What have I done? Jonah thought as he leaned against a tree, panting.
He’d broken the simplest of rules: Never aim a rifle at a target of which you are unsure.
And now this.
This . . . girl.
How could such a young child have found her way up here? And why? Nothing good drove her here, a voice said. Not like this. Naked and torn.
He looked at the girl, the same size and age as Sally had been when she’d gone missing. Had Sally ended up in the woods somewhere up here, she and her mother? Had they been chased to such a place? Were they still out here, fallen into a pit like this, or into an old mine shaft? Or had they been taken to some faraway place? Were they still being kept somewhere, alive, wondering why they had not been found? Or had their end come swiftly? All his years of searching, even to this day, had led to nothing.
He paced around the edge of the pit.
He’d killed the girl.
Shot her.
What was he going to do? How would he explain why he was even in the woods with a deer rifle when it wasn’t deer season for another week?
He knelt at the pit, head pounding as he imagined her parents when they heard what Jonah had done to her, to their lives.
He could not bear it.
He sat against a tree with the rifle, ejected the empty shell, leaving the hammer cocked. A live round ready to fire. He wedged the rifle between his knees, pointed the muzzle at his face, grabbed a stick, and placed it against the trigger.
Closed his eyes.
What was that?
A whimper. Soft and low. A soft cry, of the kind he’d heard long ago, in a different life. In Sally’s bedroom, that last night.
He eased the rifle’s hammer down, set the rifle aside.
He peered over the edge of the pit.
The girl stirred. Jonah saw now where his bullet had struck a sapling near the lip of the pit. He’d not shot the girl; though knowing this did nothing to allay his shame for firing the rifle.
The girl had been injured some other way. Her left thigh was a knot of raised, bruised flesh, her bare back livid with welts.
His back tensed with the memory of such meanness exacted against the flesh.
Who did such a thing? Too many people. He knew.
Another thought, just as terrible, struck him.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey.”
He had to get her out of the cold and snow, or she surely would die out here.
The girl remained still and soundless, cowered like a tiny forest creature, alert to the predator’s presence. Her face was turned to the side, and her hair, cut ragged, as if with a piece of broken glass, draped in her eyes.
“Hey,” Jonah said. He’d not been so near a girl since Lucinda had taken him to a pit just like this. Perhaps it was the same pit. He could not be sure.
He lowered himself into the pit, its edge coming to his chest. The girl cowered into the corner.
He touched her shoulder gently with his fingertips. She tensed and hissed at him. Her skin was cold, corpse gray. He needed to get her inside. Now. Or she’d die. She might die anyway, if hypothermia had set in.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
The girl coughed, a sound like seeds shaken in a dried gourd. Her rib bones were set in stark relief beneath her blue skin. She rolled over, nakedness revealed fully to him.
He looked away, embarrassed, and stared up to see vultures scribing circles in the sky.
He slung off his coat and covered her.
She wailed and cradled her head with her arms to expose a thatchwork of lacerations on her wrists.
“Okay,” he said and moved the jacket to lay it gently on her shoulders.
The girl cried out with pain.
Jonah pulled the jacket collar up round her neck. “Can you get up?”
She stayed put, face hidden in her arms.
“Okay. Here,” Jonah said. He slipped his hands under her arms to lift her. She wailed.
He didn’t want to hurt her or scare her more than she already was, but he had to get her out of this pit.
Okay.
With his palm, he rubbed gentle circles between her shoulder blades—Sally had liked that—then scooped his hands under her.
She kicked, beat her balled fists at his face. He took the blows, his nose bloodied.
“Easy,” he said, then counted three and stood with her. His legs buckled and he bit his tongue against a pain that set his hips on fire. He lifted her up and laid her on the ground outside the pit.
She popped up and, despite her wounds and poor state, started to flee.
With a groan and complaint of joints, he climbed out of the pit and chased after her.
She tripped and fell and he scooped her up and set her down before him, holding her shoulders gently, her face hidden behind her ratty hair.
“Don’t run. I’m here to help you,” he said. “Understand. You will die out here alone. I’ll take you inside. Warm you. Feed you. You run and I can’t find you, you’ll die. You will die without me.”
The girl made no sound or movement, but she did not try to run.
Jonah squatted in front of her. “Climb on my back,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and soft.
He looked back at her, over his shoulder. “Train’s leaving. I got warm food at home and a fire and blankets.”
She said nothing, still would not look at him.
“Do you want to die out here? Is that it?” he snapped. He’d not meant to be so harsh, had meant it as playful, a tone Sally understood as teasing.
Her hair fell to the side as she glared at him.
Those eyes.
He—
The girl was climbing onto his back, hooking her arms about his neck as she held fast.
He rose, unstable; planted his feet wide.
Those eyes.
He took a step.
He knew those eyes.
And another step.
They were Sally’s eyes.