Authors: Jennifer Donnelly
Sid Malone had obviously faked his death once. Freddie was determined
to see that he didn't get the chance to do it again. Malone would die.
In England. On the gallows. He would see to it. And this time, it would
be for real.
Seamie felt Willa's head, hot and heavy on his back. She was out.
Again. She had mumbled deliriously for the last hour and now she was
unconscious. She was in trouble; he knew she was.
He stopped, wiped the stinging sweat out of his eyes, and squinted at
the horizon. A hill, and beyond it more hills, no doubt. Above them,
the merciless sun. And behind them, Kilimanjaro.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Where's the bloody station?" he shouted. "Where are the bloody tracks?"
There was no answer.
He spotted a copse of acacia trees about a hundred yards east and
walked toward them. Once there, he gently lowered Willa into the shady
grass.
"Come on, Wills," he said, propping her up and patting her face. "Wakey, wakey."
She mumbled a protest.
"You have to drink something. Come on, now. Wake up."
He unscrewed the cap on the canteen and lifted it to her lips.
She grimaced and turned her head away.
"Please, Wills, please. For me."
She opened her eyes. They were dull and unfocused.
"There's a good girl. Come on, just a sip."
He got a thin trickle of water down her throat before she gagged.
"No more..." she rasped. She sank back into the grass and he saw that her ankle was now as thick as her thigh.
"I'm going to take a look at that leg," he said. When he'd peeled
away the last layer of the makeshift dressing, he had to stifle a curse.
Willa heard him. "What is it?" she asked weakly.
"Close your eyes," he said. "Rest for a minute." He tore strips off
his shirt and quickly rewrapped the leg. He didn't want her to see it.
It was horribly infected. The skin was hot and shiny. Red streaks snaked
across it like lines on a map. The bone edges, still protruding, had
blackened and the puncture was leaking pus.
"Oh, God. I can smell it," Willa said, suddenly lucid.
"That's me, Wills," Seamie said, trying for a smile.
"Seamie ...please. Leave me here. Leave the rifle."
"Don't talk like that."
"I can't go on."
"I can."
"If you don't leave me we're both going to die," she said angrily.
"You know that, don't you? I'm done for, but you still have a chance if
you'd just take it!"
"Be quiet. Climb on. We're going now."
"I can't."
He pulled her up by her arms and manhandled her onto his back. He
banged her leg, causing her to shriek with pain. She swore at him, hit
him, and then wept, but he ignored her. He didn't care. All he cared
about was putting one foot in front of the other. He was nearly spent.
He'd been walking for five days now. He had to find the train and soon.
He'd made it back to the Mawenzi camp after a harrowing trek through
the forest in the dark, expecting to feel a Chagga arrow in his back at
every step. Willa had been so glad to see him.
"Are we going now?" she'd asked. "Is Tepili here? And the others?"
He'd sat down beside her and explained what had happened.
"Oh, God," she'd said, her eyes bright with tears. "All of them, Seamie? They're all dead?"
"I think--I hope--that some of them got away. I saw only five or six
bodies. Maybe they ran and the Chagga gave chase. Maybe that's why no
one came after me."
After Willa had wept for Tepili and the others, the gravity of her
own situation began to sink in. "So that means there's no food for us...
no one to take our gear... no one to get me down the mountain," she'd
said.
"Right on all counts but the last one," Seamie replied. "I'm carrying you down."
"What? How?"
"On my back."
"Are you mad?"
"I can do it. I've carried heavy packs. In deep snow. At twenty below. I can carry you."
"But what about the photographic plates... our maps..."
He shook his head. The plates had survived their descent because he'd
been carrying them, but they were too heavy to carry any farther. He'd
worked it all out on the way back to her. He could carry her, the bare
essentials, nothing else.
"No. I'm not leaving the plates behind," she said. "Without them we've no proof we reached the summit."
"The hell with the summit."
"Seamie, we've worked too hard--"
He angrily cut her off. "Your bones are sticking out of your skin and
all you're worried about are the bloody photographs? Do you understand
that you will die if we don't get you to a doctor?"
