“Mag, no,” I cry. “Please, no.”
My sister lurches out her stupor and flies toward Mag, blade reaching in a desperate attack. No time for second thoughts or reason, no discussion, no chances. My skin prickles with heat as my vision fails. Blindly I stumble on feet that feel nothing. My skin flares. I howl, twisting in nothingness.
Then it’s over. Lying on the forest needles, I vomit the spiraling slop from my stomach, my sight returned, skin unmarred but prickling with unexpected cold. I crawl on hands and knees toward Rimma, gasping. Mag’s crooked body lies twisted beneath her, twitching, neck and back bent, open eyes mirroring the slit of sky, Greeb’s knife in her bony chest. Glory shrieks and keens behind a tree, the sound deafening.
Dogs howl wildly in the distance. Without a word, Rimma slides the blade from Mag’s body and heaves herself up. Bathed in blood, she staggers toward Glory, a devil drunk on death, knife gripped in her fist. I stumble toward her, adding my shouts to Glory’s shrill wail, “No! No, Rimma. Not Glory. We need to run.” I rip at her arm, striking her with my fists. I twist my hands in her hair and yank her to the ground with me. “No. I’ll fight you! Not Glory. We run!”
“Run then,” she yells at me, hitting me in the face. I let go and we scramble to our feet. Rimma steals Rune’s knife from his belt and we dash into the trees. The terrain lies flat near the waste, but full of briars and thick underbrush. We stay to the trees where the ground bears a carpet of needles and moldering leaves. I hear Rimma behind me, panting, an occasional sob breaking over soft whispering cries. I run, out of breath, my side cramping. I’ve nothing to say, no words to offer of solace or forgiveness or blame. We’re running nowhere, without a destination in a land foreign to us, and we won’t escape our deaths.
The sun lies somewhere on the horizon, long shadows stretching their fingers through the trees. We’ve run aimlessly for what seems hours, just ahead of our pursuers, the waste to our left, endless forest closing in on three sides. I hear voices behind us, the fierce shouts and threats of angry men. I slow and stop with the fall of darkness, bending over and heaving in gulps of breath. Rimma runs up beside me and presses her forehead to a tree, her eyes closed. There’s nothing for us to say, no summing up of our predicament.
“Climb,” I whisper, the thought erupting in my head. “We should climb.”
“They’ll trap us.” She yanks on my hand, desperate to run.
“I can’t go any farther,” I cry helplessly.
With a nod from Rimma, we search for a tree with limbs we can reach. I jump for a branch, swinging without the strength to heave my legs over. Below me, Rimma gives me a boost. I scramble up to sit on the branch and then start climbing. Rimma swings briefly below me, and then drops to the ground. “Rimma? What are you doing?”
“Keep climbing,” she whispers and lopes away without a glance back. I slink higher, uncertain, wanting to follow her. I know what she’s doing—saving me.
The men’s voices roar when they spy their quarry, whooping their excitement at the hunt. I envision my sister’s final mad sprint through the branches, sticks and twigs slapping at her arms and face, her breath rasping, her fear primal and raw. I hear her shriek as she’s caught and the wild jubilation of her hunters. She screams her pain, fear, and helpless terror; they laugh at their bestial power, the exhilaration of control and unrestrained destruction.
My eyes closed, I cover my ears, trying not to listen. I pray to a dead God for my twin’s broken soul, her broken life, too late for her broken body, the sounds of her rape, the grunts and moans of the men blistering my throat with bile. I cry for her, for me, my tears soaked with shame for my self-pity. My toes reach for lower branches as I scramble down from my perch and drop to the ground. I run toward the sounds without thinking, my sister’s shrill cries punctuating her endless, tormented sobs.
Her screams blend with other voices echoing through the hollow air between the twilit trees, the thud of horse hooves pounding up from the waste and behind me, running me down. My foot hooks on a downed branch and I fly onto my knees, forearms scraping the dirt. I scramble up and flee, not knowing where I’m going as bellowing voices encircle me.
A huge horse looms up from the deep shadows, its rider black as soot, face hidden in the midnight cowl of his cloak. I cry out and start to run anywhere, no idea where I am, trapped and frantic.
