Then the wagon had passed, heading toward the creek and the soldiers. Without its shadow to protect them, Elanna felt horribly exposed. Surely the men in green could see right through their sad hiding place! In any moment, they’d reach in and pull them out, maybe shoot them with the guns, or maybe worse. Her eyes, wide and staring, burned, and yet she was too afraid to close them.
Minutes passed, slow and dragging. Each strangled breath, an eternity. Waiting. She had to blink and didn’t want to, knowing that in the second she was blind they would be there.
Nothing happened. She heard shouting. Tobin seemed to relax beside her. Could they be safe?
“Hey, Maranian! Shift your skinny ass and get this shit over to the tank!”
“Fuck you!” Maranian yelled back. The high voice broke into a cough, then a sneeze. “I think I’m getting fucking sick!”
“Serves you the fuck right,” Lovett yelled back. “Dumb ass!”
Elanna pressed her hands to her ears, wanting to block out the language. She’d heard the words before, though never so frequently. Strangely, though, the more they said them, the less offensive the language became. She was struck again at how childish their behavior was, with the posturing and name-calling.
“No sign of the intruders anywhere, Major.” This was the one they called Lieutenant. He’d moved away from their hiding place, but Elanna knew that one small sound or movement from her or Tobin and they’d be discovered. “I checked the tree row, and there’s nothing. A piece of material that might have been theirs. Maybe they went that way.”
Major Kodak snorted. Sickly, Elanna realized the man had not moved away from them, but instead had been standing so silently as to make her think he had. At the thought she might have moved, or breathed, while thinking nobody was near, her stomach lurched.
“They won’t get far. Not if they’re wounded.”
Kodak snorted again. “I want to know who they were. Where’d they get a car and the batteries to run it? What about all the stuff in it? They’re too valuable to forget, Lieutenant. Search again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Lovett! Maranian! Shift your asses!”
Elanna heard the thump, thump, thump of boot steps again, this time returning. A breeze kicked up, swaying the grass that hid them. Several of the strands parted and stayed open.
She could see out. And if she could see out, they could see in. Tobin’s hand stopped her from reaching out to rearrange the grass. A quick glance told her that he didn’t see the opening. He didn’t know they were in danger.
“Major, you should see all the shit we found!”
This was Maranian, then, the wet one. Water puddled from his dripping pants and around his boots. A tiny rivulet formed, moving along the pavement to the roadside. It entered the dirt in front of Elanna. She watched in silent horror as it moved toward her, a thin silver line against the brown earth. It touched her arm, cold.
“Clothes! Food! Cans and stuff, you won’t believe it!” Lovett squealed.
“Jesus, Lovett, calm down,” Major Kodak said. “We don’t need a hissy fit.”
The breeze tickled the grass again and Elanna prayed it would close the gap. It didn’t. The men didn’t seem to notice, perhaps because they stood so close. Elanna could have reached out and touched their boots, had she been insane enough to want to.
Maranian broke into another sneezing fit. Coughing followed, short, barking gasps that nearly doubled him over. Then some more sneezes, until Major Kodak muttered in disgust.
“Jee-sus H., Maranian! What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
“Permission to de-mask, Sir,” Maranian responded in a voice clearly filled with phlegm.
“Yeah, yeah,” Major said. “Desnot yourself for Christ’s sake, so we can get out of here. The rest of you might as well de-mask, too.”
With another quick sneeze, Maranian reached up and pulled off the helmet. With it came the black netting that had covered his face from view. As he did so, Elanna bit back a gasp of shock.
He wasn’t a man at all. Maranian was a young woman, no more than a teener really. And so were all the others.
−
31-
Elanna stiffened beside him, but Tobin didn’t know why. The tall weeds that hid them from view still blocked his sight. Without moving anything but his eyes, Tobin strained to see what had startled her.
That’s when he noticed the break in the undergrowth right in front of her. He tried to measure quickly by sight, but couldn’t convince himself they were too far back to be seen. Then he realized that whatever had caused Elanna’s reaction was not fear of being caught. Something else had caught her attention.
With his cheek mashed into the ground, he couldn’t do more than roll his eyes. And if he moved….Thankfully, he didn’t have to. The breeze that had parted the grass in front of Elanna now closed it, opening a gap in front of him. It was small, too small to expose him. He thought. He didn’t know. His stomach swooped like a gull. He wanted to inch backward, into the brush, but didn’t dare.
He rolled his eyes up as far as they would go, though he expected to see little more than boots and legs. Fate had blessed him with more than that. And then he saw what had made Elanna go rigid beside him.
The one they called Maranian, the one still dripping, had long blonde hair and the face of a cherub. They were all sweet-faced, even the tall one he guessed was the one they called Major Kodak. His mouth dropped open until he made a conscious effort to close it. These foul-mouthed soldiers were girls?
