A Time to Die

by Nadine Brandes

  “Uh . . . I want to ask him some questions about life.”

  “Personal inquiry. What’s your starting go?”

  I slip my hand into my pocket and grip the trading-tickets like I used to clutch my Clock. “What do people usually start at?”

  She grins. “You think I’ll be honest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She sighs and leans on her elbows. “All right . . . em, how about ninety trade tickets and an item of quality?”

  “Ninety?” My yelp draws the stares of passers-by. I instantly regret my outburst. A few people pause in their go-about-mornings and inch closer.

  The trader lifts her icy eyebrows and chuckles. “Outside your range?” She rubs her hands together. “Hit me.”

  It’ll be another week before I have anything close to ninety trade tickets unless I borrow some from Mrs. Newton. But I have to try.

  “Thirty.” I’m reminded of the time bargaining Mother and I used to exchange.

  “Ah, a wide field.” The trader seems to lap up the moment. “This’ll be good.” More people shuffle into my peripheral vision. I lift my chin with an impersonal air as she comes back with a haggle. “Em, ninety-five without an item of quality.”

  “You went up!” Several people laugh, and I try to join them but any real humor is muffled by my indignation.

  “I took off the item of quality.” She gives a little pucker of her glossy lips, almost as if she’s playing with me.

  “Fine.” I give my tone a sarcastic lilt. “Thirty with an item of quality.” I hope my blue watch counts as an item of quality. It’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever owned.

  “Seventy.”

  The growing crowd lets out a communal, “Oooh,” of mock drama.

  Someone cheers. “You get ‘er, Rangell!”

  The trader, Rangell, is alight with amusement, basking in the attention. I grow more and more uneasy. These people seem to know her. They’re on her side. I can’t win.

  With a deep breath through my nose, I make the daring leap. “Fifty.”

  She folds her arms on the booth counter. “And you’re still offering the item of quality?”

  “Yes.”

  She rests her chin on one of her hands. “You’re at your end, aren’t you?”

  My hopes plummet as the onlookers chuckle. At me. I don’t respond.

  “How badly do you want this visitation?”

  I clench my hand and teeth. She’s not mocking, but I feel a rise of injustice at being denied something I need for the sake of this woman’s haggling enjoyment. “Badly.”

  “Then, let’s take it to the Arena.”

  I step back. Chills sweep over my skin. A buzz lingers among the watching crowd. I rub my palm on the outside of my dress. “I’ll just come back.”

  The people groan. “Aw, come on,” someone shouts, but I’m immune to the pressure. I haven’t even watched a match. I don’t know what a competition consists of.

  Rangell leans back. “I’ll remember you, Whitey. Don’t think I’ll start as low when you return.”

  My embarrassment hardens into anger. So, she’s a dirty bargainer. I could take her down in an arena. People would see my stamina and strength. I’m strong. She’ll lose. Maybe it’ll be a first for her. People will ooh and ahh and groan at her humiliation.

  “Fine. To the arena.” I don’t even finish my sentence before everyone behind me cheers with hand slaps and open thrill. My anger extends toward them, too. Their delight comes at my expense, at my shame. And, more than likely . . .

  At my defeat.

  “My apprentice will meet you or your battler of choice at the arena next Wednesday.” Rangell raises her voice so no one can miss the time. She glances at a chart nailed to the wooden wall of her booth. “Noon is free. My apprentice will see you then.”

  My anger settles into a stone. She’s not even bold enough to fight me herself?

  She eyes me with a gentler look. “Be clear you know how it works. If you lose, I still get your fifty and item of quality. If you win, you leave a rich lady with a visitation in your pocket as well as your fifty little trade tickets.”

  I give a curt nod, turn on my heel—

  And walk straight into Jude.

  33

  000.120.03.57.44

  My sharp gasp paralyzes my shocked nerves.

  Run!

  Jude doesn’t even allow the thought to transfer to my muscles. He pulls me to his chest, tight. I’m trapped. Helpless. I can’t flee. He’s too strong. I’m his captive.

  Weak.

