CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
But having worked side-by-side with my parents for years and being one of my father’s closest friends, I suppose that came with the territory. We lost our dad, so he stepped up to fill that fatherly role in our lives.
Until he didn’t.
“The last time I saw Irene” Cecil said, oblivious to my spiraling thoughts.
“She was worried that they were on to her. She said someone had finally started asking questions, really digging into why certain things weren’t making it back to Cyllene.
” He turned to look at me then, raw pain in his eyes.
“We had talked about her coming here, to Ersa Estates. With you. Maybe on the next supply run, maybe sooner if she could swing it. We don’t have much here, but we have each other.
I told her if the two of you could get out, if you could get away, I would make sure you had a home waiting for you here.
I told her…” He cleared his throat. “I told her that we couldn’t provide you two with those big city conveniences, but there is one thing we would give you, always. A family.”
Tears were sliding down my cheeks. I didn’t try to stop them.
When he spoke again, his voice was just above a whisper.
“I kept coming back to our spot. Waiting for her. Hoping every time that I’d see her there, bags packed, with a ten-year-old girl in tow.
After several months passed, and she never showed, I figured what that meant.
But I never stopped holding out hope. I told myself maybe she changed her mind.
Maybe she settled down eventually, too, and had a husband and some kids on the other side of that wall. ”
The hand he put on my shoulder was so large, it encompassed my shoulder and then some.
“When Nya and Kieran came back after that second trip and told me what you’d said, about her being executed—” He stopped abruptly. Swallowed. “I’m happy that you’re here. But I wish I never had to find out the truth.”
A sob escaped me, and he looked away. If it was to give me space or because his own eyes were glistening, I wasn’t certain.
“The thing is,” he said after a while. “I never knew if she felt the same about me. If she saw me as anything more than a really good friend. But I didn’t care. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And smart and kind and funny and…I don’t have to tell you this.”
I shook my head. Beyond words.
“When Nya and Kieran were gearing up to go find you that first time, I had a good laugh.” He smiled at the memory.
“Kieran and these other young bucks, they don’t listen to me.
I’m only thirty-six, but to them I’m just some old married guy.
I remember I said to Kieran, ‘You may think you’re hot shit here at camp, but let me tell you—if Maila is anything like her sister, you’re in for it.
’” He was laughing now, a deep rumbling in his chest. “I said to him, ‘You just wait. You’re gonna be trailing after that girl like a sick pup.’”
In spite of my tears, I smiled, too.
“Anyway, I know there’s a lot to talk about still.
A lot that you don’t know about us, and things for us to learn about you.
But I just wanted you to know that.” He pressed his palms to his knees and began to rise.
“I was waiting for you to ask how we knew who you were and why we sought you out, and then I was going to tell you. But you never did ask.”
Our eyes met again as he stood. When I spoke, my voice was thick. “I didn’t care what the reason was. Not anymore.”
His expression had more warmth in it than the fire before us.
“I know,” he said. After one more long look, in which it felt like we said a thousand things while saying nothing at all, he added, “By the way, I’m the one who made all those maps.
If there’s anything you remember about me when you leave here, besides all that I just told you, I want it to be my incredible artistic ability. ”
I wanted to laugh. But when he walked away, it was more tears that came.
“Ready?”
I turned away from Nya and Kieran to look back at the camp one last time.
I took in the dilapidated homes, the cul-de-sac, the fire.
The people passing by, some of whom I hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to, but who still gave me a friendly wave goodbye.
I tried to memorize the faces of Cecil and Rubi and little Filimena, who were there to see me off.
Even Xiomara was there. To her credit, she waved. But maybe she was just glad to see me go.
“Wait!”
In the open doorway of a house to our left, George had appeared and was stepping gingerly across the crumbling front walk. Cecil moved to offer him a hand, but George stubbornly waved him away.
He came to stand in front of me, adjusting his glasses and smoothing the wrinkles out of his pants. Then he stuck out his hand. “It was wonderful to finally meet you, Maila.”
I accepted his hand, and he clasped his other over top of it.
“It took a lot of bravery to come here,” he said. “And it will take a lot of bravery to return.”
His words contained more than one meaning, and we both knew it.
“It was wonderful to meet you, too,” I replied. There was so much more I wanted to say, but the words stuck in my throat.
As if he could sense the emotion that was rising in me, George patted my hand. Like he was assuring me that he had seen it all, lived it all, and that everything would be okay somehow. Then he leaned in, so only I could hear.
“I do see what would make a bookworm from Cyllene so brave.”
