A fist of water slams my body into hard rock. I push away from it with my feet, battling it like a boxer. The force propels me upward. In the moment my face meets the air; instead of taking a breath, I retch. Then comes the oxygen—sweet, sublime oxygen.
I seem to have undergone most of the thrashing and now ride the flood with my one good hand, like a bull-rider. The waters propel me back down the canyon Jude and I spent so many days traveling up—back toward the albinos.
Why, God? Why must this flood undo all we’ve struggled for?
My coat and pack snag this way and that on nothing but force. I fight to keep them on my body. Already a weak swimmer, I kick madly to stay afloat. My left arm flies through the water with each paddle, useless and thin.
I slam into the bends of the curvy canyon like a rag doll. No matter how I fight, I’m under the will of the devil water. It tears my boots from my feet one after the other. My hair swirls around my neck and sticks to my face, blocking my sight. Bandages around my calf loosen and tangle my legs together.
When I round another corner, something slams into me from behind, knocking my forehead against the canyon wall. Fingers grip my hair and an arm wraps in one of my pack straps.
Jude.
Even in the midst of drowning, relief provides another gasp of air. We are linked. He’ll help us. He’s a survivor.
His kicks are forceful and keep us above water, though we’re still subjected to the whim of the flood. His hand releases my hair and a moment later it wraps a rope around my middle.
“Help me!” he shouts.
We spend several seconds underwater, allowing the flood to hammer us as we fumble with the rope. I don’t know how it manages to wind its way around us both, but Jude kicks us back above water and yells, “Okay!” in my ear. I trust he considers it secure.
After another curve, we slide along the right side of the canyon where the water is a little slower. I hate the helplessness consuming me as I watch my own strength fall short. My life is out of my control. If the flood continues to flow much longer, I’ll surely drown. Already, my body aches with exhaustion.
Without warning, we stop with a jerk. The rushing water flows over my head. I can’t breathe. The rope tightens with a pinch. We’re snagged on something. It’s going to drown us. Jude is screaming one word over and over. I can’t make it out.
My body pounds against the canyon wall like a wild fishing bobber. I push against the smooth stripped rock with my feet until my head gains more height and I take a decent breath. Jude is still screaming and I make out his word.
“Cli . . . ! C . . . mb! Climb!”
I glance behind me to see what he means, but water douses my face. I reach back, groping the slick canyon wall for handholds.
His shout changes. “R . . . pe! Climb . . . ope!”
What rope? Then my hand finds it—a grainy, thick, woven rope to which Jude clings. We’re at the beginning where we first fell into the Dregs. The water’s risen so much we can now reach the cut tightrope anchored to the top.
But climb?
God, this strength is beyond me!
I grip the rope tight and pull myself toward it, against the pounding water. My muscles quiver. I gain a few inches of height— enough to gasp a full breath, but my arm shakes.
Jude plants his feet against the canyon wall and pushes. His body suspends above the water like a board. He is free of the torrent, but we are still tied together. I cling to the tail of the rope with limp muscles. My stump slides helplessly when I try to use both hands.
Stupid arm!
Jude releases the rope with one hand, grabs my elbow, and pulls me higher. “Put your arms around me!”
I kick against the wall to position myself, but the current sweeps my feet away again and again. The rope around us is too constricting. I can’t maneuver.
Throwing control to the wind, I wrap my stump around Jude’s chest and release the rope. In the moment when I fall, I grip his coat with my right hand and manage to hold on. The rope holds us tighter than my flimsy muscles.
I guide my feet above the water and onto the side of the canyon. Then Jude climbs. Hand over hand he ascends, walking up the wall. I cling to him, shuffling up the wall behind him like a vertical piggyback ride.
His entire body trembles. Blood flows again from his arm. The bandage is gone. Any second, he’ll fall.
God, strengthen him. If ever I needed a miracle, it’s now.
My legs burn and my arms fill with weights.
One more step.
