The Scourge (13 page)

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

“Keep going.”

“Peree–”

“We keep going.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re stubborn?”

He sips from his oilskin, and passes it to me. “Once or twice.”

“We’re running out of water, the torch is almost gone, and we don’t seem like we’re getting any closer. We’ve got to get you back.”

He doesn't speak right away. “I’m not going back.”

I listen for the playful note in his voice, but it’s not there. “What do you mean? Is your leg worse?”

“I don’t think it was too good to begin with, but yeah, it’s worse.”

“Let me feel.” The cloth covering the wound is swamped with fresh blood, and the skin around it feels like a sun-baked rock. The back of my neck prickles. “We have to get you back.”

He speaks deliberately, like he’s explaining something to a child. “Fenn, I can’t. Even right after the tiger attacked me, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to walk two days back.”

“Don’t say that . . . please, don’t say it.” My eyes fill with tears for the second time today.

“Okay, let’s keep going as long as we can. If worse comes to worst, you can carry me.”

Joking again. “This isn’t funny.”

“I know.” He strokes my hand. “It’s okay, really.”

I explode. “What exactly about any of this is at all okay? You’re injured, we’re over two days into the caves, we can’t find the Hidden Waters, and we’re running out of supplies!”

“At least we’re together. It would be much worse to be in here alone, not finding the Waters, running out of supplies, and injured.”

I swipe at my face. “There’s a limit to my ability to look on the bright side.”

He pulls himself to his feet. I jump up to help him. “Come on, it’s not getting any brighter sitting around here.”

I increasingly hold his weight as he weakens. I feel so guilty. Guilty for leading him on this wild-goose chase; guilty that he’s in the caves at all, instead of in his trees. A hard voice in my head whispers that none of us would be in the caves if it wasn’t for the Scourge and the Lofties, but I dismiss it impatiently.

We camp for the night in an unremarkable cave, much smaller than the massive caverns we’ve been passing through. I change the dressing on his wound, and he falls asleep the minute we finish our scanty meal. I lay awake, wondering what I’ll do when he can no longer walk.

I’m being consumed by the Scourge, torn apart slowly, every fiber of my body screaming in torment. The creatures pant around me, their fetid breath sickening me, as I finally succumb to them.

I wake, shuddering in terror, and realize the panting is real.

“Peree?” I whisper.

“Here.” His voice is slurred.

I crawl to him and feel his forehead. “How are you?”

“Nice and warm.”

I sigh. He can’t be too bad if he still has a sense of humor. My relief shatters when I touch his leg. It’s scorching.

“I was dreaming,” he says, “about swimming in the water hole. The water was warm, no flesh-eaters. You were there.”

“You swim?” I’ve never heard of a Lofty swimming before.

“Always wanted to. I watched you swimming with the others, wished I could, too.”

“The others?”

“You and your friends. Swim, work, cook, play, dance, argue, joke. Everything you did. Watching you for years.”

I’m stunned into silence. He’s quiet too, except for his labored breathing. When he speaks again, he sounds more lucid. “Years ago, you were lost in the woods. Do you remember?”

“That wasn’t exactly an uncommon thing for me,” I say warily.

“Your friends were looking for you. A boar charged you.”

I tense. “How do you know about that?”

“I was there, in the trees. I shot it.”

“I’ve always wondered . . . I should’ve died.”

“After that I watched you. Watched after you. I was the lookout, for the Scourge, for you.”

I think back to all the times I heard movement in the trees and knew a Lofty was there. It happened so often I took it for granted we were being watched, but “we” being the key word—not just me.

“Why did you watch me?”

“Curious at first, about you, your Sightlessness. How you managed.” He moves his leg, and moans. I want to comfort him, but I’m literally frozen. “After the boar, I felt responsible for you, worked hard at archery, hoping to be your Keeper. I wanted to protect you, even if we were separated by the trees.”

“I . . . I didn’t know.”

He takes my hand, fumbling for it in the dark. “Didn’t want you to know. I wouldn’t have told you, except it doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m not letting you die here.”

“Who said anything about dying?” His voice cracks in an attempt to laugh.

“I’m finding a way out.” I crawl to my pack, and pull it over to him. Then I tuck my bedroll around him, and situate my last oilskin sack and the rest of the food by his side.

“Fenn. No use.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not too late.” I take out the pouch of crampberries, weighing it in my hand. It’s almost empty. “I’m leaving my pack; I need to move quickly. Here’s the torch.” I place the piece of wood in his hand. “You saved my life once, Peree. Let me save yours. Please.”

He presses my cold knuckles to his lips. “If you insist.”

I allow myself to do something I’ve wanted to do since our night in the trees. I touch his face, exploring his features. I trace the ridged arches of his eyebrows with my fingertips, smooth his eyelids with my thumbs, and follow the firm line of his jaw. His cheeks and chin are forested in stubble. I memorize his face, both the beauty and the small imperfections, like a scar along one cheekbone where his beard doesn’t grow, a small lump across the bridge of his nose, as if it had been broken. He lies still, his breathing becoming more even with my touch. I smooth his hair back from his face, and find the feathers Calli said he wore.

I kiss his cheek, and whisper in his ear. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll try not to wander off,” he whispers back. “Be safe.”

Safe. All this time he was worrying about me, wanting to protect me. Now it’s my turn. I only hope I’m not too late.

I have a theory. I remember Willow telling us the legend of the Hidden Waters as we dozed around the fire as children. She said the waters bubble up from underground, like rainwater seeping from saturated earth. Only this water isn’t muddy, it’s clean, pure—and most important—safe. Protected. It’s what makes me so sure the source is somewhere in the caves. Where else would water be safe from the Scourge?

