In an instant, the whole grotesque burden of the day descended on Malila, the cold, the wet, the fatigue, the frustration, and now the smoke.
“You made a mess of this, old man! We are both going to die because a demented Sisi thinks he can beat the Unity! Why didn’t you kill me the first day?”
Jesse, recovering from another fit of his visceral coughing, wiped his mouth.
“Why indeed, lass? Be careful what you wish for. Dead is for life, I’m told.”
“You should know, Sisi; you must be half dead already!”
“I love you too, lass! But I wouldna be so anxious to end it all. You are tired. You will feel better after a night’s sleep, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, Sisi! How would you have any idea how I feel?” she shrieked at the old man.
Jesse looked up, spearing her with his pallid eyes even in the dim light. He pulled the small pot off the flames, set it aside, and waved a finger under her nose before Malila could consider she might have gone too far.
“How would ah know? How am ah suppose ta be sae damned auld ’n’ ne’er hae bin young, once upon a time? Dae ye think ah wis born auld, ye arrogant boot pup? How much dae ye put inta th’ pot ye eat from, Acting Lieutenant Chiu?”
Malila inched away from his anger, antagonizing him further.
“Who dae ye think is keeping yer sorry bahookie dry richt noo? If it weren’t fur me, ye’d be cold and drookit in some hollow o’ a tree someplace!”
The old man dismissed her with a flourish of his hand when she gave him a bewildered look, turning his back on her as he replaced the pot on the fire.
“If I’m such a burden to you, why don’t you let me go?”
“Humph … You don’t mind being abandoned to die o’ starvation and exposure to the elements? Good to know, provender being at low ebb for the moment.”
“Is that why you tie me up every night? So you can find me when you want to butcher me?” She knew that was unfair, and it pleased her to say it.
“I tie you up because of you being an enemy soldier. I haven’t decide about roasting you … yet.”
“Look, Jesse, I’m a city girl. Even if I could get away, I don’t know how to get home. I’ll make you a deal. Don’t tie me up, and I promise not to try to get away. Let me loose, or let me go! Do one or the other, old man, if you are telling me the truth!”
There was silence for a second, and then the old man turned to look at her.
“Well said, lass. But how do I know you won’t try to kill me?”
“Would you believe me if I promised?”
“Your promises don’t mean much to you. You showed me as much back there. Why should they mean anything to me?”
Malila stopped. Her actions, when she had cut herself free at the hot spring, had not been to escape … at least she had not been sure she could escape. She had dismissed her promise to Jesse before she had made it. Jesse had not, apparently. For the old man, the promise had had actual substance. To him, she had betrayed him. It had never occurred to her. The new realization made her feel empty. She was left with no response for the old man except one. In grim determination, she stood. The Unity procedure was straightforward, even if Jesse did not know the long history of it. Over the weeks, Jesse’s restraint, despite his interest in her, had grown perplexing and, in its way, demeaning.
Malila faced him and waited for him to look up at her. She undressed herself. Jesse did not look away, and it gave Malila hope. When she finished, she remained standing, the cold wind plucking her flesh into tight peaks.
She announced the formulaic declaration in a voice made uncertain by the cold. “Jesse Johnstone, I offer you the freedom of my body and my faithful service in return for your protection and advice.”
In the Unity, the patron-elect would acknowledge her act and words with a session of animated pleasure-sex before announcing his or her decision. Malila waited. She had to admit to herself that the idea of a Sisi as patron was grotesque, but oddly, it no longer filled her with disgust.
“This is how we ask someone to become a patron. I offer myself to you in return for your looking out for my interests … Talk, old man. I’m getting cold!”
Jesse again moved the food off the fire and stood facing her. Malila gratefully took his hand and pressed it between her breasts, moving his dry, warm hand against her softness. Malila stepped closer, feeling warmed by his nearness, and smiled to herself.
The old man had finally shown himself to be no different than her other patrons. It had been difficult for a naive thirteen-year-old Malila to present herself the first time. Defenseless and friendless, the desirability of her body had bought her protection and power, of a sort. After weeks of uncertainty, life was becoming understandable again.
Jesse spoke without moving, low and unhurried. “We aren’t about ta dae this, lass. If ah dinna tak yer words, ah wouldna shame ye by taking yer body. Ah think ye should git dressed.”
Jesse’s words at first made no sense to her. She pressed herself against the old man and was reassured by his growing reaction. Malila touched him, feeling she had at last gotten a purchase on the rocky slope of the old man’s personality.
“Malila Chiu, git dressed!”
He spoke it as a command. It startled her. Cold air circled around her as she stepped back.
“But …”
“No, lass. Git dressed. Please.”
This time is was a plea. In turmoil and confusion, Malila stooped to gather her clothes. Jesse stood watching her, his face impassive and unmoving until she was dressed.
“The question was why I should believe a promise from you, Lieutenant Chiu.”
Malila looked up at the stolid face of the old man. “You should believe me because if I kill you, then I die alone. Everyone I’ve ever known will think I drowned in some river out here. I don’t want to die alone.”
After a few moments of silence, the old man gave her a wooden spoon and a cup of the stew he had been cooking.