I’m not breathing, riddled with confusing emotions—desperate, painful hope for freedom and sickening fear of the flood.
Just one more step.
My foot slips an inch. Jude stops the ascent. Keep going, I urge. His body moves, feeble and spent.
“One more!” I gasp.
Jude flops an arm over the slanted, water-smoothed edge. He pushes. The rope goes slack. Our feet flail and I link my leg on the rope mount. Sheer survival adrenaline—and possibly the nudge of an angel—hoists us over.
At last, our bodies drag in the first burning breath of freedom.
26
000.153.23.42.13
Time does not exist. Only survival pounds louder than the thunder.
Breathe.
Rest. The inches of flowing water caress our depleted bodies. Muscles turn to churned butter. Hypothermic chills are as mild as a bout of hiccups compared to the preciousness of existence.
We pant like beached trout, too tired to flail, to put more space between the edge and us. Even the idea of Jude’s gunman can’t prick my brain into worry. Let him find us. Let him see what we’ve done.
We’ve survived.
I’ve survived. I’m not weak. God is not weak. God sees us.
Hours or minutes may have passed before the chills force us to move. I don’t know; I didn’t keep track of time. My arm buckles when I push myself to my hand and knees. I hold my stump to my chest as a wounded dog might. Jude sits back on his heels and unties my rope from around us with quivering arms.
We crawl in a broken daze, dragging ourselves to higher ground until the water isn’t sweeping around us. Rocks scrape off our soaked, wrinkled skin. Mud coats between my fingers. We crawl like powerless children, fighting for nonexistent strength.
At last, Jude collapses at the base of a tall smooth rock. I lie down beside him, desperate for any ounce of body heat. The rain turns warmer. Our clothing drips on our chilled wounds.
Jude pulls me against his shivering form with his good arm. Dreams of drowning steal my consciousness and I remember an old story of a girl selling matches, freezing in the snow as she dreamed of a fire.
Fire. What delight the sizzle of fire would be to my ears.
Crackle. Snap. Burn.
My face warms. My stump stings from cold. My body trembles. Hours weave between my veins, tempting me to relinquish my hold on life.
Pop! Wood hisses, reminding me of a winter morning at home. Cinnamon oatmeal in Mother’s giant bowl. Warm mugs. Smoky warmth in the air.
My eyes flutter open to a blast of heat from a small flame. Sparks sing into the air from the jab of a stoking stick. I squint against the heat, seeking clarity.
A red face. White, tangled hair. Purple eyes.
“Willow?” I push up on my elbow. Stones seem to fill my head. It rocks side to side as I try to keep it balanced.
Willow comes around the fire, holding a charred stick. She kneels by me. Her face is splotchy red with peeling skin along her cheeks and nose. Sunburned. “Are you warm yet?”
I shake my head. The movement disorients me, so I lower myself back to the ground. How did she find us? What time is it?
“Keep sleeping.” Her soft voice returns me to slumber.
Each time I wake through the unknown hours, the crackle of
fire meets my ears. Sometimes Willow is there, sometimes she’s gone. Sometimes the sky is light, sometimes it’s dark. Sometimes food roasts over the flames.
I wake enough to eat roasted gopher. “How did you do this?”
It’s early morning. I don’t know what day. Jude is still sleeping. Has he woken at all yet? The blood in his arm has clotted and turned a dark red color, almost black.
“I’ve been burning dead sticks. I search hard for them. I have no coal.”
My first taste of warm, cooked meat elicits a moan. Willow hands me a small pouch of water. Her splinted finger sticks out from the others—splinted for my sake. What made her sacrifice for me? What is making her help us?
“I filled yours with rain water, too.” She gestures to my water containers on the ground.
“Thanks.”
“Welks.”
She watches me eat, as if expecting something. I have nothing to offer. I want answers. “Who is the man you sent after Jude and me?”
She frowns. “What man?”
“A man found us in the Dregs. He said you told him to find us. It was right before the storm. I thought . . .” I bite my lip. “I thought maybe he hurt you.”
