Promised

by Caragh M. O'Brien

  The girl had slid her fingers into Jack’s hand and looked like she would never let go.

  “Take care of her yourself,” Gaia said. “We Stones don’t die easy.”

  “Odin Stone. Right.” He mumbled his birth name as if it were still unfamiliar.

  “Where’s your tribe now?” Gaia asked.

  “They were two days west of here and heading south. They’re long gone by now.”

  In the poor light, Gaia saw that layers of cloth were stuck against Jack’s wound. Tugging at the fabric would make it worse and start him bleeding again before she could treat him properly. There was no point staying here talking.

  “You ready, Peter?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Carrying her brother back to camp was like hauling a limp block of granite between them, and the going was so slow that the sky was a rich violet by the time they reached the last ridge. Several scouts intercepted them and took over carrying Jack. The campfires of the caravan spread before them in the valley below as they made their last descent.

  “You never said you had a brother,” Peter said.

  “I have two, both older,” Gaia said. “We didn’t grow up together because they were both advanced inside the Enclave. Just before I left, Jack helped me escape, and then he left for the wasteland, too.”

  Gaia glanced at Angie and wondered what the full story was there. The little Gaia knew of nomad culture was harsh and brutal, which fit with Jack getting knifed. The girl, still cradling her wounded hand in the makeshift bandage, kept close to Gaia as they wove through the ordered chaos of the camp.

  Eighteen hundred people were noisily settling in for the night. Since leaving their home beside Marsh Nipigon in early September, Gaia’s people had had over three weeks to establish their routines on trail. Each clan had a central hub of cook fires, with clusters of families surrounding them. True tents were few, but dark tarps were rigged over poles to shelter many of the families. Packs, baskets, and cages of chickens added to the jumble. Somewhere a clear tenor voice started up a ballad, and smoke brought the scent of chicken cooking with honey and curry.

  “Welcome to our caravan. We’re from Sylum originally,” Gaia said to Angie. “Like it?”

  The girl nodded, glancing ahead toward the men carrying Jack.

  “I’ll do what I can for you and Jack,” Gaia said. “Try not to worry.”

  In the center of the activity, clan nineteen was laid out in neat circles around three fires, and Norris Emmett, drawing on his skills as the cook for the lodge back in Sylum, was overseeing the feeding of a hundred people. He glanced up as Gaia approached, and his gaze swept over Jack and the girl before he called something over his shoulder. Farther behind him, Josephine was feeding two toddlers: her daughter Junie and Gaia’s sister Maya.

  Gaia stopped to give the little girls hugs and kisses. Maya tried to feed Gaia some bannock by pressing it against her lips, but Gaia laughed. “No, that’s for you. Eat up, squirt.” Gaia looked up at Josephine. “Has she been good?”

  “Good enough,” Josephine said with her normal good humor. “I’ve got her. Looks like you’re busy.” Josephine had cut her dark curls shorter for convenience on trail, and they were held back from her face by a jaunty red headband. Gaia’s little sister had a bit of the same red in her hair.

  With a pang of guilt, Gaia couldn’t help thinking Josephine was in some ways a better mother figure to Maya than she was herself. “I’ll try to come back to tuck her in,” Gaia said, and gave her sister another kiss on top of her soft curls before she continued on.

  A smaller, fourth campfire was burning to one side where Dinah, the former libby, had a tarp and supplies laid out in readiness for medical emergencies. She’d turned to healing in the past year, assisting Gaia and proving to have a steady hand with everything from childbirth to single sutures. Dinah’s white, pleated shirt had remained spotless during the entire exodus, defying all logic and now, as they approached, she straightened, swinging her braid over her slender shoulder.

  “Only you could wander off into the wasteland and come back with two more mouths to feed,” Dinah said. She nodded toward the men carrying Jack. “Do you want help with him?”

  “Let me get started,” Gaia said. “See what you can do for Angie’s hand.”

  The scouts lowered Jack to the tarp, where he lay still. Gaia was already reaching for the soap.

  Peter lit two extra torches and arranged them nearby. “I’ll get back to the ridge,” he said.

