Tabitha (21 page)

‘Tabitha,’ she
replied, aware of him looking down at her hand. She pulled it away.

‘Metal gloves?’
he said.

‘Skin,’ she
replied awkwardly. He looked at her with fascination, but didn’t pry any
further. She was grateful. Keen as she was to make a good first impression, she
couldn’t hold in her pee for much longer. ‘Um… do you have a toilet here?’ she
asked them.

‘Yep, just head
back outside,’ Will said brightly. ‘There’s an outhouse around the far side of
the keep there. It’s not an elegant setup, but it works,’ he said with a grin.

‘Thanks,’
Tabitha replied, smiling politely. She was glad to get out of the door for a
second, just to avoid any more questions about the skin on her hands. She
headed around the keep with Laika, through the garden and down to an ancient
stone shed built against the curtain wall. Will was right; the toilet really
wasn’t an elegant setup. The outhouse had a barred hole in the corner of the
floor, with an old wooden seat built around it and a circle cut in the middle.
Glancing down through the hole, Tabitha saw nothing but a long drop to the
hillside below. Medieval drainage at its finest.

Tabitha admired the garden as she walked
back round the side of the keep. Laika was rolling on the lawn. Bees hummed
sharply, swimming between the bobbing flowers. Tabitha stopped for a second to
breathe it all in. Green grass at her feet, and the bright blue sky above. The
smell of flowers and sweet summer haze. It was beautiful here, tucked away from
the world outside. Chris stared at her from up on the curtain wall as she
headed back for the keep. She met his gaze. Did he have some kind of problem
with her? She didn’t want to call him out on it though. She’d only just gotten
here, and she didn’t want to make any trouble. Tabitha did her best to ignore
his cold hard stare. She headed back up the stone steps onto the small
courtyard, walking back inside the keep.

‘We’ll be
getting a stew on s-soon,’ Liv piped up, pulling a chair out for Tabitha at the
table. ‘Now get your boots off, and I’ll fetch you some fresh s-socks.’

‘Would you like
a cup of tea love?’ said Jim. He was already hooking an old black kettle onto
the rail over the fire.

‘Oh god, yes
please,’ Tabitha replied. How long had it been since she’d had a brew?

‘Is it too hot
for you in here?’ said Jim. I realise we’ve got a fire going in the middle of
summer.’ He nodded at the strips of bright sunlight in the walls, shining
through narrow windows that used to be arrow slits.

‘Oh no, it’s
just right,’ Tabitha replied, smiling politely. It felt like the cool stone
walls drained a lot of the heat anyway.

‘The whole
castle was a visitor centre,’ said Will, noticing Tabitha looking around at the
room. ‘I was lucky I got up the hill here, when everything kicked off. And
guess what was waiting for me at the top.’ He grinned at her, and showed off
the twin scars on his cheek. ‘The gate where you came in was padlocked then.
So, I had to climb up the archway over the gate and then up the curtain wall to
the top, with one of those things trying to kill me!’

‘Good motivation
to get good at climbing,’ Jim chipped in from the fire, watching the kettle.

‘Absolutely,’
Will replied.

‘You climbed up
that wall outside?’ said Tabitha, awestruck.

‘Adrenaline’s a
wonderful thing,’ Will said with a grin. ‘It was either climb up that wall or
get caught by the spider. No contest.’

‘So you were the
first one here?’ said Tabitha, unlacing a boot.

‘I was,’ he
said. ‘Lucky for me there weren’t any spiders inside the castle here, once I’d
got over the wall. So, I started setting fires on top of the keep, and these
three showed up a few days later.’ He took Tabitha’s boots and socks from her
as she pulled them off. He carried them over to a bucket of water, tipped a
little soap powder into it, and set about scrubbing them with an old brush.

‘Oh no, I’ll do
that,’ said Tabitha, feeling guilty for them all suddenly slaving over her.

‘No, you’re our
guest today,’ Will replied. He wrung her socks out, and hung them by the fire
to dry. ‘There’ll be plenty to do tomorrow,’ he said brightly. ‘But today
you’re having a rest. So I say make the most of it.’ Laika had no problem
taking their hospitality. She was already settled down by the fire, gnawing a
dog chew that Jim had produced from a plastic bag.