"One plate," she said. "Please. Just one. I'll leave my boots here. And my belt. To cut the weight."
They'd argued bitterly until finally it was decided that they'd bring
one plate, Willa's notebook, a canteen of water, a compass, money, and
the rifle. They would pack the other photographic plates in her pack,
their books in his, then wrap it all up--together with their valuable
instruments--in the canvas tent and shelter it all in the overhang of a
nearby boulder in the hope of returning and collecting it.
Seamie had filled the canteen then. He'd stuffed what little dried
meat and cheese they had left into the pockets of his jacket. He stashed
their gear, then used a length of climbing rope to fashion a sling that
would allow him to take Willa's weight on his back. He could see that
she was already weak. She wouldn't be able to hang on by herself the
entire way. Then he'd had to do what he was dreading most--deal with her
leg.
"We have to do something," he'd said. "We can't leave it as it is,
just hanging. It'll bounce with every step. Catch in the undergrowth
when we reach the forest."
Willa hadn't hesitated. "Pull it straight and splint it," she said.
"It's going to hurt."
"I've no choice."
He gave her a bit of rope to bite on, braced her knee, and pulled her
damaged leg. She arched her body; her fingers clawed at the dirt. The
leg straightened some, but the jagged bones still protruded. He didn't
know what else to do, so he wrapped the wound with a length of cloth
he'd torn from his shirt, then splinted it with covers he'd ripped off
one of their books.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
Willa, still panting from the pain, said, "Are you?"
He nodded, got her up and into the sling, and they were off. He
climbed down as far south as he dared to get them below the peaks and
into easier terrain, then he headed northeast. His plan was to get to
Tsavo--a station on the Uganda line--and take the train from there to
Mombasa.
Tsavo was about eighty miles from their camp. Seamie knew he could
have made twenty miles a day on flat, easy terrain. But the trek ahead
of him was neither flat nor easy and he was carrying Willa.
Maybe if we're lucky, he'd thought, we'll come across a village where
we can hire men to help us. If we're really lucky, we'll stumble across
a plantation with oxen and wagons. But they weren't lucky. They'd found
no villages, seen no people. It had rained two days straight, drenching
them. Their food had run out. They'd found a stream on the third day
and filled the canteen, but it was low again and Willa, half-delirious
with fever, needed to drink.
As he plodded on now, his back aching, his legs like pillars of lead,
he wondered if he'd miscalculated the distance. Had he turned too far
south when they'd gotten off the mountain? If so, they'd miss the
railway completely and it would be another seventy miles--at least--to
the coast. They'd never make it.
"We can't be far," he said out loud, to comfort himself as well as
Willa. "We just can't be. I'm not the world's best navigator, but I
can't have taken us too wildly wrong. And even if I've gone too far
north and we miss Tsavo, we'll hit something. Bound to. Kenani station,
maybe, or Mtoto Andei. We're going to get there, Wills. You're going to
be all right."
There was barely a response from Willa, just a few mumbled words. He
was about to start up yet another hill when he heard a long, loud
whistle. Way off in the distance.
"Willa!" he shouted. "Did you hear that? It's the train! The tracks must be just beyond that hill."
If he could get to them, he could try to flag the train down. Get the
engineer to stop it. And if he couldn't, they'd have to spend another
night walking, trying to find the nearest station, but Willa didn't have
another night.
"Wills?" he called out.
There was no answer.
"Willa, wake up."
"No more, Seamie, please..." she whispered.
"I'm going to put you down now," he said, lowering her into the
grass. He put the rifle near her, in case of animals, and the canteen.
"There's a train coming. I hear it. The tracks have to be close. I'm
going to make a run for them." Her head was lolling; her eyes were
fluttering closed. He dug his fingers cruelly into her shoulders and
shouted at her. "Willa, wake up! You've got to stay awake."
And then he ran. As soon as he was over the hill, he saw them--the
tracks. They were about a quarter of a mile away. He saw the train next.
It was small and black in the distance, trailing a plume of smoke. It
was heading west, not toward Mombasa, but Nairobi, and it was moving
fast.
