26

000.153.23.42.13

Time does not exist. Only survival pounds louder than the thunder.

Breathe.

Rest. The inches of flowing water caress our depleted bodies. Muscles turn to churned butter. Hypothermic chills are as mild as a bout of hiccups compared to the preciousness of existence.

We pant like beached trout, too tired to flail, to put more space between the edge and us. Even the idea of Jude’s gunman can’t prick my brain into worry. Let him find us. Let him see what we’ve done.

We’ve survived.

I’ve survived. I’m not weak. God is not weak. God sees us.

Hours or minutes may have passed before the chills force us to move. I don’t know; I didn’t keep track of time. My arm buckles when I push myself to my hand and knees. I hold my stump to my chest as a wounded dog might. Jude sits back on his heels and unties my rope from around us with quivering arms.

We crawl in a broken daze, dragging ourselves to higher ground until the water isn’t sweeping around us. Rocks scrape off our soaked, wrinkled skin. Mud coats between my fingers. We crawl like powerless children, fighting for nonexistent strength.

At last, Jude collapses at the base of a tall smooth rock. I lie down beside him, desperate for any ounce of body heat. The rain turns warmer. Our clothing drips on our chilled wounds.

Jude pulls me against his shivering form with his good arm. Dreams of drowning steal my consciousness and I remember an old story of a girl selling matches, freezing in the snow as she dreamed of a fire.

Fire. What delight the sizzle of fire would be to my ears.

Crackle. Snap. Burn.

My face warms. My stump stings from cold. My body trembles. Hours weave between my veins, tempting me to relinquish my hold on life.

Pop! Wood hisses, reminding me of a winter morning at home. Cinnamon oatmeal in Mother’s giant bowl. Warm mugs. Smoky warmth in the air.

My eyes flutter open to a blast of heat from a small flame. Sparks sing into the air from the jab of a stoking stick. I squint against the heat, seeking clarity.

A red face. White, tangled hair. Purple eyes.

“Willow?” I push up on my elbow. Stones seem to fill my head. It rocks side to side as I try to keep it balanced.

Willow comes around the fire, holding a charred stick. She kneels by me. Her face is splotchy red with peeling skin along her cheeks and nose. Sunburned. “Are you warm yet?”

I shake my head. The movement disorients me, so I lower myself back to the ground. How did she find us? What time is it?

“Keep sleeping.” Her soft voice returns me to slumber.

Each time I wake through the unknown hours, the crackle of fire meets my ears. Sometimes Willow is there, sometimes she’s gone. Sometimes the sky is light, sometimes it’s dark. Sometimes food roasts over the flames.

I wake enough to eat roasted gopher. “How did you do this?”

It’s early morning. I don’t know what day. Jude is still sleeping. Has he woken at all yet? The blood in his arm has clotted and turned a dark red color, almost black.

“I’ve been burning dead sticks. I search hard for them. I have no coal.”

My first taste of warm, cooked meat elicits a moan. Willow hands me a small pouch of water. Her splinted finger sticks out from the others—splinted for my sake. What made her sacrifice for me? What is making her help us?

“I filled yours with rain water, too.” She gestures to my water containers on the ground.

“Thanks.”

“Welks.”

She watches me eat, as if expecting something. I have nothing to offer. I want answers. “Who is the man you sent after Jude and me?”

She frowns. “What man?”

“A man found us in the Dregs. He said you told him to find us. It was right before the storm. I thought . . .” I bite my lip. “I thought maybe he hurt you.”

She shakes her head before I finish. “I’ve been alone since crossing the Dregs.”

I release a long breath. There’s no reason for her to lie . . . unless she’s on the shooter’s side. “He shot Jude.”

She cocks her head to one side. “With a sling and stone?”

I spit out a thin gopher bone. “With a bullet. From a gun.”

Her eyes dart to Jude and back to me. “The hole in his arm?”

“Yes.”

Her sunburned face turns pale and concerned. “It’s deep,” she says in a shaky voice. “I think he will heal, but he groans a lot when sleeping. It must hurt very badly.”

