Chapter 35
Stella
The dining room of the Foxglove served venison meatloaf and wild spinach in the evening, and after days of eating stale road rations, it honestly smelled so much better than it should have.
I got myself a plate, and then another for Fergus as well as a cup of broth for Dougal.
I truly meant to wait, so we could eat it all together.
But I just couldn’t help myself, and I wolfed down my plate of meatloaf and greens before I even left the dining room.
I went by myself because the plan was for Edie to trade off, and she would join Fergus and Dougal when I went back inside.
It seemed the only fair way to handle things, since Dougal wasn’t allowed inside the village walls.
The warden agreed to let him pass through when it came time to leave, but only as long as he hurried straight down the main road and out the back gate.
Before we’d arrived at Xwechtáal, we’d been hoping to stay for several days, so we could rest up and find out more about Remy. But we’d already found out what we could, and our whole party wasn’t even allowed to rest properly at the inn.
The sun set early in the village, thanks to the surrounding mountains soaring high and casting shadows on the low-lying pass. The sky far above was still tinged pink and orange, but the kerosene streetlamps lit my pathway as I headed out.
A few meters away from the prickly walls of the village, a little campsite had been set up for Dougal. Leandro had pitched in, helping to make both Fergus and Dougal as comfortable as they could.
A broad canvas tarp was stretched taut between two weathered spruce branches and the side of a mossy boulder, creating a lean-to that would block the worst of the wind and weather, should any roll through.
Bedrolls were layered on top of each other over a bed of pine boughs to insulate against the chill that seeped up from the earth.
A small, carefully contained fire ring sat outside the makeshift tent, with a tin cup and an old kettle ready for tea or broth. Fergus was sitting across from it, with his back resting against the boulder while his brother slumbered in the tent.
“Don’t you know a watched pot never boils?” I teased as I approached, but he didn’t really look like he was watching anything. His eyes were far away, gazing vacantly in the distance.
When he looked up at me, he had to blink before a smile spread slowly across his face. “Hello, girl. Didn’t think it was your turn to see the lot of us. Got the short straw, did you?”
I handed him the plate, and I set the tin of broth in the fire ring to reheat it for Dougal. The hotter the broth, the more it helped fight off the perpetual chill he had most days.
“Would you believe I volunteered?” I asked.
“I would, but you’re far too good for the likes of me and Dougal,” he said. “Still, we’re grateful.
I sat down next to him, peering into the tent where I could hear Dougal. That was the one good thing about his raspy, labored breaths – you would definitely be able to hear the moment he stopped. If he stopped.
“How’s he been?” I asked quietly, as if much of anything woke Dougal.
The other day, Fergus and Leandro had tripped and stumbled while carrying him, and the stretcher had fallen heavily to the ground. Dougal wasn’t hurt, at least not that any of us could tell, and he didn’t even stir.
“As he ever was,” Fergus said noncommittally and took a half-hearted bite of his meatloaf. “Or as he has been, at least.”
“How are you?” I asked him.
He exhaled roughly, and then shook his head. “I’d leave off talking about me, in truth. What’s the story with Xwechtáal? How is the inn? Any word on Remy?”
“There isn’t too much to see of the village,” I said. “But the people seem nice, and they don’t leer at us like the Revvers did in Fort Lately.”
“Sure it’s always a good sign that you’ve not landed into another cult when the people aren’t gawking at you or holding you against your will,” Fergus said.
“Or feeding you to zombies,” I added.
“Aye, that is the main thing,” he agreed with a laugh. “But not a peep about the inn, I noticed. Are the beds as lush as I imagined?”
“I won’t lie and say it’s not a huge step up from the cold, hard ground,” I admitted. “But they aren’t anything compared to back on the Barbarabelle.”
“You’d swear those beds were stitched by angels,” he reminisced dreamily. “Folks say you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, but I did. I knew I’d never lie in better.”
“Do you regret leaving it behind?” I asked carefully.
“Dougal’s not the staying kind,” Fergus brushed it off. “Still half the world left to see. Never made it south of the line, even.”
“But you’ve been to Asia?” I asked.
He gave a nod. “Ah sure, that was before the virus and the whole collapse, like. Our dad was a structural engineer, buildings and all that. We landed in Japan for a couple of years while he worked on earthquake resistance.” He grinned over at me. “Konnichiwa! Genki?”
“What is that?” I asked. “What did you say?”
“That was ‘Hello, how are you?’ in Japanese,” Fergus explained. “That’s all that stuck, really. Oh, and ‘orenji.’ Orange was my favorite color.”
“What’s it like to travel?” I asked.
“How do you mean? You’ve barely stood still since I met you,” Fergus pointed out.
“No, I mean, to real travel. Like vacations and the way it used to be with people and different cultures and new foods,” I said.
“I don’t really remember anything outside of Canada, and that’s not so terrible, I suppose, but it’s hard when I don’t really know of anything outside of books or the little I’ve seen with my own two eyes. ”
“Wouldn’t be fair to say you’ve seen too little,” he countered, shaking his head. “Anyone left breathing’s seen more than enough. But you’re after the old world, aren’t you? The cities full of color and noise, easy food, and trinkets everywhere you looked.”