  “Right. Good.” Gaia heard the perfunctory note in her voice and made a point of looking up to meet his eyes. The faintest irony tinged his expression. “I mean, thanks, Peter.”

  “You’re welcome, Mlass,” he said evenly, and with a brief smile at Angie, he was gone.

  Dinah’s gaze followed Peter and turned back to Gaia. “What was that?” she said.

  “What?”

  Dinah pointed her thumb after the retreating scout, then stopped. “Okay. Never mind.”

  Gaia sank down beside her brother and reached for his shirt. “I need an update. Have the scouts who went ahead to the Enclave returned? Munsch and Bonner?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “It’s getting to be too long. What else do you have for me?”

  Dinah filled her in about some bickering between the miners and the fishermen, a woman’s persistent fever, a shortage of corn meal, and a broken travois. “Chardo Will is mending the travois. Otherwise, nothing major.”

  “Has Leon come in with the crims?”

  “Not yet. He sent word they’d be in around sundown.”

  Then he’s late, Gaia thought.

  Gaia would not relax until all the clans were settled in for the night, including and especially the crims. Leon was in charge of a dozen prisoners who accompanied the exodus, working to earn their freedom by the time they reached Wharfton. In a concession to safety, the crims were chained by the ankle in pairs, which meant they were always the last ones into camp each night, along with Leon.

  Dinah was working over Angie’s hand, and Gaia could see from the child’s glassy gaze that Dinah had given her a lily-poppy draught for the pain. Gaia started on Jack’s wound. With scissors, she cut away the looser fabric, then used a sponge to wet the caked blood and carefully peel the rest away. The wound was ten centimeters long, and deep, scraping along his lowest rib. The edges were ragged and pink with infection.

  “Bad, huh?” Dinah asked.

  “Yes.” Gaia glanced at her brother’s face, considering carefully. Jack was out cold.

  In the past year, there had been dozens of times when a medical situation needed more expertise than she had, and she’d come up with a policy. She was brutally honest, always, with her patient, and she let the patient decide what she would try. Sometimes it had been deemed best to do nothing, and the patient had died. Other times, she had done nothing, and the patient’s body had healed itself. Most times, the patients had wanted her to try cleaning, stitches, compresses. Once she’d amputated a man’s crushed hand, and he’d survived. But digging around in people was not something she excelled at, and she was loath to do it without their consent.

  “Any ideas?” Gaia asked Dinah.

  Dinah left Angie for a moment and came nearer, holding her braid back as she leaned over Jack’s wound. “It isn’t bleeding too badly anymore,” she observed.

  Gaia narrowed her eyes as she inspected the wound again. “I’m going to irrigate it.” She poured some of the boiled water into a separate bowl, dropping in three leaves of cohosh and a twig of witch hazel. She swirled it to let it cool before she poured half of the solution into Jack’s wound. It bubbled a little coming out.

  “That can’t be good,” Gaia muttered.

  With her scalpel she evened off the roughest edges of the wound, then stretched the opening a bit wider, trying to see further in. A black, triangular sliver of knife tip was briefly visible in the deepest layer of the cut before oozing blood obscured it.

 
; Gaia worked carefully with her tweezers to extricate the sliver, then irrigated the wound repeatedly until the bubbling stopped and the water washed out smoothly. She put in a drain, drew the muscle tissue together again, and wrapped a bandage to keep the wound closed. She wished they had some antibiotics.

  “What’s your brother like?” Dinah asked when Gaia at last sat back.

  “I hardly know him,” Gaia said. She glanced over to see Dinah had finished with Angie’s hand. “We’ve only talked a few times. I know he’s brave, though, and selfless. He saved me from the Bastion once. He was an Enclave guard, like Leon.”

  “How old is he?”

  Gaia calculated. “Twenty, now. Leon’s age. Why?”

  Dinah was regarding him thoughtfully. “He just looks older.”

  Gaia thoughtfully regarded her brother’s face, seeing it faintly flushed in the firelight, his lips dry and cracked. Her gaze lingered over the planes of his face, seeking and finding a resemblance to her mother in the lines of his eyebrows and the curves of his closed eyelids.

