(–even those feelings, the ones that were there for a minute before he got embarrassed, the physical feelings, the ones without words, the ones concentrated right on my skin, of how he wanted to touch it more, those feelings that made me want to–)
–and I wonder again if he’s in the same shock as Angharrad, if what he saw in battle was so bad, it somehow made him unable to even see it, even in his Noise, and my heart just breaks at the thought of it–
Another reason for no more war.
I pull the coat Simone gave me tighter. It’s cold and I’m shivering, but I can also feel myself sweating, which I know from my healer training means I have a fever. I pull up my left sleeve and look underneath the bandage. The skin around the band is still angry and red.
And now there are red streaks from it reaching down to my wrist.
Streaks that I know mean infection. Bad infection.
Infection that’s not being knocked back by the bandage.
I pull the sleeve back down and try not to think about it. Try not to think that I didn’t tell Todd how bad it was either.
Because I’ve still got to find Mistress Coyle.
“Well,” I say to Acorn. “She’s always talking about the ocean. I wonder if it’s really as far away as she–”
I jump as the comm beeps suddenly in my pocket.
“Todd?” I say, answering it immediately.
But it’s Simone.
“You’d better come straight back here,” she says.
“Why?” I say, alarmed. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve found your Answer.”
Before
(THE RETURN)
The sun is about to rise as I take some food from the cookfires. Members of the Land watch as I collect a pan and fill it with stew. Their voices are open – they could hardly be closed and still be members of the Land – so I can hear them discussing me, their thoughts spreading one to the other, forming one opinion, then a contrary one and back again, all so fast I can barely follow it.
And then they come to a decision. One of the Land rises to her feet to offer me a large bone spoon so that I do not merely have to drink the stew from the bowl, and behind her I can hear the Land’s voices, their voice, offering it to me in friendship.
I reach out to take it.
Thank you, I say, in the language of the Burden–
And there it is again, the slight discomfort at the language I speak, the distaste at something so alien, so individual, so representative of something shameful. It is quickly bundled away and argued against in the swirling voice, but it was definitely there for an instant.
I do not take the spoon. I hear their voices calling after me in apology as I walk away, but I do not turn around. Instead, I walk to a path I have found and start my way up the rocky hill by the side of the road.
The Land has mostly made its camp along the flat of the road, but I see others on the hillside as I climb, others from areas where the Land lives in mountains and who are more comfortable on the steepness. Likewise down below, there are those from where the Land lives near rivers who sleep in quickly made boats.
But then, the Land is all one, is it not? The Land has no others, it has no they or those.
There is only one Land.
And I am the one who stands outside it.
I reach a point where the hill becomes so steep I have to pull myself up. I see an outcropping where I can sit and look at the Land below me, much as the Land can look over the lip of the hill and see the Clearing.
A place where I can be alone.
I should not be alone.
My one in particular should be here with me, eating our meals together as the dawn slowly brightens, fighting off sleep, waiting for the next phase of the war side by side.
But my one in particular is not here.
Because my one in particular was killed by the Clearing as the Burden were first rounded up from back gardens and basements, from locked rooms and servant’s quarters. My one in particular and I were kept in a garden shed, and when the shed door was opened that night, my one in particular fought. Fought for me. Fought to keep them from taking me.
And was brought down by a heavy blade.
I was dragged away making the inadequate clicking sound the Clearing left us with after forcing us to take its “cure”, a sound that said nothing of what it was like to be torn from my one in particular and thrown into a gathered band of the Burden, who had to hold me down to keep me from running back to the shed.
To keep me from being cut down myself.
I hated the Burden for that. Hated them for not letting me die there and then, when my grief was not quite enough to kill me on its own. Hated them for the way they–
For the way we accepted our fates, the way we went where we were told, ate what we were told, slept where we were told. In all that time, we fought back once, only once. Against the Knife and the other one with him, the loud one who was bigger but seemed younger. We fought when the Knife’s friend strapped a band around one of our necks for pure, cruel fun.
For a moment, in silence, the Burden understood each other again. For a moment we were truly one again, connected.
Not alone.
And we fought.
And some of us died.
And we did not fight again.
Not when a group of the Clearing returned with rifles and blades. Not when they lined us up and began to kill us. Shooting us, hacking at us, making that high stuttering sound they call laughing. Killing the old and the young, mothers and babies, fathers and sons. If we tried to resist, we were killed. If we did not resist, we were killed. If we tried to run, we were killed. If we did not run, we were killed.
One after the other after the other after the other.
With no way to share our fear. No way to coordinate and try to protect ourselves. No way to be comforted as we died.
And so we died alone. Every one of us.
Everyone but one.
Everyone but 1017.
Before the killing began, they looked at our bands until they found me, and they dragged me to a wall and made me watch. Watch as the clicks of the Burden grew fewer and fewer, as the grass grew stickier with our blood, as at last I was the only Burden left alive on this entire world.
And then they clubbed me on the head and I awoke in a pile of bodies with faces that I recognized, hands that had touched mine in comfort, mouths that had shared their food, eyes that had tried to share their terror.
I woke up, alone among the dead, and they pressed on me, suffocated me.
And then the Knife was there.
Is here now–
Is pulling me from the bodies of the Burden–
And we tumble to the ground and I fall away from him–
We stare at each other, our breaths making clouds in the cold–