The Woodlands (21 page)

It must have been at least four times the size of a man. It turned in our direction and sniffed. A fuzzy face
presented itself, with a squashed muzzle and a big, black nose. I became as still as a statue, not daring to breathe. Slowly but deliberately, Joseph moved his body between me and the great beast. Still unmoving, I hissed at him, “You’re not wrestling a bear for me, you idiot!” He let out a stifled laugh, swallowing the noise as it escaped his lips. We both backed away slowly. It wasn’t interested in us. It turned its attention to something else and lumbered through the brush.

Leaving a good distance between himself and the bear, Joseph followed. He told me to stay, so of course, I followed them both.

We followed for about fifty meters and were rewarded for our bravery, or stupidity. The bear had stopped and was taking a drink from a wide stream. Dotted along both banks were the purple flowers of the Siberian Iris. Their long green stems extending from the bank, looking like beckoning arms. The soft purple and yellow petals reminded me of a woman’s mouth parted and ready to speak.

We sat and waited
, giving the huge creature a wide berth. Joseph was distracted, tracing patterns in the dirt with his finger. I kept my eye on the bear. It finished drinking and padded off in a different direction to where we had come from.

“
You know, if I’m part wolf, I think you might be part bear,” I said cheekily.

“
Why’s that? Are you saying I’m big and hairy?” Joseph said, looking up from his dirt tracing, his eyes sparkling. An old feeling resurfaced.

I roughed up his hair.
“Ha! Maybe. Well, big anyway.” I swayed from side to side, grumbling. “It’s the way you move; you’re not the quietest person in the world.”

He grinned at me. I found that broken tooth. Chipped and grey.
My little beacon of imperfection.

After
a while, we decided to venture towards the stream. Thirst ran hot sandpaper across our tongues. I ran to the water and plunged my head in. I took off my stinky boot and threw it into the water downstream. Joseph drank and then scooped the water up in his hands, washing his face and running them along the back of his neck, smoothing his blonde curls from his face, water dripping down his neck and onto his chest. I didn’t want to look but he was hard to ignore. What had Rash said? He was an impossibly beautiful man. Unaware of it too. I blushed, realizing my own hair was crusty and unkempt. I undid my plait and dipped my head in the water again, trying to wash out some of the dirt it had accumulated out here in the Wilderness. It had grown quite long over the time I was underground and now lay midway down my back. When I flipped my hair back, he was giving me that look again. I guess I was the only girl in the world, right at that minute. Apart from me, there were only the birds and bugs.

Before he could speak
, I said, “We’d better fetch the others.” He shook his head and got up. I suspect he found my behavior frustrating. I did too.

We didn
’t need to get up. We could hear them crashing through the trees, not even trying to be quiet. Deshi burst through first, looking at us like he had caught us doing something inappropriate. I gave him a scowl for his insinuation.

“
What’s going on?” I asked.

They all looked panicked and breathless. Clara stumbled up behind them, lagging. I
was annoyed by the fact that they let her fall behind. Once they all stopped talking at once, I could hear what had sent them barreling through the forest. The familiar sound of chopper blades cutting through the air sounded unnatural under the canopy of the trees. It started quite far away but slowly the noise increased, until all we could hear was the brrrrr of the aircraft. The trees were swaying. The birds had stopped singing. We all dove down and hid under bushes, rocks, or whatever we could find. I grabbed Clara and shoved her under a sage bush. Searching for a place to hide, I could see Joseph calling me over to him. He was squashed under a rock ledge near the water’s edge. I saw a fallen branch, between them both, and pulled it on top of myself. Being small, it covered my whole body quite well, my grey uniform blending into the rocks around us. I curled up. From the air, I would have looked like a rock that a branch had fallen on. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see Joseph rolling his eyes at me. It was catching.

The craft
hovered temporarily, sitting in the air like a giant dragonfly, but after a few minutes, it veered northeast. I breathed a sigh of relief—we all did. At least it was heading away from where we were going.

That was the first day we saw the choppers. From then on
, they were our constant companions.

The choppers were unrelenting. Always drawn to our position, like flies to rotting carrion. There was no pattern to follow. Sometimes one would come in the morning and that would be it. Other times, three or four would come at different intervals throughout the day. We decided we would walk alongside the tracks, rather than on them, so that we had time to hide when we heard them coming. What I was unsure of was whether they were looking for us. They never hovered over one place for very long. They always veered off to the northeast eventually. As far as Alexei knew, there was no settlement out that way.

We all developed our own methods for hiding. Clara dropped and rolled under a bush. I always pulled something over me. Alexei and Apella always wasted time looking for a place big enough to hide them both. Joseph and Deshi went for whatever was closest. We started to get into a rhythm, warning each other when one of us heard them coming. It slowed us down a lot though.

Water was no longer a problem either. We knew what to look for, and once we did, we found there were bountiful streams meandering through the woods. They cut through the land, like shards of a shattered mirror, beautiful and strange water plants poking out around the banks. Alexei even managed to catch us some fish. He squatted over the water, watchful, eyes darting impossibly fast. The fish zipped in, out, and under rocks, like they knew. Poised, he waited for his moment and snapped, quick as a whip, pulling a fish out with his bare, shaking hands. Joseph and Deshi had a try. It was hilarious to watch them. Most of the time they both ended up in the water, laughing and pushing each other over. I tried too but my balance was so off I couldn’t squat over the water for very long. It just irritated me, so I gave up.

