I’m breathing hard, but Cillian is worse. I let go of his hand and keep a pace or two behind him so there’s something between his body and whatever’s chasing us. He’s not moving fast enough. I’m operating on something pure, on instinct or reflex.
Training, Maeve says somewhere within me, and the numbness I feel goes a little deeper, claws on to me a little harder.
We keep going, up an incline, and I keep my hands on his back, pushing him. I’ve bruises, hard bruises, but I’m not in much physical pain, and Cillian is, I think. If I had to guess, I’d say his nose is broken, and there could be more besides. There’s not a bit I can do about that, and it’ll be the absolute least of our problems if we don’t keep well ahead of the skrake, so I keep quiet and follow after him, listening behind us.
Up ahead, Cillian stumbles, and I feel pity for him, and something like admiration, except it’s so different from the feelings I’d have had for Maeve and Mam. He’s working so hard, I think, because he’s running toward Nic and Aodh. He trips and falls in front of me, and I scoop him upward as we go, catching him beneath the arms and yanking. He’s already picking himself up, rubbing the palms of his hands together. His reddish hair is dark with sweat around the temples, and his face is a mess of dried blood and swollen skin. I take a look over my shoulder at the road behind us. I can’t see anything.
I move a little ahead of him, making him keep up with me now. And we keep going. My throat is dry, and I realize I’m parched. Cillian is worse, probably. I remember the yoke he has strapped around his body, and I reach for it and tug it off him, hold on to him to let him know we’ll rest, let him catch his breath. I find the stopper and bring it to his lips. He drinks a little, coughs, and then takes more, long sucking drafts that have him breathing even harder. He sits on the ground, panting.
“I’m okay,” he mumbles through snot, phlegm, and water while I take my turn with his bottle. Three mouthfuls, I decide. That’s my allowance. The water is cool and crisp-tasting. Cillian bends over, puts his hands on his thighs, and spits onto the dust.
“I’ll be okay,” he says again, and he looks up to meet my eyes. “Are you?”
I can’t hear anything following us; probably we’re safe enough, but I don’t feel it. You’re never safe, ever.
“C’mon,” I say. “A little farther.”
I don’t think he’ll be able, but Cillian gets going again. He stands straight, takes a step, wobbles. I jump to my feet, and he puts a hand to my shoulder. He steadies himself. He takes a deep breath, spits again, takes another, and then starts moving again. I pick up the wraparound water bottle and follow.
We move on, more slowly now, as the light begins to go and the landscape around us darkens. We break often and drink small sips, but ages later we’re still going. At last we walk side by side, and I swing Cillian’s empty water bottle by its long sling. I haven’t seen or heard a skrake since a little after we left the crossroads before the minefield. Still we walk.
The day is disappearing on us. After a long trudge uphill, we get to the top of a slope and stop again for a break. I hunker down to stretch and feel my knees pop and my feet throb. We’ve a good view of the road ahead of us, miles outward to the west. West, I think, homeward. The sun is setting, throwing a rosy glow over the whole of Ireland, it feels like. It’s so beautiful.
And that way, over there, is Slanbeg, still the same, but gone forever.
Cillian shields his bloodied face with his hand, his eyes searching the landscape below us. “I can’t see anything,” he tells me, his voice cracked with exhaustion.
He’s looking for Aodh and Nic, of course. The skrake are left behind us I’d say, but I want to move still.
“Another while,” I say. “I see a place we can get water.” Besides this, I don’t like being on top of a hill; we’ve a good view but we’re exposed and we’re too bone-tired to take on a gust of wind just now.
Cillian follows me without argument. For maybe three klicks I listen to his dragging feet following me. We get to the place I saw on the hill, and I lead him off-road, through the growth till we find the river. Cillian half sits, half falls on to its bank, and I’m the same, dog-tired, spent. Our breathing starts to even out, and the quiet around us gets louder. I don’t think at all about Maeve.
Technically, I should keep watch, but when night fills out, we’re both fast asleep, spread out beside the river.
Cillian’s still out when I wake up, but he must have stirred in the night. My body is close to his, near touching, and though the ground is freezing beneath me, sapping the warmth from my body, there are blankets over us both. He must have woken in the cold and got them from his pack.
Delicately, not moving too much, I take inventory. I’m refreshed, give or take, and the aches in my shoulder and bruises along my thighs and the sides of my face feel no worse than the bruises I’d get from training. I’m fine, nothing a few days of rest won’t cure for good. The numbness is lifting. I feel as if my body belongs to myself, as if it’s something I’m connected to.
Maeve.
I won’t think about it, is all. If I think about it, I’ll stop again, I’ll lie myself down on the ground and Cillian won’t be able to get me moving this time.