Willow told us something else. I remember her words clearly, as if she’s whispering them to me now. She said the water came from underground and pooled in a water hole. A water hole
as warm as the air in summer
. If the water was really that warm, then it must be outside. Because nothing in these caves could be described as warm.

And if the water can find its way outside, so can we. I hope.

The smell of the caves is changing. It’s musty, like Eland’s shirt when he comes in from the rain, and every so often I feel a little moisture under my hand. I press on through the dark, willing water to appear.

Miraculously, it does. The roar of a rushing stream grows in my ears and the passage broadens in front of me. I step more gingerly, feeling the ground with my feet before I put my weight down. I can’t tell where the rock ends and the water begins with all the echoing noise. When I do find the drop-off, I fall to my knees and plunge my hands into the stream.

I clean my hands and scrub my face, shivering as the frigid water slips down my neck and chest. Then I drink. It tastes very clean, like sipping pure air, but with a slight metallic tang. I want to know where the underground river goes, if there might be a way to follow it outside, but all I can tell is there’s no more light here than in the passages behind me. The darkness is complete.

It’s not warm, but this has to be it, the Hidden Waters. It has to be.

I don’t have time to debate about it. Our water will be gone within the day, and it will be a long, hard walk for Peree to get here, if he can make it at all. I hurry back down the tunnel, berating myself for not bringing one of the empty water sacks to fill for him. I remember the crampberry pouch stuffed in my pocket. I shake out the last one or two berries, and rush back to the stream to fill the empty pouch. The water may not smell so good when he gets it, but it’s better than none.

I follow the foul smell of the berries back the way I came, letting my nose guide me this time instead of my ears. As the sound of the water diminishes little by little, my anxiety grows. Will Peree still be conscious? Will he even be alive? By the time I enter the cavern where I left him, the third one I passed through—I made sure to count them—I’m in agony. I stop and listen for his breathing.

“Peree?” His name taunts me, bouncing around the room.

“I’m here,” he finally answers, his voice weak. I allow myself to breathe again.

I kneel next to him and hold the pouch of sloshing water to his lips. “Here, drink.”

“Mmm, crampberries.” He tries to laugh, but ends up choking. I fumble around in the dark, repacking the torch, the untouched food, and the oilskin of water that I left for him. Then I search his pack. There’s no way he’ll be able to carry it or his bow and quiver of arrows now. I shove his remaining provisions, the medicine pouch, his knife, and the little carved bird into my pack and hoist it up, ignoring the throbbing of my shoulders.

“Come on, we’ve got to get you moving,” I say.

“Can’t do it,” he whispers.

“We agreed to stay together, remember?” He tries to speak, but I can’t make out what he says. “Please, Peree. Try.”

A moment passes, then I feel him lift his neck. I support his shoulders as he struggles to a sitting position.

“So dizzy.”

I cup his cheeks with my hands, like I used to with Eland when I really wanted him to listen. “Do you remember my first day with the Scourge, when I collapsed with the flesh-eaters all around me? I was terrified, and I wanted to give up, but you made me believe I could do it. Well, I believe you can do this. Find the strength.”

He leans back, like he’s going to lie down again, but instead he puts his hands under him and, gasping, pushes himself to his feet. I take as much of his weight onto my shoulder as I can.

“One step at a time,” I say. “Take it one step at a time.”

I sing to him as we shuffle forward, any song I can think of. Songs I haven’t sung since I was young; songs Aloe sang when I was frightened or upset. Peree doesn’t speak. His rasping breath and the movement of his feet are the only signs he’s still conscious. A few times he wavers, like he’s about to faint, and I wedge him between my body and the wall, trying to keep him upright.

When I run out of songs I talk to him. I tell him things I’ve never told anyone, like how frightening Sightlessness can be sometimes, and how exhausting it is to try to be brave, to do for myself, to not ask for help, to be more like Aloe. I tell him how I sometimes envy the sighted so much it hurts. And other times I’m so fiercely proud of my self-sufficiency, I wouldn’t be sighted if I had the choice. I tell him how much it meant to have him as my Keeper, to know he was there in the trees, watching over me. He doesn’t respond. I’m not sure he can hear me anymore, but I sing and I talk until I’m hoarse, and still we walk toward the water.

I lose track of time and distance again, thanks to the fatigue from carrying my pack and much of Peree’s weight, and the constant fear that he’ll pass out. I try to remember how many caverns we’ve passed through, but all the caves and passages we traversed in the last two and a half days blend in my memory. The days since I became the Water Bearer feel like one long, dark passage, with no end. In the blackest moments, my entire life feels that way.

The sound of rushing water brings me to my senses again. Fighting to hold Peree up, I focus the rest of my energy on reaching it. When I can feel the spray of water on my legs, I lower him to the rock floor.

I fill a water sack and hold his head up so he can drink. Most of the water slides down his face, but he swallows a little, and coughs. I cushion his head with a balled-up extra dress, and inch the dry, blood-crusted bandages off his leg. The swelling and heat beneath is appalling. I clean the wound with water until I can feel no more dirt or dried blood, then I squeeze more agrimony and yarrow paste from my medicine pouch and rewrap it. He doesn’t stir; I think he’s unconscious. When I finish, I wait. Wait for him to wake up, or to die.

I listen to the water rush by. It sounds like it emerges from the rock itself, and disappears back into it, dampening my hope that we might find a way out. Exhausted and dispirited, I curl up beside Peree, my hand on his chest to reassure myself that he’s breathing. Lulled by the constant stream of water, I sleep.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

I lay my hand against his cheek. “How do you feel?”

He shakes his head slightly. “Where are we?”

“The Hidden Waters. We walked here, do you remember?”

“I thought I was dead . . . dreamed I was a flesh-eater.”