Текст книги "The Wall"

Автор книги: Lauren Nicolle Taylor

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Matthew still wouldn’t look at me. He shook his head. “No, it’s not Alexei. It’s Apella.”

I felt myself shrinking, my body condensing into a scrunched-up ball. “Well, she owes me at least this,” I whispered sharply.

Matthew stood up and looked at me or almost through me. His eyes changed from kindness to judgment. I leaned away from him, scared. I knew I could take things too far but I didn’t think it was unreasonable to ask for this. She could give me some blood.

“Does she owe you her baby?”

“What does her baby have to do with it?” I snapped, not quite grasping the link between the two.

Matthew’s words pierced right through me as he said, “Apella is forty-three. She’s underweight from the journey and she’s high risk as it is. The amount she needs to donate would put her body under a great deal of stress. It’s not a certainty but giving this much blood will put her baby in danger.”

Oh no.

No.

Not even I could ask that. Pain swelled in the room. Everyone could feel it. It was hopeless. Apella would not give her baby up. I would never ask her to. It was over. I started to sink.

Deshi spoke, “Ease up, Matt. She’s not that kind of person. Even Rosa has her limits.”

I crouched down on the ground, feeling a physical pain like being stabbed in the stomach. The knife was twisting back and forth but stayed in my gut, all jagged and rusty.

The hopelessness of it threatened to crush me. I was going to lose him. “Oh God…” I whimpered. “I’m going to be sick.” Matthew ran to me with a bowl and I threw up. He looked surprised. I think he expected me to run after Apella and demand she do it. “I could never ask her to do that,” I said, sliding myself towards a wall so I could lean against it. Let me turn to stone here, I thought. I’ll become part of the mountain. I’ll never leave. I’ll never grow. I’ll just stop, with him.

“You don’t need to,” he said softly. “She’s already decided.”

My back straightened. “What? No!” This was a debt I could never repay. “Where is she?” I was searching the room like she would jump from behind a curtain. I had to find her and talk her out of it. “Will you look after the baby for me? I’ll be back soon,” I said to Deshi. He nodded, adding an eye roll. He was getting sick of watching the baby for me. I didn’t have time to placate him. “Last time, I swear,” I threw over my shoulder.

I stood up and walked briskly out of the room. I had an idea of where she might go. I climbed down the ladder and made my way to the big, metal door, composing my speech as I went, changing it several times.

I stood at the big, metal door. The one they had hauled my screaming, pregnant body through six weeks ago as I watched them drag Joseph’s lifeless body past me. A lifetime ago. Something needed to change. For too long, we had been stuck in a nowhere land. I took a deep breath and unwound the cog, pushing hard.

I could feel her hand linked in mine, pulling me backwards. A warm breath on my neck made me pause and a deep rumbling voice whispered, “Don’t do this.” I shook them both free.

The moment I breathed in the cold air, everything hit me at once. This was where I was supposed to be. I had lost myself to my grief, to my struggles with the baby, and to Joseph. This was not who I was. This was not the girl he fell in love with. My heart ached at the thought, a splinter of grief for my own losses splitting me open. My eyes found the landscape unrecognizable. I had craved winter, so long ago. Back in the Classes, I’d wanted the peace and quiet to wander the garden without kids staring at me. This was more beautiful than an arboretum. This was real. It was breathtaking but harsh and cold, bitingly so. Nature never waits; it layers the world, changes it, circles it, and brings it back again.

The woods were heavily laden with white snow. Glimpses of evergreens sparkled with crystal icicles. It filled me. I crunched onto the snow, my feet instantly frozen. I quickly jumped towards the cabin, snow up to my knees. I could see a faint path, the thin slip cut into the snow only someone as small as Apella could have made. She must have been inside.

I poked my head in the door. Everything was exactly as we’d left it. A circle of beds, backpacks stacked neatly in the corner. A pile of firewood. I fought back tears as I looked at the pile of stones on the floor. An unfinished puzzle dropped the second we saw Joseph walking towards us. Apella was huddled in the corner, shivering. I sighed. The wood was right there. If I hadn’t come, she would have frozen to death. She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t read—sad, expectant, angry? Maybe all of those things.

I retrieved a backpack and pulled out a lighter, building a fire. Memories of orange and yellow warmth flooded through me. But it was an unpleasant memory. That jagged knife was turning around and around, sending veins of pain creeping through my whole body. This place was no good. It felt like it held all our dashed hopes, all our fears. The fire warmed the corner but with no door, it was still horribly cold.

