The gaunt specter of wasting diseases threatens to tap its skeletal fingers on every shoulder among the People, the poisons entrenched in the land and water, paring flesh and strength from their bones without regard for age. We, the descendants, suffer a different sickness, one creeping over us like twilight slinks up on the horizon, drawing a chill cloak of darkness in its wake. First a few women took ill, then the children, and finally the men. The People sniffle and cough with their winter affliction, while we drown in our own bodies or flare with fever. Then we started to die, the old first, then the very young. The sun-skinned women of the River Walkers weep for their pink-skinned children.
Only women dig in the fields, our hands wrapped in old bonnets, holes cut for our frozen fingers, ribbons wrapping our wrists. My blanket is my cloak by day, my cover by night. Heaven left us unprepared and vulnerable, a weak people compared to our captors. Rune should be with the men timbering and burning, but he follows me to my row and helps me pull beets. I don’t think he handles all this death well; he didn’t let Rimma die.
“Can any of the People heal?” I ask. Clearly, they can kill; I witnessed their dedication to that task with the end of Paradise. The memory of bodies bursting into tongues of flame roared back into me when Rimma described in terrified whispers the sensation of roasting alive. Her rescue by Rune and Mercy, although less dramatic, was alluring in its hope.
“You mean with magic?” He tosses muddy beets into the bushel by their crimson-veined greens, his jade eyes flickering up through a cobweb of dark hair. He shakes his head. “Doesn’t work that way, wish it did. Magic don’t heal us, grow food, or scrub poison from the broken land. Look at Mag, Angel. She’s bent up as old wire, never been or will be straight. And she’s
old
for us. If I last forty years, I’ll be grateful for a long life.”
Resting back on my heels, I tuck my hands in my armpits to warm and realize he’s right. There are few wrinkled faces and gray heads among the People. They stand better equipped than we to survive the world’s trials, but life isn’t coddling or its inhabitants kind. “Can you…are you...?” I struggle to find the words.
“We call it ‘the Touch,’” Rune replies. “And I don’t got it.” He dumps our full load of beets in the cart and drops the empty bushel in front of me. While my fingers root in the cold soil, he squats down to talk. “It’s the poison, best we can tell,” he explains. “The poison wrecks the body but brings the Touch. Look around, you’ll see it. Mag, Mercy, Glory, Shy, Prince, Amari, all of them with something wrong about them. They all got it. The worse the twist, the stronger the Touch.”
The earth lets go its hold on the beets as my mind sorts through the faces of the River Walkers. Shy with her narrow, pointed head. Prince’s withered legs, Amari without fingers and toes. There are more, those who manage to survive their precarious beginnings and the harsh violence of their lives. Heaven was free of poison, free of deformity, our hardships so miniscule in comparison. As the sun shares a smile between crowded clouds, I realize that within the River Walker pack there exists an undercurrent of compassion, an acceptance of its members, all members, each life born to them with a chance at survival. I wish Rimma could see it as well.
“Will you explain it to me?” I ask. “How it works?”
“Later.” Rune rises to stand over me. “I got bodies to burn.”
After nightfall, I share in the toil with other women, hauling full carts back to the kitchen and cold storage. My lips and hands are chapped and cracked. I wipe my runny nose on my sleeve, and scoop our day’s dirty harvest into mounting piles on the stone floor. Bone-weary and freed of my duties, I scurry away to check on Rimma, a bowl of hot broth burning my hands.
What was once the women’s residence is our sick house, our charnel house where nearly half of Heaven’s descendants waste, more arriving daily to fill solemn gaps left yawning by our dead. Deacon Abrum’s body burned to ash a week ago, most of the very old and very young lining the mass grave with their charred bones. We’ve lost mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children in the funereal march of wooden carts, naked bodies stripped of shoes and clothing, anything useful to the living.
At the peak of the front terrace’s curved stairs, Mari breathes the night air, red curls tangled by moonlight, arms embracing herself in the wind. With a confused nod, she watches me hurry by, and I know she thinks I’m Rimma risen from my sickbed. I maneuver through the door and down the dim corridor lit only by restless candlelight and the pale luster of magic emanating from open doorways. Coughs and whispers fill the shadows; the place stinks of urine.