Seamie tore down the hill. He stumbled at the bottom, righted
himself, and then ran faster and harder than he'd ever run in his life.
The long plains grass whirled around his legs and snarled his steps. He
ploughed through it, heedless, stumbling again and again. The tracks
were coming closer. Only a hundred yards, then twenty, and then he was
on them.
The train was coming on fast. It was only a mile away at the most. He
stood on the tracks, jumping and waving, shouting at it to stop. He
took off what was left of his shirt and waved it over his head. But the
train kept coming.
"Stop, you bastard!" he screamed at it. "Stop!"
But it didn't, it barrelled toward him, whistle shrieking. He jumped clear of the tracks at the last possible second.
"No! Goddamn you! No!" he cried, watching as it sped past him.
It was leaving and taking Willa's last chance with it.
But then he realized it was slowing, ever so slightly. He heard the
brakes screeching. He saw faces, some puzzled, some worried, looking at
him from the windows.
It's stopping, he thought. It's stopping! Oh, thank God!
He started running again, desperate to catch up to the engine, but a conductor hailed him from one of the passenger cars.
"Please!" Seamie cried, when he reached him. "You've got to help us.
My friend's badly injured. She's just over the hill. We have to get on. I
have to get her to a doctor. Please..."
The train stopped dead. Giant whuffs of steam came out from under it.
The conductor hopped down. "Hold on, son, I can barely hear you. What's
happened?"
Seamie explained. He said he'd been trying to get to Mombasa and
asked if there was a doctor at Nairobi. The conductor said there was. He
said he'd hold the train and asked Seamie if he needed help fetching
his friend. Seamie said he did and the conductor shouted for the stoker.
Weak with relief, Seamie turned to point to where he'd left Willa,
and that was when he heard it--sharp and unmistakable--the sound of a
single gunshot.
"It was the McGregors' stallion that was here around lunchtime, I'm
sure of it. Joshua, he's called." Maggie shaded her eyes with her hand.
"Reckon it was that lovely Mrs. Lytton. Saw her out yesterday, too, but
she was riding the mare then."
Sid knew Maggie wanted a reaction from him. He didn't give her one;
he just kept hoeing. The sun was low over the horizon. Wainaina and the
other Kikuyu women had gone home an hour ago, but he was still at it.
He'd gone out into the fields at daybreak and hadn't stopped, not even
in the blistering noon sun. He welcomed the pain in his hands and arms
and back. It blocked out the pain in his heart.
"I know she came by, Sid. I know she spoke to you," Maggie said,
fingering a clutch of coffee berries. "Baaru told me. Were you ever
going to tell me?"
"No."
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? How'd you get that mark on your face, then?"
Sid drove his hoe into the ground viciously, irritated by Maggie's
meddling. She'd come out to the north field to look at the plants, she'd
said. He doubted that. She'd come out to the north field to needle him.
"We had words, all right? She belted me," he finally said, hoping the admission would satisfy her.
"Did she? Well, I imagine you deserved it. Probably were horrible to
her." She paused, then said, "My eyes aren't as good as they used to be,
but I could swear whoever was riding Joshua earlier was wearing
trousers. Can't be Mrs. McGregor. She always wears a skirt. Mr. McGregor
barely rides at all. Too tall to be one of the boys. There's no one
else there. Must be that Mrs. Lytton wears breeches when no one's
looking." She sighed. "Poor woman. Always alone. Just like you."
"I like my own company," Sid said.
Maggie moved off down a row of bushes--sampling berries, checking
leaves, pinching off shoots here and there. She wasn't finished with
him, he knew that. He could feel her eyes on him. She had more to say
and when she worked her way back to where he was, she said it.
"You coming in for supper? Alice is roasting a haunch of that gazelle you bagged."
"I'm going to keep hoeing for a bit."
"Are you?"
"Aye."
"It's angry work, hoeing."
"Bloody hell. Here we go."
"Tell me, Sid. Who are you angry at? Mrs. Lytton? Or yourself?"
"I'm not angry at anyone, Maggie," Sid said, working to keep his
voice even. "I'm just trying to keep the plants healthy. So we get a
good harvest. You do want a good harvest?"