Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Iroll over in bed, blinking out of sleep. As I do, I notice legs at my eye level, standing right in front of me. I look up.
The fisherman is standing there. His eyes are wide open and he stares at me with hatred. His hand reaches down to grab my face—
I bolt upright in bed and scream.
“Rhagos’s tits? What’s your problem?” Kalos’s bored voice cuts through some of the terror fog.
I glance over at him, my thoughts scattered. I can’t focus. I’m terrified. Why isn’t he afraid? “Fisherman. Awake.” I grab the thin blanket on my body. “He’s going to kill me.”
Kalos grunts and moves to stand next to the bed, where the fisherman was just a moment ago. “He’s very dead.”
Shaking my head, I’m on the verge of tears. “No—he’s going to get me.”
“Look.” Kalos moves to the far side of the hut and stands over the dead, covered body. He kicks it. “See? Dead.”
I try to hear what he’s saying, but I’m still in fight-or-flight mode. He’s dead. I tell myself, over and over again. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.
“Has your mind cracked?” Kalos asks.
“I…I think I’m dreaming,” I manage.
“You’re not sure?”
I lie back down. “Dreaming. Goodnight.”
And I go back to sleep immediately.
When I wake up in the morning, I stretch in bed, not quite ready to get up and face the day. I yawn and smack my lips, and then I frown when I notice that Kalos is watching me intently, a vaguely amused expression on his face.
“What is it?” I ask.
“You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
He points at the dead body across the room. “You woke up screaming about him. Said he was going to kill you.”
I digest this. A vague flash of memory echoes in my head, like a slip of a dream. “Oh. I must have had one of my night terrors. Sorry about that.”
“Night terrors? What’s that?” He takes a step toward me, interested. “You know I don’t dream, so you’re going to have to tell me more.”
Fiddling with the frayed hem of the blanket, I try not to feel embarrassed.
“It’s something I’ve dealt with all my life.
Sometimes my brain doesn’t recognize the difference between being asleep and awake.
If I have a nightmare, I can wake myself up with screaming, but I’m not really awake.
It’s like my mind is still asleep. I don’t remember it when I wake up.
” I smooth my hair back from my forehead.
“It happens sometimes when my sleep schedule is messed up, or I’m stressed. ”
His brows shoot up with disbelief. “What could you possibly be stressed about?”
“You’re kidding, right? We just killed a man.”
Kalos doesn’t even blink. “He was going to die anyhow. That’s what mortals do.”
He’s not getting it. I can’t believe we’re even having to argue about this. “Yes, but we were responsible. We deliberately caused his death.”
The god doesn’t seem bothered by me pointing this out. “So now you’re a martyr in addition to someone who spouts platitudes full of sunshine. I see.”
“I’m not a martyr,” I huff, offended. I push the blankets back and swing my feet over the edge of the bed, and then don’t step down, because the floor is still wet and mucky. I cross my legs instead.
“Yet you blame yourself for something inevitable,” Kalos points out.
“We did it. We literally killed him. Wasn’t inevitable.”
“I seem to recall me being the one that did it, and you’re taking credit for it. Should I be offended?” He tilts his head, regarding me.
I sputter in outrage. “That’s not what I meant—”
Oblivious to the filthy floor, Kalos moves to the side of the bed and leans over me. “Listen, my sunshine-belching martyr, bad things are going to happen on this journey. People are going to die. You shouldn’t care unless the people dying are us.”
“That’s the problem,” I point out, keeping a smile on my face despite the annoyance I feel. “You never care, Kalos. That’s why you’re down here.”
He throws his arms wide. “So I should care about everyone? Cuddle them all and reassure them that the god of disease loves them very much?”
I scowl. “You’re being frustrating.”
The god waves an idle hand at me. “And like I said, you’re being a martyr.”
After that, I give up on arguing with him. I get dressed while on the bed and go through the items in my pack, trying to determine how much we have left and if it’ll get us where we need to go, or if we need to rob the dead man blind. Kalos is silent through all of this, and it makes me suspicious.
I glance up over at him, noting he’s seated by the cold fireplace, staring at the wall. “You’re quiet. Don’t you want to call me a martyr a few more times before we head out?”
No answer.
Okay, that’s…weird. I put my beat-up sandals on and move over to him, watching his posture. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. It’s like he’s not mentally there at all.
