Текст книги "Water & Storm Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Huck

Heavy. That’s the only word to describe the feeling inside me. There are so many eyes in my sleep. Mother’s. Webb’s. The bilge rat boy’s. All staring, staring, burning holes of accusation through my skin. “He’s the one!” they say. “He killed us!”

Although the Scurve seems to be under control again, Jade won’t talk to me, just clambers up the mast each morning, dead set on repairing every last tear in the sails without further assistance from me. I could go up, work alongside her, but why force something that’s not there?

As I eat alone in my cabin in a silence broken only by the intermittent creaking of the ship, I mull over what to do. More pointedly, I consider the information Jade gave me just before we stopped speaking. Fire country. The bilge rats’ home. Taken, abducted, tricked: brought to a place where they’re dogs—no, less than dogs: rats—forced to slave away, day in and day out, obeying orders from men who can barely look at them.

Was she lying, trying to gain my sympathy? In some ways I hope she was, so my father’s not a monster, so the world can become right again. But in other ways I’ll be sadder if she was lying, because that means I’m nothing to her, just a boy to be manipulated.

There’s a knock on my door and I look up, surprised. I asked not to be disturbed, choosing to take my evening meal in my cabin, rather than with the men, needing time to think.

“Yes?” I say, stabbing a potato with my fork.

Barney pushes open the door, a strange expression on his face. It’s one I’ve never seen before, a mix of what appears to be glee, embarrassment, and concern. The glee is in his eyes, wide and dancing; the embarrassment is in the extraordinarily crimson flush of his cheeks; and the concern is in his bent eyebrows and pursed lips.

“I asked not to be—”

“I apologize, sir, but I was sure you’d want to hear this.”

I raise the potato to my mouth, think better of it, and set my fork down with a clink, uneaten starch still stuck to it. “Go on.”

“You should help repair the sails tomorrow,” Barney says uncertainly.

I stare at him. “Are you giving me an order?”

“More like a message,” Barney says, turning to go.

“A message from whom...” Although the question is completed, it dies on my tongue, twitching at first, and then still. Barney closes the door softly behind him.

She talked to him?

To Barney?

No, not a question. She talked to Barney.

