by Eric Keller
His falling seemed slow, like a dry leaf drifting to the ground on a calm day. However, Jacob knew he was going to hit hard, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it, his arms to numb to move to stop his fall. Crashing into the rocky ground pushed the last ounce of breath and energy from his ruined body. Standing back up might as well have been flying to the moon.
As sleep poured in at him and his eyes closed, he could only hope he led them far enough away. Then it dawned on his fever-wracked mind: he could not stay here. Harrison would find his body lying on the bank and stop marching, set up camp here where they could easily stumble across someone from Malden. Jacob needed to use the last ounce of his life to hide. Hide so Harrison could not be sure he stopped and would continue on, looking for his escaped rabbit.
With great effort, he got to his knees and, with great deliberation, he crawled up the gravelly bank towards the trees, trying vainly to hide his tracks as delirium threatened to overtake his thinking.
. . .
“What do you think? He lying?”
Kinma pondered Paul’s question. Harrison did not do things without a reason. She shrugged. “Don’t think so, the story is sensible and, I mean, why would he lie now?”
She saw renewed hope alright on Paul’s painfully tired face, and she wished she had not raised expectations. Louder, to the group assembled in the lodge, he said, “Right. Ok, I know everyone is worn out, but we need to go look, need to go now before Jacob can get any farther away.”
Not surprising, the weary people immediately rallied and eagerly formed into search parties before seeking out supplies and gear. Kinma wanted to go, find Jacob and bring him home but fatigue soaked through her and pain radiated unpleasantly up her wounded arm. When she offered to go, Paul probably sensed hesitation in her tone and kindly explained she should stay behind, keep an eye on Harrison and heal up. Kinma did not fight this decision.
Within fifteen minutes, she stood on the porch of the lodge to watch men and women of Malden marching, in boots still covered in the blood of their attackers, towards the river and silently wished them luck, deeply wanting them to get Jacob back to where he belonged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-Eight
AUGUST 10, 2046
DAY THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY
Intense discussions were going on in the Lodge, but Morreign felt too crushed, too wretched and too tired to join in. The continual conversations over the last few days were bizarre mixtures of muted relief at having survived the attack, worrying about the wounded, grieving over their losses, all mixed among angry debates over what to do with the captive Harrison. Now that was all joined by wonderings over how the search parties, which returned empty-handed this afternoon, had failed to find Jacob.
Morreign had needed to flee all the noise so, feeling slightly guilty, she had claimed she needed to rest her extra ruined hip, and she was hiding out in her cabin when she heard a soft knock. She wanted to ignore it but figured they would only come in to check on her anyway, so he opened the door and was surprised to find Kinma.
With deep empathy in her eyes, Kinma said, “Sorry, I hate to bother you, but I was hoping we could talk.”
Feeling relief it was Kinma and not a Malden resident who wanted to pontificate about what they thought everyone should do, Morreign said, “Of course, come in.”
She poured dandelion tea into a cup for Kinma, and the two sat at the table. Kinma asked, “You ok?”
“Yeah, yeah, the hip’s sore but not nearly as bad as my head, listening to all that chatter. After what we’ve all been through, you’d think we could take a moment and simply reflect and recuperate instead of blathering on.”
Kinma nodded and said, “Well, thanks to those poison mushrooms, there’s a lot less recuperating than I figured we would need – suppose people are filling that void with talk. The poison truly was a stroke of brilliance.”
Three years ago, Jacob and Griff had come across a massive patch of orange topped mushrooms by the Creek. Sam identified them as a type of fly mushroom, declaring them to be highly poisonous. Morreign, thinking of the children running free, had the immediate instinct to bury them but a plague of mice had been menacing Malden for months, and Boris suggested they carefully pick the mushrooms, dry them out and sprinkle some bait with the dust. Morreign remained uneasy about the poison being nearby, but she could not argue with how well it eradicated troublesome rodents.
When Louisa, whose parents attempted to mercy poison her as a child, interrupted
their meeting with the sad idea of somehow doing the same to the attackers, Morreign’s mind turned to the metal canister on the top shelf where it had been silently waiting for the mice daring to return. She wasn’t sure if the dried mushrooms kept enough potency to be effective, but she figured, at least the poison might make them slightly ill, slow them somewhat. When she heard of the terrible damage the mushrooms inflicted on the Bankers, ridiculously, Morreign’s instant, unconscious reaction was to refresh and redouble her worries about having such a dangerous item sitting about.
“More Louisa’s idea than mine, I wanted to throw those damn mushrooms out a long time ago.”
Kinma took a sip of tea and then said, “I understand you’re tired of the talk but, I’m sorry, I think there’s one thing we truly do need to discuss.”
Guessing what Kinma was thinking because she was thinking the same thing, Morreign said, “Harrison?”
“People are talking about locking him up or exiling him.”
“As you can see, we do like to talk here.”
