Violet (22 page)

We travel hand-in-hand so we do not get
separated, and I am thankful for the comfort that David’s presence
gives me. Though I wanted to leave him behind on Cerno, I don’t
know how I could’ve made this journey without his support. Just as
I have this thought, David stops walking and holds his hand out to
motion me to stop. I knock into his outstretched hand because I was
lost in my thoughts, and for a moment I am afraid, exclaiming
“Wha—?” Before I can finish my thought, David pulls me to him and
places his hand over my mouth.

When he whispers, I can hardly hear him. “Do you
hear that?”

I look at him quizzically. “No…”

“Listen. Do you hear the rustling?”

I strain my ears. Yes, I do hear rustling, but
it could be the wind again, or animals moving around. I hear lots
of things—the night songs of insects and frogs, a nearby stream,
birds chattering. I cannot differentiate the rustling from these
things until it stops. I nod my head. Yes, I heard it.

David says, “It stopped. I think we’re being
followed.”

It does seem to be a logical conclusion, but I
can’t imagine why we would be followed. The tribe had
wanted
us to leave Amara, and Ramla knew that we were leaving. The idea
just doesn’t really seem plausible. I shrug. I’m not sure what we
should do.

“Let’s keep moving, but when I stop, you stop
immediately and get behind me.”

I nod. We begin to walk again. Now that I am
listening for it, I begin to hear the rustling. I watch closely for
David’s signal. David stops. I stop immediately and position myself
behind him. Both of us have our knives drawn, but we wait for what
seems like forever, and we do not need them. No one comes. David
and I look at each other and begin to walk again.

Finally, we reach the edge of the jungle. When
we step over the threshold of Amara, we are greeted immediately
with the bitter cold of the desert. I wrap my cloak more tightly
around myself, and we continue to walk. Though I am glad to be on
our way, leaving the beauty of Amara behind is bittersweet.

Yesterday, as we stretched out on our cloaks,
our bellies full of the sweet wild fruit, David had turned to me
and said, “Violet, what if we decided not to go back?”

“Not to go back to Cerno? We’ve found the shard.
It’s what we came here for.”

“I know; it’s just that… I’m tired. I’m tired of
running and searching and being afraid. I love just being with you;
even if we’re just eating fruit that we’re only ninety percent sure
won’t kill us.” He smiled and I chuckled, though I was still unsure
what his intentions were. “All I’m saying is, this isn’t our fight.
It has nothing to do with us. What if we just left it to the people
who started it and decided to live our lives the way we want?”

“The Vox will never let that happen, David. As
far as they’re concerned, there are no innocent bystanders. This
will never be over until we find all four pieces of The Cube and
find a way to protect it from The Vox forever. We can’t just sit
around waiting for someone else to do what needs to be done.”

David was silent for a moment. He knew that I
was right. We can dream of a world where we’re free from The Vox,
we can try to hide from them, or we can keep them from attaining
The Cube, which would surely make them invincible. If we keep The
Cube from them, maybe The Third Stone will have a better chance of
changing things. Maybe.

David sighed, defeated, but the trace of a smile
lingered on his lips. “I thought that’s what you’d say.” And that’s
when he kissed me.

Now, as we walk silently through the desert, I
remember that conversation with sadness. I know that I am right; we
can’t quit now. But I wonder if David regrets helping me in the
first place. After all, if I hadn’t come along, he’d still be
living a normal life. Spending time with his mother, attending
lessons at Nineteen. Life in Eligo wasn’t that bad. Now he can
never go back to that life. I took it from him. David acts like he
would have done anything to come with me, regardless of the
consequences for himself, but I can’t help wondering… Someday when
his love for me is spent, will he hate me for it?

As if he can hear my uncertain thoughts, David
grabs my hand and kisses it. I know that he loves me
right
now.
I suppose that will just have to do.

After we have walked for a while, we turn to
look behind us. Though the light from the moon is dim, the space
between us and Amara seems clear. If someone was following us,
we’re confident that he’s gone now. It was probably just an animal
in the jungle.