“The way you describe it makes it sound like it wasn’t that different than Fort Lately with the Revvers,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What for?” he asked, looking over at me in confusion.
“Everything with Dougal. I know I didn’t really invite you along this journey – ”
“You’d swear it was an insult, not an apology,” he interjected dryly.
“No, I only mean that… I never wanted anything bad to happen to you or your brother, or Alphie, or Sienna and Oakley and… and Juniper,” I said, my words choking on the growing lump in my throat. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry that Dougal got wrapped up into this.”
“If you feel you’ve cause to say sorry, I won’t stop you, but don’t be doing it for me or Dougal,” he said.
“We made our own way, and you know well we’re not ones to stay put.
On the road, and in life, things go sideways now and again.
That’s the way of it. It’s not your doing, Stella.
If it’s fate you trust in, then maybe it’s no one’s fault.
But if you believe in free will, as I do, then it’s Dougal’s.
Same as my choices are mine, and yours are yours. ”
“You really think it’s that simple?” I asked, my voice catching somewhere between hope and desperation.
“I do,” he said, like it settled the matter. “Simple as anything, and twice as tricky.”
“Do you have the answer for everything?” I asked, and I was only half-kidding.
“I’d say I do, but I’d be lying. I only know about thirty percent of everything, give or take, on a good day.” Then he turned to me, his dark eyes curious as he asked, “You never did say, by the way, about your friend Remy? Did you find anything?”
“According to the woman running the inn, Remy was here, but she left at the end of May,” I said.
He raised a brow. “You’d think that was good news that you’re still on her trail. But you’ve got a face on you like it’s bad.”
“We think she’s trying to get to the northern point of the Alaskan Territory,” I elaborated.
“Well, so you’ll be travelling on after her, won’t you?” Fergus asked. “Sure, wasn’t that as you planned?”
“I wasn’t planning to bring my toddler all the way up the frozen arctic,” I said. “But if I’m being honest the thing that scares me the most is that Boden might think it’s too far.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged, not wanting to fully give voice to the fear but finding myself doing it anyway. “Boden will likely think it’s too cold and dangerous, and that he’s gone as far as he can go. That he’ll turn back, and … and we’ll never see Remy again.”
“You think Boden will give up on her?” he asked.
“No, actually. It’s worse than that. I think he would never give up on her, unless it was to protect me and Fae. If he thinks Cold Shore is too much for us… he’ll let her be. And what if she needs us?”
“Well, then you keep at it, don’t you?” he asked. “You keep going until you can’t anymore. That’s all there is.”
“You know if you keep talking like that you could end up the next leader of the Revvers,” I said.
He leaned back, laughing heartily, and the firelight glinted in his eyes. “Don’t go tempting me now.”
The way he was looking at me then, with genuine hope and happiness lighting up his face, I noticed that he was rather handsome.
Actually, I’d been noticing it for a while now.
His eyes were deepset and intelligent with a glimmer of something playful, and his enigmatic smile quirked so easily on his lips.
His cheek bones were high above a tapered jaw, giving him a compelling foxlike appearance.
Being around him sometimes caused the heat to stir in my belly, a feeling that had mostly been dormant since Max had died. I didn’t know how Fergus was able to resurrect so much inside me, but I found myself enjoying his company more and more each day.
“You’re still going on with us to Glacier Valley?” I asked.
“Of course. Nothing’s changed there.”
The conversation lingered between us as the fire crackled softly, casting warm shadows that danced on our faces.
Suddenly, Fergus’s expression shifted, his laughter fading as he sat up, alert and tense. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. He started toward the tent, and that’s when I realized that I couldn’t hear his brother’s rasping breaths at all. “Dougal? Dougal! Dougal!”
He clambered on top of his brother, shaking him and beating his chest in a futile attempt. I hurried over to help him, and when I touched Dougal, his skin was already cold and clammy.
“Fergus, he’s gone,” I said, because pounding his brother into a pulp would not bring him back.
“Dougal, you bloody fool, you can’t go like this!” Fergus shouted, his voice cracking.
He let out a pained sob, then he got up and ran outside of the tent. I checked again, making sure there was no pulse, no breath, no life in Dougal, and I could not find any.
When I went out of the tent after Fergus, he was standing in the nearby road, staring up at the darkening sky. He let out an agonized, enraged scream, as if hoping that he would reach the gods.
Then he collapsed onto the ground, hunched over his knees, as his body was wracked with sobs. I knelt down beside him, and I put my hand on his back. He cried so hard that he dry heaved into the dirt, but I stayed with him.
Eventually, after his energy was spent, and the sky was dark and the stars were out, he lay on the ground with his head on my lap.
I ran my fingers through his thick hair, and I sang to him the same French lullaby that I sang Fae, because it was the only way I knew to comfort him.
He didn’t say anything, but he clung onto me so tightly – one arm around my waist, another my leg – that I didn’t dare let go of him.