‘Keeps the wild
dogs busy while you run for it,’ Jim said knowingly, tapping his nose. He
popped a tea bag into a cup, and put in a good amount of long-life milk and
sugar without having to ask. The new girl looked like she needed a good dose of
both.

‘It’s so…
civilised,’ said Tabitha, gazing around in awe. Liv came back down the wooden
stairs with a dry pair of socks.

‘Well, I’m glad
you think so,’ Will replied happily, setting down her scrubbed boots close to
the fire. ‘We want it to be a little piece of civilisation here. A safe place
to come to.’

‘Don’t you feel
like you’re in danger though? With all the spiders in town?’ said Tabitha.

‘Well, yeah,’ he
admitted. ‘But… you just live with it. People have always been in danger
though, if you think about it. It’s our natural state, really.’ Will took a
seat, and thought about it. ‘If you look at it, it’s only the last few hundred
years where we’ve had it safer,’ he said. ‘Now we’re back in the Stone Age. But
we’ve always had fire and the tribe to take our minds off the danger, and the
dark. That’s why we’re staying here. It’s the safest place we’re going to
find.’

‘The
philosopher,’ Jim told Tabitha, nodding at Will with a grin.

‘Oh, don’t get
me wrong, it’s awesome here,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I’m so glad I found this
place.’ Will grinned. Tabitha thanked Jim for the huge mug of tea he set down
for her. It was sweet, milky, and it warmed her insides like a fire in her
soul. But it wasn’t just the hot water that felt warming. The aftertaste was
unmistakable. ‘Jim, is there whisky in this?’

‘Could be,’ he
said, with a cheeky smile.

‘Listen, d-don’t
you be getting her drunk and suggestible, you s-sly old git,’ said Liv, taking
a seat at the table. Jim laughed as he walked outside. Liv glanced at the new
girl next to her. She looked exhausted; pale as a sheet. Tabitha looked up at
Liv for a second with tired vivid eyes. She smiled, and looked back down at her
mug on the table.

‘You look ready
for a r-rest,’ said Liv gently, taking Tabitha’s metal-skinned hand in hers.
Tabitha was surprised by the contact. She nodded silently, dipping her head as
the tears came. Liv flashed a look at Will, and he obliged by following Jim
outside and closing the door behind him. Once they were alone, a sudden sob
heaved its way out of Tabitha’s chest. She pulled her hand from Liv’s, and
leaned in to hug her tight.

‘Dread to think
what the girl’s been through,’ Jim told Will, as they joined Chris on the wall.

‘She’s got weird
hands,’ Chris observed, pulling his jacket collar close against the wind.

‘Well, I’m sure
there’s a story there,’ Will replied. Tabitha’s muffled crying inside the keep
filled the edge of their hearing. ‘She can tell us when she’s good and ready.’

‘How do we know
she’s not got some weird alien infection?’ Chris replied. ‘Or the dog?’ it was
a good point, thought Jim, but a cold one. He agreed, though he didn’t want to.
They both looked to Will for an answer.

‘Something
called
trust
,’ Will said sternly, fixing Chris with a stare. ‘Tabitha would
say something if she was going to put us in danger.’

‘Do you really
think so?’ Chris scoffed. ‘That’s not trust. It’s called being
naïve.
’

‘Look, I’d
sooner think the best of someone new and be proved wrong, rather than just not
trusting anyone,’ Will replied. ‘If we can’t trust our own kind then we’ve
already lost this war.’ The wind blew around them in the heavy silence.

‘You
still
think there’s a war left to fight,’ said Chris.

‘Not this again,’
Jim mumbled wearily, as Will and Chris launched into another shouting match
behind him.

A little later the group sat talking
around the table together inside the keep. Tabitha felt that tense, knotted
fear inside her begin to loosen; a primal relief that could only come with
safety in numbers. She looked around the keep for a moment while the rest of
them talked, still amazed that a place like this could exist in the new world.

‘You’ve got
spears propped up in the corner,’ Tabitha observed, as Jim brought over bowls
of stew to the table.

‘They were up
there on the wall when I got here,’ said Will. ‘Not sure how much use they’re
going to be, but they’re better than nothing I suppose.’

