A Time to Die

by Nadine Brandes

  I imagine the beasts charging—it will take a second. There are so many, I’m bound to die quickly. But a quick death is as far as my optimism goes.

  Run? Freeze? Yell? My impulse is to flee, but I can’t bear to turn my back on death. Why didn’t I let go of the rope and die from impact when I had the chance? I survived for this?

  The wolves stare at me, unblinking and unmoving apart from their ragged breath. I stare back, stiff and weak-hearted. Time stretches, swallowed by tense silence. Seconds remain before one of us moves. What can I do? What do wolves fear?

  I don’t know. I’ve never known. I’ve never even gone camping let alone encountered wolves in a canyon. Reid would know. He would survive.

  No. Reid’s not here. It’s just me and I’m not Reid. I never have been. I never will be. I no longer want to be. I’ve survived a dive off a canyon and a climb of torture. Wolves, bears, and coyotes still trump the two, but I feel uncharacteristically determined to die with a fight.

  I inch my left hand toward the ground, slower than a cat stalking a mole. My raw fingertips brush over a smooth, cold bone. It’s long and thick. A femur.

  Just what I want.

  In the moment my hand grasps my weapon, the leading grey wolf blinks and breaks from the pack like a stone from a slingshot. I screech and swing the femur. It catches Grey under the chin and he releases an angry yelp. He skids among the bones, regains his footing, and leaps once more. I duck, turn, and scramble up one of the boulders, banging my knee against the stone.

  I flip onto my back and flail my heels, catching Grey in the mouth. I scream again and pull my boot from the wolf’s jaws. The femur is no longer in my hand. The roars, snarls, and yaps double in ferocity. Every ounce of fur and drool charges.

  The coyotes head toward my surrounding boulders and the wolves follow Grey straight for me. The bears are slow on the uptake, but their roars shake me from the inside out like ravenous kettledrums. I’m on my feet in a flash then scramble up the boulders and leap from the highest one toward the cliff. I thank God with every particle of gushed oxygen that I land on a tiny cliff ledge on the canyon wall.

  I reel backward for a moment, but my right hand clings to a crack. My pinky keeps me from falling, curled like a bolt inside the crevice. A peek over my shoulder reveals Grey crouching, settling his shoulders for a spring.

  “Stop!” My shout is in vain.

  He sails through the air with a mighty launch. I squeeze my eyes shut and cower against the lumpy cliff. One hundred pounds of fur and muscle smash my face into the rock. Grey’s jaws clamp around my left arm and claws rake down my leg as he scrambles for balance.

  I ball my right hand into a fist inside the crack. Every muscle tenses in obedience to my frantic brain. Why can’t I stop screaming? Grey’s teeth rip from my arm and something sharp swipes across my back. I fall from the ledge, but my fist anchors me to the rough stone. My eyes spring open. Grey’s mass hits the ground with a deadly thump. I release the air of relief.

  God, please let him be dead.

  The other wolves, coyotes, and advancing bears seem less daunting . . . until Grey regains his footing. He looks up with a snarl and circles back toward the boulder.

  God, please . . .

  It’s all I manage. The scratches on my legs burn like branding irons. Blood drips over my hand in the crevice. God must be listening extra hard today because, five yards above and to my right, is an overhang with a defined lip. I ascend.

  My legs and left arm quiver against seeping, sticky warmth, yet I climb. My limbs find mysterious strength to pull me up—defying my previous weakness. Handholds appear like sprinkled miracles and the overhang seems nothing more than a minor challenge. When I crawl onto the ledge, the miracles don’t stop—it’s not a ledge, it’s a tiny God-thumbprint pressed into the rock face.

  I scoot under its angled roof and dare to dangle my legs over the edge. My dinner party paces below among fragments of clothing and skeletons, waiting for me to jump. I’d rather starve in this haven, picked to the bone by spiders, than face the beasts again. Some of the material beneath their paws looks familiar, as if a little Newton girl wore it once.