We continue to walk until well past daybreak,
finally coming to a familiar rock formation. One of our old camps;
this will be a good place to sleep for a while. David volunteers to
take the first shift and I am beyond grateful. I think I am asleep
before I lay my head down on my pack.

I wake several hours later when the sun is high
in the sky. David sits on guard, his unsheathed blade next to him
on the sand. He must hear me stirring because he turns around and
smiles sleepily. “Hey. You up?”

I nod. “Yes. It’s your turn.”

He stands stiffly and stretches, arms wide and
standing on his tiptoes. He shuffles through the sand to where I’ve
been resting and holds out his hands to help me up. I grab his
hands and he takes a step back, pulling me to my feet. When we’re
both standing, he pulls my arms around him, drawing me into a hug
and dipping his head to kiss me lightly on the lips. We remain like
this for several moments and I find myself wishing, as he had, that
we could forget about what we have to do and just be with one
another.

David stifles a yawn and I laugh, pushing him
down onto the ground where I was sleeping. He lifts his eyebrows
comically and pats the sand next to him. “Hey, why don’t you join
me?”

Smiling, I lean down to give him a kiss, then
straighten and say, “You’ve got to sleep. We’ve only got a few
hours until nightfall.”

He heaves an exaggerated sigh and lays his head
on his pack, saying, “Always so responsible…”

In moments, I hear him softly snoring.

As David sleeps, I realize that this is the
first time that I’ve been alone and able to really look around me.
This desert is a wasteland, literally everything covered in dust
and sand. It’s hard to believe that this entire place was once as
lush as Amara. This thought reminds me that soon Amara will be just
another wasteland; the unexplainably resilient green patch on Earth
will be no more. Its plants and flowers will dry up and wither
until no one can even remember where it stood. I have torn the
heart from The Great Tree.

Time passes quickly and uneventfully as I sit
and think of the gravity of what I have done. How many compromises
will I be willing to make? How will I find the boundary between
what is justifiable and what is reprehensible? I can only console
myself with the reminder that I can differentiate myself from The
Vox because I do not seek The Cube to exploit its power. This does
not make me feel much better. I welcome nightfall; it’s time to
wake David, so I’ll no longer be alone with my thoughts.

He is difficult to rouse; I feel that this long
trip is taking a toll on him and I am thankful that soon it will be
over. Soon we will be back on Cerno. Soon we will… What will we do?
What will come next? These are questions that I cannot answer.

David and I take a few moments to sit and eat
some of the dried meat and fruits that Ramla packed for us. The
meat is salty; I am glad that I refilled our water rations. After
we have quieted our stomachs, we begin to walk again. Though we
walk hand-in-hand for the most part, we do not have much
conversation. The air is bitterly cold; David remarks that he
cannot feel his nose or ears, though the exertion helps. We are
trying to cover more ground tonight, so we don’t want to waste our
breath talking. There will be plenty of time to talk when we are
back on Cerno.

It must be approaching early morning when I see
the ruined village in the distance. I believe that it is the same
village that we passed when traveling with Foster and Saul because
we have been more or less retracing our path.

Day has just begun to break when we reach the
village, and I can see that David is exhausted. “David, let’s go
ahead and make camp here.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s too early. We
won’t get there on time.”

I decide to compromise. I don’t want to point
out that he doesn’t seem to be able to go on. “We’ll leave a couple
of hours early, before night falls.”

He still looks skeptical until I add, “We may
not come upon a shelter or formation within the next few hours and
it won’t do us any good to sleep in the direct sunlight.”

David relents. “Okay, maybe you’re right. We’ll
set off again when the sun begins to set.”

I nod, satisfied. “I’ll take the first shift.
I’m not that tired.”

David seems relieved. I am sure that he would
have volunteered to take the shift if I hadn’t, but I know that he
needs to rest. He’s looking rather wan. We settle against the
waist-high remains of what used to be the outer wall of a house.
Another wall has collapsed against this one, providing extra sun
coverage. Hopefully we will not have to move as it passes overhead.
I sit with my back against the wall while David lies parallel to
it, his head near my thigh. I pass the time watching the desert,
again wondering what I will do when we return to Cerno. There is no
place for us.

