He figured his father already knew that and was worried enough. No point in giving voice to another fear.
“I hear you, but it won’t help Crave for you to be hungry,” Free said.
Charming stopped for a moment to absorb the affection that went into that simple statement. He knew that Free had risked a lot to give his family a chance at happiness and the hurt of losing Carnal cut really deep. As they walked back toward the house, he said, “People were glad to see you out.”
“Seemed to be.”
“Maybe you’re ready to poke your head out more often.”
Free shot Charming a cautious smile. “Yeah. Maybe.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
No one slept in the Extant’s house that night. Mother, father and youngest son each lay awake lost in worry about Crave’s state of mind, where he might be, and whether or not he was suffering. Was it a mental relapse? Because who would start out on foot to descend the mountain, cross the fertile part of the valley below, and think they were going to survive walking across the desert? Only a crazy man.
But an even more profound question was, why?
An hour before sunrise, from two stories above the kitchen, Charming heard Serene rattling pans and knew it meant that she was anxious about Crave. He got up, tended to matters of toilet, put his clothes on, and headed downstairs.
The kitchen was warm from stoking the wood burning stove and Serene had lit twenty candles, some on the table, some on the counter, some in sconces, so that she could see what she was doing and, no doubt, to brighten her mood as well as the room. She was sliding a tray of biscuits into the oven when Charming entered.
“Morning.”
She looked up. “I’m making extra bacon and biscuits for you to take to Crave. He’ll be hungry.” Charming sat. “You might as well have a proper breakfast. It’s still half an hour before first light.”
He nodded. “Sure.”
“I have some eggs.”
“You do?”
She showed him five beautiful brown eggs. “Two for you. Two for your father. One for me.”
“Let’s eat them all before he’s up and not tell him you had any.”
“I heard that,” Free said as he stomped in and took his seat at the end of the table. Of course Charming had heard him coming before he proposed conspiracy, but he hoped to reassure them that all would be well by interjecting a little humor.
“Too late,” Charming told Serene. “He knows about the eggs.”
She smiled at Charming. “How do you want them?”
“You got potatoes?”
‘Yes,” she answered.
“Over easy, over potatoes with bacon crumbles. Lots of bacon crumbles.”
Free looked at Serene. “You gonna go to all that trouble for him?”
She smiled as she placed an iron skillet on top of the stove and shook her head. Of course she was going to that trouble for him. Having lost one of her three sons she knew there was nothing more precious than a child. No matter how big he was. And she couldn’t imagine anything she wouldn’t do for him.
“You got it good,” Free said to Charming. “You know that?” Charming grinned. “How are you ever going to find a mate who cooks like your mother?”
He was reminded that Dandy had asked him the same thing. “Not possible. I guess I’ll just have to live here forever.”
“Okay with me,” Serene said, welcoming the distraction of lighthearted banter.
It had taken Crave twenty-four hours to cover fifty-four miles. Before the fields, still green from late spring rain, gave way to sand, he’d stopped by a creek and filled his four waterskins. They’d be heavy to carry, but he reasoned that he’d stand a better chance of surviving by going slower with water than going fast without. It wasn’t scientific, just instinct.
He also gave himself permission to sleep for six hours. Knowing that it would be the last sleep he’d get before reaching the other side, if he reached the other side, he left the bedroll behind except for the lightest blanket. He planned to use it like a tent pulled over his head to cover himself. Without it the sun would try to fry his skin, peel it away from the flesh underneath, and then cook what was left.
He figured that, if he could keep moving, he would make it to Dandy by the next morning. If he couldn’t keep moving, he’d die. He’d made his peace with life. His only regret would be causing his family more pain if he didn’t live. But a committed male owed his allegiance to his Promise first, family second.
Charming knew that the quickest route from the Farsuitwail valley to the former Rautt settlement was a straight line just east of the nuclear reactor ruins. They stood like silent sentries marking the way. Sure enough, he picked up a trail of footprints headed due north, going right past the reactors.
He couldn’t see Crave on the horizon, but Charming knew he couldn’t have gone too much farther. In another five minutes an odd-shaped figure came into view on the horizon. As Charming drew closer he could see that the odd shape was caused by a blanket being held over and around Crave to shelter him from the sun.
Charming drew alongside his brother and slowed his bike to the point where he had to lower his feet to the ground to stay balanced.
Crave didn’t so much as glance to the side. He kept his eyes forward and kept moving toward a fixed point on the horizon.
“What are you doing?” Charming said.
“Walking,” Crave answered.
“Yeah. I can see that. Let’s put it another way. Why are you walking when you could be riding?”
“Got my reasons.”
“That’s good. I’m relieved to hear that. What are they?” Crave didn’t answer. He just kept walking. “Crave! Will you stop for a minute?!?”
“No,” was all he said.
“Talk to me. I’m your brother. Give me some reason to not think you’ve lost it again. Because walking across the wasteland is crazy!”
“Don’t care.”