Stricken doves are housed together in a single set of rooms, bodies lining the walls, blanket-swathed, pale, and sweating. When the men aren’t ordering us to other tasks, Mari and I, the other doves and women of the River Walkers tend to the ill. Rimma lies where I visited her last, ashen, her corn-silk hair plastered to her face, dark rings beneath her hollow eyes reminiscent of the bruises she received months ago when Heaven failed. She hasn’t the strength to sit or fight or defy; she barely rocks her head to face me, scarcely smiles.
“I brought soup,” I tell her, my voice a cheerful whisper. I prop her up on a pillow and spoon hot liquid into her mouth, help her up to relieve herself and bathe the sweat from her forehead with a cool cloth.
“How many more?” she asks me, inquiring about today’s dead.
“I don’t know.” The truth; I’ve no desire to keep count. “I worked in the fields.”
“At least a dozen,” Mari replies from the doorway. She enters and kneels by my side, ignoring me. “Larue’s dead, Bethalyn, Glinda, Karena…” She rambles down the list in her head, each name an accusation, her eyes spitting fire. “I’m leaving,” she whispers, slipping the secret in at the end.
Rimma’s gray eyes shine like obsidian, sharp-edged, the first sign of life in six days.
Dread shoots a warning up my spine as I stare at Mari. How can she possibly risk it? We’d both seen Rimma, blind eyes wide, clawing at the vacant air, writhing on the floor, spewing vomit. Heard her tortured, panicked screaming.
“You know what Mag will do.” Rimma stares at her, fear and longing shaping the contours of her face. “It’ll be worse.”
“Only if we’re caught,” Mari counters softly, desperation lacing her voice. “I can’t stay here, Rimma. The Biters are savages, disgusting animals. If they’re not killing us with their hands, they’re working us to death in the cold, spreading their disease. Look at us. Half of us are dead. The only reason they haven’t raped us is they intend to sell us to someone who will. I’m filthy and cold. I stink as bad as they do.”
“Where will you go?” Rimma asks. I watch her mind working, wishing strength into her bones. She wants to flee with them.
“No,” I beg her, my hand on her arm.
“Sanctuary or Retreat. Whoever will accept us,” Mari whispers. “We’re hiding a little food each day in the north-gate orchards.”
“Who’s we?”
“Four women, a dozen men, no children. We leave in three days. If you’re well enough, you can join us.”
“I have a map,” Rimma says, pushing herself onto her elbows, the effort bringing on a phlegmy cough. She clutches Mari’s arm as she bends over, her body racked with the effort. When she slides back to the floor, she closes her eyes, exhausted. “Wait for me and it’s yours.”
“Three days,” Mari repeats. “With or without your map.” She rises to her feet, glaring at the River Walkers who enter the room, women bringing us fresh water and food. Without a word, she leaves us to tend to the other doves.
Rimma glances at me, expecting a reprimand or warning, anticipating my pleas and a cascade of dreary, droning worries. I disappoint her and choose silence, knowing if she survives at all, she’ll be too ill to escape this life. I would tell her instead of what I’ve learned of the People, that there’s a glimmer of hope for us in the broken world, even if we’re sold, even if our bodies aren’t our own. Most choices have been stolen from us; some have changed as capriciously as the weather, but some few we retain. I know she will plug her ears to my hopes; so all I do is smile and touch the cold cloth to her face. “Peace, Sister.”
**
I’ve glimpsed crystalline mornings of glittering sun-shined rime, a landscape pristine for those few minutes before it surrenders to winter’s midday warmth, reverting to a trampled carcass of frozen mud. Now night-fires burn in the courtyard, the only vibrant color in a world pallid and glum as ash.
Women distribute food to those of us healthy enough to congregate within the flame’s reach. My glowering sister remains bed-ridden, healing but bitter and sullen, too weak to flee. With angry tears, she told Mari where to find her map, hidden among the hub’s pipes. Today marks the third day and I try not to dwell on my fears.