As if to confirm her statement, Jude rolls over with a pitiful whimper, wrapping a muddy hand over his wound. Willow takes a small step toward him as if to comfort, but stops with a quivering lip.

Her distress calms my irritation. “His wound stopped bleeding. It may be painful, but he climbed a rope out of the Dregs, pulling me with him. He’ll be fine.”

But will he?

She sits cross-legged on a small stretch of animal skin. I continue staring at Jude. Unable to stop myself, I ask in a quiet voice, “Is Jude a bad person?”

Willow rotates a second gopher on a stick over the fire. “Alder doesn’t like him, but that’s because Jude-man doesn’t agree with how we live. He says it’s unpractical. He doesn’t like customs, so he’s always making suggestions to Alder on how to change them. I like him, though. He’s come to our village three times now.”

“Why?”

Willow shrugs. “Because I asked him to come back and tell me stories. He reads many tales to Elm and me from a small electronic square—stories about a warrior who killed a giant with a sling like mine, a hairy man who ate grasshoppers, a young queen who saved the world . . . .” A blush enhances the color of her sunburn and she turns the gopher.

I wiggle my eyebrows up and down. “You like Jude.”

Instead of looking bashful, Willow glances at Jude, then glares at me. “Jude-man’s my friend. I graft with Elm.”

I hold up my hands in defense, ignoring the sight of my invisible left hand. “I didn’t know.”

Asking what “grafting” means and who Elm is seems unwise, so I remain quiet, but it sounds like an albino betrothal of sorts. I peek at Willow. She’s so little. Spring eleven. Already betrothed?

What would it be like to be betrothed? I cringe, imagining myself standing in a white dress across from Dusten Grunt and his hairy knuckles. Who would Mother and Father choose for me? They’d have better taste than to pick Dusten, right? They chose each other, after all.

My mind flits to Jude. Reid might like Jude. Would I like Jude?

Willow interrupts my thoughts by waving a flaming gopher on a stick. “Still hungry?”

I jerk back. “Um . . .” We should save some for Jude. My fingers are greasy. It doesn’t taste very good. My stomach is churning. “Yes.”

She slides it off the stick with careful fingers.

“How did you find us?” I pop off one of the gopher legs to release some of the heat. Gopher oil drips onto my skirt. I try to calm the nasty twist of my stomach.

“It was an accident. I headed back home—to atone, but the rope was cut.”

“I thought you wanted to come with us.”

“I do now that I found you. I want to see new places. I’m tired of people leaving without giving me stories or showing me something new. You’re the first stranger to atone. Tell me a story from the other side of the Wall.”

I shrug. “I don’t have any stories.”

“Yes, you do. What’s over there?”

“Piles and piles of chopped up trees.” Her eyes shrink to slits and I smirk, pretending to poke her with the gopher stick. “Okay, not really. We have houses, people, brick sidewalks . . . boring stuff.”

She huffs. “Everywhere has that. What did you do when you lived there?” Her small mouth breaks into a shameless grin. “You didn’t fight much, did you? Black captured you faster than a falling petal.”

I glower at the fire.

She must take my silence as an answer because she moves on with another question. “What’s in your bag?”

My bag lies by the fire, the rope still tangled around it like a vine. Mud covers the bottom half, meeting dense patches of wet cloth.

“I’ll show you.” I unbuckle the flap with Willow’s help so I don’t have to muddy my teeth. First out is the NAB. Willow’s eyes widen and she turns it over and over in her hands.

“Did you get this from Ivanhoe?” she breathes. “It’s like the one Jude-man has, but bigger.”

That name. Ivanhoe. Ash called it the largest city in the West. She said the Newtons might be there. “No, it was given to me.”

Next is my box of matches. The wood box is still in good condition, but the sliding top is open. Six matches remain. I dispel my concern. Willow can make a fire without matches. Maybe Jude can, too. They can teach me.

I take out my watch and toss it on the ground.

“Why don’t you wear this?” Willow picks it back up.