When I see from the sun’s position that it must
be late afternoon, I decide to wake David. This time, rousing him
is even more difficult than yesterday. I fear that he is getting
sick; we have no medicine or first aid supplies, and we cannot
afford to allow him extra time to rest. I decide to let him sleep a
while longer. He seems to need the rest more than I do.

After another hour or so, I wake David again.
The extra sleep seems to have been for naught; his condition is no
better than it was before. Guiltily, I continue to wake him. I wish
that I could let him sleep until he is fully rested, but I cannot
walk all night without having gotten some rest myself.

David sits up and splashes some water on his
face to wake himself. He assumes my lookout position with his back
against the sun-dried wall, and I lie down to sleep with my head
near his thigh. I’m not sure how long I’ve slept, but I notice that
the daylight has just begun to fade when, for the second time since
coming to Earth, I am dragged from sleep by my ankles.

By the time I realize what is happening, Foster
has me on my feet and he’s holding his blade to my throat. My
sudden movement jerks David awake. He is shocked to realize that he
fell asleep. Immediately, his expression changes from shock to
devastation. He fell asleep when he was supposed to be watching.
David scrambles to his feet, squinting, and finally realizes that
it is Foster, our friend, who holds his knife to my throat.

“Foster?” David asks, uncertain. “Foster, what
are you doing?”

“I’ll kill her, David. I swear I will. I’m not
like Saul.” Foster’s eyes don’t focus on David, but dart around,
crazed.

David nods. “Okay, Foster. What do you want? You
can take our food and water if that’s what you need.”

Foster smiles, which only contributes to his
wild expression. “No, no, no, not your food and water. I don’t want
your food and water. I want
it.
The thing. Whatever it is, I
don’t know, but I want you to give it to me now.”

It feels like my heart stops for a moment when I
realize that Foster must be talking about the Cube shard. How can
he know about it? I assumed, like David, that Foster simply wanted
our food and water rations.

“Foster, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
We don’t have anything.”

Foster’s face purples with rage. “Do you think
I’m joking, David?” He begins to scream. “Do I have to show you how
serious I am?” As he says this, he presses the blade to my throat,
causing me a sharp pain and, I imagine, drawing a thin line of
blood.

David takes a frantic step forward. “No! No,
Foster, okay, I’m sorry.” With outstretched hands, David holds his
knife out and then drops it into the sand.

I can see that Foster’s face is pained. “I just
can’t stay here, David. I—I just can’t do it. I followed you to the
tree and I heard… I know that you have something The Vox wants and
it’s my ticket out of here. It’s the only way I can trade my way
back to Cerno. I’ll kill whoever I need to get it. Now hand it to
me.”

I can see David thinking, wondering what to do.
Foster grows impatient with David and again he is screaming. “I saw
her give it to you, David! I watched you put it in your pack, now
give it to me!”

David turns and picks up his survival pack. With
increasing horror, I run through all of the possible outcomes of
this scenario. None of them are good. I know that the parcel does
not truly contain the Cube shard, but David does not. He would
sacrifice the shard to save me. We have seen firsthand that Foster
has received some kind of training. He was skilled at navigation,
and seemed to have some talent wielding the knife. I find it hard
to believe that he will allow either of us to live whether David
hands him the parcel or not. He will want to be sure that we do not
pursue him. If I can just get David to run, perhaps he can hide
somewhere until the Traveler returns. Foster does not know that we
plan to return to Cerno, so he does not know that David is heading
back to the drop-off point. Though it’s still a long shot, I can
think of nothing but David’s survival.

“David, run!” I yell. “David, he’s going to kill
us both, please, just go! You know how important it is… The Vox
must never find it. It’s more important than me! Go!”

Foster shakes me by the hair. “Shut up! Give it
to me, David. It’s the only way to save her. Do you really want to
live with her death on your conscience?”