It was also nice to be able to wash. I don
’t know why it made such a difference, but I felt so much better after I had bathed. Clara and I would walk down to a stream before dinner. Wash ourselves and clean our hair. We rinsed out our clothing and letting it dry in the sun. Clara would braid my hair in all sorts of odd configurations. I let her, but wished I had a mirror so I could check that she hadn’t made me look too ridiculous.

She pestered me about Joseph constantly. Pulling my hair back with her thin fingers, she asked,
“So what are you going to do about him?”

“
About who?”

“
Really, Rosa?” I could sense her eyes rolling at me behind my back.

She pulled my hair back sharply.
“Ouch! Not so hard”

“
You’re not being very fair to him. Have you even thanked him for rescuing us?” she said in that motherly tone.

“
Save your mothering for that little monster you’re carrying,” I snapped.

“
Hold still.”

“
Ouch!” Clara’s fingernails were digging into my scalp.

“
Oops, sorry,” she giggled, returning to her girlish self.

That night I returned to the campfire and Joseph and Deshi fell backwards off their seats with laughter.
Apparently, I looked remarkably similar to an octopus. I touched my head, eight chunky plaits protruding from it at different angles.

“
Thanks Clara,” I said, frowning.

“
Oh, come now,” Clara said between fits of hysterical giggling. “I think you make quite a beautiful octopus.”

I smiled, shaking my head around, my tentacles bashing into each other. I felt like she was peeling layers off me, stripping back the roughness. Shining her faith into me
, and airing out the darkest corners.

Once, Clara pulled just the front part back into two thin plaits, letting the rest of my hair fall down a
round my shoulders, placing tiny, white, star-shaped flowers around my crown like a wreath. When we returned, Joseph stood. He looked stunned. I worried she had made me look stupid again. I went to pull it out. Joseph put his hand up, “No, leave it. It looks… it looks good.” Now he was blushing.

The group mostly ate from the box but I preferred to eat what I could find in the forest. I discovered I had absorbed quite a lot of information from my time at the Classes
, and I enjoyed foraging for food.

At night
, the non-pregnant members of the group took turns taking watch. We always camped under trees that would be easy to climb, in case the wolves returned, but we never heard from them again. I wondered whether the choppers had scared them off. Then again, we had walked quite far. We may have managed to get out of their territory.

Clara was so slow. She said she felt good. But to me
, she looked ill. That thing seemed to be dragging her lower to the ground. I was very worried about her. My foot was healing well and I didn’t need help to walk anymore, so I insisted that Joseph help her and carry her when he could. When I did stumble, Deshi was kind enough to offer a shoulder to lean on.

Deshi was a good friend to Joseph
, and even though there would always be a slight unease between us, he helped me when he could. We were starting to be friends. If anything, we had a mutual interest. I don’t think he resented me; maybe he was just a little sad.

Clara seemed like she must only be days away
, judging by how long we had been out here and my vague memories of them saying she was thirty-six weeks when she had her ‘scare’. I resolved to speak to Apella about Clara’s condition and what we needed to look out for. I had only a vague idea what labor would be like. It was not something my mother ever talked about, but I was sure it would be painful. And without the normal facilities, it was going to be very challenging and probably dangerous.

As we were walking, I decided to catch up with the spindly couple and talk to Apella. I had barely said two words to her since my rescue
, so the surprised look on her face was expected.

“
I need to talk to you about Clara,” I said directly. She nodded.

“
How long do you think she’s got to go?” I asked.

“
It could be today or a week from now, any day really,” she said calmly.

“
Ok, so what do I need to look out for?” I wanted to know if there were any signs. I needed to prepare myself, as well as Clara.

“
When her labor starts, she will have contractions. They will be painful and will last for a minute or two. They will come at even intervals. Don’t worry, Rosa. Clara and I have discussed it all. She is as prepared as she is going to be.” Apella’s pale blue eyes were avoiding my gaze, her fair eyelashes lapsing over them longer than necessary. It didn’t surprise me that Clara had spoken to Apella. She didn’t subscribe to my dislike of the woman. Clara didn’t dislike anyone.

I went to say thank you
, but I couldn’t get the words out. It was like trying to rearrange my bones. It wouldn’t sit right. I stopped walking until Clara had caught up to me. She linked her arm in mine.

“
Find out anything interesting?” she said with a wink. I shook my head. Apella was useless. I felt like we were alone in this. We had a doctor, but she seemed to distance herself from the very real scenario we were about to face. I don’t think she had ever asked me how I was feeling or checked on the leech. I knew if things went wrong, I would do anything to help Clara. Even if that meant holding Apella at knifepoint while she assisted.

I kept these
violent thoughts to myself and walked. Monotonous trudging. Boots crunching gravel, sounding like scraping frost from the freezer. Walking, always walking.

“
So you know you’re going to be an aunt soon,” Clara announced, beaming. If Joseph was liquid gold in my veins, Clara was light. Pure white light, shining through me and surrounding me. She lifted me because she was better than me. I was never going to be as fundamentally good as she was.

This word aunt meant very little to me. The way she spoke
, sometimes, it was like she was from another world or another time, a place where families existed: aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

“
How’s that?” I asked.

“
We are sisters,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “So when my baby is born, you will be an aunt.”

I was too touched by what she had said to make my normal sarcastic comments. Sisters. The word warmed me.
Like I could hold my hands up to it and thaw my fingertips. I liked the sound of it. We were sisters and as soon as I had accepted it in my head, it was so. It was probably always the case, just without the label.

All I said was,
“I suppose I will be.”

I had a sister. I smiled to myself, letting a little light in
, cracks starting to show in the stone.