  His hands turn gentle as they move across my back, holding me less, but inviting me to remain here. It’s not force. It’s a hug. Jude is hugging me?

  “I’m sorry I damaged your trust, Parvin.” His voice is calm. Genuine.

  I look up. We’re close enough I can see the dust in his dark hair, smell the campfire on his clothes, see his roughly shaved facial hair.

  He’s sorry.

  Regret. Shame. Fear. Anger. Surprise. The emotions sift through my bones, leaving painful chunks behind. “It’s okay.” I feel as though he robbed me of my apology. I’m humbled.

  Blast him.

  Jude gives a strained grimace, then releases me and returns his injured arm to the sling I made him so many weeks ago. Willow stands behind him holding her woven hat brim in her hand. Her eyes are hollow and the sunburn on her face is now a splotchy tan. She stares at me with marinated anger.

  My throat constricts. I need to ask her forgiveness. I can’t. Jude already said a sorry. Will she think mine’s just a repeat?

  I see her form crumpled on the tracks, screaming for me to return to her. Ghostly. Abandoned.

  “I’m sorry, Willow.” Why does it sound mechanical? I am sorry. I’ve been sorry for weeks.

  The apology doesn’t penetrate her cold silence.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, louder.

  She breaks the gaze. “Okay.” It’s small and tight and only makes me feel worse.

  She and Jude carry fur pelts rolled and tied with slips of leather. A set of young deer antlers hang from Jude’s belt.

  “How long have you two been here?” The remnants of Jude’s hug no longer feel comforting or gentle. I grow awkward. Confused.

  Jude lets his good hand fall from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized it was there. “Two days.”

  “Why are you even here?” Did he feel the need to follow me? Protect me? Find me? I don’t need help. He shouldn’t be here.

  “I said I’d take you to Ivanhoe.” Jude points to Willow and then me. “Both of you. And someone needs to fight in the Arena on Wednesday.”

  “You also said you wouldn’t take us to Ivanhoe,” I retort. “I’m still writing in my journal.” He might as well know. “And I will compete in the Arena. It’s my bargain.”

  He takes my arm and leads me away from the Visitation booth. “Let’s go see the Arena, then. Willow and I discovered it yesterday.”

  I slide my arm out of his grasp. I was trying to protect Jude by leaving him. Now he’s followed me here as if I’m his daycare ward.

  I can fight on my own.

  Our footsteps echo through the arched hallway until we emerge into an oval clearing with a ceiling six stories high. We stand at the top of an amphitheater. In the space between the descending rows of seats, stretch ropes. I close my eyes and release a horrified breath.

  Slacklines, tightwires, flat belt-like ropes, cords of metal, wound cloth rope, thin lines, thick lines, ropes at every level. Above our heads, below us, slanted downward, and straight across. A rope-course without a safety net.

  Two people are suspended over one of the lower ropes, a boy and a girl no older than Willow. The rope swings from side to side, but they both hold their balance.

  “Stop doing that,”
the girl shouts on one end.

  “That’s what they do during actual combat.” The boy moves his body even more with the sway.

  “I’m going to fall!”

  “Then that means I win.”

  At the peak of a sway, the girl leaps off the rope to a flat belt rope a few feet down. She lands with one foot in front of the other and grabs a metal cord nearby to steady herself. The change in weight steals the boy’s balance and he careens off to one side, landing hard on his shoulder on the sandy floor.

  I gasp and take a step forward.

  The girl points at him. “Ha! Fooled you! I win!” She looks up and our eyes meet. Her laughing stops and she lowers herself to a rope below, then to the ground, and grabs the boy’s arm. “Come on. No more practice, we’ll get in trouble.”

  He looks up at us, too. They grab each other’s hands and sprint the opposite way through a tunnel exit.

  Jude is looking at me. I wish he wouldn’t. My words and thoughts fall short of coherence.

  “May I compete for you?”

  I shake my head. “I can do this.” He turns toward me, but I maintain a stiff stance staring ahead.

  “Let me compete for you.”