“Kalos?” I ask and wave a hand in front of his staring face.
Nothing. Nothing at all. No response. Not even a blink.
Is this his Apathy catching up with him? Was he too active, and now this is some sort of Apathy-hangover? Poor guy. I brush a lock of hair off his brow and settle his hands on his legs, moving him like I would a mannequin. When there’s still no response, I move back to the bed and settle in.
However long this takes, I guess we’re here for the interim.
Kalos returns to himself sometime after dark. One moment he’s a zombie, the next he’s getting to his feet and peering out the window, as if half the day hasn’t passed.
I jump to my feet, too. “Hey! Are you all right, Kalos? What happened?”
He scowls at me, his expression one of pure disdain. “What do you think happened?”
Okay, he clearly is not in the mood to talk about it. I put a hand up, backing off. I can take a hint. “I can pack and be ready to go in a few minutes, if you’re capable of heading out.”
“I’m clearly more ready than you are,” he replies, tone withering.
Fun times. We head out an hour or so later, in the dead of night.
Kalos isn’t talking, and all is eerily quiet.
I look over my shoulder the entire time, half expecting someone to turn on a light or for a door to open.
For someone to call out that we’ve been caught sneaking away. Yet all remains silent.
Well, all is silent except for Dingle. It’s difficult to travel with a goat.
It’s near impossible to travel quietly with a goat.
Once I realize this, I pull out the corn cakes and keep giving him tiny nibbles as we head through the town to keep him from bleating.
By the time we make it out of the village, I’m down to only one cake and I polish it off myself.
Traveling here is so odd. The skies are bright with stars, but everything else is so, so dark.
There are no streetlights, no electricity, nothing.
Just unrelenting black night. It feels dangerous and a little bleak to head away from the comfort of houses and into the brush.
I figure that even though it’s probably not safe to cut through the woods, it’s safer than staying on the roads.
If we were going to be felled by something as simple as a bear, we would have already been killed in the swamp by an alligator.
At least my bug bites have healed quickly and are no longer plaguing me.
We sleep in the woods without a fire. Or rather, I sleep and Kalos just sits nearby, staring at me until I wake up.
It’s unnerving to realize that he’s not sleeping, but he’s also not eating, not drinking, and certainly not handling any other bodily functions.
He’s not human at all. It’s like he’s a bad copy of what a person should be, or a really convincing hologram.
Sometimes I have to stop myself from reaching over and pinching him.
“You there?” I ask at one point.
His brows go down and he scowls at me. Yup, he’s there.
It’s two days before we find the outskirts of a city tucked in a valley near the woods. It’s close enough to the coast that I pull out the map again and study it, frowning.
“This doesn’t look like Balsingra,” I comment to Kalos as I peer at the map and at the city on the horizon. “You said it had walls, right? The one on the map has walls, too. But that city has no walls that I can see.”
It sits atop a hill and spreads over it like an ant pile, with clusters of small, whitewashed homes and thatched roofs, but no walls.
“It isn’t Balsingra,” Kalos says.
“It’s not?” I eye the map as if its betrayed me. “Did we take a wrong turn?”
“The map isn’t going to show every settlement,” he tells me in a scathing voice. “Do you think my world has only a handful of cities in it like the map shows?”
Oh. “Well…no. I don’t know. How the hell would I know? I’m not from here!”
“Well, it doesn’t. This town isn’t big enough to warrant being included on the map. I suppose you’ll want to go anyhow?” His tone is full of irritation, as if the very idea of visiting this town seems like a pain in the ass.
“It might not be a bad idea. As long as we keep a low profile, we could resupply and buy some weapons. Maybe some things that make camping easier. You’ll have to make sure you don’t kill anyone though.”
Kalos narrows his eyes at me, not liking the reminder about the fisherman he nuked. “If we must. Dingle is almost out of feed, after all.”
I like that he brings up the goat’s needs and not mine. Classy. “Then it’s settled. We’ll head in, get what we need, and head back out again.”
“To Balsingra?” he gives me an annoyed look. “What’s so special about that particular city that we must go there?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just that your other Aspect already passed through. I’m hoping they won’t think to backtrack to find us.”
“Mm.” Kalos doesn’t look convinced, but he shrugs. “You’re in charge.”
“That’s right,” I say brightly. “Let’s just keep going and stick with the plan.”