Remnants: Season of Wonder (A Remnants Novel)

by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  I knelt by the pool and rinsed out the sponge, glancing over at him. “You want to tell me how you received all those scars on your back?” My eyes flicked down to his broad, sculpted, naked chest. I could see more there too, faint, raised, pale lines

  “No,” he said softly.

  “Will you tell me anyway?”

  “No.” He stared back at me as I searched him, trying to get a read on his emotions. But he was blocking me again. He had to be. How’d he do that?

  I returned to his back and finished washing him, being careful toward the top, where I knew the wound was. The bullet must’ve just missed a lung — a miracle in itself. But when I reached it, washing away thick, crusty blood, all I saw was skin beneath.

  I blinked once, twice. Where the bullet had hit him, there was now just a small, puckered circle of scar tissue, directly over where I imagined his lung was. It hadn’t missed it. How was he breathing? Whole?

  I rose and looked at the front of his chest, where it exited. I put one hand in the center of his back and the other on his massive bicep, going back and forth and back again.

  He smiled then, clearly enjoying my confusion, my awe, then gave me a little shrug. “I’m particularly good at healing.”

  “Did Tressa do this?”

  He shook his head.

  “Azarel?”

  “No.”

  “You are … This is a high gift?”

  “Of a sort. The Maker’s song is strong within me,” he said, giving me a smile that made his dark eyes twinkle. He brought a fist to his chest as he said it, and I smiled back at him, amazed.

  A man coughed behind me and I looked back, startled.

  Ronan.

  Belatedly, I saw how the two of us must have looked, and dropped my hands from Raniero’s warm, bare skin and rose. “I was just … I was just helping Niero clean up. He had blood on his back he couldn’t reach.” I knew I was blushing, looking guilty. And it made me angry that I felt the need to explain myself. I’d done nothing wrong.

  Raniero pulled on a clean shirt, then crouched by the pool to wash out his other one, stained so thoroughly I didn’t think it’d ever come out. So much blood … When he received his wound, he’d been away from any Ailith, far from Community. He’d been unconscious in the back of the Jeep. And yet now, here he was, whole, healed. “Go and get some more sleep before the night’s out,” he said to us both, meeting Ronan’s gaze of quiet challenge without flinching, without guilt. “Tomorrow’s a new day.”

  I turned and followed Ronan back to our fire and settled onto my bed roll beside the stones, now just barely warm. Ronan was mad, his hurt and jealousy and anger practically shouting at me. But he knew what I did — he had no claim on me. None of us were to be attached to another beyond a sisterly or brotherly love. That was what the elders had told us. So for him to take issue with my intimate moment with Niero would be to admit defeat on that front … and what?

  Might Niero even send us home?

  I closed my eyes and feigned the deep breathing of sleep, hoping to coax him back into slumber. After a long while, I heard Ronan finally give in. I slowly opened my eyes, peering at him from beneath my lashes to make sure he was asleep, then canvassing the cave to find Raniero again, curiosity burning within me.

  He was at the mouth of the cave, kneeling, facing out, hands on hips, his body a silhouette against the wall of the water six feet out. The sun was rising, casting a coral glow to the water, and Niero lifted his arms as if in greeting, then bent in meditation.

  For the first time, I wondered if he ever slept. He was always the first one up, and the last one to sleep. Was it his role as our captain, our leader, our ultimate protector?

  Or something else entirely?

  Abruptly, Vidar sat up, rubbed his face, and stared with sleepy eyes toward the waterfall. He blinked heavily, and then stared again. Surprise and wonder seemed to seep from his skin.

  “Vid?” I whispered.

  He glanced over to me, then to Raniero again.

  “What do you see?” I whispered.

  But Vidar shook his head and lay back down, already fast asleep.

  I looked over to Raniero, and after a moment he turned his head sideways, his face in profile. It was almost as if he was listening, aware somehow that I was watching. Quickly, I lay back down.

  And yet try as I might, there was no more sleep to claim.

