Dead of Eve (18 page)

“These aren’t visions.” My voice was raspy. “They’re nightmares.”

“Time finds truth,” he said.

“It’s been six months, Akicita.” Six months since my encounter with the nymph in the cabin. And that much again since I left my father’s home. In a year’s time, the enigma surrounding my survival, my arcane abilities, and my damn nightmares remained unsolved. What would I find if I followed the tug inside me? Did the answers lie beyond the Appalachians I called home? Beyond the people I called family?

A twisty Red Spruce sheltered our summer sleeping spot, where we’d moved further up the mountain. The hunting had been sparser at that elevation. But so had the aphids.

Akicita puffed on his pipe. “I’ll tell you a story about a widowed Lakota woman.”

I propped up on an elbow. The fire crackled in the stone hearth, spitting embers into the autumn breeze.

“The Lakota widow was in the midst of great famine when she fell sick with pneumonia. As she lay dying, she strengthened her mind through thaumaturgy and entered the spirit world as a spirit walker.”

Another puff from his pipe. “The first day, a raven visited her, with wings as blue as midnight. From his talon, he dropped leaves from a creosote bush. The second day, he brought pleurisy root. The third day, he left wormwood. The fourth day, he returned, talons empty, and found her sicker yet. He asked her if she boiled his gifts and drank them in tea. She shook her head. Then she exhaled her last breath.”

He reflected a moment. “A gift ignored is a gift without utility.”

I lay back on my blanket. The stars, like tiny pupils, winked at me, called to me. Akicita considered my othersense a gift. It was Annie who led me to the Lakota. And Aaron who lured me to the nymph cabin. And the string inside me, always tugging east? I didn’t want it. But it was there, insistent. My tea leaves were clear.

“We’re coming with you.” Naalnish paced behind me.

The ache in my chest swelled. They weren’t trying to stop me. No, they understood this thing, even if I didn’t. They called it a vision quest. I pressed my fingers to my breastbone, against the burden I bore there.

Leaving them behind was the last thing I wanted. But they were happy there. They belonged in the mountains, amongst the unity of nature and the safety of isolation. Images of them climbing over twisted metal and wielding guns to protect me instilled a new breed of terror deep in my gut.

Besides, the fucked-up-ness that was going on with my body and memories, I didn’t want that shit to touch them. Their harmony was the last beautiful thing left on the planet. It was my journey, my burden. So, for the umpteenth time, “No. You’re not.”

Next to our beds, the stream had widened as summer trickled to fall. Jesse sat on the opposite shore. Nightfall hid his eyes, but I knew they were on me. They always were.

“Boston’s far,” Badger said. “A lot could go wrong between here and there.”

“Not considering the danger traveling overseas and whatever awaits you there,” Naalnish said.

Which was why I refused to let them join me.

“Leave her be,” Akicita said from his bed roll.

Jesse leaned against a tree, his bow at one side. Always near, yet so far away.

I stretched on my side, the rabbit skin bedding soft against my face.

Badger settled in behind me and I froze, waiting for the contact that would follow. When my outbursts woke the camp night after night, we confirmed Joel’s suspicions. Contact while sleeping, bare skin against mine, quelled my nightmares. Naalnish and Badger slept against me, shirtless—as Badger was doing at that moment—with a bare arm around my waist, under my clothes.

They never abused my trust. Maybe I owed them the intimacy, but my guilt was exceeded by my fear of loving them, then losing them.

He whispered at my ear, “You watch him the way he watches you.”

I grunted. Jesse was another story. I wanted to unearth the man who watched me. The man who revealed his humanity six months earlier in the throes of a heartbroken nymph. His frown never returned after that day. But a smile didn’t replace it. His mouth remained a pinched slit, as if to trap the sentiment his eyes betrayed.

“Who’s going to help you chase away the bad dreams?” Badger asked.

“If there’s no one around to hear them, does it matter?”

His forehead dropped to my shoulder and his arm tightened around my waist. I knew my decision to go alone would be the hardest on him. In the morning, my last morning with the Lakota, would I be able to stand by that decision?

Naalnish said, “I mapped what should be the safest route to Boston. And I checked the Humvee.” The corners of his mouth fell, lengthening his narrow face. “It still runs.”

I gave him a small smile.

“You still haven’t told us how you’re getting to Europe.”

I’d been avoiding that question. We hadn’t seen a plane overhead since the outbreak. But Jesse assured us transatlantic exports still ran by ship from Boston. How he knew, he wouldn’t say. Assuming security wasn’t an issue, maybe I could board as a disguised passenger. Although, when I played out that scenario in my head, it ended in a violent pornography. Just a moment’s recognition and I would be a woman trapped on a ship full of men. “I’m still working on that.”

Jesse lowered his head and pushed a hand through the thick waves of his hair. Then he rose and waded across the stream. My pulse kicked up as he neared. He pulled a notepad from his pack and handed it to Naalnish. “She can smuggle inside a container on a cargo ship.”