And I’ll be climbing the sails tomorrow.

~~~

When the red dawn creeps over the horizon, I’m high above the ship to watch it. I couldn’t sleep, so I came up here, to the crow’s nest, to wait.

(For her.)

What does she want to talk to me about? Why now? Maybe she feels bad and wants to admit everything she told me was a lie.

More likely she wants to scream at me for throwing that boy overboard.

The wind shrieks around me as I peer over the wooden sides of the lookout platform. The men are hard at work, turning the sails, catching the wind at just the right angle. The ship cuts through the choppy waters with ease, trailing the Merman’s Daughter by only the smallest of margins.

Are we really the second fastest ship in the fleet? I wonder, marveling at how quickly things can change. Below me, the ship is alive, built with wood and sweat and human strength. And somewhere…Jade.

Later today we’ll lay anchor. If what Jade told me is true, will I be able to look the admiral in the eyes, pretend like I don’t know?

I shake off the thought when I spot her. If she sees me, she doesn’t show it, her expression flat and neutral. Jade crosses the deck, greeting the other bilge as she goes, reaching the main mast in long strides. Unlike me, she ignores the crow’s nest ladder, frog-hopping up the wooden cylinder with ease.

My hands suddenly feel sweaty and I rub them on my britches.

For the first time, she looks up, meeting my gaze with thoughtful eyes that seem to say, “You came.”

Three quarters of the way up, she stops at where there’s a gaping hole in one of the main sails. A major repair. One that could take all day.

She’s not coming to me, so I’ve got to go to her. I slip over the railing, stretching to take the ladder rungs two at a time. When I reach her she’s already positioning a white patch on the sail.

“Can I help?” I ask, and when she doesn’t turn to look at me, doesn’t reply, I wonder whether Barney’s message was really from her. Had I assumed too much?

But then she says, “I asked you to come because I needed…”—her statement hovers in the air, seemingly oblivious to the swirling wind, and I find myself holding my breath—“…your help—you know, with mending the sail.”

I let out my breath in a burst. “That’s a large tear,” I say. “I hadn’t noticed it before. Is it new?”

She shrugs, pokes a needle through the patch and begins stitching it to the sail, just like I taught her, with easy, practiced fingers. “New as of yesterday,” she says.

There’ve been no storms, no unusually high winds, no projectiles in the air. Nothing that could have caused such serious damage. And the fabric around the rip doesn’t appear to be old or frayed. In fact, the gash itself appears to be almost too clean, like someone took a knife and just…

I swing around the mast as I realize Jade created a large repair so we’d have to work on it together. “Slow down,” I say, amazed at how expert her fingers have become. “At this pace we’ll be done before the lunch bell rings.” I touch her shoulder and she stiffens, but her fingers slow.

I can feel the heat of her skin beneath the thin fabric of her old shirt, and I don’t want to pull my hand away, but I must, because someone will see, someone will tell Hobbs.

What am I doing? I think as I retract my hand sharply, as if I’ve been burned.

“Huck,” she says, and my name’s never sounded so good, so real. “Sear it, Huck!” When she turns to look at me there’s fire in the brown embers of her eyes.

“What?” I say.

“This. All of this.” She waves her hands around, meaning…the ship? Me? Repairing the sails? “It’s all invented. Made up. None of it’s real. You and me? Nothing more than a dream.”

Whose dream? I wonder.

But all I say is, “I know.”

She sighs, heavier than an anchor. “Then why?”

Why are you here? Why am I here? Why do we get up every morning, play the same old game, do the same old things, and then sleep to the same old rocking of the ship? Although I imagine her simple question to be filled with all of those questions, I know it’s not. Those questions are mine, but I can’t seem to pinpoint where they came from or when they entered my subconscious, burrowing in like mice, gnawing away at everything I’ve held true since the day I was born.

But even that’s a lie, because I do know. I do.

(Since the day I met Jade.)

And I can’t help but wonder why she’s speaking to me after everything I’ve done. “I’m sorry about that boy,” I say.

Her eyes narrow. “Are you?” she asks, but there’s no accusation in her voice. It’s just a question.

“Yes. I’m surprised you’re speaking to me after that.”

“You did what you had to do,” she says.

“Did I? By throwing a boy overboard? By killing Webb?” I’m surprised by my own words. I’ve barely thought about killing Webb, much less spoken of it out loud.

“You chose the lesser of the evils,” Jade says. “If you’d gone against Lieutenant Hobbs you would have been sent away and the boy would still have suffered and died. If you’d spared Webb, I’d be dead and your father would know you protected me. And trust me, Webb didn’t deserve life. He—the things he did to the bilge rats…” She trails away.