I took one of the blankets, draped it around her slight shoulders, and sat close. I wanted to speak but I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Don’t do this,” I stammered. My teeth were chattering, from the cold and from the fact my body was trying to stop my mouth from moving. It didn’t even make sense to me but I desperately didn’t want her to do this. I knew what it meant if she didn’t, but I couldn’t put the two outcomes together. I couldn’t owe her this. The debt would crush me. I wondered in the blackest corners of my mind whether she would regret it and resent us. Of course she would.

She looked at me, her big, blue eyes unblinking, and her hand on her stomach. “Rosa, do you know how many girls I watched them hurt?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. I remembered the sickening rosy cheeks. That glow of pregnancy that sat so wrongly over the unaware girls. Their skin stretched thin over their stomachs and their faces, like it was all they could do to hold themselves in. Those girls were probably still walking around the roped-off yards, still fighting the oppressive fog of drugs, stuck in their own contained nightmare. They were so young. I was so young.

“I did nothing. I let them treat those precious, young lives like animals, worse than animals, and I did nothing. I was selfish,” she continued.

I put my hand on hers. It was cold as ice and still as stone. I watched her face—watched it change.

“I understand now. I don’t get to have a baby. I don’t deserve one. I have to let it go.” She had no tears. Her face was accepting.

“But I can’t…” I started to say, feeling hysteria pulling me down, the weight of too many lives sitting on my tiny shoulders. “I don’t know how… it’s too much.” I burst into tears. She put her thin arms around me and held me close, wrapping me in a paper-thin cocoon, making shushing noises and stroking my hair.

“It’s all right. I’ll be all right,” she said calmly.

“You’ll hate me. If you do this for me, you will end up hating me.” I wasn’t even sure why I cared so much. I had hated her. I blamed her for so much.

Apella laughed a soft, sad, gasp of a laugh. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for Joseph and for our strange, little family.”

I nodded, still unable to control my tears, sniffing and shaking. We couldn’t lose anyone else. But this sacrifice was more than anyone could ask. And I guess that’s why no one would. This was her choice. I had to abide by it.

“How did this happen?” I asked

“How did what happen?” Her voice was serene.

“All of it.”

“It’s like you said, Rosa. We always have a choice,” she replied, dipping her chin and staring into the fire.

Damn it! My own words were coming back to bite me. I smiled, genuinely. Tears froze on my cheeks. We picked up a few things and left, our arms around each other. Apella would give her blood and might lose her baby in the process. We just had to hope it would be enough and that Alexei would forgive her.

Apella insisted on having it done straight away. I urged her to stop and think it over but she wouldn’t listen. We looked for Alexei but he was still hiding. Apella wasn’t upset, but I was. She needed him. He should have been there.

They sat her in the beige, vinyl chair, its oversized arms and back dwarfing her tiny body. Cal was lying in a bed next to her, still looking quite white but his color was returning with every passing minute.

Matthew put the needle in, pressing the cold metal hard against her skin and puncturing her willowy arm. I observed the tattoo she had stolen from the dead girl at the Classes and truly wondered if she could ever make up for all the horrible things she had done. But I sat with her. If she was letting go, then so should I. I held her hand, watching her dark red blood track up a tube and into the bag. There was a bond growing between us I had never expected. That was what bonded us, blood. Clara’s blood, her child, Apella’s gift of blood to Joseph. We were becoming a family.

Everything was fine for a while. They took two bags without anything seeming to happen. Then she started to sway. Matthew walked over and said, “Ok, I think that’s enough.” He went to disconnect the tube but her hand shot out and grabbed him.

“No, you need at least this last bag if you want to have any chance of saving him. Let me finish,” she said through her teeth. She looked so frail and yet so much stronger than I thought her capable of.

Where was Alexei? I had unfair visions of him crying in a corner somewhere, cowering like a child.

The door swung open and he appeared. He stumbled over to her chair and sat on her other side. His eyes connected with mine. I wanted to say, I tried to stop her, but my mouth was dry and wouldn’t open to the words.

He looked down at Apella and smiled. “I’m sorry, darling. What you are doing… I’m proud of you.”

She looked up at him, her face paler than I thought possible. I could almost see through her. They looked at each other forever. I finally understood what they had. This was an old love but a strong love. It was unconditional. They couldn’t hurt each other because it would be hurting themselves.

