Chapter 17: Gifts
THE DARK, INHUMAN face regards us. We stare back, statues chiseled out of fear. The low hum of its internal motors is the smothered screams of a thousand voices. It looks downward. Waves of aether heat distortion slither into our home. My eyes— the only part of me that is not frozen— move to the floor. I must have dripped blood there. I must have dripped blood all the way from the street to our house. I brought it here. Will it know to only kill me, or will it take my whole family?
Neveah is gone, I think. A small concession. Tears fill my eyes and run sideways onto the bed, crossing the bridge of my nose. I want to drown in my own tears now. I want everything to be done. I'm tired of catching what Fate throws at me.
As suddenly as it comes, it goes. The door flaps in the wind. Squeaking. Banging. A spastic percussion of fading metal footsteps and the hanging mouth of our house. Miranda stands up quietly and closes the door. She slides the lock into place, and stands there with her hand on the knob, staring at the floor.
"We cleaned it," Oscar says softly. "Me and Jonas. We cleaned it."
I blink tears away and look at the floor where Miranda's standing. A large black scorch mark gouges into the floorboards. Whatever they did, it could have burned the whole house down. But it worked. The tears return suddenly in a sob that makes me squeal and clutch my chest. Jonas looks at me, but it's Miranda that moves to my side. She leans against the bed next to me and strokes my hair. "You're safe now," she says. But I'm not. There is nowhere safe in this world.
She orders Jonas out to fetch Neveah. He complies. I'm grinding my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut against the pain for what seems like hours before they finally return. Wanting to gouge my eyes out slowly to distract myself from the pain. Then Neveah is back, and mixes up one of her teas, and manages to get some of it in me. I'm certain I'm going to throw it up before I have it even halfway swallowed, but then, suddenly, I'm drifting. My body relaxes, and only then do I realize how tightly clamped every muscle in my body was. It's like a sigh that happens in each fiber, each cord of my flesh. All at once I breathe out. I'm floating. I'm gone.
I sleep for what feels like the better part of a lifetime, half-aware, sometimes, of voices, conversations. I think the others go to bed and get up again. Maybe more than once. Oscar's voice, and Apollon's, filter through the fog. They're talking about something that happened in the marketplace. And the cost of rice. I want to add something important. I attempt to raise eyelids made of lead. I mumble something about collecting feathers.
"Feathers?" says Apollon, making me realize that I sound like a lunatic.
I grunt and fall back asleep.
It probably happens more than once. My drugged sleep is filled with strange dreams and half-dreams. Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of my white spire, but it never holds. Everything is a wash of impermanence, changing like colors swirling together in a bucket. One thing becomes the next, and the next, and the next. They mix together until they're indistinguishable. By the time I really regain consciousness, I don't remember any of it.
I blink against the filtered light that seeps into the house. It must be daylight. My head feels full, and moving makes it throb. I lie very still. Eventually, I focus on Jonas' face.
He's sitting beside me on the bed, watching me quietly. "Hey," he says, like he knows that if he speaks any louder my head will actually explode.
I breathe in. Pain detonates in multiple charges throughout my chest. After that, my breaths are shallower. "We have to leave," I say, using as little air as possible. The words barely make it out, but he seems to understand me.
He nods. "I know."
"Matt..." I begin to explain.
He nods again. "I know," he says. "We heard what happened at the Rustler."
"No," I insist impotently. "You can't work for him." I try to breathe enough to continue. "He..."
"Hung Sarah? Yeah, I know." He frowns and touches my cheek. "I couldn't," he says. He looks away. "When I saw that, I... I mean, it's not like I didn't know. It was just... like a sign or something. Like Fate was saying, 'don't do it'."
That's when I realize that we're alone. Jonas doesn't talk like that when the others are around. I listen, and hear Apollon breathing softly on the couch... asleep. Neveah must be at the marketplace. "Where are Miranda and Oscar?"
He looks at me like the question surprises him. His eyes scan my face, then he looks away again. "Uh... rats, I think," he says. And he stands up. He gets some water, then helps me sit up— which hurts like hell— to drink. The cold is so soothing on my cracked lips that I almost forget to bother swallowing. When I'm done drinking, I lie down flat again. I let my head stop swimming, and try to continue this conversation.
"Matt's men are going to die," I whisper to Jonas. "He's sending an armed escort for the shipments, but he doesn't know." I don't explain better, because it takes too much effort, and I know that Jonas understands what I mean.
He frowns at me for a moment, then says, "So?"
Talking takes so much work. "I have to tell him," I say, my lips forming the words with very little voice behind them.
His frown deepens. "Do you want to die?" he asks. "Because if not, maybe you're just stupid. So which is it, Eden?"
I close my eyes against my anger, which I have no energy for. I say very calmly, "Then tell me about this plan to leave."
He doesn't exactly have a plan. But he has plenty of desperation. I can hear it in his voice, even though he tries to keep it level. Jonas needs to leave, and his reasons go beyond mere survival. He wants to leave here the way I want to run and keep running until I find my white tower. He has something he's looking for, too. Something that calls to him even when he shuts his ears. Something that won't leave him alone.