  The next morning, Dagan, the Hoodite farmer, led us out and down a trail that ringed the waterfall and past another string of Hoodoos — the limestone figures that looked like men, carved from ancient cliffs. “They were formed by erosion,” he said, “eons ago.”

  “Even before the War?” Tressa asked.

  “Far before the War. Thousands of years before. Hundreds of thousands before, maybe.” He looked at her with shy interest. I decided that half the men in the Hoodite camp fell in love with her the hour we arrived.

  I glanced toward Ronan, hoping he wasn’t drawn to her like that. Not that I have any claim on him. Completely out of bounds, Dri. Get it through your head, once and for all.

  He is not yours, and he never will be.

  Dagan turned and walked over a small river, balancing on a fallen tree, and we followed. We entered a new trail through the woods, and minutes later exited to see a wide, south-facing plain, divided into neat rows.

  My mouth dropped open. Because I was seeing something that I hadn’t seen anywhere but in an ancient children’s book that belonged to one of the elders.

  A farm. Acres upon acres of a neatly tended, perfectly cultivated farm.

  Killian stepped forward and pressed his hand against his dreadlocks, then looked back at Dagan in sheer surprise. “You? You did all this? Planted all this? How”

  Even as he asked it, I noticed the clouds gathering above us. How long until they broke loose and drenched us?

  Dagan shrugged. “Ever since I was a young one, I was drawn to the task. The hope of tilling, planting, tending.”

  “But no one …” Ronan shook his head. “No one’s truly farmed since just after the War.”

  Dagan waved his head to one side and then the other, and went to the nearest row of plants, digging up a potato and showing it to us. “That’s true here, but not what I hear tell of Pacifica. It’s simply a lost art to us out here, I think. Between the damp and the cold and the massive swaths of land lost to the wasting poisons …” He shrugged and moved to another plant, this one nearly a foot high, with a delicate, lace-like leaf. “Here near the Hoodoos, we have less rain. And even our Hoarfrost isn’t as cold as yours is, in the Valley, if I understand it right.” I’d seen him talking last night with Vidar as they ate.

  He pulled out the plant, taking out a knife to slice off the roots, then rubbing the bulb clean on his pants. He gave each of us a slice. “Fennel. In olden times, the bulb was big, as big as a woman’s fist.”

  I tasted my slice. It was a little bitter, but with a warm flavor.

  “You can use the whole plant, in soups or other dishes. And,” he said, giving us a secretive look, “I’ve seen a bee.”

  “A bee!” Niero said.

  “What’s a bee?” Tressa asked.

  The old fragments of Winnie the Pooh books came back to my mind. Pooh had always been after more honey, a golden, sticky, sweet substance that bees seemed to produce in trees.

  Vidar was becoming more excited by the moment, pacing back and forth. He kept looking at the farm that spread before us, and to Dagan, as if he were a miracle-worker. I supposed, in a sense, he was. “Do you know what that means? What doors might open to us if we could coax the bees back?”

  “No,” Killian said, crossing his arms. “Enlighten us.”

  “Well, bees, uh … bees do …” He waved at Dagan, too excited to finish a sentence, and perhaps not entirely sure himself.

  “Bees were the great pollinators, before the War,” Dagan said. “Even before the War, there was fear because whole colonies died of disease. But it’s due to bees
that fruit trees could bear fruit. Nuts. At one time, there were over a hundred different crops that depended on bees. Some plants get pollinated by wind blowing it from plant to plant. Others need bees.”

  We stared at him as if he were speaking a different language.

  “Where did you learn such things?” Ronan asked, bending to clip a small bit of the fennel leaf off and chew on it. He spit it out, as if it were too bitter. He waved toward the neat rows of plants, some faring well, some clearly struggling. “How did you know how to create all of this?”

  “My grandfather traded for an old book on horticulture from what was once our Great North. It’s all about farming in cold climates,” he said, looking around at our blank faces. “He said that our climate here, now, is more like the Great North was, before the War. They, too, had short growing seasons and difficult weather. While she had more sun during her Harvest season than we do here,” he said, waving up at the clouds, “it was about as cold. A short season and similar temperature was reason enough for my grandfather to begin experimenting. My father picked up from there, and last year, when he died, I followed in their footsteps.”