He is sleeping hard beside me, as if he has nothing to be afraid of. His arms are curled up beside his bloodied face, and I can see the clean delicate skin of his inner wrist, the shadows his long eyelashes cast on his face. It feels good to lie beside him, but when I close my eyes to rest more, I see Maeve’s face, bloodied, turned, her lips forming an O. I get moving, up and out of the little patch of warmth I’d made on the ground for the night, and away from thought and memory, and into the safety of exercise.
I stretch in the cold air, but before I settle into my morning routine, I steal back through the bushes to see if there’s anything worth seeing on the road. It’s clear in every direction.
I’m thinking now.
I throw water from the little stream on my face, and I drink and rinse out my mouth and my cuts and scrapes, and then it’s down to work, down to training. I keep an eye on Cillian and the world around us. I go easy on myself—I’m still sore—but it’s good to be doing it, good to be moving again. It warms me up and makes me feel loose and ready. Maeve would be satisfied with me, a thought comes, and I clamp down my mind on it like a lid on a box.
No thinking.
I work harder.
When I’m finished, I drink from and then refill the water bag and then go to wake Cillian. He’s in deep and it takes him a while to come to. He coughs, raises himself on an elbow. I hand him the water and get going, moving slowly so he can catch up when he’s ready. I hear him behind me, big feet noisy and unpracticed on the road.
After a while he asks, “How long was I sleeping?”
“All of the night and part of the day,” I say, my voice coming out annoyed sounding.
“You should have woken me sooner.”
“It’s not up to me to be waking you,” I tell him, before I can stop myself, and he’s quiet after that.
I have to try harder. I don’t know why I’m so like her. My mind flinches away from her name.
When the sun’s high, we break to drink water. My stomach gives a rumble, and I let out a little laugh that sounds like an apology. Cillian acknowledges it with a huffing sort of noise and reaches for his pack.
“I should have done this this morning, or yesterday even,” he says. “It was hard to think.”
In his hand he has a tin. He screws off the top and inside is a wobbling, greasy-looking substance. He puts a hand in it and then reaches for me. I start, hand going reflexively to a knife.
“It’s cream,” he says. His voice is soothing, but he sounds like I hurt him. “Like Nic used. It’ll help with your cuts.”
“Moving toward me quickly can be dangerous,” I say by way of explanation, but he doesn’t look like he understands what I mean, and I don’t know how to say it any clearer.
“Look,” he says, and dabs some on his nose. He winces with the pain of it but keeps going, rubbing it on the swollen bridge of his nose and around his nostrils. It’s not pleasant to watch. The last of the caked blood starts to come away, and he’s wincing and letting out air between his teeth. After a moment, though, he’s dabbing more vigorously. “It helps with the pain. It disinfects as well. Come here.”
I move forward a little, more curious than anything else. I perch warily while he applies the ointment to the side of my face. His touch is gentle; I close my eyes for a moment and I realize all the little hairs on my arms and neck and even my thighs are standing upward. I rise abruptly and walk away a little, pretend to stretch.
“It’ll start to feel better soon,” Cillian says quietly, behind me. I hear him digging around in his bag, opening and closing things. “There’s water near here?”
I point to a place, twenty paces from us, and let him go alone while I drop down for another few push-ups. I listen hard in case there’s trouble.
Cillian comes back, fiddling with small brown pellets and a plastic container. He adds some water to the pellets and tells me, “It’ll be edible soon. Then we’ll move.” He looks at me, catching my eyes with his. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Yester—”
“Don’t,” I tell him, my voice like a stone.
He nods. I wish he wouldn’t watch me.
“Don’t stare,” I say. I want to tell him somehow to keep his eyes off my face—it’s too personal, whatever he sees there. I don’t want to be looked at, especially not in the eyes.
“Okay.”
We look at the landscape around us while the food readies itself. The green of the grass is particularly violent-looking against the darkening clouds. It is beautiful.
Cillian speaks again after a little while. I knew he would. “What’s it like, where you come from?”
He hands me the tin. I take it in my hands and am surprised to feel that it’s warm. Cillian roots around in his bag again and finds me a spoon. I dig in. The food is rich and good and hot. Six small mouthfuls, I think. And the rest for him. Cillian watches me while I eat, and when I hand the dish over to him, he licks the spoon clean and nods to himself and says, “What do you do for food? How safe is it there?”
It’s good, nearly, to have him asking this again. He’s scared, but he’s all right. In my mind’s eye I call up Slanbeg. I keep my thoughts away from our house (Mam’s hat hanging in the hall, waiting for her; Maeve’s winter jumper, folded carefully). I try to imagine that the rest of the chickens might have survived this long.
What happens when we catch up to Nic and Aodh? They’ll be with Cillian. I’m just someone that tried to force them all into more danger. To try to get a look at a body that had already turned, and then nearly had both of us ate.
And I was mean about it.
Even so, I tell the truth. “Nowhere’s safe.”