Vessel (10 page)

“Oh,” I said, trying not to betray how bad it really looked. “I need to find us some water.” My throat craved moisture. I imagined how his felt.

“You should wait till dark.”

“You can’t wait that long. I won’t be recognized. Tiber never saw me.”

“No.”

“Are you going to stop me?” I asked, moving out of his reach.

“I would if I could.” Recks closed his good eye.

“But you can’t. I won’t be long,” I said, moving toward the stairs.

“Alana?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.” He stared at me with his good eye. The gesture probably meant little to him, but to think that someone actually cared what happened to me made my heart flutter. Suddenly the summer day seemed very hot, but I smiled at him.

“I will.”

Out on the street, my hooded shirt made me too warm, and I felt my armpits sweating. Still, I kept the hood over my hair like Recks wanted me to and hurried back toward the river.

This river was much larger than the one I knew back in Roma, wide, flat, and brown. I could see even more buildings on the far side. The banks were lined with tall brick walls crisscrossed with bridges. Walking along the wall, I found a staircase to the water. I knelt and scooped water into my mouth when I was sure no one was watching. Other than a slightly muddy taste, it soothed my tongue and coated my dry throat. I drank until my belly was full. Then I remembered Recks and wished for my water bag. How was I going to bring him water?

I ran back to a trash pile I’d passed and dug through it until I found a large plastic jug. It was cracked at the top, but it could still hold quite a bit of water if it didn’t crumble. Some plastics shattered when they got older. Others were more durable. We used them in Roma to store various items. I hoped it wasn’t taboo in this city. If someone saw me using plastic here, after what I’d seen the night before, I wasn’t so sure they wouldn’t burn me too.

I rinsed it out and filled it with water as high as the crack would allow. The hot afternoon seemed to keep the streets quiet, and I passed through unnoticed by many. If anyone disapproved, they didn’t bother telling me so.

The plastic jug made it far enough. Recks winced at the taste, but he drank it without a word. His eye, swollen shut, needed valerian root. I’d have to go out in the woods to find it. I knew how to get there, but it would take a couple hours.

I had hunted for food plenty of times but usually only to supplement what Dine gave me. This time it meant survival. It’d been nearly two days, and the gnawing in the pit of my stomach threatened to drive me mad. If it went on much longer, the pain would become too much to forage. I had to find something or our very short journey would come to a very abrupt end. Recks had saved me, and now it was my turn to return the favor.

I dug through all the cupboards and closets in the place looking for useful items. Scavenging was already second nature to me, but the habit came in handy now. Deep in one of the kitchen drawers, under some rags and bent spoons, I found a knife barely the length of an apple. I took that along with a canvas sack I’d found in a corner. I slung the bag over my shoulder. It hung as empty across my back as my stomach inside me. I wouldn’t go back without it filled. I made Recks as comfortable as I could and set out again. This time he didn’t argue.

I saw a few people, kids playing ball on the street, but no crowds like before. Maybe Anders was gone. Perhaps he’d moved on to the next village. The thought of him burning things, burning humans all summer long, sickened me. I pushed it out of my mind and focused on foraging. I headed west until I reached the woods, which silently crept into the broken pavement, Nature reclaiming what once was hers. I set as many deadfall traps as I could find rocks. I stripped some willow branches for the traps, saving the bark for medicine, and then moved deeper into the woods to look for roots.

Finding
caysha
, I dug it up with my bare hands, breaking my short fingernails. I hoped we wouldn’t have to eat it, that something better would present itself. I gathered valerian root too. It helped any swelling. For the millionth time, I wished I had my supplies from home, the ones I’d meant to bring. I remembered Dine’s ugly face watching us leave and shuddered, glad to be rid of him. I decided I’d die before I’d ever go back to what I was before.

All the while, the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. As I wandered deeper into the woods, I found berries and mushrooms. Soon my bag and my belly were full. We were lucky it was warm and things were growing. I looked up and found myself on the edge of the forest, looking out across a huge clearing toward a compound of some sort. It glowed unnaturally.

Something in me warned to keep hidden. I peered out through thick shrubs to see a structure unlike anything I’d ever imagined, a tall, curved, windowless tower with smoke billowing from the top. The bizarre quality of the constant light was unlike the flicker of a normal flame. What was it? Slowly, I realized this was the same light Recks and I had seen on the horizon from the apartment.
I should tell him about it
, I thought. Looking at the sun lowering in the sky, I realized how long I’d been gone. He must be starving!

I left the strange building and ran back toward the city. I’d been gone for hours. Of all the traps I’d set, only one managed to snare a vole. I stuffed it in the bag too and made a plan to check them again tomorrow. At the edge of the forest, I slowed to a trot in danger of losing my breath altogether if I wasn’t careful. I didn’t want anyone to notice me, either. As soon as I left the inhabited streets, I picked up my pace again. All Recks had eaten was a tiny bit of dirty meat and some water.

I ran up the stairs two at a time. Recks lay on the cot, undisturbed by my noisy entrance. I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t move.

“Recks? Recks, wake up.” I shook him until he moved. Groaning, he pulled away from me. “I’ve got some food for you.”

I fished the berries out of the bag, the smashed ones staining my fingers, and held them to his lips. He ate them out of my hand.

“Those are good. Where’d you get them?”

“In the woods. I have more,” I said, opening my bag. Recks struggled to pull himself up to sit on the cot.

“I found some matches and a candle,” he said, pointing to the tiny table next to the cot. I struck one and lit the stub of candle on the table. The dried blood on Recks’s face gave him a monstrous look in the candlelight. He must look like me. I put the rest of the berries in his hand.