She shakes her head before I finish. “I’ve been alone since crossing the Dregs.”
I release a long breath. There’s no reason for her to lie . . . unless she’s on the shooter’s side. “He shot Jude.”
She cocks her head to one side. “With a sling and stone?”
I spit out a thin gopher bone. “With a bullet. From a gun.”
Her eyes dart to Jude and back to me. “The hole in his arm?”
“Yes.”
Her sunburned face turns pale and concerned. “It’s deep,” she says in a shaky voice. “I think he will heal, but he groans a lot when sleeping. It must hurt very badly.”
As if to confirm her statement, Jude rolls over with a pitiful whimper, wrapping a muddy hand over his wound. Willow takes a small step toward him as if to comfort, but stops with a quivering lip.
Her distress calms my irritation. “His wound stopped bleeding. It may be painful, but he climbed a rope out of the Dregs, pulling me with him. He’ll be fine.”
But will he?
She sits cross-legged on a small stretch of animal skin. I continue staring at Jude. Unable to stop myself, I ask in a quiet voice, “Is Jude a bad person?”
Willow rotates a second gopher on a stick over the fire. “Alder doesn’t like him, but that’s because Jude-man doesn’t agree with how we live. He says it’s unpractical. He doesn’t like customs, so he’s always making suggestions to Alder on how to change them. I like him, though. He’s come to our village three times now.”
“Why?”
Willow shrugs. “Because I asked him to come back and tell me stories. He reads many tales to Elm and me from a small electronic square—stories about a warrior who killed a giant with a sling like mine, a hairy man who ate grasshoppers, a young queen who saved the world . . . .” A blush enhances the color of her sunburn and she turns the gopher.
I wiggle my eyebrows up and down. “You like Jude.”
Instead of looking bashful, Willow glances at Jude, then glares at me. “Jude-man’s my friend. I graft with Elm.”
I hold up my hands in defense, ignoring the sight of my invisible left hand. “I didn’t know.”
Asking what “grafting” means and who Elm is seems unwise, so I remain quiet, but it sounds like an albino betrothal of sorts. I peek at Willow. She’s so little. Spring eleven. Already betrothed?
What would it be like to be betrothed? I cringe, imagining myself standing in a white dress across from Dusten Grunt and his hairy knuckles. Who would Mother and Father choose for me? They’d have better taste than to pick Dusten, right? They chose each other, after all.
My mind flits to Jude. Reid might like Jude. Would I like Jude?
Willow interrupts my thoughts by waving a flaming gopher on a stick. “Still hungry?”
I jerk back. “Um . . .” We should save some for Jude. My fingers are greasy. It doesn’t taste very good. My stomach is churning. “Yes.”
She slides it off the stick with careful fingers.
“How did you find us?” I pop off one of the gopher legs to release some of the heat. Gopher oil drips onto my skirt. I try to calm the nasty twist of my stomach.
“It was an accident. I headed back home—to atone, but the rope was cut.”
“I thought you wanted to come with us.”
“I do now that I found you. I want to see new places. I’m tired of people leaving without giving me stories or showing me something new. You’re the first stranger to atone. Tell me a story from the other side of the Wall.”
I shrug. “I don’t have any stories.”
“Yes, you do. What’s over there?”
“Piles and piles of chopped up trees.” Her eyes shrink to slits and I smirk, pretending to poke her with the gopher stick. “Okay, not really. We have houses, people, brick sidewalks . . . boring stuff.”
She huffs. “Everywhere has that. What did you do when you lived there?” Her small mouth breaks into a shameless grin. “You didn’t fight much, did you? Black captured you faster than a falling petal.”
I glower at the fire.
She must take my silence as an answer because she moves on with another question. “What’s in your bag?”
My bag lies by the fire, the rope still tangled around it like a vine. Mud covers the bottom half, meeting dense patches of wet cloth.
