Whisper (2 page)

“Really, Jay.”

“Mm.”

With that, it was settled. It was how he settled most things. I might have glared at him for good measure had he presented me with the chance, but there was only the un-acknowledging side of his head for addressing, focused to keep his short, light-brown hair the only feature turned to me.

We worked together filling the cart to the brim, and then he hopped down and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. His black sleeves were rolled up, exposing lanky but muscular forearms.

“What, do you expect me to thank you?” I asked when he stood there, though he seemed only to be admiring our work.

He said nothing, indifferent to my existence as he turned to leave. But I knew such indifference wasn't valid, because he had bothered to help me in the first place. It was our way. Brotherly love, some might call it. I was somewhat of the brother he never had, except that, sometimes, he proved more of a gentleman to me than a brother figure would warrant. He had to remember I was of the female species sometimes, I supposed, and reminding me had to go along with it.

I was not certain what the latent thing inside Jay was in those days. He was a hard one to figure out. It would come to me, though, I knew it would.

Breathing in the smell of settling dust for the day, I turned toward the heart of camp and left those edges to be taken up again the next day. One of our labor steeds would be hitched to the cart to haul the debris away, and the camp would expand ever outward, growing with business.

That was, if it wasn't pulled up short by the raids.

Two –

W
hen the first raid came, we were lucky enough to have some semblance of warning via one of our scouts. Of course, 'lucky' meant only that we
had
warning. It did nothing to prevent the raid from serving its purpose.

We stood in Tara's office as the news was broken, surrounded by her musty furniture and salvaged treasures, which stood about her desk and atop a makeshift mantle as a collection of broken, tarnished trophies. The set of red leather chairs that stood behind Jay and I both sported large gashes slashed into the material, tearing open the cushions as if someone had taken knives to them. That was how most things came out of the rubble. Whole, un-mussed entities were rare, prized artifacts, like the miraculously preserved relics archaeologists sometimes found buried in the ancient grounds of their digs, and met with near the same level of enthusiasm.

“What are we going to do?” I asked after the scout relayed his message. The glance he gave me was rueful, in the way someone pity's a child's naivety. The look Tara gave me was more stony, as was often her persona of choice. She was a hard woman, never mind her sweet honey-colored hair and sparkling blue eyes. She never left home without her stern mask of practicality and famous stomach of iron.

“This is a raid, Miss Wilde – orchestrated by what little government we have left.”

“So we just let them come?”

“This was never a black market operation. The law can still have its way with us.”

“There is no law,” I protested.

“There are wars being fought, Miss Wilde. Please don't make anyone's job harder with your sentimental two cents.”

“Sen–”

“Shut up, Willow,” Jay urged quietly, doubtlessly for my own good. I snapped my mouth shut, feeling slapped.

Feeling slapped by it all.

“How far out are they?” Tara was addressing the scout – Rolph, I thought his name was. But I couldn't be sure; I had the tendency to pay more attention to the horses than the people.

“A few hours. They will be here by nightfall – maybe sooner.”

Tara placed her hands on her desk, leaning into them slightly. She did not show her weakness for long, though. With a ruthless straightening of her spine, she resigned herself to it. “Ready the horses,” she gave the order.

“Ma'am–” someone else interjected, and a wave of gratitude washed through me that someone else was on my side.

“Let's not fight the good guys here, men,” Tara responded, practicing her authority. I had to imagine her ruthlessness was as much to keep her own protests under wraps, for it could not be easy for her readying the entirety of her equine stock for seizure upon someone else's whim. I refused to believe it was easy for her to just do that.

“But – Fly,” I objected again, my panic rising as the worst of the impending seizure occurred to me. Fly was my personal mount, the beloved steed that had been with me since I was a child. A gift from my father. “He's too old for war.”

Tara spared me a glance then, but her face was hard. The dust seared into the lines of her face looked darker than ever. “Too old for war, Miss Wilde?” she challenged ruefully. “No such thing. You can never be too old to die.” It was the hard truth, a terrible piece of logic.

Unbidden desperation welled up in me as the cruelty of the coming event painted its premonition in my gut. I was not prepared for it, could not fathom simply offering up my beloved Fly for an unforgiving fate of certain death, not just like that.

It seemed Tara could see as much on my face. “I cannot have any of my people inhibiting a raid, Alannis. You will not stand in the way of this.”

It was an order, but one I could not readily cope with. What good was following an order if I would not want to live with myself the rest of my life? I couldn't conform to that. But, as my desperation was an open book, Tara proceeded to invest in further measures. Drastic measures.

“I know that look,” she divined relentlessly, but she had turned to Jay. “Please ensure Miss Wilde does not leave the confines of the Dorm-wing while the raid plays out. I cannot allow her interference.”

Jay nodded, and the betrayal doubled. It was ironic how the world could turn the tables on a dime and transform all the people you trusted most into people you suddenly hated with a passion. They could be ruthless, in a pinch. I had never given them the credit they were due. No – I had given them too
much
credit. How could I have not seen they never really had my best interests at heart? How had I believed anyone really cared about me, really had my back, when survival was key in this world?

“Jay–” I objected, hurt, unbelieving that he would gang up on me in such a way. He only cast me a glance, and began to herd me from the room. Tara had turned back to the chart on her desk; no sympathy there. The others were shuffling to see to their orders. I did not envy them. I could not believe them.

Jay took me by the nape of the neck once we were outside and steered me toward the Dorm-wing – our name for the barracks – just off-set from the center of camp.