  “It’s going to be interesting, meeting some new men,” Dinah said.

  Gaia glanced up. “You’ve never had a shortage of men liking you.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m not curious,” Dinah said.

  “It isn’t going to be easy,” Gaia said. “Our women won’t be special in Wharfton the way they’re used to. It’s going to be an adjustment.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  Gaia took a second look at her friend, and guessed she was probably right to be confident. Certain women would always be prized, no matter what society they landed in, and Dinah was lively, smart, and uncommonly pretty. What Gaia was going to miss was the closeness she had with her women friends in Sylum. She missed Taja and Peony, who had stayed behind with their families in Sylum. Already, with the responsibilities of the exodus, Gaia saw little of her nearest friends, like Josephine, and she hoped she wouldn’t see them even less once they reached Wharfton.

  “I’ve always sort of wondered if you might hit it off with Chardo Will,” Gaia said cautiously.

  Dinah gave her an odd look. “I don’t have a chance with Will.”

  “Why not?”

  Dinah laughed. “Very funny. I’m not stupid.” Her eyes went warm with teasing humor.

  “Don’t, Dinah,” Gaia said.

  “I’m not blaming you, but I know a hopeless case when I see one. Poor Will. Unrequited love seems to be his specialty. Or maybe it runs in the family. No, I think I’ll just see what Wharfton and Enclave men are like.

  They’re different, Gaia thought. They aren’t as polite. All kinds of things could go wrong.

  “You look so anxious,” Dinah said, laughing. “You’ve warned us plenty, Gaia. Different cultures and all that. You go ahead and take care of the big diplomacy. Leave the one-on-one to the rest of us. We’ll be fine.”

  As Dinah moved off to other chores, Angie came drowsily nearer, sliding onto the tarp to cuddle beside Jack. Firelight reflected off the goggles she’d lowered around her neck.

  “You’re just happy to have a warm fire and a safe place to sleep, aren’t you?” Gaia asked.

  Angie glanced up and pointed a finger to Gaia’s scarred cheek.

  “It’s a burn from when I was a baby,” Gaia said. “It doesn’t hurt now.”

  The girl pointed next to Gaia’s necklace.

  Gaia lifted it from the neckline of her blouse to show her, turning the small, weighty objects in the firelight. “The locket watch is from my parents for timing contractions when I’m a midwife. The monocle is from my grandmother, the last Matrarc of Sylum, for leadership and heritage, I guess,” she said. She remembered how reluctantly she’d accepted the monocle at first, and considered how familiar it was now. “So, what’s the story of your voice? Care to tell me?”

  The girl watched her groggily, then shook her head.

  “Didn’t think so,” Gaia said. “Can you sit up a bit? Take off your goggles.”

  The girl complied, and Gaia tilted a torch nearer so she could examine her throat and neck. “Does it hurt?” Gaia asked gently.

  Angie slowly nodded her head. “When I talk.”

  Gaia shifted behind Angie so she could line her fingers softly all around the girl’s warm neck. “Try to say ‘Ah.’ Nice and steady now.”

  With the sound, Gaia could feel Angie’s neck muscles tense unnaturally, fighting to trap her voice instead of releasing it. Gaia handed back Angie’s goggles and began making up a cure as she went along.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” she said. “Take a big drink of water every hour, whether you’re thirsty or not. And put your hand to your neck, like this, and think about keeping those muscles loose and calm. No one can hurt you.” Gaia smiled, watching to see that the girl was listening closely. “Pretend the inside of your voice is just cool and open, like water going down. All the time, whether you’re talking or not, even when you’re falling asleep. Will you try that?”

  The girl looked slightly hopeful. She nodded again.

  Gaia lifted the dressing on Angie’s hand to inspect what Dinah had done, and judged she could do nothing better. She rested Angie’s small, splinted and bandaged hand lightly on the girl’s chest, and thought of a wounded bird, fragile and hollow-boned. Gaia knew what it was like to be motherless.

  Angie’s eyes closed, and she rolled slightly, turning her cheek to rest on Jack’s shoulder. She put her fingers to her throat.

  Gaia sat back and reached to wash her hands again.

