkable at the moment as he picks up another log and hoists it into the flames. The firelight accentuates his raven black hair, causing a slight shine over it. He toys with the wood he’s been carving all morning, working his knife into it. He speaks with the others in a quiet tone that mimics the mood which hangs over us all. Jesse, big and strong, lounges against his pack, his hands propped behind his head. He yawns and pulls his blue cap over his eyes, settling in. Max, half-hidden in the shadows, twitches his pocket knife open then closed intermittently, a habit I’ve grown accustomed to seeing. And they are simply—ordinary.

  “What is it, Ian?”

  He sighs heavily, rubs his hand against his cheek, stalling, and I feel a tiny slice of overwhelming angst begin to build up again. Every time I think we’ve finally come to common ground, I find myself forced with the task of dragging yet another secret out of him.

  “We’re all freaks,” he says after a moment. “I’m not totally sure I like it. I mean, sometimes it’s cool, you know? But . . . it’s hard.”

  It’s the first time he’s even hinted at dissatisfaction with this unnatural gift he’s been given. I’m moved by his words. I know how it feels to be something you don’t want to be.

  His expression grows more serious. “In Eden, we have a strict code we are sworn to uphold.” He lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Nobody outside of Eden is supposed to know about what we are.” He pauses, thinking, and says, “If it got out to the other villages what we are capable of, what do you think they would do?”

  It sounds like a rhetorical question, but I remember what Mona did. So I answer.

  “I think word is already out,” I whisper.

  He raises a knowing brow.

  The idea of even one more village other than my own existing is fresh to my thinking. I am so far from home, and I have utterly lost myself in this big and strange world. But the implication that Ian and his friends have to protect themselves from other villages is a harrowing thought. If they are not safe out here in all their strength and might, how much more danger does this world pose for me?

  I do understand secrets, and I do not fault him for keeping his clamped tightly in his grip and away from me. I haven’t forgotten the terror I felt when I first saw the boys on the edge of the woods in my Village. The fear piles up inside me again when I think of the Council. They control the Village. They enslave us. They kill us and blame it on the stars. The list is long. People on the outside looking in may not be so understanding. I cannot imagine they would approve of a pit full of imprisoned males.

  Before Ian, there had never been need to ponder any of this—at least not with other villages in mind. But when he unexpectedly came into my life—not
from our own stock, but as a boy from another place—I had to consider all of it. And when he brought the others, I had a sudden urge to protect my people. To protect my friends.

  But most of all, I wanted to protect Ian from the Council. For people would not be so understanding of a thousand super-humans, either. A village with too much power is daunting indeed.

  Yes. I understand secrets all too well.

  He wedges in, his face close to mine. “I’m not afraid to tell you anything. I’m only afraid of you knowing the things I tell you,” he whispers. I swallow the lump forming in my throat. He shakes his head, his voice low. “Of what kind of danger I might bring on you if I break the Code. I don’t even know what that means exactly, but it is the only reason why I’ve kept so much from you.”

  The tears sting my eyes before I come close to stopping them, and I nod furiously.

  “I never broke the Code—not once in the Pit,” he continues. “I only told you the safe things. To protect both of us. But now, you’re out here and—”

  Diana stirs, and Ian stops, distracted. She checks Tabitha’s fever, her brow furrowing, and lays a cheek against the baby’s head. She sighs and closes her eyes, humming soft and sad. Her pain breaks me, and I bite my quivering lip.

  Ian watches her, too, saying nothing more for the moment. This gives me a chance to gather myself, to muster up courage. I want to be brave. Brave enough to face whatever we must together.

  “And what do you want to tell me?” I ask tentatively.

  His blue eyes dance, concentrating on me.

  “The real reason I’m like this.”

  I nod. He licks his lips.

  “We call it the Serum.” He says this as easily as if he’s told me the sky is blue and the grass is green, and I’m supposed to simply understand.

  “Serum?” I try the unfamiliar term on my tongue.

  “Uh . . . Ian?”

  We both turn. Justin stands at the open door where sunshine floods the floor at his feet. Diana rises up, and a spark of terror—terror somehow impossibly mixed with a gleam of hope— crosses her face as Justin’s eyes fall on her. He nods once.