And young girls, he noted, as the one he guessed was Lovett again giggled and teased Maranian for falling in the water. Now, upon closer inspection, he could spot the tell-tale bumps on their chests that marked their womanhood, but bumps were all they were. How old could they be, really?
Well, no matter how old they were, or what their gender, they still had guns. And they weren’t afraid to use them, he remembered, thinking of the crazy ride away from the roadblock. They were just as dangerous now as they’d been before, even if his mind wanted to refuse to believe it.
“C’mon. Let’s get the fuck outta here.” This was Lieutenant, a tall girl with black hair that fell past her shoulders. Bits of dirt and leaves clung among the dark strands, and the hair gleamed with grease. Sweet-faced, maybe, but not too clean. “Hey, Stolzfus! You and that brat done loading that shit into the tank?”
Incredibly, within a few seconds, they’d gone. Marched away in their heavy boots. Tobin’s entire body seemed to relax at once; he was a boneless and limp as a rag doll. He hadn’t realized how tensely he’d been holding himself until that moment.
He risked discovery by scooting forward to watch the girls head back across the creek. This time, none of them fell. The six or so who’d stayed behind had not all taken off their helmets and masks, but the ones who had looked as feminine as the four who’d just rejoined them. He couldn’t see so clearly from this distance, but they all looked just as young and unkempt.
With a shout, Lieutenant jumped back up on the side of the tank. Pulling her helmet and mask back over her face, she pounded on the vehicle’s metal side. With a roar that didn’t sound half so frightening now, the huge tank lurched into motion.
It sputtered and jerked, heaving forward and grinding up the creek side dirt into a thick mud that splattered upward, hitting many of the riders. He heard hoots and whoops, but no cries of disgust. Once it got started, the tank moved pretty quickly. It swung back onto the cracked road and soon was out of sight, though the sound of it lingered in the air long after it had disappeared.
“They’re girls,” Elanna said in a strangled voice. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Girls, Tobin!”
“I saw.”
Elanna started to laugh. He turned to look at her, sprawling on the ground and shaking with hysterical laughter. Tears began pouring from her eyes, and she didn’t even pause to wipe them away.
A few nervous chuckles escaped from his mouth too. He recognized her r
eaction as relief, because he was feeling the same thing. After a couple minutes, though, she showed no signs of stopping. Her face grew red and her chest heaved for breath, and still she laughed.
“Elanna, calm down.”
She laughed harder. Clutching her sides, her face a grimacing mask of pain and hilarity, Elanna writhed on the ground. The pitch of her laughing grew higher, almost painful.
“Oh, oh,” she moaned between spurts of relentless hooting. “It hurts! It hurts!”
Alarmed, he shook her. “Elanna! Please, calm down!”
She bit her fist as if trying to stop the chortling coming from her mouth. It didn’t help much. Small snorts and whoops still leaked out, though the intensity of them was dying down.
Her eyes rimmed with red, Elanna finally managed to stem the flow to a trickle. Her shoulders shook as she let out another spare giggle, then one more. At last, her breathing slowed and she smiled at him wearily.
“I’m done.”
He gathered her into his arms, pulled her over onto his lap and rested his face in the weed-infested snarls of her hair. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against him. “I couldn’t help it.”
“I know.” Tobin suddenly felt like laughing himself. “Girls?”
“Ja, maidlen,” said a voice from the road. Enoch Stolzfus had crossed from his wagon back to them. His face was drawn and solemn beneath the straw hat. “Gappers, they are. Ferricked und ferroonstzled.”
“Crazy and dirty,” Elanna elaborated, and let out another chortle. She wiped her eyes again. “Crazy and dirty girls.”
“Bischt du Deutch?” Enoch asked her now, staring at her closely. “Was iss dei naame?”
She looked startled. “Elanna. And no, I’m not Deutch, whatever that is.”
“You an English are, like him?” Enoch asked, clearly puzzled now. “But speak the Dutch, do you?”
Elanna looked at Tobin as though she wasn’t sure how to answer. “Dutch? No. I thought…ir farshteyt Yiddish? Do you understand Yiddish?”
The older man shook his head. “No.”
But they did understand each other, Tobin knew that. Enoch spoke and Elanna answered. He had no idea what either one of them was saying at all.
“No matter,” Enoch said with a shrug. “Gappers you are not.”
“No.” Tobin gently pushed Elanna from his lap. His legs were beginning to cramp, and he wanted to stand. She did the same, rubbing her calves briskly as though they hurt.
“Papa!”
Enoch turned and said something sharply in that other language. “Amos. My boy. The horse he brings. To town we will take you.”
“But our stuff,” Tobin began.
Elanna laid her hand on his arm. “You need a healer, Tobin. And we can always get more stuff.”
He looked back at the man who had saved them. His face was kind. Enoch put his arm around the boy, drawing him closer, and the child looked up at his father with unmasked adoration.
