Ashes, Ashes (20 page)

“Is this one talking your ear off,
wilcze
?”

“No, we were just chatting,” Lucy said, wiping the sweat out of her eyes.

The old woman glanced at the square they’d cleared, the half-filled wheelbarrow, the pile of rocks Lucy had collected, and Henry’s freckled face, dry and unreddened by exertion.

“Too bad you exercise your tongue more than those strong arms of yours,” she said, fixing Henry with a baleful stare. “A couple more hours and some of us can break for lunch. Beth and Ralph found puffball mushrooms in the field this morning.”

“Some of us?” Henry asked. He kept the shovel in motion, exaggerating his breathing. He jerked his head at the pile of rubble.

“I believe that Lucy is responsible for that,” Grammalie Rose said. She turned so only Lucy saw the way her lips twisted in the beginnings of a smile. “However, if you continue at the pace you are setting now, I think you will be one of the luncheon party.”

“Why did Aidan get to slack off?” Henry asked, digging with more enthusiasm than he’d shown all morning.

Grammalie shot him a look. “He works harder than anyone else here. He was in the fields at four
A.M.
when you were still rolled up in your sleeping bag with those magazines you think I don’t know about.”

Henry mumbled something and turned away. The tips of his ears were an almost fluorescent red.

“Two hours more, I think,” she said, resting her calloused hand for a moment on Lucy’s arm. “At least the rain is stopping.” The old woman walked away in the direction of the camp. As soon as she was out of sight, Henry put down his shovel. “Man,” he said, rubbing his hand along his ribs. “I think I pulled a muscle.” He turned to Lucy. “Think you could check it out for me?”

Lucy barely acknowledged him. Del and Sammy were shouting at each other across the field. Del tossed her pickax aside and threw up her hands. She pushed Sammy away from her. Her hair, loosened from its ponytail, swirled around her face. And then she turned.

With a start, Lucy realized the girl was heading toward her. Fast.

“Uh-oh,” said Henry. “Lady Del’s in a fury.” He picked up his shovel again and moved closer to Lucy. She was oddly touched.

Lucy’s hand stole to her waist. Her fingers found the comfort of her sheathed knife and then fell away. She was hardly going to stab Del, annoying as she might be.

She took a deep breath and stood her ground as Del stormed up. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and then Lucy said, in as mild a tone as she could muster, “Something going on?”

“Hey, Lady Del,” Henry said in a determinedly light voice. “How’s the digging going? Your boy Aidan bailed out early, huh? What a slacker!”

Del’s deep blue eyes flicked over him and then returned to Lucy’s face. Lucy forced herself to stay calm, but it was difficult. She tried to decipher Del’s body language. It was as if she was barely keeping control. And she seemed on the edge of tears.

They had an audience now, too. Beth and Ralph leaned on their rakes. She saw Scout and Connor lower the plow to the ground. Only the youngsters and the older folk seemed unaware of what was going on. Lucy chewed the inside of her cheek, remembering the one and only fight she’d had in grade school, when Gracie Foster had accused her of stealing her heart-shaped pencil eraser. They’d ended up rolling in the dust of the playground with a bunch of kids egging them on. And when Lucy went home that afternoon, she’d had bloody scratches up and down her arms, and her scalp hurt. Gracie Foster had been her best friend after that, all the way up until eighth grade, when they’d gone to different schools. She wondered if Gracie was still alive.

Del got right in her face. “It’s all your fault,” she snapped. Her hands were clenched in fists. Lucy planted her feet. She felt a surge of anger, and it gave her confidence.

“What are you talking about?”

Del snorted. She paced back and forth, her hair streaming over her shoulders. Her silver bracelets jangled, and she pushed them up her arms impatiently.

“Aidan,” she said. Her hand rubbed at her nose, and Lucy saw tears in her flashing eyes.

“What? I didn’t … What?”

“I think he’s either gone to the Wilds or he’s trying to find Leo. Either way, you’re to blame, Lucy Holloway.” She practically spat the words out. Her finger came up and jabbed Lucy in the chest. Lucy slapped her hand away. She didn’t understand this at all. She’d thought Del was going to give her grief over almost kissing Aidan, but instead it was these riddles.

“You’re crazy!”