Sounds of fighting, clashing steel, and men’s guttural cries ring out ahead of me. Men curse and run through the trees, horses snorting, spectral bodies monstrous in the growing dark as they crash through branches. Something hard raps against my back, sending me sprawling and knocking the breath from my lungs. I clamber up, twisting and gasping, fighting the firm grip on my arm, kicking and scratching, squirming against my captor as I struggle for breath.
“Hold on. Hold on,” he says. “I don’t mean to hurt you. Stop thrashing and I’ll let go.”
“Gragh!” I shout in helpless frustration and beat against the body of a man I can’t see. I feel him, but I can’t see him.
His grip tightens, holding me at arm’s length, his words intimate as if we stand in an embrace. “Peace, peace,” he urges over my hissing cries. I stop flailing, my body rigid but pulling away, ready to flee the moment he releases me.
“I’ll let go.” He withdraws his hand and steps back. I glimpse a man, one palm up and open to me. “I’m Priest.” He drops back the hood of his cloak, revealing a nearly black face, darker than polished walnut, darker than anyone I’ve ever seen among the People. He gazes at me with slanted almond eyes, eerily bright despite the deepening night. I back away and spin to run.
“Whoever she is, we intend to help her,” he shouts to me, halting me with his words.
“My sister,” I say, facing him, my breath heaving. I don’t hear her anymore. “Is she alive?”
The man hesitates. “I don’t know. But I will.” He grabs the rein of his horse and pushes past me, calling ahead to other men. I don’t know what to do, run or follow. He doesn’t look back as I start after him, but he pauses for me to catch up. “Avoid walking behind the horse,” he instructs me, his voice soothing. I edge around the tall animal, but keep my distance from the man. “Walk with me,” he beckons, those three words the kindest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time.
Ahead through the trees, torches blaze, men and horses gathered in the amber light. Rimma lies on the ground, a cloak covering her body. Her face is pummeled, blood matting her hair. “Is she alive?” I ask, kneeling beside her, afraid to lift the cloak. I touch the back of my hand to her cheek. None of the strangers responds to my question or troubles to glance at me.
When I raise my face to Priest, his eyes shift between my twin and me. “Is she alive?” he repeats my question to his companions.
“She’s breathing.” A tall woman, dressed in men’s clothing, squats across from me at Rimma’s side. “But she’s been used like she wasn’t meant to survive.”
“Tannis, where are the men that did this?” he asks.
“A couple run off; a few not so lucky,” an older man replies as he inspects a wound to his horse’s shoulder. The animal nudges him as he trickles water on the gash and strokes its neck.
“We need to press on then,” Priest informs them. He unstraps a blanket from his saddle and tosses it to a young man with a halo of black curls, little more than a boy. “Keyon, you and Tannis build a stretcher to carry her to the waste. Then we’ll set up a travois. We’ll travel easier and quicker in the open. Chantri, tend to her. Keep her warm and if she wakes, try keeping her quiet.”
The woman nods, limps to her horse and unlashes a pack from her assortment of gear. Her short wheat-colored hair is unevenly cropped and spikey, and she studies my sister with sharp blue eyes. As she kneels beside Rimma, I feel the air warm around her. She lifts the blanket for a more careful inspection, heedless of the watching men. My sister’s fair skin glows with a ghostly paleness despite the smeared blood and bruising welts. “Her arms are broken,” the woman says. “Probably her jaw as well.”
A cry erupts from my throat as I cover my mouth. Priest studies me for a long moment before speaking. “We have two women here…in addition to Chantri.”
“Light-benders?” Tannis asks as he and Keyon lash the blanket to two sturdy spears. A pair of brown braids hangs forward of his shoulders over a rounding belly.
“We’re not light-benders,” I say. “I don’t know what we are. Twins. I’m Angel; my sister is Rimma.” My fingers brush aside bloody strands of hair stuck to her face.
“Not light-benders,” Priest replies to the man. “Something else. The woman you see is Rimma. The other is Angel.”