“At least, can’t we check to see if they left anything?” Tobin said quietly. “If it’s safe, I mean.”
“Safe?” Enoch said. He looked back to where the tank had gone over the hill.
Elanna nodded. “Ok. But let’s hurry. I want someone to take a look at your head.”
They walked back to where the car had skidded off the road. Or limped, rather, both of them moving a lot more slowly as what seemed like a million aches and pains began to set in. Before leaving Eastport he could have counted on one hand the times he’d been seriously injured. Now he’d be hard-pressed to even remember them all.
The car was as they left it, doors hanging open and trunk ajar. Most of what had been inside, however, was gone. The bags, the boxes, the carefully packed bundles, all had been torn apart.
The ground, already gouged when the car slid from the road, was trampled and muddy. Bits and pieces of what the Gappers hadn’t wanted littered the area around the car. They’d left behind some clothes, which now were dirty and torn probably beyond repair.
“Damn them,” Elanna said quietly. Though no tears sparkled in her eyes, they were thick in her voice. He squeezed her hand. She gestured at the mess, and looked at him helplessly. “Why did they have to ruin all of it? Why couldn’t they just take what they wanted and leave the rest? Why waste it?”
He could tell it was the waste that bothered her more than anything else, and he understood why. In the Tribe, nothing could be wasted. Everything had to be used to its fullest potential, because the safety and prosperity of two thousand people rested on it.
The waste bothered him, too, more because of the random violence of it than anything else. “Let’s see what’s left,” he said with a sigh. “See if we can save any of it.”
There wasn’t much to save. The food was gone. So were the candles and matches. The girl soldiers had spilled the water jugs out onto the ground, which explained the mud, and then crushed the jugs until they were useless. The towels and bedding was gone, and most of the clothing.
He heard Elanna gasp, and she broke from his side to run toward a small piece of cloth that had been crushed into the dirt. She clutched it to her chest. Her shoulders shook with sobs, but she was smiling. “It’s here!”
He couldn’t see it. “What is it, Elanna?”
She held it out to him. A tiny gown, white now, though it might long ago have been yellow or pale blue. The material was thin from many washings. He’d never seen one, but he recognized it as a baby’s dress.
“It’s mine,” she said, and let her fingers drift lightly over the faded pattern of ducks and teddy bears. “I’ve dressed every child of mine in it. I brought it with me when we left the Tribe.”
She looked at him nakedly. “It’s all I have left of my babies, Tobin, and I thought it was gone.”
She wept then, her body wracked with sobs. He couldn’t do anything except hold her against him while she cried. His own throat grew tight at her grief, and he rocked her as she had done for him before.
When she’d quieted against him, he pushed her hair away from her flushed cheeks and kissed her. “Let’s get back to the wagon before Enoch and Amos decide to leave us here.”
Her smile was wobbly but genuine, and she kissed him back. Her hug was so fierce it hurt him, but he didn’t push her away. She sagged against him for a moment. To help her, Tobin put his arms under her legs and lifted. His hand came away wet.
He looked down at his fingers, stained crimson. “You’re bleeding.”
−
32-
Hopemothers weren’t supposed to grieve. The loss of a child was something to be forgotten, not sympathized with. When a pregnancy ended, sometimes just weeks or even days after the celebration that marked its beginning, nobody ever said anything about it.
The other hopemothers might take your hand, or smile to show they shared the pain, but that was all. If you talked about it, someone else might lose her child too. Superstition, perhaps, but one that was widely believed.
A full-term labor was celebrated and attended by all the hopemothers, who gathered around the mother and helped her bring her child into the world as safely as they knew how. Those whose bodies rejected the blessing of their wombs were not given the same honor. Elanna had lost half as many babies as she’d born. She’d endured the bleeding and the cramping, the gripping pains in her uterus so much like those that heralded the birth of a live child. She’d always done it alone, as dictated, with no one to hear her crying.
Here, though, in the town Enoch had brought them to, the women took care of her as though she were one of her own. They all had strong, firm hands, calloused from work. Those hands held her head over the basin when the nausea overtook her, and placed cold cloths on her brow to ease the pain as her body labored to rid itself of what it had decided was a burden rather than a blessing. Elanna was grateful for the women. Grateful she didn’t have to go through this sad journey alone.
They wouldn’t let Tobin in to see he
r until it the worst of it had passed, and she was grateful for that, too. She didn’t want to see his face as he watched her pain. And she didn’t want to have to comfort him even as she herself sought comfort.
When he did finally come to her bed, though, his eyes were dry and his hands steady. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and held her hands. He said nothing.
She’d never had someone to comfort her. Elanna didn’t think she had any tears left, but when he touched her she discovered more. They streamed from her eyes in soundless rivers, coating her cheeks and dripping from her chin. She didn’t sob. It wasn’t violent, this grief that had torn her heart into bleeding strips, and when the tears finally dried she felt cleaned out.