by Thea Prieto
It’s too hot here, gasps Tie in Sky’s lap. Sweat stands on her furrowed forehead as she pants.
Too hot, she repeats, her palms searching the ground for cool stones.
The roots aren’t done, says Mark shaking his head. We can’t put out the fire yet.
Tie’s fingers crawl across the ground in front of her, blindly reaching closer to the water bowl. Teller’s stare widens when her nails scratch the clay lip, as water trickles over the dish’s edge. The bowl upends the same moment Mark shouts Stop and the word No pushes out of Teller’s teeth, and Sky can only watch the handful of water cross the cave floor, his mouth drying as the trickle escapes from Teller drilling gaze and gathers against Tie’s body.
Hot, says Tie quieter, her eyes closed tight. What’s happening?
It’s gone, says Mark, watching the water sink between the stones. When he speaks to Sky, Mark’s voice is dangerously slow, his eyes burned open.
We need to move her into the lower cave, says Mark. Pick up her legs. Don’t lift too high.
Sky jumps up to wrap his arms around Tie’s knees, where the damp smell is the strongest. He thought the drinking water spilled against her stomach, but her legs are slippery too. He thought there was just a swallow of water in the bowl, but there’s water between Tie’s thighs as well.
Let me do it, Tie growls as they rotate her onto her back, her hip bones popping, and when Mark lifts Tie into a sitting position, she yelps at such a high pitch that Sky freezes in place. Tie’s brown eyes are open, staring at nothing, her lips sucking air quickly. Teller, who has been whispering again to the globe, tears his eyes away from the spilled water, ejecting words in exhales.
Tie, breathes Teller.
We’ll lift her carefully, a little bit at a time, says Mark to Sky.
Clean, breathes Teller. Water.
We’ll start by getting her to the tunnel, says Mark.
Baby, breathes Teller.
Lift on three. One, two—
Mark.
Be quiet, Teller—
Sky.
Clean water for Baby, answers Sky. I remember, Teller. Don’t worry.
—one, two, three.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stop, groans Tie.
Sky and Mark lower Tie gently to the slanted floor of the tunnel. In the slim and jagged passageway, halfway into the pitch dark of the sleeping chamber, Tie, Mark, and Sky suck the smoky air. Tie’s clenched body is too wide to rotate in the narrow space, so Mark has been carrying her backward through the tunnel, back-stepping in small, guarded shuffles. Their path also drops too sharply into the blackness for Tie to rest flat, so instead of laying her with her head pointed downward, Mark props her into a recline, her shoulder blades resting back against his.
In this position, Mark can support all of Tie’s weight and Sky is relieved. There is only sound, scent, and touch in the tunnel’s darkness, and Tie’s new smell is worrying, her rapid breaths make his chest thump acid, make his muscles braid. When it is safe to release Tie’s legs, Sky scrambles away, forcing his breath to slow while wiping sweat from his grainy eyes. The fast stabbing in his ribs lessens as he pulls air deeply through his nose, and his shivering body calms when he releases air slowly through his mouth. As his blood begins to steady, he hears Tie matching his breath. He reaches out to her knees again and feels her body slowly loosening its grip.
It’s a little better, says Tie after a long inhale and a long exhale.
I can’t stay here, says Mark. The roots will burn, the drinking water needs to be jarred, then the fire—
I’ll check the roots, says Sky, and he trots up the passage before Mark can stop him. Above, in the red firelight of the upper cave, the heat has grown to wringing, and Sky notices at once that Teller has moved. He has dragged himself closer to the fire, his ribs pumping fast from the effort. The hot touch of his skin stings Sky’s fingertips, but he still tugs Teller away from the fire, to where the warmth is drawn upward into the windy main passageway already lit gray with early morning.
You’re going to hurt yourself, says Sky to Teller.
Teller, heat-knocked and staring, does not answer.
Try to rest, says Sky.
