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“Evor said you’re not well now?” Kazem touches my face gently. His thumbs brush over my lips. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” And I will be. I know that. My body’s always been strong. It’ll heal. “This is just temporary.” I wrap him in another hug, then pepper him in kisses, breathing in his scent: it’s mainly sweat—I mean, we’re all sweating—but there’s the hint of mint too. Like from old gum. Was he chewing gum earlier, before we began this mission?
“But what is it?” he asks, his voice soft.
I sigh. “Evor said it’s my autonomic system. That’s what he thinks. It’s malfunctioning.”
“That sounds serious.” He takes hold of my hands and meets my gaze full on. That’s one thing I’ve always liked about him: how to can maintain such steady eye contact.
“It’s not.” I swallow hard. It can’t be. “I’ll be back to normal soon. Be beating you at free-running.” I give him a sly look, expecting him to laugh—but he doesn’t.
He just stares at me, shakes his head softly. It’s the same look in his eyes that he has when he talks about his brother. Yusuf was twelve when he died— when Kazem was just fifteen. It was years before I met Kazem. Yusuf died of natural causes. A bad case of flu, I think, though Kazem’s never really told me much about that. What I do know about Yusuf’s death comes from Maggot. But when Kazem talks of his late brother, it’s usually about how he lost Yusuf’s favorite pair of socks—a pair with cartoon yellow men and women on them Kazem had for three years after Yusuf died. Or when Kazem’s feeling bad about the time he ruined Yusuf’s cuddly toy, ripping it open in a fit of anger when he was like eight years old or something. Those are the things Kazem always talks about for his brother—the things that make him feel sad or ashamed now. I don’t know if he thinks about their happy memories, but he never talks about them.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, but we both know I’m trying to convince myself of it too. Because this can’t be my life now. It can’t.
I turn and look away, because, suddenly, I feel like crying—and that’s not like me at all, and I don’t want to seem weak. Can’t seem weak. So I focus on my surroundings. The low sloping hills and the lake in the distance. The air is shimmering around it and—
There’s a person there. A figure, hazy in the glimmering air, but I can see her hair. Flaming red.
My eyes widen and I jolt, feel everything inside me tighten.
Ysabelle, she’s alive, of course. And she is here, she’s coming for me and—
I let out a strangled-sounding cry, trying to alert the others, but as I do, the air shimmers again and Ysabelle disappears completely. She’s just...gone.
“Kacey? You okay?” Kazem’s voice. I hear him move, hear the plastic bags he always keeps in his pockets rustle.
“What is it?” Shweta is looking in my direction, now ignoring whatever it is that Celena is saying to her.
I gulp, looking between Kazem, Shweta, and the lake. The air is still now, crystal clear, definitely no woman there.
“I’m fine,” I say to Kazem, but my heart twists with the lie. I wait until he nods, and then tell him he’d better go and help Maggot. The moment he turns away I wave at Shweta, beckoning her over.
I wait until she is at my side before I whisper to her that I thought I saw a woman. Don’t give her any details.
“Oh, that happens sometimes.”
“It does?”
She nods again. “Especially when the timeline isn’t stable. So far, every timeline I’ve been in has had some instability. Little things that don’t make sense. But when people literally appear one moment and are gone the next, it usually means the timeline will end shortly. Be a day or two long, at the most.”
My mouth feels grainy, my tongue gritty. “And then everything will start again.”
“Uh huh. You’ll get used to it. And I sure hope to the Gods that this isn’t a one-off, that you remember it all next time too.”
#
WE WALK. ALL OF US. I try and hide how sick I am feeling, but it’s difficult. Kazem’s got his arms around me, and he’s half pushing me forward as we walk, propelling me. My body feels lazy and floaty and heavy, like I’m not fully grounded in my body too, which is ridiculous. But I feel like I could drift off. And everything aches. Aches so, so much. By the time we stop for a break, I’m so grateful. Grateful for something I cannot voice. They cannot know how bad I am.
I sit with my back to a tree and breathe in and out, heavily. Through extraordinarily heavy eyelids, I watch as Celena starts her evening routine. She does it out in the open, no worries about us all watching. She hasn’t got her pink mat she usually sits on, but she folds herself onto her knees on the dusty ground, sits upright with her spine dead straight, and tosses her head back. Her blond hair falls in glossy, perfect waves over her shoulder.
“Please, Divine Gods and Goddesses of Life and Fertility and Hope and Renewal, please bless me with what I desire most.”
I want to look away, but as always when I see her praying, I cannot. There’s something enticing about it, about seeing her at apparently her most vulnerable, and I can’t look away. Others, back in the tunnels, spoke of this too. Because sitting here, like this, you’d think Celena was lovely. And she is...and she isn’t. She’s like one of those delicate flowers with the yellow petals that I know Sian likes. The type that looks fragile, like something to be protected, but is a nightmare to pick. Robust because of the razor-like thorns on its stems.
“Please know that I’d do anything you ask to have my own baby, and please know that I am not fussy. That I have put my whole life into fulfilling my purpose to be a mother. Every decision I have made, though it may not be understood, is for this outcome, so please help me in my methods, guide me in my choices, and I will be eternally grateful.”
Celena turns her head and looks directly at me. I turn away, feel color rushing to my face. I clear my throat. I don’t know why she prays. Not like the Gods and Goddesses make the babies. Well, maybe they help, but you have to actually have sex to start with. And Celena, if she’s following Maggot’s rules, can’t be. Unless she’s rule-breaking with someone, and that’s why she’s praying.
I shrug and focus on Kazem a little way away. I wonder if the two of us will ever have a baby, then I shudder. Not because I know we’d have to have sex—probably a lot of times—but because it would be a baby. A tiny, little human who we’d be responsible for. Who I’d be responsible for. Oh Gods. Why did I even think about the possibility of a baby? I can’t have one when any children remind me of all the ones I killed in the clansmen massacre.
I swallow hard and shove the thoughts out of my mind, glad that I’m not like Celena. That I haven’t got a desperate yearning to be a mother. Even though I know that Kazem wants to be a parent. He’s mentioned it as something that will happen ‘one day.’ I’d wondered before if it was my lack of sexual attraction that meant I didn’t feel maternal or want children, but Kazem’s feelings on children don’t support that hypothesis.
I breathe out hard and tell myself not to think of it, not to worry about it. I’ve already lost countless evenings and nights worrying if there was something integral I am lacking—whether in my sexuality or makeup as a woman—and each of those times I’d told myself firmly, after hours and hours, that we are all different. So that’s what I tell myself now.