I could feel my eyes narrow slightly as I tried to grasp his meaning.
“Being kicked out of the city by The Council is one thing. But we should all be so lucky to have a dashing young man steal us from our bed in the night.”
I followed his appreciative gaze to where Kieran stood. It was an effort to hide my smile.
“Be safe,” George said finally, stepping back to the others.
“I will.”
Finally, I turned to Nya. “I’m ready,” I said. Even though, inexplicably, it felt like my heart was breaking.
We headed back toward Cyllene the same way we had come, and we walked mostly in silence.
Reality was lurking on the horizon, about to come crashing down, breaking the spell of this trip.
And maybe breaking me, in general, if anyone had realized I was gone.
The realer it all felt, the more I began to wonder which was the worse decision—leaving Cyllene in the first place or returning there now.
At one point, I had the overwhelming urge to beg Nya not to take me back.
But I stifled it and continued putting one foot in front of the other.
Nya’s subdued demeanor, on the other hand, seemed to be because her heart was heavy. Her thoughts were still with the family from this afternoon.
As for Kieran…I still didn’t understand why he was being so standoffish.
Multiple times, I gathered the courage to say something to him.
But each time I opened my mouth, the fear of his reaction kept me silent.
I decided it was better not to know what he was thinking, than to have him confirm something I didn’t want to hear.
When we were halfway across the field that led to the walls, Nya twisted her backpack around so she could dig in the front pocket. She pulled out a glass vial filled with some sort of dark liquid. With the skies cloudy and starless, I couldn’t make out the color of it.
“This is for when we cross the wall,” she said. “And the trip through the city.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a potion. Before you ask, yes, it employs magic.
It will make you drowsy and relaxed.” She tilted it back and forth, watching the liquid slosh around.
“I know last time was rough for you, and we’re not going to have the option to stop and let you puke your guts out this time.
We have to be quiet. And more importantly, we have to be quick. ”
She wordlessly handed me the vial.
Maybe I should have been more hesitant. But she had trusted me not to poison her that time—it felt like ages ago now—when I offered her dinner, and I owed her that same trust. Not to mention that she had already had just about every opportunity under the sun to kill me, if that’s what she had wanted.
I popped the cork and downed the contents in two sips. To my surprise, it was tasteless.
When I was finished, I handed the empty vial back to Nya to stow away, then glanced at Kieran. His face was unreadable.
“Where do you all get this stuff?” I asked. I kept waiting for my throat to burn or my stomach to gurgle. Something to indicate that I had just ingested a magic potion. But it was no different than if I had sipped water.
“Sigrid,” Nya responded. “She’s an enchantress who took pity on us years ago and decided to join us. We would be lost without her.”
My mouth fell open. “You actually have an enchantress who lives with you all? In Ersa Estates?”
“We do.” Nya sounded uneasy. As if she already knew what I was going to ask next. “We would’ve taken you to see her, but she’s wary of strangers.”
I nearly laughed aloud at the irony in her words. But something told me it wasn’t just strangers in general, but me specifically that their enchantress didn’t want to meet. And that was deeply disappointing.
The Strangers had been so welcoming overall, I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me that some of them may have purposely kept their distance during my visit. Why would everyone be so quick to trust a woman from Cyllene?
As we crunched through the grass, the edges of my vision began to soften. By the time we reached the foot of the wall, I could barely stand. My mind slowed, then was quiet.
I felt Kieran lift me and hold me against his chest, positioning my legs around his waist and draping my arms over his shoulders. “I know it might be difficult, but still try to hold on to me if you can. Okay?”
It was the first thing he had said to me in hours. Maybe all day. But all I could say through the cloud of the potion was, “Okay.”
From there, everything was a blur. Flashes of the wall, of buildings, of the streets.
Things I thought I was seeing, but could have been dreams. Then I was in my apartment.
In my bed. Someone was pulling the covers up to my neck.
I said, “Wait.” In my mind or out loud, I wasn’t certain.
But they needed to wait. Because somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, where some semblance of thought was trying to fight its way to the surface, I realized that we had never discussed when I would see them again.
If I would see them again.
There were silver eyes. Silver that I could see somehow, even in the dark.
I felt something soft brush against my forehead.
Like Irene’s lips when she would kiss me goodnight each night.
But this was different. It was sweet, gentle, but not the kiss of a sister.
I would decide later that that part, definitely, was a dream.
I don’t know how long I was asleep for. Only that when I woke up, it was still the middle of the night.
And I was alone.