“Okay. Let me back up a minute. Let’s say I accept that you’ve got some logical reason for suicide by sun. At least tell me why you’re doing this. Give me something to go back and tell our parents.”
Crave was silent for a full minute. When he spoke, he didn’t break his stride or look away from a destination that was as yet unseen, but somewhere beyond the northern horizon.
Crave had spent a night replaying everything that Charming had told him. How Dandelion had slept on a mortar floor for months while he wheezed every breath he inhaled and growled through every breath he exhaled, even in his sleep. How he had done his best to destroy everything destructible, including her. How she had constantly worked in ever-escalating creative ways to ignite his memory. How he’d walked away from her without a backward glance once he was freed. He’d put himself in her place and tried to imagine how he’d feel if Dandy looked at him like he was a stranger.
Before the sun rose he’d decided on a course of action.
“I can’t just walk up to her and say, ‘I’m back’, like that makes me worthy of her. I have to show her, prove to her, that nothing has changed. That I’d still die for her.”
Charming let those words sink in as he continued to keep pace with his brother. He thought the perspective was twisted, but believed that, in its own skewed way, it was still logical.
“You want to punish yourself for hurting Dandy,” Crave said in review.
“No. It’s not just that. I want to show her what she means to me. I’d rather die trying to deserve her than live having disgraced our promise to each other. If I do this, I’ll believe the gods think I’m worth saving. And if the gods think I’m worth saving, I’ll think I’m worthy to ask my Promise to forgive me.”
“This is not what she’d want, Crave.”
“What makes you think you can speak for her, little brother?”
“I know her.”
Crave grinned at that. “You may think you do. Nobody knows her like I do. Nobody else ever could.”
“So you’re going
to fry in the desert.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I won’t try to argue that, but I will tell you, even after hearing your reasons, this is still crazy and I’m not going to let you do it. So stop being so self-centered. Either get on the back of this bike and let me give you a ride to Fosterland or get on the back of this bike and let me give you a ride to Newland. I don’t care which way you want to go, but I’m taking you to one or the other.”
Crave said nothing. He didn’t look at Charming. He didn’t give any indication that he thought that pronouncement merited a response.
“Don’t ignore me, Crave. We’ve all had enough.”
“Said what I have to say and now I’m done wasting my energy on jabber. Go home, little brother.”
That was when Charming learned, for the first time in his life, that he had a temper. He’d had no practice with learning to control temper because it had never raised its ugly head before. He turned off his bike, put the kickstand down, made sure it was stable, then ran at Crave and knocked him off his feet.
Crave divested himself of the blanket and waterskins lightning fast, rolled, and came to a crouch snarling.
Looking at his older brother, Charming realized that there was a big difference between training to be a warrior and being one. Crave had engaged in a fight to the death with Rautt many times before he was captured. He knew thirty-three ways to kill someone with his bare hands and, at the moment, looked like he was ready to review how to use every one of them on Charming.
While Charming stood there, quickly beginning to understand that starting a fight with Crave had been a bad, bad idea, Crave ran at him, feinted at the last minute, swept Charming’s feet out from under him and landed on top of his brother with his fangs a bare inch from Charming’s throat.
The prudent thing would have been for Charming to submit, but the specter of returning home and telling his parents that Crave was on a suicide mission was more than he could stand. It’d been hard enough to watch them both deteriorate into ghosts of themselves after Carnal’s death and Crave’s incarceration.
So Charming shocked his brother, who assumed it would be over as soon as he dominated, by head butting Crave so hard that it broke his nose, and then punching him in the left eye when Crave dropped his guard and reached up to his face.
They rolled around in the sand for a couple more minutes, both managing to just barely curtail the instincts to release claws and let fangs do their worst. It was Charming who finally put a stop to it, recognizing in the middle of the drama that, if he couldn’t convince Crave to come with him, he had become instrumental in weakening his brother and lessening the already slim chance that he would survive crossing the desert.
He rolled to his feet and backed away. “Okay. You win,” he said to Crave.
He picked up the blanket that had been discarded and shook the sand out, not that it would help much. They’d both taken on so many irritating grains of sand inside their clothes that it would be hard to think about anything else until the next shower, whenever that might be. Crave, still panting from the struggle, accepted the blanket reluctantly.
Charming then picked up the waterskins and carried them to Crave. His eyes were already swelling from the nose break and blood running from a split lip mixed with the blood running from his nose. Charming didn’t have a broken nose, but his face had been pummeled and, if anything, looked even worse. He deeply regretted having resorted to violence to try to force his brother to his point of view and thought it was fitting punishment that he was going to have to wear the evidence of that stupidity for a while.
“Serene sent you bacon and biscuits. Please, I’m begging you, don’t refuse. I have to be able to go back and tell her that you ate something.”
Crave stared at Charming, blinked slowly, then said, “No bacon. It would just make me thirstier. I’ll take the biscuits.”