I hold up my stump in response. Why draw more attention to my severed arm than I need to?

“Wear it on your other arm.”

“I don’t want to wear my watch on my other arm! I want the right to put it on my left without worrying it will slide off.” My heart wilts. “I want my hand.”

Before she can talk again, I dig deeper into my pack. My wool socks and handful of underwear are in a wadded mess, still soaked and covered in dirt. I close my eyes at the idea of wearing fresh undergarments.

I set them aside, away from Willow. The Daily Hemisphere is in a stiff roll in my pocket. I laugh at the irony. The flash flood takes my boots, but doesn’t empty my pockets?

I wipe the mud and green Dregs grime off the electrosheet with my skirt. Willow’s jaw drops when I show her how to turn it flat. While she’s preoccupied, I reach in and pull out a thick wad of heavy, waterlogged paper. My stomach drops before I even see it.

Reid’s journal.

The cover corners are curled and soggy. Pages fold in on themselves. It’s still dripping. I crack it open with a crying heart to see blur after blur. A few words link together in short sentences, but otherwise it’s ruined.

“Oh Reid,” I whisper, gripping the pages. Water trickles out. I’m an idiot. I’m not used to having paper, so I didn’t think of what the Dregs water would do to his journal. An emotigraph slips from the pages into my lap. I sniff.

“Oh”—Willow notices the journal—“what happened?”

“What do you think happened?” I toss the journal aside. It lands in mud. “We were in the Dregs.” I grab the loose emotigraph and push myself to my feet, walking away from the fire.

I struggle to place one foot in front of the other. Why wasn’t I more careful? But who knew we’d land in the Dregs? Still, I could have pulled it out and dried it as we traveled.

No. This was inevitable. The flash flood would have destroyed it in the end. Now I’ll never know why Reid thinks the Clock is his.

I stop and cover my face. Do I even care about Reid anymore? Or Mother? Or Father? I crossed the Wall and seem to have shoved them out of my mind. I’ve focused only on myself. If I cared, I would have read through Reid’s journal first chance.

“What was I supposed to do?” I shout to the sky. “How could I have prevented this? Do You have an answer?”

I don’t wait to hear if He does. I pace, tapping the stiff emotigraph against my hip. Since crossing the Wall I’ve just reacted by clinging to survival. But mere survival holds no purpose. I refuse to believe God created us to just get by, so where does that put me?

My thumb rubs Reid’s emotigraph button. I hold the sheet up. It’s a picture of the sunlight streaming through the new lattice window at home. Mother’s fresh spreads sit on the windowsill with small price cards, not yet snatched by the morning sill-traders.

What was Reid feeling when he took this? I lick my lips and press the button.

A mental wall leaps into my mind, blocking my current emotions. Like the flash flood, new ones slam into the corners of my heart. Remnants of fading sorrow precede a sweep of thick hope and jealous excitement. My heart swells with conviction. Something great can be achieved. The hope, excitement, and conviction stir faster. Faster. I gasp and my walls disappear, letting the flood mix with my own emotions, leaving a tiny almost invisible wisp of regret.

“Wow.” I breathe in short gasps, organizing the confusion in my mind. The emotions don’t fit with my circumstance, but even their shadows feel good. Reid’s conviction is the strongest feeling tingling my nerves. He felt helpless, but he knew something great could be achieved. By me?

I press the emotigraph again. The several seconds of emotion pass, leaving me gasping as they did the first time. His hope and conviction had to be for me. They must be. My thumb presses the button again, welcoming the prick. I close my eyes, soaking the emotions in—welcoming them into permanence. This time, when I emerge, the conviction almost feels like mine. Maybe I am convicted. Reid thinks I can achieve greatness. I can. I must! I have the potential.

My finger rubs back and forth over the button. I fit my thumb into the indentation. One last time.

Parvin.

I twitch, dropping the emotigraph. God’s voice echoed in my spirit, not my ears, almost like feeling my name come from Him.

I stare at the emotigraph beside my feet. “Sorry . . .” Why do I feel the need to apologize?