  I looked up to the Hoodoos that lined the western edge of the farm. He was right; it was far warmer and drier here than in the Valley. Did the stones, the heat they retained, have something to do with his success?

  Niero shook his head and paced. “But how did you get the seeds? How did you begin?”

  “My father and I found the remains of a cabin near here. Even now, you can see the remains of fence posts here and there. It had been farmed before the War. And my grandfather …” He gave us a sheepish smile and rubbed the back of his neck. “Others called him foolish. Crazy. But he spent his life trading for seeds. More books on horticulture. I guess I caught the bug.”

  “Or the gift,” Niero said, gesturing forward. “This is extraordinary. A farm. A farm!” He laughed in awe and crouched, lifting a handful of dirt, squeezing it in his hand and staring at it as if it was from the Maker’s land itself. “Between this … and Ignacio’s herd …” He looked up at all of us. “Don’t you feel it? The hope we might have, in this land? The Trading Union — if we could build upon what these two have started. We could build true alliances, and feed our people. Many people.”

  “Others must know of such secrets,” I said. “We’ve traded for dried apples for years. That’s a crop that demands sun and bees, yes?” I asked Dagan.

  He nodded. “I think there are still orchards to our west. The crops seem to come from Pacifica.”

  Azarel hissed at the name. “He is right,” she said with disgust. “Pacifica has retained the art. And carefully kept it from the Trading Union beyond the Wall.”

  “Why?” Even as I asked it, I knew the answer.

  “Power,” she said, pulling her head to one side, her lips curling into a sneer. “Greed too. But mostly power. They want to retain the secrets that everyone wants, so that ultimately everyone is beholden to them. Keallach wants everyone to come to him, wanting something only he can give.” She looked to the rows of plants as the rain ceased again, then over to Dagan. “If he knew this was here … that Dagan had discovered the way to till the soil and produce again, they would hunt him down. And kill him.”

  I breathed in sharply and Dagan frowned and looked to his fields, but clearly her words didn’t surprise him.

  “What of the Drifters, just across the river?” Ronan asked, one hand on his hip, the other in the air. “What if they discover it, and tell others?”

  “The Drifters can’t swim,” Socorro said. For the first time I studied him in the light of day. He was about my height, with mezzo skin and round eyes. He was terribly skinny — had he not received his share of the food in that Drifter camp? I imagined his kindness keeping him from demanding, pushing, pulling for what was rightfully his.

  “And for a decade now, the Drifters have kept to that side of the river, and we to ours,” Dagan said.

  “Until your people came to rescue us,” I said softly, “and Socorro crossed with us.”

  Their dark eyes met mine. Dagan nodded once.

  “We’ve compromised him then,” I said to Niero. “Dagan has to be one the elders spoke of. One we are to save and preserve. With him with us, we’re closer to providing for our people,” I said excitedly, matching his pacing now. “Not just trading for food, but producing it.”

  Niero paused, chin in hand. “But we can’t take our farmer out of the only land we know can produce. These crops — they would fail in colder, wetter conditions, right?” He looked back at Dagan.

  “I assume so. My grandfather tried to plant in many places. It was only when we reached this place that plants began to take root, flower, grow.” He bent and plucked several red strawberries from a short vine and handed them to Tressa with a shy grin.

  Killian crossed his arms and frowned, towering over him. I smiled over his jealousy, but then thought, Better Dagan than Ronan going after her.

  Inwardly, I chastised myself. You’re just as jealous, Dri.

  “They’ll kill him,” Vidar said with conviction. “Those who are against us. As soon as they know of it. Have you traded any of these goods?” he asked. “Any at all?”

  Dagan shifted nervously. “A bit. With our brothers and sisters in the salt caves. But they would never betray — ”

  “Never betray us, no,” Azarel said, shaking her head, looking as if she herself had been caught. Maybe she had taken the supplies herself and now regretted it. “Not on purpose. But it would only take a careless word at a trading post”

  “Even now, word might be out,” Vidar said, his entire body coming to attention, slowly searching the woods, the Hoodoos, as if reaching out to sense any darkness, hovering near.

