The Weight of the Dead (5 page)

Because, if you were all kinds of wise, that's what you'd do to set a girl at ease when you came up on her, and there was something about you that wasn't quite human, and not animal, vegetable, or mineral, either.

Melody peered up at her from the forest floor, afraid to blink. There was something about the woman, if a woman this truly was, that wasn't wholly there, yet was
more
there than just there. Like stained glass, Melody decided after a few moments. She'd been in a church before, on the scavenging trips, a real church from the World Ago. It had been a sunny day, and she'd never seen such brilliant colors in her life. Saints and shepherds, green grass and blue skies, even the reddest fires of Hell, lit by the shining sun … yet she knew one flung rock could put an end to any of them.

The delicate clarity was like that all over again, Melody and the sun and this woman-thing in between, either filtering some of the light through her or throwing off some of her own. Neither option was particularly comforting, when you got down to it.

“All right,” she said, looking Melody up and down, and the mess she'd made of herself. “If you want it this badly, all right.”

“Just … just like that?”

“It's never just like that.”

Melody stared, because there was something about her that was familiar, even if she couldn't say what or how or why. But she too was a woman now, Melody had to remind herself, and women
knew
things.

“Is your name Tara?” she asked. “Or did it used to be?”

But no, that wasn't possible. How long had it been since her grandfather had watched his one true love walk into the woods and never come out again? That woman, she would've been young then, not much older than Melody was now.
This
woman, while she wasn't as young as all that, wasn't old, either.

“No, that couldn't be,” Melody said. Still, the way her grandfather had spoken of Tara had made her seem so familiar. “That just … No.”

“If you knew enough to ask the question,” the woman said, “didn't you really know the answer, too, already?”

It cut the tongue right out of her, as Melody sat up and scooted back to lean against the stump. Trying to make sense of everything that couldn't be, but was. You hoped. You hoped for things, and pretended they might be within reach, and when they didn't answer you could console yourself that, well, you'd tried.

But if they did,
when
they did …

This
Tara, she was neither young nor old. She was just right. Like she'd grown into what was, for her, perfection, then decided to stay there. Her hair was red, the color of rhubarb, and nearly to her waist, thick as summer wheat. Her eyes, green. Clover would want to be that shade of green, if it only knew.

Men would love her, of course, and she would be the ruin of them.

That much, at least, was a comforting thought. As long as it was the right men.

“If it's never ‘just like that,' then what
is
it like?” Melody asked.

Tara said nothing at first, just let the question toss and dance on the winds, but then she got down to it and told her what was what, how these things really worked, and never once had Melody considered that everything she'd brought to sacrifice, and the blood that followed, was only the first step, just a way of getting their attention.

Melody thinking,
No, come on, please, anything but that.

*   *   *

It was late when she got back to the village, but since it was October, late wasn't what it used to be, and when the guards at the gate chastised her for it, she glared at them with all the spite she could muster until they backed down like whipped dogs. Some guards.

There was no hiding the state of her arms, and her grandmother made a fuss when she saw them. Without even having to think about it, Melody spun a lie of gravity and thorns. Grandmothers were always ready to believe the worst about clumsy girls. Jeremy, though, knew better. He might still believe the part about the thorns, but he looked at her as if he knew, absolutely
knew,
that something of huge importance had happened, and that he wanted her back the way she used to be.

“Did you see Dad?” he asked.

“Sure. He's built himself a nice shelter.” Then she hugged him and held tight and kissed him on top of the head. “He said to give you that.”

When Jeremy tried to squirm away, like he always did at the four-second mark, she refused to let him go, because while he may have been a pest sometimes, he was
her
pest, and her responsibility too, and she'd almost been tempted out there in the woods, deeper than deep, to say,
Yes, okay, if that's what it takes, I'll bring him to you,
until she remembered everything about that bond their father had always made sure she would never forget.

She was the only big sister Jeremy would ever have. That counted for something.

And should have been enough to ride this dilemma through, until their father's life or death was decided and there was no more need for her to choose.
Would
have been enough, if only she could have stayed inside.

Inside, where she wouldn't have to notice the eyes that followed her, Hunsicker and his kind, the rough men who liked small things in their beds.

Inside, where she wouldn't have to contend with the sight of Jenna Harkin, and how there seemed so much less of her now. So much less life, less hope, so much less left to look forward to in each and every tomorrow. So much less love between them. Fact was, she'd have to say Jenna probably hated her now, for her father's crime, or
would
have hated her if she'd had that much fight left. Her eyes were downcast and resigned, staring at the ground as if she spent too many hours thinking of the day she'd be under it. Jenna was going dead a little at a time, whittled down to hips that moved on command and a mouth that told whatever lies it had to, when it wasn't otherwise occupied, and the rest of her just not there anymore.

Wherever Melody had to go, she tried to walk lightly, with no shows of pride or promise. She walked as if there was even less to her than there was to begin with. She walked as if she had no breasts, small as they were. Walked as if she had no hips. She walked pretending that she didn't reflect the light of the sun at all, invisible, just a dark, sexless smudge drifting across the ground.

It made no difference. Their hungry eyes found her anyway, and their blackened hearts filled in the rest.

“How's he getting along out there by his lonesome?” Hunsicker asked her one afternoon, ten paces from the chicken coops, and she'd never seen him coming. He sounded like the happiest man on earth.

She stood her ground, though. He'd enjoy it all the more if he could get her backing away, just so he could keep dogging her. “He's getting by, and he says anything you've got to say to me, you can run it past him first.”