“Jay,” I tried again, my voice breaking as soon as it was just him and me. “You know Fly won't last a minute on the battlefield.”

“Fly has never been anything but a good, solid horse, Willow. You can attest to that. Give him some credit – there's no reason to assume he'll be so easily bullied out of good form in the face of a little war.”

It was more than I expected him to say to me, but I could not credit him for it, because he was wrong. 'A little war' was a gross injustice to what Fly would be facing out there. We had all heard the stories; we knew what the present armies of conquest sheltered in their ranks.

“He's all but retired, Jay. He can't even go out on the rubble without coming home lame.”

“Stop.”

He had exhausted the reserves he kept for conversation, then. Reasoning with him was pointless, at that point. But I couldn't help it. Who else would fight for Fly? He was supposed to be put out to pasture in his state, to live out the rest of his days in peace and indulgence. Not be recruited for war. There could be no career for him there. His career was behind him.

I skipped to keep up with Jay's brisk pace, lest he drag me into the ground in his purposeful wake. His grasp had not left me. I suppose I was not to be trusted.

“You can't do this. You can't let
her
do this. Fly will be useless to them; a complete waste of a life.”

Jay said nothing, relentlessly towing me onward. To my surprise, he steered me into the men's panel of the Dorm-wing. The whole thing had been constructed out of slabs of debris and pieces of structure salvaged from the wreckage, and he led me clear to the back where a door had been re-plastered to some makeshift wall pieces, creating a storeroom of sorts where the men kept some of their personal gear. He retrieved a key from under one of the bunk-stacked mattresses and unlocked the storeroom, holding the little token in his mouth while he thrust me in.

“Sorry, Willow,” he said around the metal of the key, and then he pulled the door closed in my disbelieving face.

*

When the raid fell, I heard it through the crude walls of my confinement. Horses whinnied as their order was disrupted, calling to each other as they were separated. I closed my eyes against it, not wanting to recognize Fly's voice among them. I did not think I could bear it.

The tears of betrayal had dried on my face, tasting like salt and leather on my lips. The leather was a comfort, a fond sentiment throughout my past. I ran my hand over the suede seat of a saddle that kept me company in the storeroom, appreciating its texture. It offered a sort of solid tenderness there in my moment of disheartenment, something I desperately needed.

Oh, Fly. I'm so sorry.

That was all there was for it, and it left me in a state of brokenhearted resentment.

Stern voices could occasionally be heard among the disoriented cries of the horses, but they were incoherent, just disembodied assertion in the fray. Clang and clatter detailed the event, ringing throughout. I tried to imagine what it would be like to emerge to an empty stable, devoid of all those endeared animals we had come to know, having to start fresh, from scratch... Tara would do it – there was nothing else for it – but I found it devastating.

What would I do the following day? Cast about listlessly with everyone else? And the day after that? The only measly scrap of livelihood left to my routine would be climbing the trees just beyond the camp's boundaries and collecting the robin and blue-jay eggs that were produced there. With limited amounts of trees still standing, nests could be found in abundance. It was not the most comforting of tasks, though – not plagued by the factor of recognizing the key component of these nests more and more commonly as human hair. Harvested from the rubble. And as for the task itself – it was no rewarding thing taking from a struggling species, especially when I could sympathize. I certainly could not feel good about cleaning them out after we had been likewise raided.

When the action died down in the camp and someone came to let me out, I was surprised to find that it was someone other than Jay. The one I thought was Tawney – maybe Tony – stood there, one of the other young manure-muckers of Tara's camp. He looked in expectantly, ignoring the tear streaks on my face.

“Alannis,” he greeted in a neutral fashion. “You can come out now. He held the door wide, and I stood shakily from my sentence and stepped free of the provisional cell. Unlike the others, I thought a wave of sympathy touched his face as he stepped aside and granted me back my freedom, but I ignored it. It was useless to me, by then. Too late. If I were to acknowledge it, I would just as soon resent him for it, for bothering only when it no longer mattered.

Where were you when Fly needed someone to care?
I allowed myself to fancy, and then I stowed the thought, lest morale be allowed to become even uglier in the wake of what had befallen our livelihood.

With my freedom returned to me, I might have hurried from my prison – had there been anything to hurry toward. But I knew what awaited me out there, and had no great enthusiasm to take stock of those empty stalls, the quiet barn, the gate of the training corral hanging open on its hinges. I may have pleaded with the non-existent sentries at my cell door to let me out, while I was imprisoned, but now...for what?

I trailed out of the Dorm-wing, numb with dread. They were all there, those people I couldn't name, standing around, not knowing what to do. Nameless
and
useless. But what was there to do? Purpose had decidedly drained from their bodies; bodies meant to work, used to laboring until day's end. The idleness was uncomfortable, uncanny. Proper etiquette evaded them.

I could find nothing for it, either. It was all there; the vision I had feared. We had been cleaned out in less than an hour.

Fly was gone with the rest of them.

An ache, albeit an angry one, sent its pangs through me as I stood before Fly's pen, gazing in at the emptiness where he used to be. Should have been. I could have screamed at Tara. Could have throttled Jay.

Except – where was Jay? I had not seen him, standing with the others. My anger flared. He had the gall to lock me up and allow what I loved to be torn from my grasp, but not the guts to face me afterward? He was supposed to
be
there for me when my world crumbled. Who else was there to be with me when everything was reduced to rubble? It was him, always him. How could he have done this thing, and then abandoned me to the consequences?