Apella let out a small cry, tiny. It shot out of the room on a breath of wind. I know she didn’t hate me but I hated myself. It shouldn’t have happened. Matthew ushered me out of the room, telling a much brighter looking Cal to leave also.

“When I’m ready, I will come down and collect Joseph. Wait for me in your room,” he said as he turned his back to us, closing in on Apella. She was braver than I’d ever thought possible. Somehow, she had become a mother without a baby. She was protecting her family. Maybe she would come out of this stronger, shake the old life off like shedding a skin, papery remnants of a horrible existence floating to the ground. It was something to aspire to.

I was staring through the small, rectangular window, intruding on their personal pain, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, we need to give them some privacy,” Cal said. He guided my rigid body towards the ladder.

I shrugged his hand off and tried to steady myself but the floor was heaving under my feet. An imaginary gust of wind churned around me and tried to knock me over. If only things would slow down for a second, if the world would stop spinning, I could catch my breath. His face stretched and blurred before my eyes. “Whoa!” Strong arms caught me and then… darkness.

I awoke propped up against a wall in a dark hallway. Hard, jagged rock poked into my back, wet with condensation. A shaft of light sliced through the blackness about a hundred meters away. I stood quickly, bumping my head on a low-hanging pipe, a comical ‘boing’ sound shimmying away from me.

“Rosa, isn’t it?” a vaguely familiar voice asked. I pulled my legs up quickly, hands in front of my face in defense. “Don’t panic. You fainted.”

“Oh. Um. Sorry. I’m just not used to all the blood,” I lied. If only that were true.

“It’s all right. Lucky I was there or you would have fallen down the ladder,” Cal said a little too proudly. I could barely see him in the dark, just his ears poking out, giving him a recognizable silhouette.

I started to stand. “I better get back. Matthew said to wait in my room.”

A hand clamped on my shoulder, holding me in place. “Hey, there’s no rush,” Cal said in an odd, syrupy tone. “They’ll be a while.”

I stood up, swaying a little, and walked towards the light. It felt uncomfortable being in the dark with this boy. I picked up the pace, ducking my head when I got to the door so they didn’t see me, and swinging myself down the ladder.

“Wait! Can I come with you? Keep you company while you wait?” In the light, he still looked pale. He was only a couple of inches taller than me and he was leaning up on his toes. Eyes earnest, he stared at me expectantly, one hand in his pocket, the other tucking a stray curl behind his ear. He seemed harmless.

I weighed it up. This boy had just donated all the blood he could to Joseph. He must have understood our relationship. Besides, what I was thinking was preposterous. I was not desirable in any way. I was a teenage mother, a mess. Whatever had made me uncomfortable, I ignored it. My instincts weren’t to be trusted anymore, look where they’d got us so far.

“Ok,” I shrugged. He followed me to my room, silently. I kept a good few feet between us, not entirely trusting him. The only sound was the standard-issue canvas sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor.

I entered to find Deshi sitting, rocking an inconsolable, screaming baby. He looked stressed. Hessa was rolling around on the floor. I smiled down at the darling child.

“What happened?” Deshi asked, his eyes showing concern for both of our family members, as he walked to me and handed me the baby.

“She went through with it. Matthew is coming down to get Joseph soon.” My face felt thin, stretched over my bones too tightly. My heart felt similar.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked, his eyes moving from me to Cal and back again. I wanted to say yes. But I was being silly. I would be fine.

“No, it’s ok. Joseph’s here,” I said with a weak smile.

Deshi rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m going to put Hessa down for a nap.” He tapped his hand on Joseph’s shoulders lightly. “Good luck, Joe.” He kissed his fingers and placed them on Joseph’s forehead. Then he was gone.

The baby screamed. I climbed onto the bed and put the child to my breast. Not even thinking about Cal. This had become second nature to me now. The boy shyly looked away as I fed my child, his curls forming a curtain over his bowed head. When I was done, he pulled up a chair and sat facing me eagerly. Maybe he was just being friendly.

“So, have you thought of a name yet?” he asked, trying to be kind or interested.

I stiffened. “No, not yet. I mean, I can’t.”

His eyebrows rose in confusion. “Oh, why’s that?”

“Not that it’s any of your business but I always thought his father would name him,” I snapped.

The boy was offended. His eyebrows turned down, his eyes wide, but he quickly swallowed it. He seemed overly sensitive.

“I’ll help you,” he said, half-standing out of his chair, his hurt flipping to inappropriate enthusiasm.