When Hunsicker smiled, his tiny eyes twinkled. He'd not shaved in days, and the brown stubble looked coarse enough to grate nutmeg. If she'd let herself, she would've shuddered at the thought of the feel of it.

“Then maybe we'll have us a parley, him and me. While there's still time.” He looked her top to bottom, seeing everything,
everything.
“How much do you weigh, little sister?”

What kind of question was that? She had no idea how to answer, even if she'd known what the scales would tell.

“Because you don't look like you'd weigh much more than a full feed bag. Such a bitty thing, someone could hang you up here off his shoulders and hardly know you were there at all.” He peered down his nose and gave two sharp sniffs. “Except for the smell.”

Then he laughed and went on his way.

She couldn't live like this, and wouldn't, not for long, and if everyone else in the village expected her to, then it would end the same as with her father, and she'd be the next one driven into the woods, dragging along a two-hundred-pound corpse chained to her back, Hunsicker's or somebody else's.

Whatever
they
were out there, awakening beyond the wild, they who could hear a girl's tears and smell her blood and who demanded little boys, maybe they were kind, in their way.

Maybe they would be nice to him.

*   *   *

She wasn't sure when they crossed it, but knew that at some point they'd taken a step that marked the farthest away from home Jeremy had ever strayed. He'd never been a-scavenging, only looked impatiently forward to the day when he would. He was on the adventure of his life now, and she couldn't even tell him.

She led him by the hand the whole time, and he consented to it without a single complaint, not like him at all. But she knew why. It was a big world getting bigger all the time. There'd been a lot of walking since they'd heard the last faint sounds of the village behind them. To his eyes, she was sure, the trees looked taller, and the sky-eating clouds looked angrier, and the streams looked swifter, and the leaves underfoot crunched louder, with menace, calling out for bears and packs of feral dogs.

“Why would Dad be out this far?” he asked. “It's
too
far. Nobody'd want to take him his food.”

“Because we're not just visiting him, silly. We're going away with him. He's cut Tom Harkin off himself, so now we're going to make a new home, just the three of us.”

Jeremy peered up at her, clomping along at her side and doing the calculations for all the massive change this would entail. “You mean we're never going back?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why didn't you tell me?” he bawled. “I would've brought some shirts. And I'm not even wearing my favorite pants. Or my digger! I'll need my digger!”

“Now
think,
” she told him. “If anyone had seen you dragging that much stuff along, they would've known something was going on.” He balked, unable to walk and fret at the same time, so she yanked to keep him moving. “Dad'll make you a new digger. And you can get pants anywhere.”

He would hate her forever, she feared. For everything, but most of all for the lies. Every last thing he was hearing from her, just one lie after another.

But then, she needed the practice. She still had no idea what to tell her father when he came back to the village, healthy and spared, the ordeal of the Rot behind him, crying and hugging her with relief, then looking for his son so he could hug him too.

When she found the stump again, it seemed like so much longer ago than yesterday that she'd been here last. She had him sit facing ahead, while she sat facing the direction they'd come from, the two of them back to back.

“You watch for him that way,” she told him, “and I'll watch this way.”

He complained that he wanted them to face the same direction, complained because complaining was his job, it seemed, so she told him that this way they got to see twice as much. Nobody could sneak up on them, and they had each other's backs. All lies, even the twice-as-much part, because it was all she could do to slump there and stare at the forest floor. She couldn't even keep her head up, fighting against the weight of her decision.

How would
they
know, she wondered. How would they even know to come and collect their due? Did they have eyes everywhere, among the birds and snakes and fast-footed hares? Or were they listeners, instead, zeroing in on Jeremy as he chattered about what their new home might be like or the unrelieved pounding of her heart?

Or maybe they felt things in the wind that she herself would have no idea how to begin seeking, and could follow them to their source, the way a book she'd borrowed from Miles McGee told of fish called sharks, and how they could follow blood through leagues of ocean to the open wound that shed it.

“Are you cold?” Jeremy asked. “I can feel your back shaking.”

“No,” she said, so he wouldn't turn around. It was an easy word to say, no matter how much your throat was clenching. Then, when she could, “Maybe a little.”

He scoffed. “It's not
that
cold out.”

And he would hate her forever. Dad too, if he knew.

But they would be nice to him. Of course they would. There was a reason for this, the way there was a reason for everything. Tara, she was still fine, whatever she was now … and that was it, maybe. She'd never had a son of her own, and now she wanted one, although not just any boy would do. She could only be happy with a boy descended from the only mortal man she'd ever loved.

They'll be good to him …

“Hey,” he said. She felt him straighten against her back. “I see someone moving. It's got to be him, right? Got to be Dad.”

“Probably.” She clenched her teeth to make the rest of her mouth work. “But he's been sick, remember. He may not look himself.”

… and one day he'll be glad …

“No … no, I don't think it's him.”

“He's got some new friends now, it might be one of them he sent to find us.”

“There's more than one. They don't look like anybody
I've
ever seen.” Jeremy made a sound he'd never made before and began to squirm. His bony little shoulder dug into her back as he twisted around. “You're not even looking!”

“Just turn and face the way I told you to, Jeremy,” she snapped. “Don't make me tell you again.”

She could hear him breathing, faster and heavier now, and when he made a whining noise, he sounded just like Patches did whenever he knew something was wrong but couldn't grasp what.

“Why would Dad have friends like this?” Jeremy whispered. “There's something wrong with these people…”

He began to say her name, over and over, “Melody Melody Melody,” sometimes a question and sometimes a plea. She heard the heels of his shoes drumming back against the stump, and gradually something else began to fade in beneath that, a sound like walking, almost, as if things that no longer made a noise were trying to remember how to do it, so they would seem normal.