“Don’t look.”
“I’m not looking.”
“I know, just…” Susanna squeezed Jack’s hand. “Don’t look.”
Sweat was dripping down her forehead and her clothes were sticking to her skin. The heat was unrelenting; there wasn’t so much as a puff of wind to give them relief. Susanna knew that was a blessing, however. Earlier the wind had swirled and howled, snatching up the tiny grains of sand coating the floor of the wasteland and hurling them against Jack and Susanna, scraping their skin and getting in their eyes and mouths.
Though it had been easier to ignore the wraiths with their eyes scrunched shut.
It was midday, Susanna thought, judging by the height of the sun in the sky. She hoped this was as hot as it was going to get, but with the ground absorbing heat all morning, the afternoon had the potential to become even more stifling once the baking sand started radiating up at them.
There was no shade. Nothing but the dry and cracking ground, undulating just enough to obscure the road ahead, and jagged rocks and tumbled boulders that somehow cast no shadows. In the ‘normal’ wasteland that Susanna was used to, shadows were a danger, a place for wraiths to lurk. Here, the demonic red sun freed them – and denied any kind of shade that would give Jack and Susanna a chance to hide from its punishing rays.
“I need water,” Jack croaked beside her.
“You don’t,” Susanna reminded him. “You’re dead. Your soul doesn’t need things like food or water any more.”
“All right then,” Jack griped back, “I want water. Is that better?” His breath came out in harsher, more ragged gasps as the hill they were ascending steepened, causing all the muscles in Susanna’s legs to cramp and pull. “Bloody hell,” he rasped. “I’ve never been this hot in my entire life.”
“Try to remember that it isn’t real,” Susanna advised.
“Huh?”
“It’s not real,” she repeated. “Your skin isn’t really burning, you’re not really thirsty. And no matter how much you feel like you’re overheating, the sun won’t kill you.” She barked out a breathless laugh. “Heatstroke doesn’t exist in the wasteland.”
“Well, it feels real,” Jack replied. “And I feel like I’m going to die.”
You can’t die if you’re already dead, Susanna thought, but she refrained from stating the obvious. “You won’t,” she said. “Just focus on that and keeping putting one foot in front of the other. And don’t look at the wraiths!”
She added the last bit because she could see, out of the corner of her eye, Jack’s right hand clenching into a tighter and tighter fist. He wanted to grab or slap down one of the wraiths that were diving and swooping round their heads.
“I’m… trying…” Jack ground out. “But it’s instinct. They’re like wasps. I just want to grab a newspaper and batter them to death!”
“You can’t,” Susanna said. “React, acknowledge them, look at them – and they’ll get you. If you can keep ignoring them, then they’re just like your wasps. Harmless.”
“You’ve obviously never been stung by one,” Jack muttered quietly, needing to have the last word as always.
But Susanna was just as hot as he was, and cross with it. She was in no mood to let him have it.
“Well, maybe not,” she snapped, “but I have been attacked by wraiths, more times than I can remember, and it’s not pleasant. So ignore them.”
Silence from Jack. Then, so quietly it might have been a figment of her imagination, he murmured, “Sorry.”
Susanna reached out and took his hand, giving his fingers a quick squeeze before letting go. She understood.
Long minutes later, they reached the crest of the hill. The slope dropped away, steeper on this side, and Susanna winced as she saw the scree that littered the sheer descent. They were going to slip and slide and skid all the way down. Terrific.
A wraith lower down the hill suddenly started making a beeline for them and Susanna slammed her eyes closed, not trusting herself not to follow its progress. She felt the air stir gently – along with a sharp but shallow slice across her cheek – as the wraith passed by. It would likely join the small cloud of its kin that had followed them all morning.
Why not, Susanna thought wryly. Join the party.
“Is that how you survive it?” Jack asked, the question surprising Susanna enough that she turned to look at him, found his grey eyes searching hers. Was that sympathy she saw there?
“What do you mean?”
“When the wraiths are hurting you, is that how you survive? By telling yourself that it isn’t real?”
A wraith darted between the two of them, daring one of them to acknowledge its presence, but Susanna couldn’t tear her gaze away from Jack’s and he was watching her intently, waiting for an answer.
“Yes,” she said, seeing no reason to hide it from him. “It hurts, but I won’t die. And it’ll end eventually; I just need to keep breathing.” She looked back to the drop before them, finding it hard to hold his gaze. “That’s what I tell myself. Over and over.”
“Does it help?”
Susanna smiled grimly. Jack was very, very good at asking questions that got right to the heart of things.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t help.”
She waited for him to say something caustic about her advice – now that she’d admitted it was bad advice – but he didn’t. Instead he sighed.
“That’s going to be a bitch to climb down, isn’t it?”