Now I was confused. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll help you come up with a name. He’s going to be pretty tired and confused when he wakes up.” Cal gestured to Joseph’s resting form. “The last thing he’s going to want to do is name a baby.”

He was irritating, but he had a point. And I wanted to show Joseph I wasn’t completely incompetent.

Cal devised a plan. He started asking me questions, personal questions. The first being—how did you feel when you first found out you were pregnant? I eyed him suspiciously, replying that I was really, really angry. Violated. Seeing that was not a great line of questioning, he continued to ask me about the baby. How I felt, when did it change, what made me think I could be a mother?

“Stop. None of this will help me,” I said crankily. My patience was not thin, but non-existent.

“Ok, ok. I know,” he said. Rubbing his chin, he pointed at Joseph. “How does he make you feel?”

I closed my eyes, dreaming, thinking of Joseph’s warm arms around me, his soft lips parting mine. The way he pressed me up against a tree and buried his face in my hair, kissing my neck, sliding his hand down my arms to my waist.

“Like gold,” I whispered, forgetting I was answering a question, forgetting there was someone staring at me. I opened my eyes and my cheeks flushed hot at Cal’s intense gaze.

“Hmm. Like gold,” Cal grinned with a faraway expression. He paused and I waited for him to snap out of it. When he didn’t, I rattled the arm of his chair. “And you are of Spanish origin right?” he said chirpily, coming back to reality.

“I suppose. I mean, in old terms, I guess I’m half-Indian, half-Spanish.” It felt strange to say it. These terms were rarely used in Pau, banned outside of the classroom. They were considered inflammatory.

Cal stared at me a long time, picking over my features, his eyes pausing over my nose, my ears, my neck, and to my chest. I wanted to kick him. He returned to my eyes and kept peering, until I coughed and turned away, giving my attention to the baby as I wrapped him and tried to rock him to sleep. The way Cal looked at me was completely foreign. I didn’t know whether to be scared or flattered.

“Interesting,” he said, peculiarly fascinated. “Those eyes…” He stopped talking mid-sentence and pulled out a small reader from his pocket. At least that’s what I thought it was, until he started typing things in and reading. I was curious but something told me not to get too close, so I hovered above him from my bed.

“What about Hema?” I screwed up my nose; it sounded too much like Hessa. He laughed, a low sound that didn’t quite touch his eyes. It sounded like Joseph and I didn’t want to put the two together in my mind. “Ok, maybe not.” He returned to the screen. “Oriole, Orville, Hemen, Kunal, Orlando, Kin, Jin, Paz.”

“Wait. Go back a few.”

“Kin?”

“No.”

“Orlando?”

I paused. Orlando. I turned it over in my head, pulling it out and laying it across the child like a blanket. Orlando. He opened his eyes and looked at me. One blue and one brown eye framed with long, blond eyelashes. My eyes, Joseph’s frame. I wondered if there was a nice-sounding name for defective. Probably not. I let out a giggle. No, Orlando fit, a beautiful name for a beautiful child, a one-of-a-kind child. Something materialized in me, or maybe was there all along, and now it was making its presence strongly felt. When I looked at this baby, I saw beauty. I saw love. The connection was there. I took his tiny hand in mine and put it to my face. Soft and sharp.

I nodded. “Orlando is good.”

Cal was looking at me with a quizzical expression. He opened his mouth to speak but Matthew entered the room, flanked by two women I didn’t recognize.

He just stared at me with tired, worried eyes and I knew what he was going to say. I watched his lips moving slowly, noticing the dryness in the corners. The words came out like they were underwater. A dull thrumming noise that I understood to mean ‘Apella will probably lose her baby’ and the words not spoken, ‘It’s your fault’. I felt the pain of his words, each one smarting like the lash of a cane. Leaving a message slapped into my skin, a debt I could not repay.

“Can I see her?”

He shook his head. “Give her some time,” he said, his usually bright face looking worn, tired. I felt so very sorry for him. He seemed to have invested so much in our well-being and I could tell this was weighing on him heavily. If the operation wasn’t successful, Apella’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

I wanted to say something comforting but all that I could think was: You have to make this work and you better make this work. So I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to add to the pile of rocks and bodies Matthew already had teetering atop his shoulders.

He managed a weak smile, thin-lipped, no teeth. “We’ll take him now. If you want to say something, now would be the time.”