She says it is so matter-of-factly that I can’t think of a rebuttal. I change the subject. “Is what you told me before true?” I ask, wishing I didn’t have to ask, because I know it’ll only make her angry.

To my surprise, her eyebrows don’t furrow, her lips don’t tighten. “Yes,” she says, turning back to her work.

And in that single word is the truth and it’s good enough for me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing for having to ask the question and for my father.

Jade falls silent, her fingers pushing the needle through the fabric and pulling it back out, securing a corner of the patch to the sail.

I step onto the rope bridge, moving as close to her as I dare. Pluck my own needle and thread from my pocket. Start on another corner of the large patch. “What’s fire country like?” I ask, and although she doesn’t stop working, her eyes twitch in my direction.

For a few minutes the only sounds are from below: men shouting, whistling, singing; women calling for clothes to be cleaned, offering hot morning drinks; barrels being rolled, sacks being tossed, planks being scrubbed. There’s no awkwardness in the silence, and somehow I know she’s not ignoring my question, just thinking on it, like it’s one of the wooden puzzles my mother and I used to work on together, requiring a precise solution.

Finally, she says, “It’s home,” and although it doesn’t tell me anything about what her country’s like, I can feel what she feels for it in my bones, in my thoughts, in my heart. Warmth and security and familiarity—like The Merman’s Daughter has always felt to me.

It was all taken from her. No, not taken. Ripped from her little hands. Stolen from her.

By my father.

At that moment, something is unlocked in the memory of my mother’s death. She still falls; I still can’t save her, can’t hold on. I still fail her. But she says something, something I’ve never heard her say in any of my dreams, where all I saw was her terror and my failure and my father’s disappointment.

“Not your fault,” she says.

There’s a sharp pinch on my arm and I can see again, not because I’ve opened my eyes—which were never closed—but because the memory is gone, and I’m dangling in midair, not holding the needle, not holding the ropes, not holding anything. Jade’s hand is clamped on my arm, gripping me, bruising my flesh with the strength of her fingers.

“Huck,” she says, “I can’t hold you up all day. You’re heavier than tughide.”

Astonished, I curl my empty fingers around a rope, pull myself to an upright position. “Was I…”

“Falling? Yeah. You just let go and would’ve done a bird dive onto the decks if I didn’t grab you.” There’s no pride in her voice, no praise-seeking. Just facts.

“You saved my life,” I say.

“And you lied to save mine,” she says.

(And killed. It’s in her eyes, but thankfully she doesn’t say it.)

“Thank you,” I say, but she’s already back to stitching. Though I can tell one of her eyes is still watching me, just in case I let go again.

“Fire country is hot and barren and dangerous,” she says, as if we’re just continuing our conversation from before. “And beautiful and perfect,” she adds.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” I ask.

“I have two sisters,” she says. “Both older. Skye and Siena. They’re…amazing.” Her voice is full of grit on the last word, like it almost didn’t make it out of her throat. “At least they were…I think. It’s hard to remember. It was six years ago and I was so young.”

I finish threading my corner and begin working my way toward her, giving her time to compose herself and her thoughts, hoping she’ll continue.

Time passes like wispy clouds, silent and thin and full of imagined images.

Our threading fingers get closer and closer and still we’re silent. The air in my lungs refuses to satisfy me, leaving me short of breath, like I’ve just run a long way. I stare at my fingers, focusing on each pass of the needle, careful not to prick myself.

Closer.

And closer.

And then her hand brushes mine and it’s like lightning against my skin.

She looks at me, but I can only stare at my fingers. She breaks the thread from her needle and hands me the end, careful not to let us touch again. When she begins working on another corner I breathe a relieved sigh and knot my thread with hers.

When I start working on the fourth and final corner, I can still feel the sensation of our hands touching, but I try to keep my fingers steady.

“What happened when you almost fell?” Jade asks, her question coming like a random yellow cloud in a perfectly red sky.

Oh…that. “I was just daydreaming,” I say, keeping my voice low, even though no one below could possibly hear us.

“About your mother?” she says and my breath catches. How could she know?

I’m still trying to figure out how to respond, when she says, “I daydream about my family all the time. I don’t know if they’re dead or alive or happy or sad, but I picture them as alive and happy. My sisters miss me something awful, of course, but they’re still happy.”

“Well, I know my mother’s dead,” I say.

“I remember,” she says, and for some reason I’m surprised, although I shouldn’t be. “It’s all anyone talked about when it happened. Some say your father pushed her over, some say it was you, some say it was an accident.” I flinch and her eyes jerk to meet mine. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t be talking about any of this.”