“Take these so I can make you some dinner. I found some medicine for your eye too.”

Recks wolfed down the fruit, licking his fingers, while I smashed up the valerian with the flat of my little knife. When the milky juice ran, I filled his hand with the pulp and pressed his hand against his eye.

“That feels cool,” he said, holding it gently to his face.

“I don’t know why, but it helps,” I said, looking in my bag for some wood splinters I had cut. I skinned the tiny vole I caught in one of my deadfalls and skewered it so I could toast it over the candle. I gave it to Recks when it was mostly cooked.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I ate in the woods.” It was sort of true. I’d eaten some berries and shoots but no meat. While he ate the meat, I brushed the dust off a mushroom and ate it. It tasted like wood, but I pretended it was meat. They’d gotten me by many times before.

“I need to check your arm, see if it’s broken,” I told him when the food was gone.

“How do you do that?”

“Just feel it. Try to move it.”

“What if I can’t?”

I wasn’t trained by a healer, but I’d seen healing done. Dine even secretly consulted a healer for me after my burn, careful not to let his wives know. The healer used valerian to cool my burns and told me it was good for any swelling. I didn’t really know about fixing broken arms, though.

“If you can’t, we’ll wrap it tight until we find a healer.”

I sat next to him on the cot and touched his injured arm at the wrist, which he held close to his body. His skin was on fire. I felt him relax his wrist as I massaged the joint.

“No pain?” I asked.

“Not there. It’s more in the elbow.”

I gave his forearm a gentle squeeze to be sure. There seemed to be no pain there, so I pushed his sleeve up over his elbow to see the swollen joint.

“Can you straighten it?”

Recks tried to move his arm and he did a little with a gasp of pain. I felt for breaks above and below the elbow; as far as I could tell, everything was in the proper place. The swelling made his elbow impossible to feel. I shook my head.

“I can’t tell. It may just be sprained. A sprain can hurt pretty bad. I can make you some willow tea. That’s good for pain.” I turned back to my bag for the willow bark I’d collected.

“Alana?”

“Hmm?” The bottom of the bag was getting harder to see in the dim light.

“Thank you for feeding me. I would’ve been dead by now if it weren’t for you.”

“You would have managed,” I said as I dug around in the bag.

“I don’t think so.”

“I saw the place with all the lights.”

“You did? What was it?”

Finding the willow bark, I set the bag aside and shredded the bark, piling it on my lap as I worked. Longer fingernails would’ve made the job easier.

“I don’t know exactly. There were several buildings and a huge smoking chimney. It’s like another town. There’s something strange about it.”

“What?”

“The lights. They weren’t fires. They didn’t flicker.”

“An artifact of the Dark Days?”

“How could they still work? Didn’t Mother Sun destroy the machines?”

“They stopped working, but nothing was actually destroyed. The Cleansings are destroying the machines. Men are doing that.”

“True.” I found a cup in the kitchenette, filled it with the bark, and poured some of our water over it.

“It would steep faster if the water were hot. You’ll have to give it some time before you drink it.” I set the cup by Recks and took the valerian from his eye. Wiping his eyes with a rag soaked in water, I was pleased to find the puffiness was already going down.

“I think once you feel well enough to walk, we should move on,” I said. “It’s much easier to find food in the woods than the city.”

“And we don’t want to run into Tiber again. Have you seen him?”

“No, but I’m sure he’s around. We didn’t get too far from their camp.”

“Maybe we should move tonight? Put some distance between us and them.”

“Are you up for it?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll have to go out first, try to find a place to go.”

“Wait until it’s darker, just to be safe.”

***

Out on the street later, I searched for a building Recks could get to—somewhere not too far to walk but far enough to make it worth moving. It was going to be risky, so it needed to be a hidden, out-of-the-way place if possible.
And a real bed would be nice
, I thought as I peeked in empty rooms and shops.

This part of town seemed deserted, probably why the Tribe lived here. No one to get in their way. I decided we should be closer to the edge of the city so I focused my search in that direction, keeping to the shadows in case of trouble. Most of the buildings were warehouses like the one the Tribe camped in, but at the end of a narrow alley, behind a thick curtain of ivy, I finally found a perfect cottage.

The rooms were small and narrow, but the kitchen had dishes and the bedrooms had mattresses. I’d have to fill the water jug again before we moved, but that was easy enough. My mind should’ve been tired, yet it buzzed with a thousand thoughts like a hive of bees.

Recks was sleeping when I got back, and I couldn’t bring myself to wake him. He was finally resting easy, his face smooth with no trace of pain. Perhaps the tea had helped after all. We could wait here one more day. The cottage wasn’t going anywhere, although I wished for the teacups.

I lay on the musty pillow bed on the floor next to Recks. His good arm lay over the edge of the cot, pale in the moonlight through the flimsy curtain. I wondered what would become of us, how long we could get by like this, living day to day. When winter came, we’d have nothing then. I shoved the fear to the back of my mind.

I studied Recks’s silhouette, blacker than the darkness in the surrounding room. He was marriageable, like Tow, and yet he had no wife. With this life, he never would. It was a shame someone so beautiful would have no mate, but perhaps that was his wish.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, Recks was already up. My neck was numb from sleeping on the floor again. Without the ability to feel anything, I was almost comfortable. I stayed perfectly still, enjoying the sensation. I knew when I moved it’d change.

“You couldn’t find a place we could move?” asked Recks.

“I did, but you were sleeping when I got back. I didn’t want to wake you.”

Recks peeked out of a slit between the curtain and the wall to see the street below the apartment.

“You didn’t have to come back, you know. You could leave me. You’re free now.”