  I look away and curl against the cavern wall, entwining my blood-slicked fingers around my ankles to hug my knees to my chest. By this point, my tears, heart, and lungs remember how to function. Shaking sets in like a spring drizzle and grows until I’m drenched in panic and freezing sweat. My eyes squeeze against the burning pillaging my body. Tears slink down my face, but they taste of relief.

  “Mother?” I crave her firm hands of care. I hurt. I hurt. I’ve never hurt like this. “Mother!”

  My heart beats rhythm against my knees—solid and invincible while at the same time chilled and feverish. This awareness of life lifts my head from my knees. I stare through a watery film to the opposite wall of grey stone. Wild tangled hair sticks to my cheeks, my neck, my wounds, my blood.

  I wanted this. I wanted life. I wanted a second chance, and God is giving it to me. Granted, my second chance twirls among a pinwheel of rabid, starved animals inside a crater, but it’s a second chance nonetheless. God wouldn’t allow me to survive a death-plunge only to be devoured, would He?

  The thin cross ring spins easily under the pressure of my forefinger, slathered as it is with blood. God is all I have now. Mother’s not here. Reid’s not here. The name Parvin is a clean slate without the chalk marks of passivity. Today, my name marks a new beginning wrought with blood, loneliness, and fear.

  My pack slides from my shoulders and I rummage through with my right hand, wiping tears with my left, smearing blood and sticky hair across my face. I want to pull out the nanobook Skelley Chase gave me and beg for rescue, but there’s too much blood on my hands to experiment with it. Besides, my betrayer wouldn’t help me and I don’t want the reading world to know I wanted to give up so early.

  My hair clings to wounds. When I pull it away, the strands slide against my raw skin like paper cuts. I rummage for a ribbon to tie it back, but my fingers find Father’s smooth dagger first. I slide off the wooden sheath, wrap my hair in my free hand, and run the dagger in a sawing motion through the sticky strands. The slicing sound is pleasant, rhythmic.

  I feel no remorse for cutting my hair, though I regret using my bloody hand to hold it, now having to pick each loose strand from the thick red coating of life. What’s left is still long enough for a small braid. I find a ribbon and, as I tie my hair back, a sense of assurance secures itself among the ribbon.

  Now the wounds. I close my eyes and assess. I encounter pain first on my face, then my neck. Blood and grime covers too much of my skin for me to locate gashes or deep cuts—my raw, torn fingers have little feeling in them anyway. Instead of feeling around, I pinpoint the strongest pain: my left arm, my back, and my legs—all bearing gashes from Grey’s teeth and claws. A shudder pulses down my body and I glance over the cave ledge.

  The beasts are gone.

  I scan the tree line. No shadows. No haunting eyes. My wariness increases, but I cannot allow myself to dwell in paranoia. The pain in my back is sharp and thrums with furious beat, harder and harder. With a grunt, I remove my coat and curve my right arm back, brushing shaking fingers over my vest. There are no holes in the thick material, but it is soaked and sticky. I peel it away from my skin and a zing shoots through my nerves. Three defined gashes pour my life onto the stone.

  I know little of healing or care for the body. How much blood loss is too much? Though I’m not a healer, I’m not ignorant. I need bandages, water, a fishhook, and a fire. I’ve seen Mother do stitches plenty of times.

  Bandages I can make, and I have my leather water pouch, but no wood for a fire. My mind rests on the needle in my pocket-sized sewing kit. I didn’t think I’d need to use it on myself.

  I shudder. I can’t reach the wounds on my back, but my thighs and calves bear similar lacerations that
could heal with some fishing twine. Too bad I’m stuck with regular sewing thread.

  A sigh escapes into the breeze. I could have prepared so much better, but I was distracted by my death. I didn’t weigh other possibilities. I didn’t count on miracles.

  I didn’t count on surviving.

  I give my head a small shake, and the rope burn on my neck screams. I ignore it as best I can.

  Get to work.

  Father’s knife becomes my hero, slicing away the grey layer of my skirt and cutting long, even bandages. I dampen one rag enough to wipe blood away from my calves and off my back. Snowdots sprinkle the air again, dancing with more energy than before. The chill slows the bleeding.

