“You don’t want to go back to your tent?” Too late, I remembered the bloodstains on his blankets. Had anyone cleared up the mess? “All right, mine then. But you need to be treated, one way or another.”
He rested his forehead in his hands, then, the only unmarred part of his face. “Please. I’ll do it myself. Just leave me alone.”
“Fade—”
“Leave me alone,” he repeated, with no greater inflection, but I could tell he meant it.
Not wanting to make things worse, I did as he asked. Outside, the guards went about their business. They played cards, stood watch, sparred, and showed no sign they knew how great the danger. The elder had decided, then, to send the messenger without revealing anything. It was a smart, if ruthless, move. Once they got wind of the true situation, most of these men would run for the town walls without caring what happened to the crops—and they’d leave the growers to fend for themselves on the morrow and not venture out again.
I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and I was too tired to be of any use, so I got a pail of water from the common trough, and went into my tent. If Fade didn’t want my help, then I desperately needed to be clean. I stripped off my filthy clothes and washed as best I could. The slash on my ribs stung, and it was puffy. I used my small sliver of soap to lather it twice and then I rinsed. It stung as I rubbed the salve in. With no way to wash my hair properly, I wet it down and slicked it back into a tail so its ratty state bothered me less.
There was no hurry to dress, as I wasn’t on duty, but I couldn’t be easy about standing in my skin with only a flimsy fabric barrier between the other guards and me. So I scrambled into my last set of clothing, ignoring the pull on the torn skin. I couldn’t bandage it myself, but if I kept it clean, it should be fine. Though it wasn’t too deep, it would give me another scar, proof of my strength.
That was what I used to think, anyway. What they taught me down below. But maybe that was wrong too, like everything else had been, and it was just a flaw.
After flipping my blanket to the relatively clean side, I lay down on it, but I couldn’t sleep. I had too many unanswered questions, and I hurt for Fade until it felt like a scream stuck in my throat. Tears rose; they leaked out in silence and salted my cheeks. It was supposed to be all right now. I’d gotten him back.
Later, as it got dark, Stalker slipped inside. I had no energy to yell at him, and besides, there were no rules about chaperones here anyway. He had been in my bedroom window countless times. I was long past the fear that he would ever take anything from me that I didn’t want him to have.
“Room for me?” he asked.
I nodded and slid over on the pallet. “How’s your leg?”
“Hurts. But as long as I stay off it for a while, it’ll heal.” More accurately, he hoped it would. “Told you I’d find him for you.”
“Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
No exaggeration. I lacked his skills, and his knowledge drove us to circle the lake, hoping there might be some trace. I never would have thought of that. I was a Huntress, not a stalker.
“That was the hardest thing I ever did.” His icy eyes shone bright silver, like moonbeams on the water.
“The tracking?”
He shook his head. “Watching you go into danger without me.”
I should ask him to leave. He’d checked on me, seen I was still breathing. We shouldn’t sit together in the dark when Fade was alone and broken. But I was wounded too, and I didn’t protest when Stalker put an arm around me.
Harvest
Longshot sent Fade and Stalker back to Salvation the next day.
Fade didn’t glance in my direction, and his steps were leaden as he walked away. His distance stabbed me like a knife in the back. I didn’t understand his behavior, but he’d suffered so much. In time, he would heal and be able to stand my touch again.
Things would be fine.
How I wished I believed that. Maybe some damage couldn’t scar over; the wound just bled and bled until it drove you mad or you died of it.
Stalker paused long enough to whisper, “I’ll see you soon.” And he leaned in, but I turned my face, so his lips brushed my cheek.
The hurt flickered so fast that I almost missed it. Then he inclined his head, accepting nothing had changed between us despite everything he’d done in the forest. I hated this. It felt like nothing had been settled. Neither of the boys I cared about was happy, and I didn’t want either of them to go, but it made sense; they were both too wounded to serve any purpose at the outpost. Therefore, they needed to get to safety before our time ran out. Still, it increased my sense of isolation.
Tension infused the men. They’d heard whispers about why we had to hurry the harvest. In ones and twos, they beset me, asking for hints or confirmation. Distracted, worried about my friends, I found it easy to get rid of them. For old men, they were easily alarmed by a girl spinning a knife in the palm of her hand, a brat’s trick. But maybe my expression related to their desire to be elsewhere too.
That morning, a cadre escorted the growers out with multiple wagons, empty and ready for the harvest. It would take all our combined efforts to do this quickly. This time, we couldn’t just watch them work while standing guard. I took up a scythe for threshing the tall grain. I turned it in my hands, reflecting it would make a fair weapon too. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
In the field, I found Tegan working as fast as she could. She looked pretty and pure in her yellow dress, dark hair shining in the sun. I hardly recognized her from the thin, bruised waif I’d brought from the ruins, near death and afraid of her own shadow. She looked healthy, now. I joined her with a sad look; she could tell something was wrong, but the head grower yelled at us to quit slacking, so I followed her lead with the plants.