I shake my head. “It’s okay. I didn’t push her, but it was my fault,” I say, hearing my mother’s words—“Not your fault”—in my new memory. Is it real or did I invent it?

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Thank you.”

We work our way from corner to corner, not stopping until we meet in the middle again. This time I’m careful not to let us touch as we approach. I tie it off and we work on the last two edges, ignoring the lunch bell in our sudden haste to finish the job.

When the patch is firmly in place, we dangle side by side on the rope bridge, our legs hanging through it, flexing our overworked fingers.

“I smuggled some extra bread from breakfast,” Jade says, reaching inside her pocket and sliding out a smallish loaf. She tears it in half and hands me the smaller piece. I offer her some water from the container hanging from my belt. We eat and drink until it’s gone.

The question that ended our conversation the last time rolls around my mouth, hot and warming my cheeks from the inside out. I won’t ask it again. I won’t. But what if she says yes? What if mending the tear was enough to mend whatever was broken when she slid down the mast and stopped speaking to me?

“Want to see the crow’s nest?” I blurt out.

She frowns. I’ve done it again. Spoiled things. Because she can’t see the crow’s nest. The bilge aren’t allowed up there. But if a lieutenant orders her to go, then surely the rules don’t apply, do they?

I rephrase. “Go to the crow’s nest.”

Her frown softens and she almost laughs. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

I smile, too. “Of course I can. I’m a lieutenant.”

“You’re a wooloo boy.”

It should sting, but it doesn’t, not when her lips are curled like that. “So you’ll disobey a direct order from this wooloo boy?” I ask.

“I could,” she says. “But I won’t. Not this time anyway. But you’ll have to lead so it’s clear from below that it’s your idea.”

I start to climb, raising my smile to the sun.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sadie

Father is asleep when I return home. His breathing is loud and rumbling, something that would normally annoy me, but which only endears him to me tonight.

I’ve made a grave mistake.

For years I’ve treated him with frustration and disrespect at best, contempt and white-hot anger at worst. And he wasn’t to blame. Wasn’t a coward at all. Oh, no, no, no, he was the exact opposite. His every action was that of a hero, albeit a failed one.

I hate to wake him but I must.

I nudge his shoulder and he stirs. “Father,” I say.

His eyes flicker open, blinking away moisture. “Sadie,” he says, his tone infused with such joy and love, despite all that I’ve done, how poorly I’ve treated him. Do I deserve him?

You needed to know. Now more than ever. What did Gard mean by that?

“Father, I know,” I say and he closes his eyes, cringes. Opens them slowly, almost mournfully.

I wait for him to speak but he just watches me. Will he withhold the truth from me even now?

“You tried to save Paw,” I say. “Don’t deny it—Gard told me.” He nods. “You tried to stop Mother from riding.” Another nod, almost imperceptible. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shakes his head. “I—I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want you to…” He bites his lip, refuses to meet my gaze.

“Father,” I say, reaching forward to pull his chin back in line with mine. “Why was I already in the tent and Paw not? I remember some things. We were playing together, Paw and I. How did I make it back and not him? Why am I alive and not him?” My voice cracks and all I want is to let the waterfall of tears out of my eyes, but I blink and force them back. Holding them back hurts, but I’m still a Rider.

“Sadie, I’m—I’m dying.” His words are so unexpected, so fierce, so wrong, that I shrink back against them.

“What? No, you’re—you’re the only one who’s not.” Does he mean dying inside because he can’t tell me the truth? Does he mean emotionally dying after losing my mother?

“Sadie…” And when he speaks my name I know it’s neither of those things. It’s not a riddle, not a vague Man-of-Wisdom prediction that requires interpretation. For his previous words were the truth, as stark and bright as lightning in the night sky.

“No, Father,” I say. And again: “No.”

“I have the Plague,” he says.

“No.”

“I’ve had it for a while now.”

“No.”

“I love you, Sadie,” he says, and the floodgates open, and the tears bloom like flowers, falling from their stems and down my cheeks. Mother Earth can’t do this. Not now. Not when I’ve finally realized…

That my father’s a hero.

And then my head’s against his chest and I don’t know how it got there, and my tears are soaking through to his skin and I’m choking, sobbing like a child, as far from a Rider as I’ve ever been before. But I’m not ashamed—not this one time. Because every tear is an apology, and my father’s worth every one.

When the pain and the pride and the sorrow grow so big that I can’t feel them anymore, my body goes numb and I drift to sleep, my father’s arms wrapped firmly around me.