  For now, I use bandages—the needlework will have to wait until courage catches up with me. I tie cloth strips as tight as my weak arms and stiff fingers allow. The wool scratches against my wounds like sandpaper.

  My leggings are torn in several places, but still hold together. I refrain from cutting them. Instead, I pull their shreds over the bandages to help hold them in place. My left shirtsleeve is almost rent in two from Grey’s teeth, so I rip it off and wrap my arm.

  My back is the most difficult as I struggle to cover the entire wound. For good measure, I smear a little of Mother’s burn paste on the bandage to keep the gashes from stiffening too much—at least, that’s what I hope it does. I also lather it on the uncovered rope-burn portions of my left arm and around my neck. It’s slimy and uncomfortable, but it will encourage healing.

  When the last knot is tied, my body succumbs to dizziness and fatigue. I knew it would come, but I admire my own stamina—I never knew I had any.

  I spread out the two remaining layers of my skirt and curl beneath them. The sun no longer shines in the snow-dusted canyon. Wind picks up and my bruised knee throbs against the bending. I attempt to rest on my side, but the pain rolls me over to a different position. Grunting, gasping, and tender turning bring me to my stomach—still an uncomfortable state, but the least painful so far.

  My head rests against my shoulder pack. The bump from falling against the cliff-face throbs, but what can I do? I throw the worries aside and spare a moment to register this is my first time ever sleeping outside, even though it’s daytime.

  I’m camping. I’m alive. I can do this. Yet I still start to cry. I hurt, far deeper than physical wounds. How could Skelley Chase do this to me? How could my family allow it?

  God? Are You even here?

  I Am.

  Imagined? Felt? Heard? It doesn’t matter. His response soothes my sorrow. As my mind’s-eye slow-dances with the sandman, I dare to believe for a moment that I might survive.

  13

  000.173.20.05.50

  I never absorbed the definition of agony until now. The word somersaults through my mind on repeat, bouncing off the awareness of pain in my back, over my leg, across my face, on my arm, in my hands . . .

  It won’t stop.

  I don’t know how long I slept or if I just wafted in and out of consciousness. The light is nearly gone. Its glow fades like melting sugar.

  Agony.

  Dratted word. Sitting in this chilled cave, waiting for myself to heal, almost takes more energy than action might.

  I sit up, the action accompanied by a fiery scream from my back wounds. I rummage through my pack for a syringe of distraction. My numb fingers close around the leather-bound electric journal from Skelley Chase. It still smells like lemons.

  The blood on my hands is dried and doesn’t smear the cover. When I unfold and open it, my arm spasms. I grimace. The blank screen looks cold and aloof. My brain is sluggish, but I must write. Everything must be written. I wanted survival and adventure. I just never expected to get them.

  Though my hand shakes, I tap the screen. Nothing happens. I run my fingers along the smooth sides of the square. They slide across a long slit in one side and meet an indentation on the top. I press my finger into it and the screen lightens to an aqua blue with a small chime sound. Two sea-green bubbles float on the screen. A single black scripted word sits inside each. One says, Contact, the other says, Journal. I touch Journal.

  A blank page opens with several tiny screen-buttons lining the top. The first has a swirly Ss inside of it and another has the words “Talk/Type.” Others have single letters or symbols I don’t understand.

  “No instruction manual?” Before I finish speaking, words flow onto the page like an invisible calligrapher is writing them.

  No instruction manual?

  I gape at the screen. Could it be this simple? “My name is Parvin Brielle Blackwater.”

  My name is Parvin Bree-yell Blackwater

  So it has some spelling issues, but writing just got a whole lot easier. I scan the other bubbles. Inside are the letters S, P, E, and N. I tap the P, and nothing on the screen changes. I tap the E and a little rectangle bubble pops up in the middle of the screen that asks, Erase?

  “Yes.” Nothing changes. I repeat myself, louder. “Yes.”

  The bubble floats, unchanging. I tap it with my finger. It pops, but nothing erases. I press the N and a new blank page shows up. Easy enough.

  Deep breath. Where do I start? I snag the blue watch from my pack and squint at the date. “April sixteenth, twenty-one forty-nine.”