Kinma, apparently taking this comment as indecision, leaned back and said, “Look, I know this man and I know what he’s capable of. People made the mistake, back at the beginning, of following him, of giving him control because everyone was scared and hungry and he handled all of it much better than anyone else thought they could. Once he was ensconced it proved immensely difficult to oust him, impossible may-”
Morreign lifted her hand to cut her off. “I know, don’t worry, I know. We need a definitive solution.”
A relieved sigh. “Ok, I’m glad we are of one mind on this. At the Bank, this sort of matter was handled in draconian fashion by Harrison, I was not sure if the people here would act in the same way. You know the people here, how do we go about doing it without causing too much damage or upheaval? Maybe some sort of trial, a jury.”
Morreign wanted to laugh. Kinma was worried she lacked the resolve to execute Harrison. In reality, the only reason Harrison continued to draw breath was because Morreign did not know if death was sufficient. Ever since the attack, she found herself reveling in a hazy dream of doing harm to the leader who caused so much grief, the man who hurt her child and ensured he could not return home. Torture was the wrong word, although that idea had crossed her mind in moments of weakness. Now, what she wanted was to humiliate him and make him endure at least a sliver of the emotional suffering she felt.
Sitting across from Kinma, Morreign realized she also did not want to close the chapter. Harrison was a link to Jacob. A weak one, but a link nonetheless. The last person to see her son.
Foolish. All of it. Jacob was gone, and the evil man in the Lodge was not going to change that. Harrison was a threat to Malden and threats to Malden needed to be eliminated. At least, in this case, the threat deserved his punishment. Boris’ words rang in her mind, “Will doing or not doing something risk what’s here?”
She sighed and asked, “Do you know what we do when someone peaceful stumbles across this place and then wants to leave?”
Kinma only cocked her head and looked quizzically at Morreign so she continued, “Most everyone here thinks we let them go but, actually, I walk them out of the Clearing, to an old plank bridge over th
e Creek, pretending to be pleasantly escorting them on their way, and then another member from the Committee puts an arrow in their back.”
Morreign forced her ruined hip to stand up.
. . .
Kinma got up and followed the woman out of her cabin as she limped straight towards the lodge without another word.
Kinma knew how Morreign was going to handle Harrison, and she found herself respecting the decision. Malden embracing brutality seemed wrong as it destroyed her image of a tranquil paradise, but she knew the horrible man deserved to fall from a tall tree with a short rope around his neck. They needed to put an end to the evil bastard who terrorized and ruined people without thought or regret. The evil monster who marched for thirty days to destroy this place of kindness. The evil charmer who could get people to follow him against their better thoughts. The evil demon who ultimately killed Hale for wanting something better for everyone.
People inside the lodge were continuing to talk in small groups, and they turned to look at them as they came through the door. A few called out questions of Morreign which the woman did not appear to hear as she moved through the crowded room and, without slowing, plucked a carving knife off the long table.
Murmurs followed them as the others began to realize where she was heading and what she was planning. Paul stood up first and hurried after them, saying, “Morreign, I get, I do but you can’t simply-“
Paul had been one of the people arguing for keeping Harrison locked up. Kinma, gently placed a hand on his chest, stopping him with a minute shake of her head as Morreign opened the door to the storage room.
. . .
Harrison, with bloodied and wrecked fingernails, had managed to pry loose a nail from a floorboard in the storage room. For days now, he had obsessively filed away at the chain holding him to the stove. He could not tell how much damage he would need to before the link would break, but he figured he might be close and this perceived closeness prompted his tired, ruined hand to scrape the nail faster against the metal.
The door opened, interrupting his work. Not time yet for them to bring him food, this was something different. He instinctively palmed the nail in his bloody hand while he stumbled to his feet, sweeping the weakened chain behind him. He managed to fortify his stance and fix his glare as a middle-aged woman limped in.
Harrison saw her before, the second day he was locked up, she had merely stepped inside the room, stared at him for a moment and then left without a word. While the others here had seemed hesitant and unsure, the look on this woman’s face was different. Now, on her return, only the dirty knife clutched in her hand held his attention.
He said, “Wait now, we can talk about options. I was promised that I would be allowed to leave once I provided the requested information and I did that, over five days ago. So, now, I will simply go, never to be seen again.”
She stopped a few feet in front of him and calmly shook her head.
Panic raced through Harrison, filling him with adrenaline. He reared back and kicked the leg held by the compromised chain with his all his might. The metal bit into his flesh when the slack ran out, holding tight despite his efforts. He strained further, thinking he could feel some give, surely it would break and surely the world would at least let him fight back.
The woman seemed unfazed by his struggle as she stepped closer. Harrison grabbed at her with his bound hands. The woman quietly said, “Stop.”
Harrison ignored the order and bent to pull at the chain with his worn hands as he stated, “I can help you, I know things. I can work-”
A finger on his chin, lifting up his face, interrupted his one-sided negotiations. The woman looked at him, nothing but coldness on her face. He opened his mouth to try and convince her, but sudden, tight, enormous pain seared into the base of his neck. Then another intense pain. Then nothing. Then blackness.
