by E. E. Giorgi
The rock snuggled in her fist lowers another notch. She starts panting and suddenly I notice how pale she is. Maybe they’re all that pale—her people, I mean—but this one looks almost ivory. She leans back against the tree and I finally see it. Her right arm. She holds it against her chest, tightly wrapped in a bloodstained cloth.
There’s something wrong about her forearm. It’s too short.
I swallow, suddenly realizing what’s happening.
“Can I help you?” I say, stepping forward.
She yelps and jerks her left hand up again, her fingers clutched around the rock.
I shoot my hands back up in the air. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m just trying to help.”
Her frown relaxes and her gaze strays past me, a sudden look of surprise dawning on her face. I turn. Taeh comes out of the trees and walks toward us, her head low.
The girl stares at the horse with her mouth open, her blue eyes almost popping out of their sockets. I smile, get up, and brush my fingers along Taeh’s neck.
“This is Taeh,” I say, even though I’m not sure the girl understands. “Taeh,” I repeat, rubbing the horse’s nose.
Brows squashed against her hairline, the girl finally drops the rock. Judging by the look on her face, she’s either never seen a horse before or she thought they were magical creatures that never really existed. I try my luck and beckon her to come closer.
“She’s a friend,” I say, rubbing Taeh’s nose. “You can touch her. Feel how soft she is.”
The girl tilts her head. She gets up and slowly peels her back off the tree behind her, her hand gingerly coming forward, itching to touch the horse.
That’s when I make a stupid move. I try to grab her hand to pull her closer, but she anticipates my move and immediately jerks away, screeching. And man, she can screech.
I’m left there standing like an idiot, wondering what happened to her right hand and at the same time refusing to speculate about it. Because deep inside I know what happened to her right hand, and somehow the notion hurts.
I grab Taeh’s reins and hop onto her back. “Remember this spot, Taeh. Remember it well, because we need to come back.”
* * *
She’ll die if I don’t help her. I’ve no idea how she got here or why. The Gaijins never cross the mesa. They know our blood is contaminated with the bug that exterminated most of their people. We’re immune, but they’re not. That’s why they built a barrier between us. Somebody told me they’ve built barriers among themselves, too, that it was the only way they could stop the spread of the bacterium. They banned any human contact within their society, making it some kind of pride, a sign of an advanced civilization, they claim.
So where did the girl come from? And … why?
One thing I know for sure: my people will kill her if they find her. And if they don’t, she’ll die anyway. Her skin felt hot when my fingers brushed the back of her hand. If the blood we saw at the foot of the gorge is hers, she’s lost a lot and she’s harboring an infection. She won’t last long without nanobots or implants to boost her immune system.
I ride across the solar fields and can’t repress the nagging voice in my head.
You can’t be sure the blood is hers.
The cloth she used to wrap her arm in was soaked. No other Mayake was injured.
And her shirt is the same color and texture as the piece of fabric Kael found.
It had to be her.
Why are you doing this, Athel? The droids just destroyed the fishing platforms, the Mayakes’ primary source of food.
Let her die.
No.
I swallow. I looked her in the eyes. And she looked back.
I can’t let her die.
Back at the Tower, I notice with relief that everyone’s out by the river, hard at work to clean up and rebuild. We have chickens and goats, we grow rice and wheat, but most of our protein intake comes from fish. We can’t go a single day without our fishing platforms and cranes.
Akaela and Mom will be busy for a while threading new nets with the other women. As I take a peek down the riverbank, I spot small children running along the shore and jumping in the water, their laughter and playfulness clashing with the dismal view of destruction.
I let Taeh graze in the clearing outside the Tower, catch the elevator up to the fortieth floor, gather all the medications and herbal remedies I can find in our bathroom cabinets, and then dash back down.
As we once again gallop across the solar fields, I spot a cordon of our fittest people heading over to the forest. I swallow, as I should’ve seen it coming. They’re getting lumber for the new fishing platforms and cranes. I press my heels against Taeh with renewed pressure. I have to warn the girl that they’re coming.
We sprint along the edge of the fields and then south toward Beacon Rock. The men seem to be headed slightly west of the rock, but they’ll be out there for days, cutting timber and hauling it back to the bank. Somehow, I’ll have to communicate to the girl to stay hidden and away from all the commotion.
The Gaijin girl is back by the creek, her feet in the water. She jumps when she sees me, but this time she has no energy to react. She looks at me with her big blue eyes and then turns away and dips her right arm in the water. She’s left the bloodied cloth on the grass, and now that her wound is exposed, I see her right hand is missing, severed at the wrist. The lump of her arm looks like an unfinished sentence, the flesh around the wound purple and swollen, riddled with pus. She bends over the water, soaks the dirty wraps, then presses them over her wound, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.
I’m sorry, I think. This is all my fault.
That’s not what I say, though.
The girl tightens the wraps around her wound, pain etched all over her face. I dismount the horse, slide the backpack off my shoulders, and empty its contents. I show her one of the bottles I brought from the Tower.
“Brings down the fever,” I say. I step closer and leave the bottle on the ground, a few feet away from her. “Helps with the pain, too.”