~~~

My father’s still asleep when I leave, his deep breaths sighing in my memory with each step. On one side the ocean screams at me, and on the other, the thick woods whisper and taunt. You have no one!

I make for the forest, because I know it’s the one place my father won’t come looking for me. Does he have days? Does he have hours? Why am I hiding from him?

Inside the cool shroud of the trees, I feel calm again. The tears are but a distant memory, washed away by a cupped hand in a small creek I find along the way.

My back propped against a thick tree, I watch a small animal drink from the water, unaware of my presence. I’m invisible so long as I’m still. Filled, the creature moves on, scurrying into the underbrush.

A bird chirps somewhere above me, tweeting out a joyful song that doesn’t match real life. Does the bird not know?

Life goes on around me as if nothing’s changed.

When he steps from behind a tree, I can’t hide my surprise. My father’s in the forest.

“Father!” I say, leaping up. “You can’t be here. You need to be resting.”

He’s bent over, which makes him look like an old man. The birds sing his arrival as he limps toward me. “Sadie, I don’t have long now,” he says, his voice full of cracks and crumbles.

“Don’t say that, Father,” I say, helping him to the ground, feeling how bone-thin his arms are. Thin even for him. “You can’t know how long you’ve got.” But I know my words are a false hope because: He’s never been wrong. A Man of Wisdom till the end.

“I had to…”—he coughs into his arm, swallows hard—“…had to see you again, Sadie. Before it’s too late.”

As usual, I’ve been selfish, running from my fear, hiding from my father in the forest. When he needs me most. Black clouds move overhead, thundering a warning. “Father, I’m sorry,” I say. For everything.

He shakes his head, coughs again, massages his forehead, which is etched with deep lines of age and decay. “No more apologies, my dear daughter. For you have been chosen for great things and deserve to know the truth.”

Great things? Like treating my father terribly? Like suffering the loss of my entire family? I say nothing.

My father’s face is red and melting—raging with a fever. Late stages of the Plague. Of course, he was right. He doesn’t have long. “I should’ve told you sooner, but I was afraid…”—he fights off a half-sob—“…afraid you would blame yourself. Afraid it would destroy you.”

“What, Father?” I say. “Just tell me.”

He nods, places a hand on my shoulder, as if to gain courage, or perhaps to comfort me. “That night, when Paw was taken…” He shudders as a heavy blast of wind hurls itself through the trees. Leaves fall like rain.

“Father, please. Tell me. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

He nods again, squeezes my shoulder. “I know you can, Sadie. You are strong, so strong. I’m so proud of you.” His voice hitches and tears stream down his cheeks. I’m filled with emotion and love—so much love—but something’s changed in me. Something powerful, like crying last night wasn’t a sign of weakness, like I thought. It’s almost as if I’ve been cleansed, unburdened, strengthened. If only I could share that strength with my father.

I put my arms around him as he weeps openly.

The first drops of rain drum on the treetops. More leaves fall. And still I hold him.

“Tell me the truth, Father,” I say.

Eyes wet, he looks up at me. “I had a vision before you were born,” he says.

This I know. I’m thankful every day for that vision. “That I would be a Rider,” I say.

“Yes, yes. But that was only the beginning. You were riding your horse, black with a white butterfly-shaped marking on its nose.”

“Passion,” I say.

“Passion,” he agrees. “There will be a great battle with the Soakers. You will fight magnificently, maybe more so than your mother.” His voice is gaining strength, growing clearer. Maybe he’s not as close to the end as he thinks. “You will see him, the high-ranking Soaker boy in the blue uniform.”

“I know, you told me, Father. That I have to decide whether to kill him. But why wouldn’t I? Where’s the choice?” My voice sounds unnaturally high. I lower it. “If we’re fighting the Soakers, why would I show mercy to one of their officers?”

“I don’t know, Sadie,” he says. “I just know that it’s your choice and your choice alone. And that it will change everything.”

I look to the sky, which is a black blanket between the leaves. The rain is falling harder now, seeking to soak us through the gaps in the leaves, but failing, drumming all around us. We are dry.

“I don’t understand, Father. How can saving or killing a Soaker boy change things? What impact could it possibly have?”

Father’s eyes shimmer with tears and knowledge. “That is for you to discover, my daughter.”

We sit for a moment, listening to the rain, waiting for it to pour down upon our heads. I wonder at my fate. You have been chosen for great things. Even the words make me feel small, unworthy.

“I had another vision before you were born,” Father says suddenly. He reaches a shaking hand forward and I take it, hold it, try to calm it.

“Tell me,” I say.

“It was of the night Paw would die,” he says.

“You knew?” I say harshly, and the familiar heat surges through my blood. I take a deep breath. I can’t waste a moment of the time we have left in anger. “Why didn’t you take us away from there? Why didn’t you stop it from happening?” I have to understand.

He laughs, but it’s a wheezing, coughing laugh that breaks my heart. “If there’s one thing I’ve been taught over and over again, it’s that you can’t change the future, only how you’ll respond to it.”