“No one should die alone, lass. Mak’ me a promise nay ta escape or ta harm me or yourself, an’ I will take your parole.”
“I promise, Jesse.”
“Enough said, lass. Eat your stew.”
CHAPTER 21
BISON
Malila sensed the ground tremble in a bowel-loosening crescendo. Small stones bounced in the dust at her feet. She looked up into the oncoming terror, bizarrely shaped animals with huge forequarters tapering to slender hips and massive misshapen heads covered in horn and dark fur. They bore down on her with wild eyes and lolling tongues, arcs of spittle flicking across their flanks. Into the chaos, the old man sprang up, flapping a hide and ululating across the prairie in a clear, high voice.
The herd veered off, circled back to a small clearing, and slowed. Malila knelt and aimed at one of the smaller animals. The crack of the pulse rifle echoed back from the trees. The animal dropped to its knees before falling to its side. The herd set off again, charging along the edge of the woods and returning to the wider reaches of the grassland. After she could no longer feel the shuddering throb through her feet, she ran to the kill site, arriving just as an exultant Jesse did.
The old man scooped her up and spun her around. For an instant Malila, transported by her success, enjoyed Jesse’s delight, feeling his strength elevate her face into the warm autumn light. They stopped laughing, and the old man let her slip down and out of his grasp. Malila had enough time to realize how her body stroked along Jesse’s before her feet once more found the ground.
“Wonnersome shooting, lass. I dinna think ah seen better.”
It was only then Malila appreciated just how enormous the beast was, the chest coming almost to her shoulder. Jesse took the pulse rifle from her, put it back into his pack, slipped his long knife out of its sheath, and set to work. He stripped to his waist, rectangular tattoos absurdly co
ntrasting his pale skin. Jesse cut a long gash in the animal’s belly and began pulling armfuls of steaming entrails out of the bloody cavern. Malila was predictably queasy.
They left the carcass, minus tongue, hide, haunch, liver, and shoulder, to the wolves and ravens. Improvising a sledge from the hide and springy saplings cut from along the tree line, they made good time, pulling in tandem until the sun was almost down. Jesse had them bathe when they found a stream and then abandon the sledge. He cut a few long green branches from a tree, and they hiked into the forest along the stream. They camped that night at a bend with a wide sandy beach.
Jesse, using the short knife, cut a generous circle of the raw bison hide, wiped the blade, and flipped it to her so that the handle hit the ground at her knee.
“Strip the bark off those branches, lass. We are going to have a delicacy.”
Malila finished her task in time to watch Jesse finish pegging the bloody hide to the ground and start to scrape it free of flesh and hair with a tool from his kit. She was fascinated, not for the first time, by the delicate handling and deft touch he used on what was, to her, a foul and bloody souvenir.
“Now make a loop out of each branch, the ends together,” he called to her.
Once scraped clean, the old man folded the raw hide into a more or less flat-bottomed cone and fastened the loops of green wood around the edge, folding the edges of the hide under one and then over the other. Pouring some water into the bottom of the cone, he placed it into the fire.
“Why bother with all that if you were just going to burn it, old man?”
“Watch and learn, lass.”
Some of the residual fat rendered and flamed, sending up a spiral of oily smoke. Malila expected the whole thing to incinerate at any moment. Jesse, building the fire up around the cone and adding water, remained unperturbed. When the cone was about half full and the water boiling, he threw in some salt and a handful of weeds that he had harvested along the stream. Then he lowered a portion of the skinned bison tongue into the cone, the water rising perilously close to the rim.
When she did not respond, he added, “Admit it, lass: it’s a neat trick, doncha think? Water boils and keeps the skin too cool to burn. The handles catch the hide between them and keep the shape to hold the water. The hide cooks into shape to keep the handles together. So I got a boiling pot.”
“For an old man, you are such a little kid.”
“One of my many endearing qualities, lass.”
Within minutes, Malila inhaled a savory smell. Jesse hoisted the piece of tongue out and carved the coarse meat crosswise into slices. For the first time in weeks, Malila’s mouth watered. He offered her the first slice, and she grabbed it, the flesh tender, hot, and sweet. The tang of the seasonings gave a relish where hunger had provided appetite. She chewed it briskly before swallowing, waiting for Jesse to offer her another slice.
They spent the evening eating tongue while the old man sliced the haunch and jerked it over the fire. For the first time since her capture, Malila experienced an odd sensation of satisfaction. Together they had brought down a great animal and were sharing in the success of their efforts.
“I want to commend you, lass. You took down a moving buffalo. You are a better shot with that weapon than I could hope to be.”
“Thank you, Jesse. I am, aren’t I?”
He gave her a smile, a genuine smile, and Malila saw the young man Jesse must have been once. Without much thought she asked, “Why do you have all those tattoos?”
“They mean things to people as know how to read them.”
Malila placed three fingers next to her nose and drew them down and away from her. “What do those mean, then?”
Jesse raised a hand to his face, touching the blue stripes absently. “They tell people that I’ve killed three men, righteously.”
“In war, I suppose.”
“No, not in war.”
“Then it was murder.”