  “Others can see to your crops, Dagan,” Niero said, regretfully. “We need to get you — and your seeds — to the Citadel to keep you safe. The elders have additional texts there that you can study. Perhaps experiment with what’s still possible to grow in the Valley, given our heavier Hoarfrost. When all are gathered, when our mission is complete, you shall emerge and lead us, sustain us, with this gift.”

  “I’ll take him,” Azarel said, crossing her arms.

  “You. Alone,” Niero said, eying the small woman who had been a companion of Kapriel. “I don’t think so,” he added, walking away from her.

  She scurried around him, gesturing to the bare, lean muscle of her arm. “I got here, didn’t I? From Pacifica. Alone.”

  He frowned down at her. “Perhaps it’s easier to get from Pacifica to the Hoodites.”

  She laughed under her breath. “Brother, you clearly have no idea what’s ahead of you.”

  “Nor do you know what’s ahead of you. Unless you have some sort of foreknowledge gift.”

  She pursed her lips and sighed, crossing her arms. “Well then, how ’bout I share what I know, and you share your knowledge, and we’ll both get where we want to go faster?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  I had to turn away, their attraction was so palpable. Was I the only one to read it in them? Killian saw it. He rolled his eyes and let out a scoffing breath.

  “You should stay with them, Azarel,” Socorro said, as we all turned to go. “I will take Dagan to the Citadel.”

  We turned back to consider him. “I know the Desert,” he said with a shrug. “As well as the ways of the Drifters. I can keep him safe.” He gave us a small smile. “Besides, I’d like to see your Valley.”

  Ronan said, “He might discover Ignacio and his grandmother too, along the way. Help them along, in case they’ve gotten waylaid.”

  Azarel considered him, arms folded, and bowed her head. “He’s right,” she said at last. “Dagan will be safer with him. It is as the Maker has seen.”

  “How do you know that?” Killian asked in irritation.

  “Because the Maker has told me as much.” She turned her dark eyes to the ridge, and then glanced at Niero and Vidar. She was troubled b
y something, as if she’d smelled something foul on the air.

  “Right this instant?” Killian sneered. “The Maker said, ‘Dagan will be safer with him.’ ”

  “No,” she said, squinting her eyes. “A moment ago.” She stared at him. “Perhaps I am to travel with you Ailith for a time,” she said. “It appears there is much you do not yet know about the Way. If you are to accomplish your mission”

  “We have what we need to accomplish our mission,” Niero said in irritation.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “If you are questioning our ability to …” His words faded as he watched her look to the trees, and slowly pull a bow from her shoulder, and finally an arrow from a quiver on her back. “Azarel?”

  “You feel that?” she asked Vidar.

  “What say we get back to camp?” Vidar asked nervously, falsely bright, eyes settling on the trees, hand reaching for the halberd on his back. I felt the cold fear within him and shivered.

  “Vidar? Something coming?” I asked. It wasn’t fear.

  Terror. And worse, doubt.

  “Maybe. I-I don’t know.” His eyes met mine and I felt his shame. “My mind is on such hyper-alert, I seem to be sensing everything, both good and bad. So fast,” he held his head, “so intense …”

  “You’re sensing something terribly evil, as well as good,” Azarel said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Your gift will settle in time. Become clearer. More consistent. All your gifting will be so,” she said, looking at each of the Remnants. “But for now, we need every one of you to take up your weapons.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  They emerged from the forest in even segments — twelve of them in an arc about us, four of them dressed in the long, royal red cloak and hood that we’d seen on the one in Nem Post and Zanzibar. The others were in a darker, shorter red oilskin, the color of dried blood.

  Four were trackers. Pacifica’s elite. With scouts to back them up.

  Vidar swore under his breath, and his hand trembled as he switched the halberd to his left hand and drew the pistol from a holster with his right. “Let me take care of ’em,” he said.