  I spin to face him. “Why?” Here it comes . . . the deluge that flows from my helplessness. “Why should you compete? Why did you come here? I left you for a reason. Your assassin might be here, and if you go in the Arena he’ll shoot you again. Do you think coming to my aid will change the fact you attacked me three weeks ago? You expect me to trust you? What do you want from me?”

  My face is warm and vision blurry from the gush of breath. Jude stares at the ground, his hand cradling his slung arm. “What should I answer first?”

  When I don’t reply, he pushes on. “I want to fight because I know how to tightrope walk and you don’t.”

  “That didn’t stop you from forcing me to crawl across the Dregs.”

  “Look, Parvin, you’re being—” He stops, though his tone has intensified.

  What? I’m being what? Why doesn’t he say it? I ache already and his rejection is escalating it. He should just finish his accusation.

  With a lurch of effort, he drags his voice back into a sea of calm. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to let my anger go that far.”

  “It’s the fact your anger can go that far that bothers me.” If it happened once, when might it happen again? What might I do to make him snap? I don’t trust him. I don’t know him.

  Willow stalks forward with folded arms. “Jude-man came here so you’re not alone. He wants to be with you.”

  “Willow,” Jude says in a tired voice, sliding a hand over his face.

  “He’s not afraid of the assassin. We want to help you find your purpose.”

  “We’ve been through a lot together already.” Jude extends his hands in surrender. “Don’t you think God introduced us for a reason?”

  I stare at him. His us is more personal than just our threesome. He’s intent. And my mind has the audacity to wonder if he’s right.

  Us.

  Jude and Parvin.

  I don’t think I want him to leave. In fact, I’m glad he came after me. I want to give him a second chance. With this, his goodness returns to my memories. Rescuing me from the Dregs, giving me a piggy-back ride all night, dancing with me. Relationship. Shalom.

  “Okay, you may fight for me.”

  000.113.01.27.00

  Wednesday afternoon ushers a ring of onlookers into the amphitheater. They spread like fire ants surrounding two dying grasshoppers. Willow and I find a seat half way down the amphitheater while a small group across from us chants, “Rangell! Rangell! Rangell!”

  “She’s not even fighting,” I fume to Willow. “She’s sending her apprentice. Wuss!”

  “You’re sending Jude-man,” Willow points out.

  I glower. “Hush. He volunteered, for time’s sake.”

  Willow’s attitude has thawed this past week as we’ve lived in my small room together. She’s still angry, but the raw hurt of this child doesn’t run so deep it can’t be overturned.

  Mrs. Newton was gracious enough to open her other spare bedroom to Jude. It feels strange, all living in the same house—like cutouts from different sections of my life are being pasted together.

  The combat commences with little flair. No announcer. No music. Just deafening cheers and two limber figures stepping out on platforms attached to the highest rope.

  “One only has to knock the other off, right?” Willow asks.

  There’s nothing ‘only’ about it. Jude transfers his weight from platform to rope, six stories from the ground, both arms extended despite his healing gunshot wound. If he falls . . .

  I shiver, imagining myself up there. “Yes. To the ground.”

  Rangell’s apprentice steps on the rope as well. Her red hair is cropped like a newborn bird’s. She wears tight black shorts with a long-sleeved spandex top. Jude heads toward the middle. She stays on the edge. He hesitates, watching her.

  She starts bouncing the rope, absorbing the upward movement with her knees. The effect hits Jude like a tidal wave in the middle. Two solid bounces steal his balance and fling him into the air. He floats suspended for a mere second, twisting to face the ground. Then he plummets.

  His outstretched hands miss the rope by a full foot. The next tightrope down clotheslines him, throwing him into a spin. Somewhere between Willow’s scream and me covering my eyes with a fist, Jude grabs a rope and stops the fall. He hangs by one hand.

  His weight pulls the rope down, releasing a small handle on wheels near the mount in the wall. It glides down the rope toward him. He stops it with his free hand before it runs over his fingers.

  I couldn’t have done this. Even if I learned to tightrope walk, I have one hand and little strength. A single fall would have defeated me.