‘They’re blunt,’
Chris grunted, shovelling stew into his mouth. Jim brought his own bowl of stew
last, and sat down to join them. There was a sudden hush around the table,
where the chatter gave way to eating and clinking spoons.

‘This is
delicious,’ said Tabitha, breaking the silence.

‘Thank you,’ Jim
replied proudly, as the rest agreed with full mouths. Tabitha scooped up
another steaming spoonful of stew. It was thick and hot; a steamy orange mush
of onions, carrots and potatoes. She devoured it, suddenly too hungry for
polite pausing
spoonfuls
. She just had to hope that
she was over her vomiting phase by now.

‘It was my
better half’s recipe,’ said Jim. ‘It’s the celeriac that does it, I think.’

‘Ooh,
celeriac
?’
said Chris. ‘Bit exotic for you, Jim.’

‘Celeriac’s not
exotic
,’
Liv chipped in, picking something from her teeth with her fingernail. ‘It’s
j-just that some of us know how to cook things other than
ch
-chips.’
Jim and Will were grinning. Chris glared at her angrily, and said nothing.
Tabitha dropped her spoon with a clatter, and clutched her stomach suddenly. She
jumped up from the table and rushed outside, hand clamped against her mouth.

‘Tabitha?’ said
Liv, following her outside where she was throwing up.

‘The food’s not
so good then,’ Chris joked.

‘Shut up Chris,’
Will warned him. Jim looked worried about what his cooking had done to the poor
girl.

‘Every time I
eat something,’ Tabitha sobbed outside. She wiped away the sick from her chin
with a rough metal hand. Liv put her arm around her.

‘…Do you ever
f-feel hungry?’ Liv asked her, rubbing her back. Tabitha shook her head, and
wiped her snotty nose with her wrist.

‘But you still
feel weak, like you’ve n-not eaten?’ said Liv. Tabitha nodded. Liv thought for
a while in the silence. Tabitha sobbed and leant in to her shoulder. Liv opened
her mouth to speak; hesitated.

‘Hun, what you
were telling me about your heart and your b-blood… maybe your stomach’s changed
too. Maybe you need to eat the kind of things that they eat.’ Liv only realised
how bad that sounded after she’d said it. They’d both seen what the spiders
ate. Tabitha hid her face away in her grey hands, and cried.

‘Oh God, I’m
s-sorry,’ said Liv, pulling her close. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Beyond the castle wall,
the birds sang in a sunny grey world.

Liv insisted on
taking Tabitha upstairs to the beds. Their sleeping quarters were a Spartan
set-up; old fold-out canvas sun beds, draped skeletal in throws and bed sheets.
Liv opened the door of a storeroom in the corner, and sat Tabitha down on the
bed inside. There was a narrow window in here, like the arrow slits downstairs,
letting in the fading light of dusk.

‘I claimed this
room to m-myself, away from the boys,’ Liv said proudly. ‘A lady needs her
privacy.’ It was cosy in here; a snug space filled with cushions, blankets and
books. Liv sat Tabitha down on the bed, and looked her ragged silver-stained
clothes up and down.

‘Here hun, I’ve
got a spare top if you’d like it,’ said Liv. ‘I packed it in a hurry when
everything happened, so it might not be my best one. It’s clean though.’

‘I could do with
something new to wear, thanks,’ Tabitha admitted, taking the crinkled t-shirt
that Liv produced from a backpack in the corner. Tabitha looked down at her own
dirty t-shirt and jeans. They were covered in holes and tears; browned with
dirt and blotchy with silver bloodstains.

‘Thank you,’
Tabitha said gratefully, smoothing her new t-shirt out on the bed beside her.
‘You’ve all made me feel so welcome.’ Liv smiled, shrugged her shoulders. They
could hear Laika climbing the wooden steps leading up from downstairs. A few
moments later she came padding in, and plopped down beside Tabitha on the bed.

‘No, Laika,’
said Tabitha. ‘Off. You can’t come on here.’

‘It’s ok, I
don’t m-mind,’ said Liv, stroking Laika’s warm head. ‘Just get some rest, ok?’

‘Would you mind
explaining everything to the boys, please?’ said Tabitha. ‘It’s… I feel like a
leper or something.’

‘Of course hun,
if that’s what you w-want,’ Liv replied. Tabitha smiled a little.