So the plan is full of holes, at best. Sell what we can. Get as much of the right supplies as we can. Make a litter to drag Apollon. Make a litter to drag me. I stop him there. I can walk. I can ignore the pain, and I can walk. Apollon says he can, too.
Both of us blink, realizing that Apollon is listening to this conversation. How long has he been awake?
"How you feeling?" I finally ask, staring at the ceiling.
"Great," comes the voice from the sofa. "How's that rib?"
"Great," I say.
He makes a noise.
Well, we're both great. Jonas rolls his eyes.
"So we're walking," I say, not ready to let our planning die down to inaction.
"Matthew has locked the Outpost down after what happened," Jonas informs me reluctantly. "No one in or out. We'll have to leave at night. Try to slip out." He purses his lips for a moment, then adds, "We won't be ready to leave right away. If things go sour here, we'll just have to hang on. It doesn't matter what happens to Matthew's people, so long as we can stay out of it."
I don't like the sound of this— of hanging on. I'm ready to leave now. I'm ready to climb out of this bed and march straight out the door. I try to sit up, and groan, and fall back to the bed. Maybe not. Maybe just a day or so.
That day or so adds up and adds up. I find myself unable to get out of bed. This is only partly because of the pain. I'm tired— tired deep into my soul. I want to close my eyes and sleep the rest of my life away. But when Neveah weans me off of the drugs, I have trouble sleeping at all. When I do, my nightmares return. If it's not the box, bodies and blood pile up. I flail, which wakes me, and then I can't return to sleep for long periods of time because I'm in pain. Jonas rests his hand on my hip at nights, instead of putting his arm over me, where it could press on my ribs. His fingers rub lightly over the blanket, soothing in their steady rhythm. They're like a lullaby sung in touch, and the only reason I go back to sleep at all. If he wasn't there, I might never sleep again. I want to tell him thank you, but somehow, in the daylight I can't say it. I look in his face and can see nothing of the
tenderness I remember. Have I imagined it? But every night, when I can't sleep, his touch soothes me until I can.
When I'm finally able to climb out of bed, still clutching my crumpled towel, there's a pile of new clothes waiting for me. They're from Matt, Oscar explains. Because my others were ruined with blood. I scowl and Oscar admits to answering Matthew's questions about my wellbeing.
"You need clothes," Oscar shrugs innocently, as though he doesn't understand the harm of accepting a gift from Matt. But then he adds, "It was his fault your clothes got ruined, right?" Maybe he does understand.
There's a shirt, pants, a jacket, socks, undergarments, and boots, all better than what was burned. The cloth is like a whisper against my skin. The leather is supple, thick, and sweet-smelling. Everything fits perfectly. The jacket is not too tight around my ribs, as if Matt thought of this, too. As if he thought of everything.
Jonas gives me a dark look when he first sees me wearing it. He says nothing, but I can see him think it. I'm stupid. I'm going to get myself killed.
I turn away from him and pretend I don't notice.
During the days, Jonas slips out to make preparations. He takes a few items to sell or trade, and comes back, stashing new things in bundles under the table. One day, he shows me a compass, its arrow steadily pointing northward.
"But don't we just follow the road?" I say, wondering if he thought of this. Wondering if there wasn't something more necessary he could have traded for.
He shakes his head, kneeling at the packs to tuck it away. "There's one road for a while," he says. "And then there are others. We'll need to find our way, once we get past Outpost Four."
Past it. That's when I realize. We're not just going to Outpost Four. We're going south, where Jonas' arrow is pointing. Once we start that direction, he's not going to stop. Our journey suddenly gets much bigger in my head. Following that comes the thrill of excitement. The image of the white spire looms in my mind, clear as in my dreams. "Do you think we'll find the white tower?" I mumble, before I realize what I'm saying.
Miranda, sitting at the table, looks up. "White tower?" she says. She snorts. "We'll find twenty if we keep going long enough." Then she frowns. A deep frown. She doesn't want to go, and she's made this clear again and again. I think she's starting to come around now, but then, looking at that frown, maybe not.
Jonas has tucked the compass into the pack and is still squatting, but he's turned his head to look at her.
"Twenty?" I say, raising my eyebrows. I'm aware that my exterior must seem very calm, though inside I am chaos.
Miranda looks at me blankly, then grows a small smile. She realizes she knows something I don't and she's enjoying it. "There's one in every city."
I close my mouth. I breathe. "There's a white tower in every city?" I ask calmly, curiously. I catch Jonas glancing at me over his shoulder, but I don't look at him. My eyes are fixed on Miranda.
"Sure," she says, shrugging it off, looking back at the nails she was picking before the topic came up. She doesn't add anything for a while, and I hold my breath, wondering if I should ask. Wondering if I should leap up and shake it out of her.
Jonas rises slowly to his feet and stands looking at her, and me. Her, and me.
Miranda glances at me and I raise my eyebrows higher.
"Oh," she says. "Well, they built one in every city back at the Turn. They were supposed to be meeting places. You know. For everyone. Back when they thought we'd all be having picnics or something."
I blink slowly and look at my hands in my lap, fiddling with my fingers. Jonas sits beside me on the bed, and looks at my fingers, too. A long silence passes between us.
"Huh," I say, finally. "Meeting halls." I stand up, put on my jacket, and walk out the door.