Henry moved forward to stand between them. They both glared at him and he stepped back.

“He likes to climb trees in the Wilds. It has nothing to do with me. And he said he wouldn’t go after anyone who’d been kidnapped by the Sweepers.”
Not even you
, she thought to herself. “He said we weren’t prepared.” Her toe scuffed the dirt. “And he was right. I get that now. We can’t just storm in there with no idea of what to expect.”

Del frowned and the accusatory finger rose again. “But that’s not what you told him, is it, Lucy Holloway? You said that if he really cared about his friends, he would go anyway, right?”

“I didn’t tell him to go anywhere. I just said that, if it were me, I wouldn’t wait around for the next bad thing to happen. And besides, I was mad and I was just shooting my mouth off.”

Del’s shoulders slumped. The anger seemed to drain out of her. She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? He can’t stand that you think of him that way. Like he’s some kind of a coward. God, don’t you know anything about boys?!”

Lucy cleared her throat. She couldn’t remember what she’d said to Aidan. She’d yelled. He’d yelled. She tended not to watch her mouth when she was angry. “Are you sure that’s where he’s gone?” Her voice was hoarse. She grabbed Del’s arm. Del stared at her fingers, but she didn’t brush them off.

After a moment, Del said impatiently, “No, I don’t know. I
think
he’s headed to the lake. I hope that’s where he’s gone. It’s where he always goes when he needs space. He won’t let me go with him, and he’d never say what he was doing.” She looked down at her boots. “I followed him once.” Her chin came up, as if she was daring Lucy to say something about it.

“He liked to climb to the top of the elm tree and look north,” Lucy said, dropping her hand. “He said he wanted to travel up there one day.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.” Del sighed. “He probably just needed time to think, but he talked about the argument with you, and Leo and the kids, and then I got so mad at you for picking on him that I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying.” She raised her eyes to Lucy’s face. They weren’t snapping with fire anymore, but there was still something hard in them.

“Aidan can look after himself,” Henry said. “He’s been running wild since he was thirteen, right?”

Del drew a deep breath. She glanced at Lucy again. “Why did you have to come here?” she said. Her tone was strange. It seemed less angry and more tired. She rubbed her hand over her face and eyes, leaving smeary wet trails mixed with dirt. Her mouth twisted. “We’re not friends, Lucy Holloway,” she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper.

“Hey now, Lady Del,” Henry said softly. He slung an arm around her shoulders. For a moment she collapsed into him, and then, with another shake of her head, she pushed him away.

She strode off. Lucy stared after her. She didn’t understand Del at all. One minute she was spitting like an angry cat; the next, she was as emotionless as a robot.

“That was intense,” Henry said. “Why’d she keep saying your name in that weird way? It was like she was putting a curse on you or something.” He laughed nervously and wiggled his fingers in her face. “Voodoo magic.”

Lucy shook her head. How could Del hate her so much?

“Maybe she got too much sun?” Henry said. He rubbed his chin with his gloved hand, staring in the direction Del had taken. “I’ve got to say, though, all that passion she’s bottling up sure makes me wonder. I mean, it’s got to find an outlet, right?”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, Henry,” Lucy said, trying not to laugh.

Sammy tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to face him. His hood was pulled forward, and he was wearing a different mask. This one was painted a glossy red with a broad, upturned smiling mouth and little red horns. Holes were cut out for his mouth and eyes. His red-tinged irises gleamed behind it. “He used to watch you and wonder about you. In your camp. He used to say you were the bravest person he knew.”

Lucy raised surprised eyes to his face. “Me? Why?”

“Because you were alone and you were surviving,” Sammy said. “Because you just did what needed to be done.”

“Half the time I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Yeah, but you kept on anyway.”

She looked at Sammy properly for the first time. He was shorter than Aidan, probably a shade under six feet. His shoulders were broad, and his gloved hands were wide. He seemed a little clumsy, like he’d recently had a growth spurt. Under his hood she glimpsed a shock of the same dirty blond hair his brother had. And then the gruesome contrast of charred skin. It was smooth, though, not cracked and oozing as she had thought before. The surface was whole. It was underneath that great patches of black and red covered his body, like giant bruises. She thought she could see some hazel in his irises within the bloody whites, and the lobes of his ears were pink, like new skin after a bad sunburn. She thought about what Henry had said and wondered if he was right about the body fixing itself.