I nodded. “I just need to put the baby, I mean, Orlando, to bed.” Matthew raised his eyebrows at the name but didn’t comment. I padded off quickly. I laid the child down in his cot across from my room. My eyes washed softly over the tiny bundle. If Joseph didn’t survive—at the thought of this I felt my insides turning to stone, like a snap frost it crept up my spine and spread like poison—would I be able to make this work? Unfortunately, I knew the answer, so I didn’t finish my thought.

I walked back to my room slowly, inching my feet forward. I felt like I was moving through high grass and there were animal eyes on me, waiting to pounce. Matthew was watching me too, hands on his hips, tapping his feet. He was anxious to get moving. Drawing it out was not going to help. Invisible arms shoved me forward. I tripped over myself and into the room.

Cal was still sitting in a chair, looking at his feet. I moved to Joseph.

His face was a memory. I filled in the spaces, inserted pink to his yellow skin, added weight to his thinner body. I leaned down and kissed him. The smallest glint of gold sparked through me. He was still there. I leaned down to his ear and whispered, “I named our son. But I’m not going to tell you his name until you ask me.” An ache shot through me as I remembered one of our first conversations back in Pau. Joseph had said he wouldn’t bring up the subject of my father until I asked him. We still had so much to talk about, so many things to learn about each other. It wouldn’t end here. It couldn’t.

The nurses disconnected him from the machines. One put a suction cup over his mouth attached to a balloon and squeezed it at even intervals. I let my hand trail the edge of the bed until it connected with nothing. They disappeared.

“This will take all night, Rosa. I suggest you try and sleep,” Matthew said, rubbing his tired, creased forehead.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure thing.” As if I could sleep.

Now it was just Cal and me.

“Do you know what they are going to do to him?” I asked, blinking away stray tears.

He looked up from his feet, his eyes hopeful. “No, but Matt’s very good, the best.”

Something was stirring in me. Old feelings of curiosity long suppressed. “How did he get that way? I mean, do you have Classes like we do?”

Cal laughed at me, and I hardened. I glared at him and he swallowed the laugh like a bitter pill. “No. No Classes. Matt wanted to be a doctor so he studied to become one.”

This was an amazing and confusing revelation for me. People could choose their path in life? The idea of that amount of freedom was, surprisingly, a little terrifying. And like that, the seductive distraction of finding out more about the Survivors took over. I leaned into Cal intensely. “What else can you tell me?” His cheeks were pink, surprised by my sudden closeness.

“Not much, I’m afraid. I’m not supposed to say much until you take the pledge. Besides, you really need to see it for yourself.”

“The what?”

Cal explained that all survivors had to take a pledge. It was a way of securing your allegiance, to the secrecy of their home and also to each other. Everyone had to take care of each other and help any other survivors who came along, which was not many, apparently. We were the first in many, many years and the only known escapees of the Woodlands. So that’s what Matt meant when he said it was his duty. It sounded nice but a tiny warning light was flashing, a faint, red glow. Was I swapping one cult for another?

“So you can’t tell me anything?” I sighed.

He responded to my obvious disappointment, eager to impress. “I can show you some things,” he said, extending his hand. I eyed it apprehensively. I wasn’t sure, and I really should have stayed right where I was. I talked myself into it; waiting was not going to achieve anything anyway. I took his hand. It was warm and dry. A shiver ran through me, a reminder, and I let go abruptly. I walked to the cot to check on the baby. Hopefully, he would sleep for at least an hour. “Ok, lead the way.”

Cal grinned at me and started walking down the hall away from where the people were. Then as it got quieter and darker, he broke into a jog. I jogged behind him, wondering why I was mindlessly following this strange boy but feeling a sense of freedom. My footsteps sent a new energy through my body as I ran. A sense of my old self, impulsive, mischievous, was surging forward. He told me to hurry up. We were nearly there.

He pulled up suddenly and turned to face me. In the dark, I could barely make him out and I slammed right into his stationary body with a thud. We were both panting, breathless. I laughed. So did he.

Once I couldn’t hear footfalls anymore, another sound was pushing up out of the darkness. Barking.

The air was heavy down here. Cal found my hand and I didn’t pull away because I couldn’t see where I was going anymore. It made me feel intensely uncomfortable and I was starting to regret my decision. He placed my hand on a metal rail, patting it once, and told me to climb down. I gripped the rails and clumsily tried to find the rungs of the metal ladder with my feet. Cal was right behind me and stepped on my hands.

“Ouch! Watch it,” I snapped

Cal scoffed, “Whoops, sorry.”