. . .
Morreign left the knife in the base of Harrison’s skull, letting it fall with him as the dead man tumbled heavily to his side.
When she turned, she was not surprised to see a number of people crammed in the doorway, staring with opened mouths. All she wanted to do was go back to her cabin, sit at her table, sip tea, look out the window and recall happy memories of her children. But, looking at all the faces, she knew she needed to say something, needed to let them know this would not be a place of unabashed brutality but that threats could not be ignored and that Malden could not be a place where evil would be allowed to fester and grow.
“Ten years ago, we were forced to come here, forced from our homes and lives because narcissists, greedy for power and attention, destroyed our civilization, a civilization built by millenniums of generations. They killed pure innocents who wanted nothing but to exist, killed them as if they were ants scurrying about their feet, simply to feed their egos and increase their control. I refuse to let those demons rise back up in this new world, in our world.”
. . .
A cold spitting rain fell on Jacob. He didn’t know if he could call it waking as Jacob merely became conscious at some point, pulled back into himself from the far-off place where he could not think, where nothing existed. He thought he had heard laughter. Or voices. Voices. Close by, saying his name, yelling his name through his deep sleep. His lips would not listen when he ordered them to move, ordered them to call back. The voices, which were probably only in his mind, moved on. But he thought a smell drifted through the damp, the smell of the coarse soap they made at Malden. Only a hint of tallow on the wet air but he knew the odor completely as it hung over everything and everyone back home.
He figured the voices and smell to simply be illusions, exhausted confusion making his wants worm their way into his muddled reality. He tried to shake it off, reminding himself he was in the middle of nowhere, hiding in a musty hole under moldy logs, waiting for death to take him. But hints of the smell persisted.
What if it was real? What if, somehow, someone from home was actually here? The simple idea made him warm with happiness, through all the hurt and pain and sorrow, it made him glad. Even though he knew any thoughts of home would make him more miserable later, when he learned it was all imagined foolishness, Jacob decided to let himself wallow in the idea, knowing he may not have a later to be worried about.
But, the end did not come and, eventually, his eyes drifted open of their own accord. Sunlight through a crack in the branches. Worry instantly struck at him: he had been there too long. Harrison must be close. Then, through the confusion, he recalled. He was no longer marching, he was hiding, hiding in a self-made tomb. He was to stay here forever so morning, noon or night made no difference.
An uncertain number of days ago, after falling on the gravel, certain he could go no further, he had crawled up off the river bank where he found some moss-covered deadfall under a massive pine, making a musty cave barely big enough to squeeze into. Unsure if this would do enough to hide his corpse from Harrison, he managed to break a few branches to cover the shadowed entrance to complete the grave before giving into sickness-soaked exhaustion.
Now, Jacob’s head was splitting, and his body ached, but he could think again. He tried to figure how many days had he been curled up in the musty hole, wondering how he remained alive. Three days? Four? More. Then he realized something important, he was not being tormented by powerful chills. The fever was gone. He swallowed. Minor pain in his throat but not the scorching fire of before.
Extreme dehydration and vertigo made moving incredibly difficult, but he managed to climb out of his shelter. He could not stand, but stretching his sore limbs on the forest floor felt good, and Jacob was shocked as he could not recall the last time something felt good. He took in a deep breath of pine-scented air before his powerful thirst pulled him to crawl down to the river to drink.
>
. . .
Her bedroom felt painfully small. Louisa knew she should go out, get out of the tight space and take in some fresh air, do something useful but she couldn’t. It was now clear and final, Jacob was not coming back. She needed to say goodbye.
Sitting crossed legged on the hard bed, she forced herself to let her best friend, the only person she could remember ever loving, leave her. With the hope of his return evaporated and all the thoughts of what their reunion would be like gone, a powerful emptiness filled her, and she knew it would remain for a long time. But, eventually, she would sleep and, eventually, she would wake up and, eventually, she would go help with chores and, eventually, she would feel partially alive again. Eventually. Hopefully.
CHAPTER Thirty-Nine
AUGUST 14, 2046
DAY THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR
Walking up to the Lodge, Morreign wondered yet again if this might be a terrible mistake. Holding a funeral for Leo, Tina and Griff made sense, they knew they were dead. She was less sure about memorializing Jacob. However, Louisa said she wanted for them to have a memorial for Jacob at the same time as the others and Morreign she figured, with all that happened, it made sense to have the community mark it all on one day, give them a solely terrible, definitive event from which to move on from.
Before she limped inside, she turned to look at the sun rising over the Clearing. Tradition dictated for funerals to be held at first light. Morreign started that custom nearly a decade ago for no other reason than, back then, there was always so much to do she did not like people wallowing in misery all day as they waited for the ceremony, best to get it over with as soon as possible so people could get on with living. Apparently, she had forgotten that lesson, maybe she needed to apply it to herself, maybe this event did make sense.