He returned her gaze. “You are brave,” he said with the hint of a smile. She caught a flash of very white teeth. “Look at you right now. Not worried I’m going to crack your head like a walnut and eat your brains?”

She blushed. “That was so dumb. I just—”

“—believed the propaganda and the news reports.” He nodded. “You’re not the first.” He shrugged. “They just didn’t know what to do with us. Didn’t know where to put us. It was like we were nonhumans or something just because we got sick. Ralphie still won’t talk to anyone but me and Beth.”

Lucy was trying to understand her fear. “I think it’s because you survived. You’re sort of like a living, walking reminder that there was a plague.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I can’t do anything about that.”

“Hey,” said Henry. “Hate to break up the tête-à-tête, but I’m hungry, and if you guys don’t help load and dump the rest of this, Grammalie Rose is going to personally see to it that I starve.”

Lucy and Sammy exchanged a grin.

“Pretty please?” Henry said.

“With sugar on top?” Lucy said.

“I just can’t resist a whiner,” Sammy said.

Henry tossed a shovel at him. Sammy caught it.

“I’ll give you a kiss,” Henry said to Lucy, puckering his lips and opening his arms wide.

“Henry!” Grammalie Rose yelled from the camp.

Suddenly, a jumble of shouts and cries rose from the direction of the square. Something had happened. Lucy’s heart started pounding.

“Henry!” And this time they all heard the shrill note of panic in Grammalie Rose’s voice.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PLAGUE

T
he shrouded lump lying on the mound of bracken leaves and grasses was scarcely recognizable as human. And the sounds that came from it were more like that of a wounded animal. Lucy and Sammy followed Henry into the open space beneath the awnings. Grammalie Rose crouched at the head of the makeshift bed. A few of the youngest kids huddled together in the corner, and Aidan was there, too. He raised his head, meeting Lucy’s eyes briefly. She was shocked at how pale and drawn his face was. He looked much older than seventeen. Henry dropped down to his knees opposite Grammalie and moved the covers aside. Lucy caught a glimpse of charred skin, a gasping mouth.

“Sue is boiling water for willow bark tea. Aidan soaked some sheets in water. He’s bad,” Grammalie Rose said. She looked at Sammy and beckoned him closer. “Get the children away,” she said in a low voice.

Sammy nodded. He bent his head and pulled the white and gold mask from beneath his cape and switched it for the horned mask. Then he clapped his hands. “Strawberry hunt in two minutes!” The kids clustered about his legs, jabbering in excited voices, and he led them out into the square.

“He’s burning up,” Henry said, laying a hand on the man’s forehead. “The willow bark tea won’t bring his temperature down fast enough.” He looked miserable. “What else do we have?”

“Elder flower, echinacea for the fever; but if the willow isn’t doing any good …” Grammalie Rose’s voice trailed off. “Valerian, black cohosh for the pain: There may be some motherwort left, but I used most of it when Lottie broke her arm. I have a tincture of rosemary for when he is calmer.” Her hand brushed against the man’s face for a moment. Then she pulled two small glass bottles from her pocket. One was filled with a gritty brown powder. The other glowed yellow-green.

“He’ll probably die,” said Henry. He bit his lip, as if ashamed of what he had said.

Grammalie Rose soaked a cloth in a pan of water and dabbed it over the man’s face. She muttered under her breath. It sounded like a string of curses. Her eyebrows met in an angry frown over her hawklike nose. She glared at Henry.

“Then we will try to make him as comfortable as we can. Yes?”

Henry lowered his head.

Lucy watched the body writhing beneath the thin covers. She could see blackened skin covering a bald skull and spreading in splotches to the face. His eyes were half-open. The eyeballs were tinged an angry red. She couldn’t distinguish his pupils at all. It was as if the sockets were filled with blood. He thrashed and threw off the sheets. Two thick gold hoops dangled from the charred earlobes, and under the skin of the muscular forearms she glimpsed swirls and bands of dark blue. Tattoos, she realized with a shudder of recognition, almost covered by the dusky hue of bleeding beneath the skin. It was Leo.

And now he was ill with the plague.

A feeling of hysteria rose in her throat, and she battled to keep herself under control.