The night is still clinging to the world around me, and dawn is muddled and unrealistic. I am awake, shivering violently.
In the dark my head felt too heavy for my neck, like a boulder trying to balance on a stick. I fell asleep, woke up sweating, and slept again. It was a mistake, training would have it, falling asleep. They could all have got away in the night, leaving me here with no supplies—I have no idea where my things are now, my bottle and blankets, and no way to find Maeve. Sick like this, I’d probably die.
I could always die.
In the morning, though, nothing has changed; they’re still here, fast asleep. That’s dangerous, feeling like I can get away with things. I’ve been trained better than that.
My thoughts feel far away from myself.
I know Maeve is out there, under a bush.
And beyond her somewhere, Phoenix City, still.
The three bundles in camp are motionless. I watch them, cuddled together for warmth, wrapping my arms around myself. After our discussion they settled down, all together. Nic is sleeping in the middle and one of the man’s hands is thrown across her belly, and I think about that for a moment. I wonder is that how Mam looked once, and did a man ever throw his arm over her, to claim her in that way. The child has a rock in her hand, but her fingers are limp and all three are gone, fully asleep. They look like a family, a unit.
It’s idiotic to sleep like that in the open when there are skrake around, and me, to harm them. I’ve maybe never slept like that, so soundly, so out. Where do they come from that they can sleep like that?
I close my eyes and try not to move. My limbs hurt so much that I’m worried I mightn’t be able to walk the road—not for long, anyway. The day warms as the sun comes up, and I stop shivering, and a little while after that I sleep again.
It takes a few moments to come to where I am. Blinking hard against the sun, I look around me, my neck giving out and then everything else joining in, my back especially. I feel a wreck, a ruin.
“Morning.” The man’s voice. The three of them, woman, child, and man, are twenty paces away, all staring at me.
I get to my feet, wincing in pain, one hand dropping to my knives.
“Give it a goddam fucking rest, will you?” The woman’s voice cuts through the space between. “What the shitting fuck is your issue? We saved you, you outlying sack of—”
The man puts a hand out, and she looks at him and closes her mouth and turns away, but she can’t keep her mouth shut for long. “If we wanted to hurt you, we’d have hurt you.”
I know this myself, but they could change their minds any time they felt like it. Everything changes, and when things go, they go pretty fast in my experience.
Don’t trust anyone.
Maeve. Of course.
Where is she?
“Where is she?” I say, my voice like stone, dead and hard and not interested in arguing.
“What’s your name?” the child asks.
I say nothing.
“I’m Aodh,” she tells me in her bright voice, “and this is Cillian, and this is Nic.”
I want to tell her to keep her voice down, it’s dangerous talking like this on the road.
“Don’t you have a name?”
I say nothing yet but lower my guard and begin a stretch on my right, rotating my arm at the shoulder slowly to see what works, but then stop. It’s too hard. I’m still cold, but sweating too.
“I told you,” the woman—Nic—is saying.
“That’s not very nice,” says Aodh, but I don’t know who she is saying it to. I keep my eyes on the horizon.
“There’s no point talking to her. We should have just let her be.”
“She’d have died in the minefields.”
“Yeah, we should have let her. She’s no use; she’ll die anyway. She’s gone in the head.”
“Where have you come from?” I ask quietly. My voice sounds alien to myself I haven’t used it in so long, but they don’t hear it they’re so busy chatting to each other. I’ve never heard so much talk.
“Hey!” I say, louder, which makes my head pound. They quiet down and I repeat myself.
Nic and Cillian look at each other and then at me.
“Phoenix City.”
It feels nearly like being socked one in the stomach, right in that sweet spot under the sternum. I can’t catch my breath suddenly, and I feel faint. The blood rushes in my ears.
“Are you all right?” The man.
I breathe, try to think. “It is real?”
“Yeah, it’s too fucking real,” Nic says, not looking at me.
I shake my head. It’s hard to think around the pain. I focus on the most important thing, the one thing I know. “You need to take me to where you found me, to where…” It’s so hard to say Maeve, or body. “To where you found the barrow.”
Nic lets out a sound, a hard noise that I realize is meant to be laughter. Cillian doesn’t take his eyes from me. Aodh watches all of us, chewing her lips.
“We can’t go that direction,” the man says, and there’s something in the way he says it that is meant to sound like a decision has been made already and that’s that. It makes my fingers curl in anger.
“I’m going that direction,” I tell him, narrowing my eyes, “and you’re coming with me.”
Aodh walks toward me, slowly, keeping her eyes on me, and I wonder is she going to attack me. I shift my weight, holding the foot that hurts most a little off the ground. Injured, tired as I am, I worry I don’t have the control it’d take to keep her away from me without hurting her. She stops a few paces away and holds out what she’s carrying to me.
I’d never take it except for the way she says, “It’s okay.” Her huge eyes are full of worry. I snatch the bag off her, take an unbalanced step back, nearly fall, and manage not to. I keep my eyes on her, and on the others, as best I can. The bag is full of liquid, and I realize then how thirsty I am, how weak from lack of water. I bring it to my lips and drink. What meets my lips is not water; it’s something cold, sweet. I spit it and throw the bag on the ground.
“Poison!”
Aodh steps over to pick it up, wipes it off and, calmly, drinks long swallows. She keeps her eyes on me. Then she offers it again, burping loudly. I think about it. Take it. Drink. I can nearly feel the sweetness reaching out into every part of my body that needs it, my arms and legs and toes. My head. I drink till there’s nearly none left in the pouch, and I only stop because I don’t want to finish it on them.
“Are you hungry?” Aodh asks me. I don’t answer. It feels like a weakness to say that I am. I don’t know what it means, to take their food.
“I have to find her,” I say again. Angry, but not so angry.
Nic and Cillian are stepping closer to me, which makes me uncomfortable. I try to back away again, but my feet are making things difficult for me. I badly want to sit down.
“You can’t walk,” Cillian says. “Even if we wanted, how would we take you?”
“The barrow,” I say.
“Well, we’re not taking you in the barrow.” He says it in that same voice. “Look, you’re not from Phoenix City, are you?”
Instead of answering, I glance around. We’re being too loud. I need to get them to go easy, go quiet.
“Take us to where you came from,” Nic says.
“Take me to where you found me.” I’m trying to think how to force them. I can, I think. So just shut up and take me.
“We saved your life, you know,” Nic says. “That mine would have killed you, blown your legs off.”
I can make no headway with that.
“Tell us your name,” the man asks.
“Keep your voice quiet,” I say, and then I ask the other thing I need to know. “Danger?”
They look at one another again.
“The dog. A black dog. Followed me everywhere.” I don’t know where the tears come from, but they itch and prickle and then run down my face when I blink. Nic meets my eye and shakes her head. I look away. I knew already that he was dead. If he wasn’t dead, he’d be with me. Those were the only two options for that dog.
Aodh comes closer and I let her. I’m not afraid of these people, I decide once and for all; it’s them who should be afraid of me. I feel flesh on my hand and see that the child has taken her fingers and put them into my palm. I shake her off and blink away the stinging in my eyes.
“Take me to where you found me,” I say. “And then I’ll go with you. I don’t care about what we do once we find her.”
This is true, I think. Mostly true. I want to see Phoenix City still if it stands, I want to be safe. But Maeve is the thing, the only thing that matters. I don’t tell them that if they argue with me, I’ll make them do what I want. I don’t tell them that my feet, my pain, means nothing. I’ll hurt them if I have to, even the girl.
“My name is Orpen,” is what I do tell them.