“I’ll show you.” I unbuckle the flap with Willow’s help so I don’t have to muddy my teeth. First out is the NAB. Willow’s eyes widen and she turns it over and over in her hands.
“Did you get this from Ivanhoe?” she breathes. “It’s like the one Jude-man has, but bigger.”
That name. Ivanhoe. Ash called it the largest city in the West. She said the Newtons might be there. “No, it was given to me.”
Next is my box of matches. The wood box is still in good condition, but the sliding top is open. Six matches remain. I dispel my concern. Willow can make a fire without matches. Maybe Jude can, too. They can teach me.
I take out my watch and toss it on the ground.
“Why don’t you wear this?” Willow picks it back up.
I hold up my stump in response. Why draw more attention to my severed arm than I need to?
“Wear it on your other arm.”
“I don’t want to wear my watch on my other arm! I want the right to put it on my left without worrying it will slide off.” My heart wilts. “I want my hand.”
Before she can talk again, I dig deeper into my pack. My wool socks and handful of underwear are in a wadded mess, still soaked and covered in dirt. I close my eyes at the idea of wearing fresh undergarments.
I set them aside, away from Willow. The Daily Hemisphere is in a stiff roll in my pocket. I laugh at the irony. The flash flood takes my boots, but doesn’t empty my pockets?
I wipe the mud and green Dregs grime off the electrosheet with my skirt. Willow’s jaw drops when I show her how to turn it flat. While she’s preoccupied, I reach in and pull out a thick wad of heavy, waterlogged paper. My stomach drops before I even see it.
Reid’s journal.
The cover corners are curled and soggy. Pages fold in on themselves. It’s still dripping. I crack it open with a crying heart to see blur after blur. A few words link together in short sentences, but otherwise it’s ruined.
“Oh Reid,” I whisper, gripping the pages. Water trickles out. I’m an idiot. I’m not used to having paper, so I didn’t think of what the Dregs water would do to his journal. An emotigraph slips from the pages into my lap. I sniff.
“Oh”—Willow notices the journal—“what happened?”
“What do you think happened?” I toss the journal asid
e. It lands in mud. “We were in the Dregs.” I grab the loose emotigraph and push myself to my feet, walking away from the fire.
I struggle to place one foot in front of the other. Why wasn’t I more careful? But who knew we’d land in the Dregs? Still, I could have pulled it out and dried it as we traveled.
No. This was inevitable. The flash flood would have destroyed it in the end. Now I’ll never know why Reid thinks the Clock is his.
I stop and cover my face. Do I even care about Reid anymore? Or Mother? Or Father? I crossed the Wall and seem to have shoved them out of my mind. I’ve focused only on myself. If I cared, I would have read through Reid’s journal first chance.
“What was I supposed to do?” I shout to the sky. “How could I have prevented this? Do You have an answer?”
I don’t wait to hear if He does. I pace, tapping the stiff emotigraph against my hip. Since crossing the Wall I’ve just reacted by clinging to survival. But mere survival holds no purpose. I refuse to believe God created us to just get by, so where does that put me?
My thumb rubs Reid’s emotigraph button. I hold the sheet up. It’s a picture of the sunlight streaming through the new lattice window at home. Mother’s fresh spreads sit on the windowsill with small price cards, not yet snatched by the morning sill-traders.
What was Reid feeling when he took this? I lick my lips and press the button.
A mental wall leaps into my mind, blocking my current emotions. Like the flash flood, new ones slam into the corners of my heart. Remnants of fading sorrow precede a sweep of thick hope and jealous excitement. My heart swells with conviction. Something great can be achieved. The hope, excitement, and conviction stir faster. Faster. I gasp and my walls disappear, letting the flood mix with my own emotions, leaving a tiny almost invisible wisp of regret.
“Wow.” I breathe in short gasps, organizing the confusion in my mind. The emotions don’t fit with my circumstance, but even their shadows feel good. Reid’s conviction is the strongest feeling tingling my nerves. He felt helpless, but he knew something great could be achieved. By me?