Backbreaking labor followed. Tegan didn’t make conversation; she understood the importance of our efforts here. If we failed, the settlement starved. All the while, I kept an eye fixed on the horizon, dreading the moment when it darkened with the onslaught of the horde. Without pausing for food, though I did swill water in the fields, I cut and cut, letting someone else gather the fallen grain and pile it in the wagon. Elsewhere, they pulled corn, dug potatoes, and whatever else the growers had planted. I didn’t know all the names, but my sense of urgency spiked.
“Slow down,” Tegan begged me. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
I just shook my head. We had little time left. I could feel it ticking away, as clearly as the hands on Fade’s watch. He’d let me wear it down below, and as I lay watching him sleep, I’d felt that ticking in my skin. I sensed it now too.
“I’m gonna be so glad to see my wife,” one of the guards said nearby.
“Been a long time,” another agreed.
Chatting as they were, the men didn’t seem to feel it. I worked faster. Feverish. This couldn’t be done in a day. How I wished it could.
When the light went, the growers returned to Salvation with the laden wagons. I wasn’t chosen for escort duty, and I prowled the camp like an angry spirit. Longshot stopped me on my second circuit, drawing me toward his private fire. Sometimes he let men join him as a mark of favor, if they’d distinguished themselves that day. I didn’t think that was the case with me.
“You’re gonna burn out,” he said. “And you’re making the others nervous. Do you want to go back and join your friends in town?”
“Would you ask that of one of them?” I demanded, jerking my head toward the guards clustered around the other fire.
“Nope,” he admitted cheerfully. “But you ain’t a grown man, either, for all you’d like to be.”
I stared at him. “I don’t want to be a man.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. I know people think I’m strange in Salvation, but I’m not a bad example of a Huntress.”
“Never said you were.” Without asking if I wanted something, he fixed me a plate of beans and roasted meat. It was venison, I thought, left from the last hunt.
Though I felt too sick with anxiety to eat, I shoveled the food in anyway. My body would get weak if I didn’t maintain it, and then I’d let one of my comrades down. Under the circumstances, we needed all the strength we could muster.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Two days should wrap it up. The rest will rot in the fields, but it’s not ready for us to bring it in.”
“Will Salvation have enough food this winter?”
Longshot shrugged. “Might have to tighten our belts a notch or two, but nobody will starve, I reckon. And some could do with some slimming anyway.”
“You’ve always been so nice to me,” I said. “For precious little reason from what I can see. Why is that?”
He was silent for long moments, gazing out over the dark landscape. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled at me. “I brought you to Salvation. You’re like my own.”
What did that mean, exactly? Down below, I had no kin to claim me, just the good of the community. Topside, I had foster parents and Longshot too … whereas Fade had nobody. That seemed so unfair; he needed people to love him because he’d had that once and lost it. But maybe I could make up the difference. Perhaps my heart was strong enough to heal the damage. I clung to that hope, just as I had to the certainty he must be alive.
“Is that why you sent me to Momma Oaks? Because you knew she’d do more than tolerate me.”
The elder inclined his head. “I hoped she’d love you, yep. Seemed like you could do with some.”
That was when I knew—in his way, he loved me too. That was why he’d put up with my questions and visits to the wall, the nights he stood watch. Warmth bubbled up through the pain and uncertainty. It was hard to stay tense around Longshot, which was probably why he’d called me over. My muscles relaxed, both from his easy company, and the quiet warmth of the fire. Exhaling slowly, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about Fade. Or about Stalker, who had kissed me good-bye, but Fade seemed indifferent to that too. He no longer cared about anything—and maybe I fretted for no good reason. It might be normal for him to withdraw, considering what he went through.
Be patient, I told myself.
Before long, I excused myself and went to my bedroll. Sleep didn’t come easy, and I roused at every night noise, expecting to find a Freak trying to drag me out of my tent. As they had Fade. If they’d intended to instill fear by their actions, then they’d succeeded. I didn’t feel secure here anymore—not that there was safety anywhere. The whole world was a ruin, a place of sharp angles and pitiless lines that could cut you to the bone.
In the morning, I gulped water, hard tack and then sought Tegan in the field. She glowed a deep bronze where my skin burned from laboring in the bright sun, but there was no help for it. Momma Oaks would have some remedy when I got home. I wanted to see my foster mother with a desperation that bordered on unreasonable, but I felt like she could make everything better somehow, or at least explain to me why nothing made sense anymore.