I don’t know whether she understands, so I point to her arm and then again to the bottle. She gives me one of those priceless looks that in my head translates to, “It ain’t gonna give me my hand back, you idiot.”
I didn’t expect her to run for the bottle and gulp down the medicine. So I came prepared. I take two packages out of my backpack, set them on the grass between us, and carefully unwrap them. One is a ball of steamed rice, the other is leftovers from last night’s dinner—a casserole Mom made with nuts, raisins, and goat cheese.
Judging by the look on her face she’s either never heard of a casserole or the infection has done a number on her appetite. I go back to my backpack and retrieve one last item. Hopefully this one will be more convincing. It’s my mom’s old hand prosthesis. Akari made Mom a new one with the hand we stole from a scavenger droid last month, with flexible fingers and a powerful grip. Mayakes never throw away anything, and Mom’s old hand was left in a drawer to catch dust and cobwebs. It’s not fancy, just a silicone cup that attaches to the maimed limb, and a clamp on the other end.
I show it to her and her eyes widen. “I know, it’s kind of rudimentary. It’s temporary, though. Until we can make you a better one.”
She’s really pale now, and I can tell from the shine in her eyes that she’s running a fever. I scoot closer, grab the bottle from the ground and push it in front of her face. Surprisingly, she doesn’t jerk away like she did earlier.
“You have to take this. To fight the infection.”
She doesn’t budge. She doesn’t trust me, either. So I unscrew the cap, raise the bottle above my mouth, and let a few drops fall on my lips. I want her to trust me, but I don’t want to contaminate the bottle. The medicine tastes awful, yet I manage to force a smile onto my face.
“See?” I say. “Your turn, now.”
Man, she’s stubborn. All females are, Mayake or not.
She tilts her head and looks over to Taeh
, grazing by the water.
“You want to pet Taeh again, don’t you?”
I set the bottle on the ground next to her and then get up to fetch Taeh. As I walk the horse over, some color resurfaces on the girl’s cheeks. She beams and tries to get up.
“No,” I say. “Medicine first.” I point to the bottle, then pat Taeh’s rump. “Take the medicine and I’ll teach you how to ride her.”
She looks at the bottle then back at me.
Her blue eyes make me queasy. It’s my fault she lost a hand. I don’t know how or why, but somehow she managed to get caught in the struggle with the droid when the snare went off.
I step closer and crouch down to her level. “I know you’re wondering whether you can trust me or not. And you probably don’t understand a word I’m saying. I don’t know where you came from, and I don’t know what the heck you’re doing here.” I chew the inside of my cheek and wait for a reaction, any kind of reaction. But she just stares at me with eyes that remind me of a sky I’ve never seen, not for as long as the Gaijins’ factory has blown ashes over our land. She stares, and who knows what she’s thinking.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry you lost your hand.” I swallow and force another smile onto my lips. “If it’s any comfort, you chanced on the right place. We’ve all lost something around here. Check this out.” I press underneath my left eye and make it pop out of its socket. She screams and covers her mouth, her blue eyes bulging. And then, as I push my eye back into place, she giggles. To add to the nonsense, I shake my head and let the eye dangle down my cheek. You’d think she’d be grossed out, but instead her chuckle bursts into full laughter.
And that is priceless.
I pop my eye back in and grab mom’s old prosthesis.
“That’s why we have all sorts of gadgets to make up for the stuff we lost.”
I show her the prosthesis, then the medicine bottle. I hold it in front of her face and stare straight into her eyes. “To make you feel better.”
Carefully, I slide the bottle into her left hand. She doesn’t jump when my fingers brush her warm skin. So I dare more and take her hand into mine, close her fingers around the bottle, and then move her hand to her lips.
Except I forgot to uncap the bottle.
She understands anyway, bites the cap off, and downs the whole thing in three gulps. When she’s done, she makes a disgusted face and shoves her face down into the creek, drinking.
“You need to rest now.”
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes on the small packets of food I left on the grass next to my backpack.
“Oh,” I say. “Rest and eat, of course.”
As soon as I push the food closer, she lunges for the ball of rice and scoops it all up in one brisk gesture. At first she looks surprised by the texture, her jaws working a little too dramatically around that rice. After that first mouthful, though, she comes back for more, and in no time she wipes out the whole ball of rice and the casserole leftovers, too.
Not bad for someone who didn’t have an appetite.
When she brings to her mouth the leaf wrappers I used to package the food, I laugh and shake my head. “No. You don’t eat those.” I take them from her and toss them in the stream.
She watches them bob down the creek and her face turns sad again. Her injured arm hangs from her shoulder as though drained of life. Most Mayakes are born without limbs, and the lack of body parts is a sight we’re all accustomed to. But it never occurred to me until now how painful it must be to lose one.
I shift closer and point a finger at the dirty cloth loosely wrapped around her severed wrist. I smell the metallic tang of blood on her. And then something else, an artificial scent I can’t pinpoint, reminds me of the disinfectant newborn mothers use to keep their infants from getting infections.
She watches me unfold the clean gauze I brought from home and doesn’t object when I touch her arm and redo the dressing of her wound.