  No words show up on the screen. I release a frustrated grunt and tap the “talk/type” button harder than necessary. “April sixteenth, twenty-one forty-nine.” The graceful script flows across the top.

  I sigh. “Finally.”

  Finally.

  “What? No! Useless thing.”

  What? No! Useless thing.

  And I thought this would be easy. My head reminds me of the pulsing agony. I tap a few extra buttons, accidentally change fonts, try commands like, New paragraph and Erase, and at last manage a small entry with enough details to jog my memory in the future . . .

  Assuming, of course, I have one.

  4.16.2149

  A cliff on West Wall. I fell, climbed down. Graveyard. Stampede of wolves, coyotes, and bears. Fought. God saved me. In cave bleeding. Snowing.

  I press the bubble Ss to save my work. A miniature Clock counts down from 5 seconds to 0 before a screen message says, “Saved and Sent to Skelley Chase.”

  Skelley Chase—invading every part of my life. He must have programmed this before giving it to me. I wouldn’t have sent my entry to him yet. I might as well get used to it, but I didn’t want to share my first survival moment with him.

  I reread my short entry and breathe in thick pride. I may be bleeding and freezing, but the past several hours of unexpected life have held more action, tears, thoughts, and excitement than all my time on the East Side. Even the sticky sorrow coating every minute now is refreshing.

  Reid. Has he ever felt real sorrow? What did he feel when I left home? Did he experience panic or passion for life? Does he miss me? Does he embrace any hope of seeing me again?

  My optimism vanishes with the closing snap of the journal. “How do I get out of here?” My voice startles me and I glance toward the darkening forest. Nothing emerges. “What do I do?” I whisper it this time.

  My agony disappears with the blaze of a mental candle. Seconds later, I hold in my lap Reid’s sentra and journal. I start at the end of his journal and flip backward until I reach the most recent entry.

  04.15.2149, Time: 23:45

  Parvin is afraid. She’s afraid of dying and she’s afraid of me dying. God, give her perseverance and peace. Help her pursue Your shalom.

  This is dated last night. He was right—I was afraid. I still am. At the bottom of the page, in tiny print, is an asterisk.

  Shalom—wholeness and completeness in God. The way things were intended to be.

  This is much deeper than my understanding of the strange word. I thought it meant peace in a different language.
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  04.08.2149 Time: 05:00

  It’s strange heading back to Unity . . . alone. Sometimes I question if this was the right thing to do. But Parvin needs me. I can’t abandon her. Besides, she needs to know.

  Reid wrote this the day of the train crash—a week after our eighteenth birthday. He felt alone? What did I need to know? Even though my pain and dizziness increases by the minute, I read the entry again. Did he regret coming home from Florida? Did he regret coming to be with me? This thought hurts my heart more than any wolf bite could. Why did I think his journal would hold answers?

  I close the pages and examine the sentra. It’s older than Skelley Chase’s. I press the small button on the edge. A tiny grating sound comes from the sentra. A slot in its side expels a thin electrosheet the size of a playing card. The sheet shows a picture of my boot with another button on the top right corner. I suppose I should have aimed the lens. I reach up and press the button on the emotigraph with my thumb. It pokes me, but I feel nothing else. I click it again. Nothing. Is it broken?

  My eyelids grate like sandpaper when I blink and pressure pulls my head toward the cave floor. I set aside the sentra and release a ragged breath. I try to relax. Not much time passes before my mind swims itself back into painful sleep.

  I bob in and out of slumber like an anchorless buoy, sipping water when I’m conscious enough. At one point, snow rests upon me like a cloud blanket, kissing my skin with shivers and goose bumps. I can’t die this way.

  God, where are You?

  000.172.04.35.01

  Three days before my thirteen-year-old Assessment, I woke with heavy eyelids, endless sweat, and the sensation of anvils spread across my body, pressing out my breath with each ticking minute. The thought of talking had soared out the window with the little energy I’d abandoned.

  This morning, I feel the same, only there is no Mother to smooth my hair back and wash the sickness off my skin with cloths warmed from the fire.