Twenty-One Inesa
Twenty-One
Inesa
The crackling ache in my throat is gone, my muscles are strong instead of shaky, and my eyes are fully open for what feels like the first time in days. Even the sunlight seems brighter as it breaches the canopy of leaves, warm and pale yellow. I stand still for a moment, tilting my face toward the slashes of unobstructed sky.
I don’t let myself bask too long, though. Melino? is watching me.
If the sunlight is coaxing me back to life like a wilted flower, it’s having quite a different effect on her. Her shoulders are raised up around her ears, her body tensed and gaze narrowed. It gives her the appearance of a wary cat, not even trusting the impartial brightness of the sun. I remember thinking of her as spidery, when she first dropped onto the hood of the car, her long, thin limbs clad in black, her eyes wide-set and night-dark. Now I can’t shake the feline aura she exudes.
“Are you feeling better?” I ask. It still feels like an absurd thing to say, considering we were quite literally at each other’s throats no more than a day ago.
She gives a stiff, tight nod.
“Okay, then.” I draw a breath. “We should probably go.”
Another silent nod. The compass case has gone back into my pocket, and I decide to bring the bowl with me as well. It will save me the trouble of having to whittle another one later. Her knife is made of more expensive materials than our entire house on Little Schoharie Lane, but it’s very much a killing tool, not a crafting one. Made for carving flesh, not wood.
I put that in my pocket, too. Melino?’s gaze follows my hand as I do.
You’re not getting it back , I almost tell her. I may not be much of a fighter, but I’m no fool.
Her eyes flicker to my face again. “Which way?”
“Following the stream.” I indicate it with my chin. “Eventually it will take us to a lake or a river. And where there’s water, there’s civilization.”
I’d stick close to the stream anyway. Just in case I’m wrong, I don’t want to be too far away from our only source of water. The animals will stay by the stream, too, which will make hunting easier when we exhaust our meager supply of nutrition paste.
Plus, Luka is also smart enough to seek out a source of water. If he’s nearby, he’ll find the same stream. Melino? doesn’t have to know what I’m thinking.
I try to let the idea of seeing him again lift my spirits, but my stomach is hollow with hopelessness. Over and over again I see his face in my mind, stricken with horror, screaming my name.
He’s alive , I tell myself firmly. He has to be. If I’m still here, as weak and inept as I am, Luka has survived, too. He’s always been better, stronger than me.
Melino? and I end up walking side by side, neither of us willing to turn our back to the other. The silence that stretches between us isn’t quite companionable, but it isn’t hostile, either. Melino? keeps her head down, though occasionally her eyes dart over to me, both the real one and the fake one. I realize that I’ve started to not even notice her prosthetic. It just seems like such a natural part of her.
“Did Azrael put that in?” I blurt out, and almost clap my hand over my mouth. What a presumptuous question to ask someone who knows three dozen different ways to kill me.
But Melino? doesn’t look offended. She lifts a finger to her cheekbone, right below the false eye. “We have them implanted when we’re children.”
Her voice, as usual, betrays nothing, but the way she touches her face seems self-conscious.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and then lapses back into silence.
I’m left with the image of a child strapped down on an operating table, sharp medical tools hovering over their face. I’m sure the process was brisk, anesthetized, and clean. But I can’t dispel the barbarity of it. The idea of going to sleep and waking up with such an essential piece of you ripped away and replaced.
“Did it hurt?” I ask softly.
Another too-probing question. Melino? stops walking. The wind lifts the long strands of her ponytail and makes her white hair shiver around her face. I stop, too, and just watch her. Beautiful and pale, she’s too bright in this world of muted browns and greens.
She’s silent for so long that I give up on her answering, and start to turn around again, but then—her voice.
Quietly, without looking over at me, she says, “Yes.”
The forest changes around us. It’s subtle, but not below my attention. The trees are thinning. White birches begin to emerge among the thick deciduous brush, like slashes of light. More of the sky shows through the canopy, larger swaths of gray-tinged blue. I hope this means we’re getting close to the edge of the woods. Close to civilization.
At the same time, I hope we’re not. Because the minute the cameras click on again, Melino? will have her rifle drawn and I’ll be staring down the barrel with nothing but a flimsy knife in my hand. Maybe I can convince her to at least give me a head start.
Or maybe we’ll find Luka first.
Just as I feel a flicker of hope kindle in my chest, a branch cracks nearby. I stop instantly, boots skidding in the dirt.
Melino? heard it, too. She pauses, fists clenched at her sides, so still she looks almost lifeless.
I inhale, searching for the scent of rotting meat, but I don’t find it. Not a Wend, then. I’m not quite optimistic enough to imagine that it’s another person, appearing to lead us triumphantly to civilization.
Another twig snap. For some reason, I have to restrain myself from reaching out to Melino?. I don’t even know what it would achieve, to touch her. I just want to.
The leaves rustle, and then a flash of brown and white darts out from the brush. Before I can react, before I can even register that it’s a deer, Melino?’s rifle is lifted. The bullet cracks the air. The deer gives a plaintive honk and then collapses in the dirt, limbs spasming for a moment before going still.
I let out a breath, half shock and half relief. Warily, Melino? lowers her gun.
“It’s just a deer,” I say.
Very slowly, I walk over and examine it. Melino? follows. It’s definitely dead, but there’s almost no blood—her bullet went right through its eye. Its tawny fur is matted and damp-looking, with a shimmery pattern of scales emerging on its chest. Its antlers are draped with moss. And where its hooves should be are webbed feet instead, only lumpy and misshapen, the transformation not quite complete.
“A mutation?” Melino? asks.
I nod.
I’ve seen a hundred of them before. Luka doesn’t kill them, because there’s no point in wasting the bullets, but every so often a group of men in Esopus will round themselves up and go hunting for mutations. Obviously there’s no eating the meat, and the pelts are usually too disfigured to do anything with, either, the antlers too yellowed and ugly to display. But it’s an exercise in camaraderie, one of the rare times that people from Upper Esopus and Lower Esopus voluntarily mingle, bound by a shared purpose.
More than that, it’s a release. A necessary one. All the small, daily humiliations people face eventually build up and harden into rage, and it’s better to take that anger out on mutated deer than on each other. The more powerless you are, the better any shred of power tastes. It’s like taking a lifter.
“Oh,” I say suddenly. “Oh, no.”
Melino?’s head snaps up. “What?”
“The scent of the kill will draw the Wends here.” The thought sets my hands shaking. “I’ve heard they can smell fresh meat from miles away.”
Melino? draws a breath. “I shouldn’t have killed it. It was just instinct.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.” I stand up straight, drawing in a breath of my own. “It just means we should get out of here—fast.”
After the hunts, the men pile up all the deer and set their bodies alight, precisely so the smell doesn’t attract the Wends. I can build a decent fire of my own, given enough time, but we don’t have that time. The Wends could be on us in minutes.
I zip my jacket up to my throat, because the rare sunlight is already waning, and set off at a quicker pace, almost a jog. But I don’t get far before I realize Melino? isn’t following me.
I turn around. “What is it?”
She’s staring down at the deer’s body, eyes oddly unfocused. A small furrow emerges in her forehead, marring a face that is otherwise as smooth and flawless as marble.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice is low and distant, like an echo of itself. “It was just instinct.”