Charming walked over to his bike and took the little hemp bag of biscuits out of the saddlebag. When he handed them over to Crave, he said, “Gonna be honest. I’m going to go find your old crew and tell them what you’re doing. Get ready for visitors. This evening, at dusk, I’ll be back to find you. If you aren’t ready to get on the bike by then, I’m going on to Fosterland and tell Dandelion.”
“You always were a shitty little tattletale.” Crave hoisted the waterskin straps onto his shoulder and pulled the blanket over his head.
“Yeah? Well. Now I’m a shitty big tattletale.”
Charming started his bike and took a wide loop in front of Crave’s path to turn around, giving his brother a salute as he passed.
When Charming pulled up to the Extant’s house, Free was standing out on the front porch with his hands in his pockets. Charming would have been encouraged by the fact that his father had emerged from the confines of the house if not for the fact that he had to deliver unwanted news.
Free took one look at his son’s face and scowled, saying, “What the…?”
“Let’s go inside,” Charming said, as he turned off the bike and climbed the porch steps.
Free entered the house, leaving the door open and yelled, “Serene!”
She hadn’t gone to the Weavers Barn yet, but was on her way. “Here,” she said, coming to the front door. When she saw Charming’s face, she said, “Come into the kitchen. Let me take care of those cuts.”
Charming’s lip was split, he had black eyes, and both sides of his face looked painfully swollen. He sat down in the chair that his mother pulled close to the sink.
“Don’t keep us waiting,” Free warned.
Charming wasn’t interested in taking on a second formidable male in his family in one morning so he hurried to comply.
“It’s just what we thought. He intends to cross the wasteland on foot. He’s got it in his head that it will prove something to Dandy, that he’s good enough for her. He says he wants her to know that he’d still die for her. He says if he lives then it means the gods think he’s worthy of Dandelion’s forgiveness.”
“Gods,” Free spat. “Will fortune never come this way again?” He looked at Charming and waved toward his pummeled face. “And who did this?”
Charming looked away, ashamed and embarrassed. “I tried to make him get on my bike. It didn’t go too well.”
When the room remained silent, at length Charming ventured a glance at his father. Free’s expression didn’t hold the censure he expected. Instead Free looked mystified. He shook his head slightly just before he started laughing. That was just about the last thing Charming had expected. Glancing at his mother, he saw that she was trying to hide a smile.
“You tried to make Crave do something he didn’t want to do?” Free said, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Right now if I have to pick which one of you is crazier, I’d say that would be you. What were you thinking? Not even Carnal would get between Crave and something he’d set his mind on!”
Charming glanced at his mother before speaking. “I didn’t want to have to come home and tell you I’d failed.”
Free pulled out a chair and sat. “If I haven’t gotten this across, then I’ve been remiss, so please hear me now. Nobody is successful all the time, son. All it takes to make us proud is knowing that you tried.” He turned Charming’s face one way and then the other. “You’re going to be a lot less good-looking for a while.”
Charming started to smile, but hissed when he learned that smiling caused pain. “You think I’m good-looking?”
“Of course.” Free winked at Serene. “You look just like your mother.”
“I’m going to find Crave’s old crew. Get them to take a ride out and try to talk some sense into him.” Free nodded like he saw wisdom in that plan. “If they don’t get any farther than I do, I’m going to go back out myself tonight. If he still feels the same, I’m going to Fosterland and get Dandy.”
Free got to his feet. “While you’re hunting up his friends, I’m gonna take a ride myself.”
Charming’s eyes lit up. Free hadn’t been more than a few yards from the house since Carnal had died. “You think you remember how to ride?”
“You’re pretty mouthy for a guy whose face is so swollen he can barely talk.”
Charming tried to smile, having already forgotten that his smile was temporarily out of commission. “Ow. Crave hits hard.”
Serene looked at Free. “Should I come?”
Free lifted his chin and gave her that familiar look of pride and longing that he’d always reserved for her alone. “Let me try. Father to son.”
She turned to Charming. “I can help find his friends. Raven and Leo work part time keeping the school-age young in physical training. The rest of the time they’re helping Red’s crew. Scape is at Fosterland working on the building there.”
“I know. Snow volunteered to work with the human engineers, helping get the power back up. I’ll see if Leo and Raven are here before I leave. If they aren’t, I’ll look for them in Farsuitwail. You don’t need to come. If everybody is looking, we’ll find them fast.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
During the past two, almost three, years, not a single day had passed that everybody on Crave’s former crew hadn’t thought about him. Until a few months ago they’d carried the guilt and horror of having watched him be taken by the Rautt and not being able to stop it. When he was recovered and brought back to Newland, that guilt hadn’t lessened.
At first it had been made more painful because of witnessing what had become of their friend’s mind and body. Then when Crave had been released, guilt had coupled with the pain of him looking past them and through them like they were strangers, like their mutual experience wasn’t punctuated by years of training together to become warriors. By the shared history of life and death battles. Or the trust that follows from looking out for each other when comrades depend on each other for survival.
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