“These wraps are drenched in antibiotic solution,” I explain as I dress her wound. “It’ll prevent an infection.”
The heat radiating from her body tells me her fever is still high. I think of the stupid snare I built at the gorge and how it was supposed to catch a droid, not a girl from the other side of the mesa. How did this happen? Did she struggle with the scavenger droid that got caught in the trap? Or did she get trapped trying to free the droid?
I tuck the end of the gauze underneath the wraps so it won’t come loose, then press a hand over my chest.
“Athel,” I say, hoping the gesture is more or less universal in its meaning.
She stares at me and blinks. She doesn’t even attempt to repeat my name. Holy Kawa, how do these people communicate?
“Athel,” I repeat, but all I get is a yawn and an attempt to get up. I help her stand up, expecting her to walk over to Taeh and pet her. Instead she stumbles away, shuffling between the trees. It’s sort of funny to watch her, the fever making her sway like a drunkard.
“Where are you going?”
She turns and her eyes say, “Follow me,” or at least that’s what I see, so I pick up my backpack and Mom’s prosthesis, grab Taeh’s reins, and follow the girl whose name I couldn’t coerce from her.
We pass a broken arch that leads to nowhere and a moss-covered slab of cement that slants out of the ground. The terrain under the trees bends up and down like a crinkled piece of metal as we step over the buried ruins of the city of Astraca, until I recognize the old oak tree where I’d seen the girl the first time.
She steps down the incline and falls.
“Hey!” I call, leaping down to help her.
She waves me away and points behind me.
I turn. Propped against the trunk of the old oak is a scratched and dented missile-like object about three feet long. I don’t know how I missed it last night.
The girl doesn’t get up. She braces her injured arm and rocks back and forth. I crouch down and offer a hand but once again she shakes her head and points to the rocket.
The doubt that she’ll make it, despite the medicine I gave her, creeps into my head. I push the thought away, and observe the rocket she’s so adamant to show me.
“What is it?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure she won’t reply. “Looks like a roc—wait a minute.” I roll it around and stare at the pointed head and the fins at the other end. “It is a rocket. I bet it’s the rocket Dottie was talking about—the one she saw flipping between the trees when she came out here.”
“Lilun,” she says, and her voice is so soft I almost miss it.
“Say what?”
“Lilun,” she repeats, looking at the rocket in my hands.
I brush a finger along the dented fins. “Lilun,” I repeat. “Weird word for a rocket.”
She drops her chin and giggles. “Lilun,” she repeats, this time pressing her hand against her chest.
“Oh,” I say and smile back.
Lilun is not the rocket.
Lilun is her name.
Chapter Eleven
Akaela
We thread fishing nets until late in the day, our work lulled by the distant thuds of falling axes. By late evening the men have piled up all the timber needed for the new structures. The first planks have been cut, planed and stained, and now they stand against improvised racks to dry. When darkness falls, we all shuffle back to the Tower, strained and exhausted, but happy that we’ve made so much progress in just one day.
To help improve the general mood, the older women have set up tables in the clearing outside the Tower. They welcome our return with pots of steamed rice, vegetables, and sliced watermelon. On cue, the fiddlers raise their bows and begin to play traditional Mayake songs as we stand in line to get our food. Despite being exhausted and demoralized by the devastating start of the day, the music and the food slowly reenergize us.
Somebody goes so far as to joke that we needed new structures anyway, and that our old ones were doomed to crumble in the wate
r any day. Tahari stands up and raises a glass, praising everyone for how promptly we reacted to the enemy and didn’t waste any time weeping or feeling sorry. Instead, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work, accomplishing so much in barely a day.
People at the tables cheer and raise their glasses. Hennessy throws in some predictable accolade to his son and his powerful weapon for taking down the droid.
And then, out of the blue, an elderly woman stands up, shaking her head, and says, “Everyone’s talking about great weapons and attacks on the Gaijins. In reality what today has taught us is how vulnerable we are. Next time the droids will shoot directly at the Tower. We’ll be gone to ashes without even realizing it.”
She briskly snaps her fingers and flops back on the bench. Without another word, people resume eating, their heavy silence broken only by the clinking of silverware.
Athel shows up at our table in the middle of dinner. I scowl, but before I can demand to know where he’s been, he motions for Wes, Lukas and me to scooch closer, and says, “Guys. Meet me at the barn at midnight. It’s imperative.”
My eyes widen. “Imperative? Is that what you just said? Do you even know what it means?”
He regards me as though I’m missing the utter importance of what he’s saying. “Yes. Midnight.”
Athel has been gone most of the day. While everyone else has been threading, hauling, lumbering, axing, nailing, and shoveling, my brother has the guts to show his face now, fresh and rested, without a word about what he’s been up to all these hours. I’d slap him if my fingers weren’t blistered and my arms sore.
“Right,” I snap. “Obviously, somebody will still be wide awake and full of energy tonight at midnight. I’ve got news for you, Athel. The three of us here”—I sweep my hand across the table to include Lukas and Wes, sitting next to me—“have been working nonstop since six a.m. So now we’re going back to our floors, hit the sack, and sleep like logs.”