Back at the fire, the skins of the roots have already shriveled black on one side, so Sky quickly retrieves the metal pokers to remove the nubs from the heat. The dying fire burns his face and the metal bites his fingers, but he manages to arrange the cooling roots in such a way that they do not touch, the same way Mark arranges them, then uses the pokers to spread and thin the gleaming coals. The black chunks he brushes into the charcoal heap, near the snapped blades and dull claws of glass, and he nudges the pot of boiled wash water and rags into a dark corner. By that time, the drinking water has cooled enough to pour into the glass jars.
A cautious pause. Sky searches Teller’s face—his unseeing eyes, the awful knots in his cheeks—then glances toward Mark and Tie, who are hidden from sight around the bend in the tunnel. Sky has never handled the cooking before and Mark has never trusted him with pouring the water, but even as the dread of failure folds his shoulders, he knows, at that moment, there is no one else to do the work. He begins lining up the jars the way he has seen Mark organize them before, from largest to smallest. The iron pot is heavy in both of Sky’s shaking hands, but the importance of the job, the weight of the task, orders his mind and muscles to a focused point. I am not Nothing, he thinks, I am here and I am able—I will take care of the work for Mark.
The water in the pot sloshes as Sky tips the wobbling load toward the jars, and Sky forces his thin elbows to steady, to pour the water even more gradually toward the pot’s spouted edge. At last, water trickles into the first jar and Sky waits for the last drop to fall before moving onto the next. Six jars he fills to their brims, then half of the seventh, all so painfully slow but without one bit spilt, just like Mark would have done himself, able and Responsible—I poured the water just like Mark.
And when Sky places the pot on the cave’s stone floor with an empty clang, Teller’s stare is no longer blank. Teller watches the jars as they are lidded and gathered, his eyes bright but without praise, aware but not of Sky. His lips move weakly as Sky stows the jars inside the pot.
Water, says Teller.
Sky looks at the half-empty jar, the seventh and smallest.
We already drank tonight’s water, says Sky.
Teller’s mouth continues to rotate, perhaps praying quietly, to his stories, to Moth, to his determination and hope.
But Sky hears the word again from Teller’s mouth. Water.
Mark said—
Water.
Refuse, thinks Sky. Mark would refuse Teller without blinking, because indecisive kings are traitors. Mark would be able to deny Teller, to flatten memories of better days, of Teller well and strong, singing loud over the ocean wind as he repaired the fog net, his voice happy and clear. Refuse and work instead of allowing hope to pry open the emptiness, making room for the Dark Sickness. With his eyes on the ground, Sky feels this new, cold responsibility in the stems of his fingers, following him into the solid dark of the tunnel toward Mark and Tie.
In the oily shadows, Sky hears murmuring.
Won’t let anything happen to you, says Mark.
Mark’s voice—it jerks Sky to a stop. It is an odd voice, unrecognizable. A strange thought pangs through Sky’s mind—Mark is afraid.
I promise I won’t let anything bad happen, says Mark.
Nothing you can do, says Tie.
I can do something?
It’s no use.
Tie.
Terrors cram into the stillness, crowding the childish and begging parts of Sky’s mind. A sharp gloom sets in, and Sky speaks to lop the hungry silence, to fling the Dark Sickness away.
I took care of the roots, he nearly shouts into the tunnel.
More terrible wordlessness.
They’re cooling now, continues Sky, and the water was cool enough to jar—
What, yells Mark, his voice flung in
Sky’s direction. Did you spill any? There should be six and a half jars. If you spilt any—
Didn’t spill, says Sky quickly, shrinking to the ground near Tie’s knees.
It’s all right, says Tie. He did all right.
Mark remains quiet in the dark. When Sky shifts himself near Tie, he can tell she is breathing fast again. The skin of her legs is slick with sweat.
Teller needs water, says Sky, though he already knows this is useless talk. At least the words are not as pointless as Teller Needs Help or Save Teller.
Needs water, repeats Mark in a toxic voice, with a slow and exhausted sigh.
When he finally answers, Tie flinches as though she’s been cut.
What should we do about Teller? asks Mark.
The silence returns, bearing with it a wave of Dark Sickness even heavier and more poisonous than before. Mark’s are dangerous words, the ones kept low and unspoken. They make Sky’s stomach twist. Cold fear rises in Sky’s chest as sour rises in his throat.