Hitting the ground, I adjusted my eyes. I could see light again. I followed it; hearing the sounds of dogs barking, the unpleasant smell of animal closeness creeping up my nose. I came to a door. Cal opened it for me, putting his hands in the small of my back and pushing me through gently. I jerked away from his touch and stumbled into a room full of wolves.

I turned to run, my blood thumping in my ears. But Cal was just smiling casually at me, like the room was full of bunny rabbits. There was a man in the corner fiddling with what looked to be a carriage. He looked up and waved a hand at Cal. “Hey, Bataar,” Cal said. The man just grunted. His dark brows pulled together in concentration as he tried to untangle meters of rope.

   The wolves were jumping up excitedly, their claws click-clacking against the stone floor. Cal approached them. I squeaked out a “No,” but they knew him. They were licking his hands and he was patting their heads, pulling on their ears and talking to them.

I didn’t notice I was pinned against the wall until he brought one over to me, holding it by the collar. I gulped drily; I had nowhere to run. I peeled myself off and leaned down towards it. “This is Bold.” It wasn’t a wolf, at least not like what I had encountered. Its eyes were a golden yellow and its coat was thick and fluffy. It looked at me, teeth bared in an almost human grin, tongue hanging out. “It’s ok. He won’t hurt you.” I reached my hand out and patted it stiffly on the head. It leaned into my palm, taking the pat as a sign that it could jump on me.

I surprised both men when I firmly said, “No!” The dog tilted its head and planted its bum on the ground. I laughed. “Good.”

“You’re a natural,” Cal said admiringly. The man in the corner sniggered and spat on the ground.

“What is this? I mean, why have you got animals down here?” I had the sudden and ridiculous fear that maybe they ate them. I chided myself.

“This is our transportation,” Cal shrugged, like it was obvious.

My eyes grazed over harnesses, carriages, stacks of containers piled against the walls of the big, dark cavern. I grinned. This could be fun. But I instantly felt a stab of guilt at enjoying myself when Joseph was under the knife and Apella was grieving her baby. I sat down against the wall and sighed deeply. Would I ever be able to enjoy life without something pulling it away from me?

Joseph , please wake up.

One of the dogs sidled up to me and laid its head in my lap. I ran my hands through its fur, rough and prickly on the outer layer, but when I pushed my fingers deeper, it changed to a soft down. My happiness was attached to these feelings. A mixture of fear and love had pushed me into a tree and created the most amazing night of my life. I held my chest, afraid of my ribs parting, my heart falling out and dropping to the dirty floor to be covered in dog hair. I laughed halfheartedly as I imagined someone picking it up, dusting it off, and handing it back to me saying, ‘Here, you dropped this.’ I felt like I was going crazy. I was.

Cal played with the dogs and I watched him create mini-tornados of dog fluff and dust. Yawning. Distraction didn’t last very long. He walked over and sat next to me, our legs touching. It was too close. I edged sideways, putting a gap between us. The dog snored in my lap. I wished I were him.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I blurted out, harshly.

He was taken aback but he answered me kindly. “Because I know what you’re going through.”

I snorted. How could he possibly?

“I lost my sister six months ago. She got sick. Matt tried to save her but he couldn’t.” He looked sad. Tired. Grief does that. It wears you down. So all you feel is bluntness and loneliness.

“I’m sorry,” I said, shoulders slumped, suddenly feeling so weary I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Close your eyes and rest,” he said. “I’ll wake you in half an hour.”

I didn’t reply, the heaviness of the day was pressing down on me, one life slipping away while another fought to hang on. Half an hour. I could rest and then I would go back to the room and wait. A heavy, furred head on my lap lulled me to sleep with its warmth and rough snoring.

I was running through the forest, the light streaming through peppered trunks. It was warm; the autumn colors shone Technicolor bright, as if painted on. The trees leaned into me, whispering secrets as they swung their arms back and forth in a slow dance. Someone caught up to me. A big, warm hand clasped my own. It started to rain, but I didn’t feel wet. It showered down on me but only sent pinpricks of pleasure through my free body. Joseph chuckled and stopped running. I gazed into those beautiful eyes, the green of the forest living in them. The gold of my heart scattered around the irises. He started climbing a tree and I followed, vaguely aware of dogs barking in the background. We sat together on a branch and he pulled me into his lap. It was light, brighter than light, everywhere. It folded over us like a warm blanket. He held my face in his hands and pulled me closer. I parted my lips just slightly, breathing in his warm breath. I closed my eyes and opened them again.