“But what about my choice?” I say. “If the future is set in stone, do I even have a choice? Or is my choice preordained?”

“A wise question,” Father says. “One I’ve pondered often. But I don’t choose what future I see. It’s a gift from Mother Earth. And in this case I can only see to the point where you face the Soaker boy. That is the future that cannot be changed. What comes after, that is up to you.”

“And Paw’s future? That was set in stone?”

His chin drops to his chest and he closes his eyes. His voice comes out as a whisper, barely loud enough to be heard over the rain, which continues to thrum on our leafy door, almost begging to get to us. “I saw the night of the attack. I didn’t know how the Soakers would break through, just that they would. I saw you playing with Paw, laughing, having so much fun. I remember smiling even as I was graced with the vision. And then they came. I saw you in the tent and Paw on the ground. I knew he was dead.”

“Then why didn’t you do something? You say you can’t change the future, but I don’t understand. You could’ve hid us in the forest, taken us away somewhere safe, somewhere they wouldn’t find us.” You can’t change the future. Just how you respond to it. My response has always been anger and condescension.

“I tried,” Father says. “We started for the forest, but Paw said his stomach hurt, and then it was his leg, and then he was scared of the lightning flashing in the distance. He refused to walk. When I tried to carry him, he kicked and screamed and fought me every step of the way. But I persevered, brought you to the edge of this very wood. We tried to enter it, but every path we took was blocked, by brambles or thickets, or trees packed so tightly you’d swear they were a fortress.

“We could have stayed at the edge of the forest, but I already knew they’d find us. By the will of Mother Earth, they’d find us anyway. And then you wouldn’t be in the tent like in my vision. I thought maybe they’d get you, too, Sadie. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you took us back so Paw could die and I live?” I can’t keep the pulsing, throbbing anger out of my voice this time. There had to be another way. We could’ve started running and not stopped until we were far, far away.

Ignoring my question, he continues. “So we went back. I put you both in the tent, sat you in the corner, watched you. But you were so fidgety, so squirmy, two little worms unwilling to be tethered. You insisted to go outside and play your game, with the rocks and the sticks. I told you no over and over, but you wouldn’t give up, until finally I relented, because at that point I knew: you would be in the yard playing when the Soakers showed up. No matter what I did, you would be there; even if Mother Earth had to work magic before my very eyes and cause you to disappear from the tent and reappear in the yard, you would be there.

“So I let you go, but stayed with you, right next to you, watching you play. You were so happy. So happy.” His voice falters and he looks away, reaches out a hand, palm up, as if trying to catch the rain. When he pulls his hand back to his lap it’s dry. “When they came, I grabbed you both, one under each arm. I ran for the tent. Because I could stop it from happening. I could change the future. They’d have to kill me to get to either of you.”

He pauses and I realize my fingernails are digging into my legs. I’m fighting with my father’s memory, every step of the way, trying to remember. Trying…

“And then suddenly he was gone. Paw. One second he was under my arm and the next he was on the ground. Before I even knew he was gone, I’d run another few steps. The tent was so close, but when I looked back, Paw was watching us, laughing, as if something was so funny. And I made a choice, Sadie. If I’d gone back you might’ve been killed, too. So I ran the last few steps to the tent, put you inside, and went back for him, tried to protect him. But they pushed me aside, knocked me down, and they—they…”

“Shhh,” I say, touching his face. “No more. No more, Father. You’ve said it all.”

“No,” Father says. “Sadie, he was always going to die. Always. He had to die so you could live. That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I thought it would destroy you.”

Too much. It’s too much. “It should’ve been me,” I say.

“No, Sadie. You have to go on. You have to be strong. You have to change things for us all.”

And in that moment, I know I will. Whatever my destiny is, I’ll live it for Paw, for Mother, for Father.

“I love you, Father,” I say, feeling his body shake with pain and the Plague as I hug him.

“I…love you…too, Sadie,” he says, his voice getting weaker with every word. And I hold him and hold him and hold him until the shaking slows and slows and slows, even as the rain falls harder and harder and harder, and then his body goes still, so still.

And the rain falls and the ground around us grows wet, but we are dry; in a perfect circle around the base of that tree, no rain can fall.

And in that circle, a great man dies.