What are you talking about? says Tie cautiously.
You know, says Mark.
I don’t.
Fine.
A pause.
He’s suffering, says Mark.
Stop, says Tie.
We have to do something.
I told you, says Tie. There’s nothing you can do.
Another pause.
It’s morning, says Sky with a high, unfamiliar voice. Soon it will be too hot to go to the storeroom.
No one answers. Sky pushes again, desperate for the simple talk of chores.
I can take the roots and water to the storeroom? he asks.
No, says Mark. We’ll finish moving Tie and then I’ll go.
No, moans Tie. Not yet.
But then—
Mark groans with frustration.
—then if Sky’s going, he can’t step anywhere but in the middle of the storeroom. The container’s next to the last water drum, and don’t forget to glass the light or dust will ruin everything, do you understand?
Yes, says Sky, and he’s already on his feet. Before he disappears around the bend in the tunnel, he stops to ask, What do I say to Teller?
Tell him, begins Mark, but his answer dangles.
A breathing quiet.
Tell him to wait until sunset, says Tie at last.
As Sky creeps back into the upper chamber, he is already speaking the words.
Teller, he says, Mark and Tie say you have to wait—
But he discovers Teller has moved again. He has crawled to the cooler part of the cave, his arms locked straight in front of him but with his head and shoulders arched backwards. Teller could be stretching, just waking from a long nap, except the fading firelight shows his stringed muscles flexed near to snapping, his ribs rashed where he has pushed himself along the rough floor of the cave. Although Teller’s fingers are clenched, his fists still peddle ahead, grasping at the pot with its seven jars of water.
From Teller’s strained mouth, a low clicking. The sound of words trapped inside a locked jaw. A tongue speaking without sound.
Teller, tries Sky again. Mark and Tie said—
Teller isn’t listening. His paled knuckles scuttle against the rough side of the pot, so Sky steps forward. He removes the pot from Teller’s reach and begins piling the cooled roots on top of the lidded water jars.
So sorry, whispers Sky when Teller’s clicking grows faster. Teller’s arms jerk tight against his sides when the pot is moved away, his fists curled into his armpits, and Sky quickly ties plastic cords around his own bare feet so he can leave the cave faster, escape the clustered muscles of Teller’s forehead, his wide and pleading eyes. Should not have let the Enemy Ocean climb up the blood in his foot, Sky repeats to himself, should not have, should not, this is not my fault, My fault, must stay strong and responsible and refuse—
Then Teller’s spine flexes a loud groan from his thin chest—the sound of popping bone. Sky’s steps quicken to his shrieking thoughts, his spinning, writhing guilt—Not my fault, do you hear me? Not, should not have slipped, should not, So sorry, I cannot save you, nothing I can do, Nothing—
His stomach twists so painfully he barely notices the early morning heat waving on the stairs or the rising winds slicing the main passageway. The huge, open daylight at the cave entrance blinds him through his eyelids, but soon Sky is feeling his way to the shadows of the tallest tunnel with light-splotched vision, through the slender space that leads to the storeroom.
At the last step into the damp space, Sky tries to ignore the warning ring in his mind. Go in, Mark sent me, I’m allowed to enter—remove the loose brick from the wall to create some light, put a piece of glass in the hole to block out the dust, do not step anywhere but in the middle of the room, do not move too quickly, do not be a baby.
It takes Sky’s strained eyes a moment to adjust to the flash of daylight once he scratches the brick free from the wall and lodges the gap with Mark’s smeared shard of glass. The rectangle of morning light, which has already grown a hotter yellow, falls directly onto the bubbled soil at the far end of the storeroom, brightening small chips of flaking mirror and the crispy white hairs of the summer roots. Slowly, though, everything else emerges as he remembers it from many days ago, the row of water drums, the iron beams supporting the ceiling—the winding lines of Forever writing. The scratched-out pattern is just as looping and intricate as when Sky first saw it, packed with silent words that lightning Sky’s mind. What hides in the past beneath the quiet, he wonders. Perhaps only chore talk, but maybe secrets, answers—a place where memories are stored. Stories. The streak of daylight also leans into the square dots in the clay, the ones Mark taught him were names, that Teller said held vital stories.