Under Mag’s watchful eye, the doves join the gatherings by the night-fires, too cold to leave us out with all the sickness scourging our ranks. We number sixteen now, whittled down by the chaos at the fall of Heaven, claimed by other packs, and ground down by disease. Mag, Rune, Doony, Bones, and Greeb have claims still alive among us, and they keep a close eye. Ram owns the other doves collectively, and every pack member will benefit when they’re sold. Most of the men seem to respect our value…or don’t dare risk a knife in the throat.
“What will you trade Xavia for?” I ask Rune as I finger the bead at my ear.
Cross-legged in the dirt beside me, he scrapes a bowl with a wedge of bread. “Before Karena died, might of got a top crossbow maybe. And a quiver of straight bolts,” he adds with his mouth full. “Decent bows are hard to come by. Each of you is worth a fine weapon, some more than others. I could trade her for a good sword.” He studies his remaining dove where she sits across the fire, her long tawny braid dangling over a shoulder. “Shit, I could use good boots and a coat, but I’d want more than that.”
“You talk about us as if we’re…sheep,” I accuse him. “Don’t you feel a tiny bit embarrassed or ashamed?”
“What for, Angel?” Rune gives me a sideways glance. “It’s just the way the world is. Doves is rare as diamonds. Six of you might earn Ram a good horse.”
“Huh. A horse.” I don’t know why I feel so shocked and disappointed.
“It’s nothing personal,” he says, which only leaves me feeling worse. “If Rimma was my claim, I’d keep her. If I didn’t need a bow.”
“Stop. Fine,” I mutter.
A shrug rolls off his shoulders and he frowns at my sour face. “I’ll tell you about magic.” His peace offering, I suppose.
At my nod, he stretches his legs out in front of him, his old boots steaming by the fire. “The Touch isn’t the same for all of them,” he begins, indicating Mag and Glory with a jerk of his chin. “There’s a range, and I can’t say exactly why some are more powerful than others, whether it’s the twist of the body or mind that makes the bigger difference, or both just the right way. I don’t know why some get the seeing Touch, others the hearing, why Mag gets
all
of them. I’ve seen worse off People with less. All I know is, if you come bawling out with a ten fingers and ten toes and a brain between your ears, you don’t get Touched.”
“Tell me about Mag,” I say, as good a place to begin as any.
“Better to start at the other end,” Rune says after some consideration. “Then add to it.”
“Either way,” I reply agreeably.
“Well, here’s what I know and you can ask Mag about it if you want more than that. At the lowest level magic affects how we take in the world, our senses.” He snaps his finger by my ear. “For one, the Touched hear better than us. Mag heard them blankets drop off the roof like you landed them on her head. She was listening hard for you.”
“I wondered how you knew exactly where we were.”
“Mag’s Touch,” he replies. “Same goes for seeing, things looking sharper, maybe with more colors. Some Touched notice little movements, most see farther. That’s how Mag spied you and Rimma in the stream that first day. Plus she heard you and smelled you.”
“Smelled us?”
“As we got closer. She knew you were from inside the bone wall. Same goes for taste and feeling things with the skin. Those aren’t good senses for hunting, but they’re good for living I hear.” He grins wickedly at me. “Good for fucking.”
“Huh,” I grunt, and move him along. “And if the magic is stronger?”
“Even better for fucking,” he asserts and drops his head back, erupting with laughter at his wit. He draws his feet in from the fire’s edge and lies on the stone pavers, his arms behind his head. “You got to know there’s things in the air we can’t see, waves and energy bouncing against each other, all around us. Mag says light and sound and heat are all waves, like moving streams.”
I must be blinking at him with confusion and disbelief daubed all over my face because he tries again. “You can’t see smells, can you?” I shake my head. “But somehow the smell of that spitted pig goes right up your nose. You see light from the fire and feel the heat, but somehow it’s getting from over there to your eyes and skin, right?”
“Yes.” I nod, trying to grasp the idea of invisible light traveling through the air. I want to ask how anyone can see it if it’s invisible, but I don’t.
“Well, that’s got something to do with how some magic works. So if the magic is stronger, the senses are keener. Amari feels changes in the air, like weather coming over the mountains or in from the sea. She tells feelings as if reading your mind, like you’re wearing them all bright and showy on your clothes. Ask her and she’ll tell you that when her skin gets all tingly or itchy with the Touch, she can’t think from here to there.”