Like a whisper caught in the breeze, I sense a calm hush. Shhh . . .

I breathe. Reid’s emotions fade into memory, taking the conviction with them. I guess it wasn’t my conviction after all. It all came from the emotigraph.

For the first time since stomping away from Willow, I notice my surroundings. I stand in a graveyard, only it’s more than a yard. Thousands of headstones stick from the ground like petrified mushrooms, leaning this way and that as if bent by the wind. They stretch in every direction for miles, marking raised lumps of ground; some are tall carvings of wood, others are hewn stones, some have a pile of rocks. The most common grave markers are rough crosses.

The sight overwhelms me. Each of these markers represents a human. My toes tingle, thinking of a lifeless body six feet below me. I’ve found the cemetery of the world.

Who buried everyone? I allow a chill to take its course over my body. Who died? I reach out to a tall gravestone beside me for balance. It’s one of few with an engraving.

J. F. H. IV

2004 – 2030

“A young man whose soul knew the years were limited
yet pushed him to great purpose and compassion.”

It takes several seconds for me to remember they didn’t have Clocks back then. How did his soul know? What does my soul know? Is that what spurred my restless dragon?

I need to sit, but I don’t want to sit on the ground. Maybe it’s because of what may lie beneath me. I lower myself onto the headstone. My skirt sways and something in my pocket clatters against the rock. I pull out Reid’s sentra.

With a trembling hand, I raise it up and take a picture. The emotigraph comes out. The sad picture of tiny stones doesn’t capture the magnitude of this burial ground. I don’t think it could, even if I took a hundred more.

I rest my hand and stump in my lap and stare. Who are these people? I barely think the question before answers spill in from my banks of logic—the dead. The ones killed by the terrorism.

I’ve never grasped the gravity of our world’s history. Present day in Unity Village was all I knew, but in school history I heard about the woman who studied and worked in space technology. She directed two meteors into our planet—one in an ocean called Pacific, and the other in a place called China. She left no note of explanation and died under her own act of terrorism. An earthquake joined repeating tsunamis and chains of volcanic eruptions. The bodies beneath me may have suffocated from ash, drowned in water, been crushed by rubble.

I push a fist against my stomach, willing it to calm as a vision of flesh scorched by lava pierces my imagination.

This isn’t how it should be, God.

Thousands of graves marking thousands of lives—so much focus on death. Did the gravediggers spend their lives just serving the dead? How many Numbers ticked away for the sake of carving headstones no one would read?

As I stare at this scene, I decide I don’t want a headstone when I die. I don’t even want to be buried. I want to disappear—save that chunk of earth for people to live on. This land I stand on is worthless now. No one can build a house here. No one can plant gardens or start a new village. Is that what the people buried beneath me would have wanted?

Earth wasn’t intended to hold only dead bodies.

I stand. God, I need to live.

Swelling passion mixes with panic at my still dwindling Numbers. I can’t keep reacting. I need to take a step. “Use what’s left of my life for something worthwhile,” I whisper. “Guide me on Your pilgrimage. And God . . . please forgive me for wasting my life.”

I return to the campfire where Willow sits with Reid’s journal open before the flames. She turns each page slowly, letting them dry a little.

I flop down beside her. “You don’t need to do that.”

“There’s a lot of writing that’s not blurry. You might want to keep it.”

Several sentences are intact on the current drying page. “Are you reading it?”

Willow shakes her head. “I don’t read.”

I relax, watching the methodical flip of pages. The next time I have a pen, maybe I’ll write messages to Reid on the blank pages. I may have missed what he wanted to tell me, but I can use his own journal to write to him, to tell him I’ll be the one dying, and that I’m proud of him.

For now, though, it’s time to take a step. God destined me for greatness. It’s my own conviction this time. I look into Willow’s sunburned face, hesitant to share my recent idea. Should I think on it longer?

No. No more waiting.

“Willow, what do you know about Ivanhoe? I want to go there. I want to find the Newtons.”