  “There’s a story there,” Leon said quietly, stepping into the firelight. “Unbelievable.”

  Happiness shot through her at the sight of him.

  Leon dipped his head to take off his hat, and putting a strong hand on her shoulder, he leaned near for a kiss.

  “Best part of the day,” he said, and chucked his hat on a blanket near the fire.

  CHAPTER 3

  a promise

  “ARE YOU GOOD?” LEON asked.

  “Yes,” Gaia said. “And you?”

  He smiled and started to roll back his sleeves. “Good. Where’d you find Jack and the urchin? They look pretty beat up.” He reached to take the bar of soap from her hand. His arms and hands were filthy, and she guessed he’d helped to carry the crims’ loads.

  “Back behind the ridge west of here,” she said. “Peter helped me bring them in. Jack said they left a band of nomads two days west of here.”

  “How old do you think she is?” he asked.

  Angie stirred, and blinked up at Leon.

  “I don’t know. Not more than eight or nine,” Gaia said. “She’s tough, though. I shot her hand before I realized she was a kid and she never even cried.

  “Shot her yourself?” Leon asked. “How was the aftermath?”

  “Normal,” she said and checked to see that no one was within earshot besides Angie and sleeping Jack. “I threw up, but I was able to delay it a little. That’s progress.”

  “Face it, Gaia. You’ll never get over it,” Leon said. “You’re not meant to hurt people.”

  “I need to be able to protect our people,” she argued.

  “I don’t mean you won’t do what you have to,” Leon said. “I’m just saying you’ll always pay for it somehow. Were you embarrassed?”

  “Only Peter and Angie saw me. She thought I was pregnant.”

  Leon’s smile turned amused. “Are you?”

  “No,” she said. “You’d be the first person I’d tell.”

  “We’ve been careful, but things can happen.”

  “As if I didn’t know.” She made big warning eyes at him and inclined her head slightly toward Angie. “We are not talking about this here.”

  He laughed. “Have you eaten any dinner?” He leaned over the basin to splash water on his face, drenching his three-week beard, and then he flicked the excess water away. A drop sizzled in the fire.

  “I was waiting for you,” Gaia said.

  “You mean you forgot.”


  “I’m not exactly hungry,” she said.

  “You ought to be. Have a seat. I’ll get you a plate.” He lifted another woolen blanket from a pile and dropped it next to the fire. Norris’s cat darted over from the other campfire and circled Leon’s boot. As Angie’s gaze followed the cat closely, Leon picked it up and subjected it to a nonchalant rub that flattened its ears and elicited a purr.

  “Hey, kid,” Leon said. “Do you like cats?”

  Angie cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said. “What’s an urchin?”

  “A very brave girl,” Leon said. “Can you watch Una for me? I need to feed the Martrarc here.” He passed over the cat and pointed at it sternly. “Stay put, Una.”

  Angie smiled sleepily, curling her good hand gently into the cat’s fur. Gaia shouldn’t have been surprised. Naturally, the girl would struggle to talk to Leon when she talked to no one else, just as the cat would obey his commands.

  “Be right back,” Leon said, and gave Gaia another kiss. “Don’t fall asleep on me. We have some planning to do.”

  She sank down onto the blanket, settling in comfortably upwind of the smoke, and soon Leon was back with a couple of steaming bowls. He passed her one and tossed a couple more sticks heavily into the fire before he sat down beside her. They had no real privacy, but at least they were together, and the part of Gaia that responded only to him expanded a little.

  His knee pressed into hers, and he clinked his bowl to hers. “To Jack,” he said. Will he make it, do you think?”

  “I don’t really know. Antibiotics will help once we reach Wharfton, if we can get them. Angie ought to have them, too,” she said. It was amazing to think they were so close to medication that could save someone’s life. The proximity reminded her of her missing scouts. “Munsch and Bonner haven’t returned from Wharfton yet. I’m getting worried.”

  “Want me to go after them?” Leon offered.

  “No,” she said. “You’ve got enough to do.”

  “When are you ever going to let me be in any danger?” he asked, spooning up his stew at a steady rate.

  “You’re in danger every day,” she argued. “Who else could handle the crims?”