Epilogue
The Messenger…
Eight days later, Gideon’s group had settled on the south side of Eureka. They would stay there for the winter and decide what to do in the spring when it was time to grow things. The entire group had gathered to rescind the steering committee’s vote about my exile. It was official. I wasn’t exiled.
Kara found Lulu across the causeway to the spit of land that framed the bay that Eureka sat on. Alive and well, she was lonely, and Gideon commuted her sentence. Still she stayed away for several days, trying to get her courage up to return. When she did come back into the fold, she couldn’t look at me and stayed away from me as much as possible. However, she did the same to Zach, and he was still very angry with her.
Zach and I were dancing around each other. I could see the question in his eyes when he looked at me. He had expressed himself. Why couldn’t I?
I got to sidestep that one by lieu of the messenger. A thirty-year-old man was found by some of Gideon’s scouts. He was browned by the sun, well-equipped, and had a broadsword strapped to his side where he could easily draw it. His name was Hanley, and he had come from Washington, D.C.
It turned out that there was one surviving member of the United States Congress left. A junior representative from Texas. Well, he was now unofficially the President, and he was trying to get representatives from all over the United States to come to him to revive the Constitution.
I volunteered to Gideon before I told Zach. Gideon thought that I would probably be gone for about a year. I guess the pixies had seen it coming.
Hanley was headed north. We warned him about the Burned Man, who was now the one-handed Burned Man. He didn’t seem particularly worried. It seemed he had a connection to an interesting new creature. It looked a lot like a dragon and was about the size of a mountain lion. It went everywhere with Hanley and seemed protective of its human cohort. Hanley even had an interesting bluish mark on his shoulder. It looked like a tattoo of a dragon, but I knew that it wasn’t a tattoo.
The day came for me to leave, and Zach came to me in the house I was staying in. Kara left us alone and went outside to wait. She was going to walk me as far as Arcata, where I would turn to the east, and head over the mountains on my way to visit with the new President of the United States of America.
“Why?” he said simply. His handsome, perfect face was grim.
I stepped close to him without touching him and inhaled his masculine scent. Zach always smelled as good as he looked. “You’re not ready yet,” I stated. It wasn’t a question, and I was certain about the proclamation. “Neither am I. Not really.”
Zach reached out a hand and touched my cheek. After I nuzzled into his hand, he took in a strained breath and pulled me into his arms. His head dipped and our lips met. I swear that we would have burned the house down if he hadn’t pulled back eventually. His serious eyes searched mine.
“No, not yet,” he affirmed. “But I still love you.”
I reluctantly unlooped my arms from around his neck. “And I love you,” I whispered. “That won’t change, not now. Not a hundred years from now. So when I come back, you’ll be here for me, training to be a doctor, right?”
A bleak smile curved his lips. “Promise me you won’t get yourself killed,” he said, his voice choking suddenly.
“I have a map from Hanley,” I said. “He’s pointed out some areas to avoid and groups of people like us who will help me. I’ll come back if I have to crawl.”
So when I walked out of Eureka with Kara at my side, my last sight of him was him standing in the road watching me leave.
There was something I needed to do. I was only seventeen years old, and I had been through the biggest change a human being could endure. I had lost everything, but I had gained so much more.
Life could be sad, but it was also to be savored. I would see Zach again, as well as the pixies, and everything and everyone else I had learned to value again. Nothing was really lost.
– TE