**
Rimma’s bones are hurriedly splinted, her jaw wrapped firmly in place. While Chantri works, I kneel beside my sister, looking into her wide, frightened eyes and gently cooing. Fierce blades of agony shoot her from the serene respite of unconsciousness into a keening, blubbering, insane helplessness. I can’t wash away the flaking blood or hold her hand, every touch a torment. Finally, she sinks into sleep, lulled by the rocking stretcher and swathed in Chantri’s magical warmth. When we cross into the waste’s barren plain, the men construct a travois behind the woman’s horse and we travel on, the ends of the two poles dragging over the lumpy ground, my sister slung on a blanket between them. A few more hours before we rest, three days ride yet from the Colony.
A gibbous moon shines down on the waste, wreathed in shunting clouds, the broken world plated in silver. I rock in a saddle on a giant black horse, clutching the pommel to keep from falling, almost too tired to care if I do. Priest sits behind me, his lean body relaxed, reins loose in his left hand. He has no right hand, that arm thin and tapering to a withered stump below his elbow. The eight of us travel quietly, the murmur of whispered conversation soothing me, soft voices rippling through the silence. Priest asks me no questions, and I’m content to simply drift and sway in the saddle, too tired to think beyond the very moment, my next breath. His half arm wraps around me as I surrender to sleep.
“Angel,” Priest whispers in my ear, nudging me awake. I blink into the starlit sky and straighten up, awkward with the intimacy of our ride. “We’re stopping for what’s left of the night,” he explains as he dismounts. He waits while I clamber down, holding the horse steady for me. My rump feels sore from the saddle and my legs wobble. Priest offers his withered arm before I topple.
“Thank you,” I murmur, my hand grasping the slender bone beneath his black skin, my gaze flitting briefly to the dark slanted eyes, the short woolen hair, goatee, and thin line of moustache. “Thank you for saving my sister,” I blurt out.
“I hope we have,” Priest replies with a soft smile. “Her light’s weak, trapped in her body.”
His strange words confuse me, but his concern rings clear. “I need to check on her,” I tell him, ducking out of his tall shadow. He steps back, letting me go.
“Careful not to wake her, Angel,” he suggests behind me. “Every minute of sleep is one without pain.”
The woman, Chantri, bends over the travois where my sister lies unconscious, tucking the blanket around her neck and shoulders. She doesn’t look up, and I remember that she doesn’t see me or hear me. I’d like to thank her for the tender care but haven’t the means. Instead, I watch Rimma breathe, touch my lips to her forehead without waking her, and shuffle to the fire-pit the older man, Tannis, dug in the hard soil. Keyon dumps an armful of dead wood in the finished hole.
“I’ll take first watch,” Priest announces as he waves his arm sparking a flame. He looks up at my wince. “Did I frighten you?”
“Startled me,” I reply, glancing at his arm. “I suppose I should have known. Are you all Touched?” I ask, surveying the group as they find places to curl up in wool blankets and sleep.
“Chantri and I.” He uses his left hand to invite me to sit by the fire. “Join me if you’re not too tired.”
Opposite the fire from where he rests, I take a seat in the dirt, arms wrapping my bent knees. “It wears you down to use your Touch, doesn’t it?” It’s an observation I made of Mag but never dared ask.
His eyebrows arch in surprise at the question. “Sometimes. It depends on what I do. What makes you ask?”
“Nothing,” I reply, afraid to share anything of myself until I know him, these people, better. I puff my cheeks and blow out a graceless breath, my tongue clogged in my throat. I want to stare at this black-as-night man but can’t make my eyes do it.
“Are you alright, Angel?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Would you like something warm to drink?” He rises to a knee, slides over his saddlebag and extracts all the makings of a sweet tisane, heating water with his Touch and handing me a cup.
The hot liquid soothes my throat and nerves. I watch the clouds dance across the moon, and move closer to the fire as the wind quivers in the sage. Not far from us, a chorus of animals’ yips and howls, keening a wild song. My eyes dart to Priest. “What is that?”
“Coyotes,” he says, looking over my head into the night.
“Are they dangerous?” I ask.
“Not to us.”
“To who?”
“Rabbits, mice,” he clarifies with a smile.
“Oh,” I sigh. “Have you seen lions or elephants?” I ask, remembering the picture books from Heaven.
“Elephants?” he asks, trying terribly hard not to laugh at me.
If it weren’t so dark, he’d see my cheeks blushing crimson with embarrassment. “I…well, Rimma and I…we thought we might see lions and elephants…because of pictures in a book…when... There aren’t any elephants, are there?”