He crouched before me and said to Naalnish, “The average transatlantic containership travels at twenty-five knots per hour. We can’t predict the arrival port, but the trip should be about five thousand kilometers. At that rate, she’d be five to six days in that crate.” He gestured to the notepad. “The specs are all there.”

I stifled the urge to jump up and grab the pad. Patience.

“These containers aren’t airtight,” Naalnish said. “With the appropriate ration of food and water, the trip would be tolerable.” He traced the paper. “But the location here…how exactly does she get in one on the upper deck near the forecastle and away from the crew quarters?”

Jesse’s eyes burned into mine. “That’ll be up to Evie.” His face held no expression, but I understood his intent. He was Lakota by blood, but he was also every bit the killer I was. He knew I’d do what was needed to board a ship unnoticed.

Naalnish stood and handed me the notepad. “This may be your best option, Spotted Wing.”

A sketched blueprint detailed the compartments and containers on a cargo ship.
20x8x8 feet
labeled one of the cubes. More than big enough for a stowaway.

I held up the sketch. “How do you know about cargo ships, Jesse?”

He leaned in, the red in his hair like cinders in the firelight. “Sleep well, Evie, for it may be your last night to do so.” He used that mocking tone that aroused me even as it pissed me off. His eyes flicked to Badger behind me and for a moment, I glimpsed pain their depths. Then he stood and walked into the forest.

The next morning, Darwin lay at my feet, his body motionless except the swish of his tail. I pulled a leather strap from my pack and squatted before him. I trailed a finger over his name seared on the surface, memorizing the grooves.

My throat tightened against a swallow as I tied the collar around his neck. I wanted to take him with me so badly my chest hurt. But sneaking him aboard a ship would’ve been impossible.

I clutched the collar with both hands and pressed my cheek against his furry one. “You protect them, boy. Just like you did me.”

The Lakota waited by the Humvee. Jesse wasn’t among them. I stepped through the line, hugging each one. There was no more pleading to join me, no nagging about dangers. Each embrace gave me encouragement. Each one harder to step away from. At the end of the line, I ran my hand over my hair, which had grown to mid-back. Three braids, one given by each man, each tied with a feather.

Shoulders bunched, I turned away, gasping for air, fighting the need to change my mind.

I lifted my chin and inhaled the mountain yews. The trees mottled the ridges with hues of maroon and amber and scattered their leaves to loam and wind.

My hair, and the feathers tied there, lifted with the easterly current, pulling me with it. East, where dawn illuminated the pulsating life of the forest. All life but one. I turned back to them. “Where is he?”

Badger shook his head.

Akicita stepped before me and held up a turquoise rock dangling from a tan leather string.

I reached to touch it. “Is that—”

He nodded and waited for me to lower my head. When it settled against my chest, I stroked the smooth surface. Turquoise formed naturally in arid desert climates. Stumbling across that stone in the mountains of West Virginia was as mysterious as the man who found it.

“Lone Eagle wanted you to have it,” Akicita said. “It can strengthen one’s capacity to love and connect with others.” He pressed his wizened lips against my forehead.

I squeezed the rock in my palm. “You’ve taught me so much.” To hunt. To heal. The web of life. “The circle.”

“Mm.”

It’d been Fall when I stumbled into their camp. It was Fall again. Everything was a circle. The seasons. The cycle of the moon. The wind when it swirled. Would the circle bring me back to them? The odds of that compounded the ache in my chest. I swallowed. “But I gave nothing in return.”

He winked a farsighted brown eye. “You taught us the hunt for truth.” His hand rested on my crown, stilling my shaking head. “When you were born, your soul entered here, through the skull’s soft spot. The truth is
in
you, Spotted Wing. You showed us how to find it.”

The meaning of his words caught the breeze, drifted away. “What truth?”

“I look at you and I understand what I see. I see hope in the shape of the spirit. And when you finish this quest, her shape will transcend.”

“Her?”

“Go forward.” He released me, a tear escaping down his cheek, though his eyes were dry.

Oh, Akicita. Promises I couldn’t keep piled up in my throat. I choked on them and stepped away. Then I gave the tree line a final sweep for Jesse and climbed into the Humvee. The emptiness inside me expanded as the tires crunched the gravel, sounding my good-bye.

For two weeks, I followed Naalnish’s route to Boston. After an isolated year in the mountains, curiosity had me stopping several days in larger cities to do some scouting. I wasn’t sure if I’d see factions of dystopian governments under the control of tyrants. Or if there’d just be small clans of men working together, rebuilding and protecting each other. But I didn’t see shit. Wasn’t it human nature for people to stick together and leverage the strength in numbers thing? Perhaps the decreasing ratio of man to aphid was to blame for the lack of organization.

I reached Boston’s harbor at dusk and hid the truck in an empty garage. Then I pulled out my cloak. Made from gray fox hides, the Lakota crafted it to fit my frame and conceal my gear. The hood draped large enough on my head to conceal my face.

Humping enough artillery to satisfy Joel, I picked my way along crumbling sidewalks to the wharf. A welded steel wall of vessels lined the docks, moaning as they rocked against the tide. Only one ship crawled with life.