“No, lass. Jury saw it as righteous. The way you tell, Lieutenant, for future reference is if I were a murderer, you’d not see me at all. We can’t afford to have murderers around isolated farms with kids for the taking. If we catch one, he dies.”
“What if he gets away?”
“Then we don’t see him at all. If we do, it’s shoot on sight, no jury, thank you. If we find a body, then a jury sits to decide if it was a righteous killing or not. Righteous, it earns you a mark, so that people know you on sight. Killing changes a person, righteous or not.”
“But three?”
“I amn’t going into the tales for your titillation, my young friend, but one was a man who I shot in the back as he was running away.”
“You shot him in the back? You could have let him live!”
“I could have. He left behind the body of my wife and was dragging away my daughter, perhaps I might have mentioned.”
His whisper came to her from a distance she could not see. Malila’s chest tightened spasmodically. She knew no children other than her distantly remembered younger self and her friends. She had no vocabulary for sorrow, no words for regret, pain, or loss. The Unity’s response to loss was rage and scorn. Malila reached out to touch the old man’s hand as it cupped his knee. She had failed to express her feelings, unnamed as they were. Jesse started as she touched him, coming back from years and miles away, pulling his hand away from her. Her sudden flow of tears surprised her.
Jesse pressed one of his red handkerchiefs into her hand as Malila struggled to calm her breathing and distance herself from this unseen quicksand of emotions.
“You must have done something terrible to earn the big tattoos on your back then!” She smiled, handing back the handkerchief, making it a statement.
Jesse explained to her another odd practice of the outlands. He pulled up his tunic near the warmth of the fire to display one and then another of his decorations. The oldest, smallest, and most faded tattoo was his graduation certificate from a secondary school. Even so, it was meticulous, elaborate, signed, and numbered. By outlander standards, Jesse was an accomplished scholar. Degrees in engineering and medicine were duly exposed, admired, and discussed.
“What is a doctor of medicine?” Malila blurted as the last one was explained. This tattoo occupied the upper portion of his right chest, ornate with curlicues and shadings.
“You don’t have any doctors in the Union?” exclaimed Jesse. “Who takes care of the sick?”
“An HP—health care provider. You get a doctorate of government or philosophy but not health care. No one gets a doctorate in that.”
Jesse tapped the blue patch reflectively. “Getting that was painful … and the tattoo wasn’t much fun neither! Family tradition and all.”
“I thought you were raised in a hollow by your parents.”
“I was. Both of my parents were docs, but they were hiding out when the Union attacked us. It wasn’t for years they felt safe enough to come down. If the Union didn’t shoot you, the hunger mobs would find where you holed up. The militias didn’t make it really safe until I was half-grown. My folks both had the teaching gene as well, it seems. By the time I was twelve years old—that’s when we came out of hiding—I started my sophomore year in high school. My sister and her family still live in St. Lou.”
“Why not just put the certificate on paper?” asked Malila, truly fascinated despite herself.
Jesse shrugged. “People skin is cheaper than sheepskin, I ’spect. My parents had all theirs on parchment. After the Meltdown and the Scorching, people had to be a lot more mobile. Big cities like Chicago burned. Detroit was leveled, first by the rebels and then by the Canadians. Anyway, people started inking themselves to prove they had done what they claimed they had. No worries about getting your papers burned or lost and no worries if the city where you went to school was a smoking hole in the ground.”
“So you are marked
for life. You can’t go anywhere without everyone knowing who you are and what you’ve done?”
“Why would I want to, lass?”
The idea was chilling. In the Unity’s crowded streets, Malila felt like a stone in a stream, unremarked amid the citizens sliding around her. The people were supreme in their will but anonymous in their persons.
Jesse offered her another piece of bison tongue on the tip of his long knife. She moved closer to the old man, feeling his warmth as they shared the bounty.
CHAPTER 22
LAKE OF BLOOD
They went to bed with bellies rounded by the meal. Malila slept well … for a few hours.
The dream, when it came, was like all the others: Malila was thigh-deep in warm blood, redolent and thick. The sky, lighting the sea and its empty horizon, was a yellow hue from pole to pole. Malila was walking, had been walking. She sensed the viscous blood clinging to her legs, exhausting her. Each time she stopped, the vista was the same. The oddest thing about the dream was her apathy, watching herself trek through the hideous, shallow sea of blood without a qualm.
A shiver ran through her, and she turned sharply. Immediately behind her now was a stone temple of some ancient and derelict design. Approaching the vast stone steps, she started to climb. Her feet slid at first, but she got her weight over them and mounted. The steps were steep; she could not see what lay at the top. She never could. She climbed until exhaustion overcame her.
She turned again to discover the lake of blood was gone and the stone steps extended down to lose themselves in haze. She turned back to find she was at the pinnacle with no sight of a temple.
Overhead, the yellow sky stretched to the horizon. She reached up a hand, scraping it along a surface like plaster. Once touched, the sky at once began to descend upon her. Only now did terror assault her. Turning, Malila tried to retreat to the invisible sea of blood. She could hear the sky chewing up the stones behind her … and gaining. The nausea of adrenaline surged within her. The final panic awakened her, as it always did.
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