Susanna wanted to laugh – Jack had hit the nail bang on the head – but it wasn’t at all funny. It was going to be a bitch.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
Jack let out another sigh. “OK then. Let’s go.”
That was his way. Push on, push back. Keep fighting. But she knew he was just as exhausted as she was, mentally and physically. And that was a sure-fire way to make mistakes.
Mistakes here would see him dead.
“Wait.” She reached out, pulled him to a stop. “Let’s take a break.”
“A break?” Jack laughed harshly. “Did you bring a picnic basket?”
“No,” Susanna said with exaggerated patience. “But let’s just have five minutes of not concentrating every second. I think it’ll help. Here.” Using her grip on his arm, she manoeuvred him to his knees and then knelt directly facing him. Leaning in, she rested her face on his shoulder, eyes closed. It took a moment, but eventually Jack relented, mimicking her posture.
“There,” she said quietly. “Now, even if you open your eyes, you can’t see anything. You can relax, just for a minute. They’ll still swipe at us, but they won’t do anything more than that.”
She consciously relaxed her muscles, stretching her shoulders to try and loosen the tension there. It wasn’t comfortable, kneeling on the hard-packed earth with tiny stones digging into her shins, but not having to constantly police her gaze loosened the vice gripping her skull and that was blissful.
“How did Dylan do this alone?” Jack asked after a long, quiet minute.
“I honestly don’t know,” Susanna said. “I guess…” She thought about what she’d seen between Tristan and Dylan, the bond that held them together, the love they shared. “I guess her motivation was strong enough.”
“Well, I’m pretty motivated not to die, so I reckon maybe there’s hope after all.”
Susanna didn’t correct him. She knew what he meant. Becoming a wraith would be a death of his self, not just his body.
Guilt wracked her for, oh, maybe the millionth time. Crossing Jack’s original wasteland would have been a piece of cake compared with this.
“Jack—”
“If you’re going to apologise again, save it.”
Susanna yanked in a shocked breath. Hurt punched her low in the belly, solid enough to feel like a wraith trying to batter through her. Forgetting herself, she stupidly made to draw back, but Jack held her there, his hand firm but gentle on the back of her neck.
“I agreed to it,” he said, his voice still as harsh, as gruff. “It’s my fault as well as yours, so stop beating yourself up about it. Just…” He broke off and squeezed her, turning the grip into a hug. “Just promise me you’ll get me out of here.”
She couldn’t promise that. Not here, in the burning desert with the wraiths so free to torment them. With days and days of this still ahead. She could not promise that. But she did anyway.
“I promise, Jack. I’ll get you through this. I swear it.”
They stayed there longer than they should have. Susanna knew it, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move, and Jack didn’t complain. They’d fought all morning, each step, each moment requiring them to keep laser focus: their eyes on the ground or dead ahead, staring into the distance and avoiding glancing, even for a heartbeat, at the wraiths doing everything to catch their attention.
Susanna didn’t understand how it worked, why the wraiths wouldn’t attack them unless they looked at them – she was only grateful for the chance, however small, to get Jack through this in one piece.
One morning had utterly exhausted them, physically and mentally. She didn’t understand how they were supposed to survive the afternoon, never mind days of this. Especially when she couldn’t even muster the energy to lift her head. Jack’s breath was warm against her shoulder, his hold strong and comforting. Susanna couldn’t bear to tear away from him. Just another minute, she promised herself. One more.
At last, reluctance lost the battle against the instinctive panic of still being out in the open when darkness fell. “All right, let’s go.” She took a deep breath. “Are you ready?”
“No,” Jack mumbled into her shoulder. “But let’s do it anyway.”
They clambered to their feet awkwardly, still facing each other. Susanna didn’t know about Jack, but she kept her eyes shut. Anything to buy another few precious seconds of not controlling her gaze, her every blink.
“Susanna,” Jack said at last. She opened her eyes and Jack’s face was directly in front of hers, close enough that a wraith couldn’t squeeze its away in between them and draw their attention.
She found his eyes and drew strength from them. Slate grey, they were slightly narrowed and ready for battle. As his ferryman, she had Jack’s memories in her head, knew he’d fought pretty much every day of his adolescence, and he was ready to fight this, too. He just needed her to lead the way.
“Right then,” she said, feeling her own determination rise to meet his. “Let’s do this.”
The slope was as awful as Susanna had predicted. She found it easier to relax her eyes and focus on nothing, so she couldn’t see the bigger stones ready to trip her, the rivers of loose pebbles ready to give way beneath her feet and send her sliding. Each time she lost her footing – and the twice she ended up on her backside – it was a struggle not to sharpen her gaze, to look about and get her bearings, search for something to help her back on her feet or steady her balance. At these times, she just closed her eyes and waited for a hand to reach out and help her. And one did.
And when the roles were reversed she did the same for Jack. Because that was the only way they were going to get through this – together.