Vital, Sky says aloud, and more cramping guilt tightens through him. With the heft of the pot in his arms, the weight of food and water, Vital is for supplies, Vital is for pulses, not for scratches in clay as Teller told him. With Teller’s body attacking itself and Tie’s wet, unsteady legs, Sky wants to hang the word Traitor, not Vital, on his name and the dots of the past.
Just remember me tomorrow, Green used to say.
The memory strikes so suddenly that grief surprises him, cracking his guilt into sorrow, filling his chest like foul water fills a jar.
Just remember me tomorrow, Green used to say whenever he took over someone else’s work, when he declined portions of his food so others could eat, before he went to sleep.
Sky screws up his burning eyes and shakes his head to clear his mind. Responsibility, food and water—not these other responses. Mark once told him, You’ll work better with your mouth shut, and Sky cannot help but wonder at the purpose of writing, the shadows of words after they’re gone. What’s talk when there’s water to swallow and food to chew, and what’s a past when there’s work to fill the emptiness with vitals? There are memories of Green and Green crying in the storeroom, but Teller honors the dead, and food and water are my responsibility now.
To stop his thoughts of Green from surprising him again, Sky taps his fingers loudly against the sides of the water drums, discovering the first is empty, also the second, the third, the drums so awfully empty, all except for the last two at the end, both already halfway depleted. It may or may not be enough to get them through the last days of summer—the complicated tallies on the wall still mean little to Sky. Mark’s count has to be correct, though, it has to be, and the best Sky can do is stow their provisions. He searches out the plastic container for the water and roots, finds the large, lidded bin near the final water drums, half-buried in the ground and hidden underneath a heap of plastic tarps. Once the container is popped he knows he will have to move fast, so no floating dust will get into their clean supplies.
But when he opens the container, Sky realizes how much he has relied on Mark. The container is entirely empty, an open, hungry mouth, and worse, he has no idea if this is normal for this time of summer. He stacks the roots quickly at one end of the container, the roots
looking small and sickly, shrunken kinks of skin rather than dense plant bulbs. And once the roots are inside, the container feels even more empty. He lines the water jars at the other end of the container and decides to leave the pot inside as well, just to fill the lonely space. By the time he confirms that the container is tightly closed, he is moving quicker in the shadows, trying to get away from the empty drums and the quiet, to escape the thick responsibility of painful, vital tasks.
When Sky scratches the glass free and slides the brick back into the wall, the howling daylight he blocks out is a charred orange, the morning heat already scorching. He high-steps back through the main passageway so that his toes don’t burn, scurrying past the stormy cave entrance that huffs like a stoked blaze. He descends quickly into the lower chambers of the cave, the stinging light and driving wind to his back, and when he crawls into the shallow cave he discovers the fire has died completely.
Sky moves in a crouch to be near the cooler stone floor.
Teller? says Sky to the melted darkness, before he halts to listen, to adapt his eyes to the dim.
The sound of irregular breathing. It comes from deeper inside the cave, where the pot of wash water is resting. The heavy, bucket-sized pot contains the boiled ocean water they use for cleaning, the water sterile though too salty to drink, but Teller has dragged himself closer to it anyway. If he wants to drink that salty water, thinks Sky, then Teller’s mind is no longer working.
The swinging handle of the pot has cooled enough to touch, so Sky waddles the large pot around the sound of Teller’s increased panting, into the tunnel toward the others. The handle squeaks loudly enough that Mark calls out to him from the blackness.
Move slower, shouts Mark. You’re going to break it.
Sky draws out his steps, gliding the pot gently.
Why did you bring the wash water? Mark asks when Sky finds a flat ledge to balance the pot.
Teller was—
Teller’s hoarse breath, his dry tongue clicking against his teeth. Clenched and searching fists.
—Teller said Tie would need it, says Sky finally.
Tie, says Mark, we need to move you.