  The apprentice descends from rope to rope, lowering herself to a hanging position until her toes are above another rope, angling a different direction.

  Jude shuffles his hand and then, with one bounce, releases the rope and grabs the hanging handles. He zips down the line, slowing to a stop below the apprentice. She rubs her hands together and prepares for a leap.

  Jude stills, his toes mere inches from a slackline. When his feet are positioned, he releases his hold on the handle above and sinks onto the loose wire. He wobbles and throws out a leg to gain balance.

  I don’t breathe.

  His stability returns as the apprentice swings from a rope above, lined up for a collision. Jude ducks. She misses him, but flips like a gymnast.

  He grabs her ankle as she swings by again. Her force pulls him off, but his weight rips her fingers from the rope. They both fall. She snatches another rope like a trapeze artist mid-flight, but Jude plunges through the remaining tangled web. The thud of his body on the sandy bottom hits my chest like a sledgehammer.

  He doesn’t move.

  Willow’s on her feet. The apprentice lowers herself to the sand with a cool look of victory. The fire ants cheer. Willow and I run down the amphitheater steps into the sand.

  The apprentice nudges Jude with her tiny bare foot.

  His neck is broken. He’s dead. He’s in a coma.

  “Just a knock-out,” the apprentice says when we reach her. The crowd is already leaving. Does no one care he’s hurt? “If he doesn’t wake in ten minutes, go fetch a med.”

  Willow sinks to her knees. Jude’s face is in the sand. She angles it out so he doesn’t breathe in the grains.

  The apprentice waits.

  I look up at her, hating her slim gymnast figure. Hating her master. Hating this arena.

  “Fifty trade tickets and an item of value,” she says.

  “I’ll bring them by,” I spit out.

  She shakes her head. “We had an agreement, even if
the end result is dirty.”

  I can’t argue. I pull out all fifty precious trade tickets. “I’ll bring the watch today or tomorrow. I didn’t bring it with me.” I thought we would win. After all, Jude was fighting. He’s a man on the run, a tightrope-walker, a fighter, a survivor. I didn’t expect him to lose.

  I stare at his unconscious body. He failed me. I’m out of trade tickets. I can’t meet with the Preacher. Was this Jude’s plan? To lose on purpose?

  The apprentice leaves.

  Jude groans. His eyes open in a confused frown. He raises a shaking hand to his head. “Was I knocked out?”

  “Yes,” I snap.

  Willow leans over him. “Does anything else hurt?”

  He lays silent with a frozen frown for several seconds. “Was I knocked out?”

  Willow and I exchange a glance. “Yes.” I stifle growing concern. “Does anything else hurt?”

  He shakes his head. His fingers comb through his hair. With a small tweak of his ear, he grows stiff. He folds his ear again.

  “My tune-chip is broken.”

  I snort. “Welcome to the world of the normal.”

  The next several days are difficult for us all. During the day, Willow tries to swap some of her furs for trade tickets. I monitor Wilbur Sherrod to see if he has created any new outfits to test. When he has none, I run errands for him in return for minimal trade tickets.

  I quash my hopes of exploring Ivanhoe until Jude recovers. For now, he needs our care. Jude spends the days in his small room, dizzy and nauseous. His vision is blurry and he’s always tired. When a med visited she said Jude had a concussion and needed to rest his mind.

  He repeats questions and doesn’t remember things I say, but I enjoy taking care of him in what I hope is an attractively bossy way, not that he’ll remember. I tell him to rest, to sleep, and I make sure he has food. Sometimes I brush hair from his forehead for no reason other than the fact he’s sleeping and doesn’t know I do it. My fingers always tingle after touching his skin. I don’t know if this response comes from the fact I’m touching Jude or the fact I’m touching a man’s skin in general. It creates an aching longing in me.

  Mrs. Newton helps when she’s not out selling bread. She examined Jude’s bullet wound one day and shook her head. “It’s amazing this never got infected. In fact, I can’t think of a single reason why it wouldn’t get infected.” Her eyes meet mine. “It may not be a bullet, Parvin. You ought to ask Jude about it when he’s healed.”