by Jeff Hirsch
“Walk where?”
Kevin didn’t respond. However vague Aamon’s directions had
been, one thing was clear: They should have stopped hours ago. At this point, the river could only be taking them farther from where they wanted to go. As much as she hated it, Kevin was right. There was no time for stubbornness. Glenn put the pole into the river and fought her way out of the current. Once the bow crunched into the rocky shore, Kevin jumped out and pulled the boat up onto the bank. Every muscle in Glenn’s body ached, but she reached for the backpack, ready to sling it over her shoulder. Kevin’s hand got there first.
“It’s okay,” Kevin said quietly. “I got it.”
As Kevin leaned over the pack there was a clatter of metal
underneath his coat. He threw the pack onto his shoulders, then took off into the woods above the shoreline without a word. Glenn watched him go, then, seeing no choice, followed, her white breath puffing out before her. Soon, the rush of the water faded and the trees thinned, giving way to a long empty field that stretched to the horizon. Glenn hoped they’d at least be within sight of a town or a road, but there was nothing but twilight-shadowed hills everywhere she looked. It was all so alien. So empty.
“That way.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just … seems familiar.”
“Kevin, you’ve never — ” But then Glenn understood. Cort. He was saying Cort had been here before.
They set off. He moved quickly, barely pausing to examine the rough terrain as he led them through the woods and out onto a road that was pitted with what Glenn took to be wagon tracks. Glenn’s exhaustion was a heavy fog that wrapped around her body, dragging her down. Her legs ached. Her back was a nest of burrs and knots.
Far worse than the pain, though, was Kevin’s silence. She never thought she’d miss his babble but now the absence of it haunted her, as did the way his hand rose to his chest over and over to steady whatever it was Opal had given him. As they passed pilgrims’ waymarkers Glenn let her fingers brush against them, wondering if praying to Kirzal could make Kevin be Kevin again.
Hours later they stopped in the middle of the road, Kevin
squinting off into the darkness.
“What?”
Kevin pointed straight ahead. There, peeking out from the trees, ghostly yellow lights danced just above the ground. Glenn thought back to the man and the swan woman in the forest and wondered what the Magisterium might bring them next.
Slowly the lights resolved into small yellow points. Candlelight in windows. It was a town, ten or fifteen small buildings arranged on either side of the main road. Most of the structures were low shacks, little more than dark boxes barely lit from the inside. There was one larger building, the only two-story building in the town, and it sprawled the width of three or four of the other shacks. Firelight and candlelight poured out of it, and Glenn thought she could also hear the barest trace of music.
“An inn?”
Glenn shrugged and peered into the town, trying as hard as she could to not see the shapes of giants and ogres in the plain lines of the houses.
“Give it a try?”
Glenn was pretty sure she couldn’t walk another step. It was fully night now and the temperature still seemed to be dropping. Glenn nodded wearily and started to press on, but Kevin took her hand and pulled her back down.
“I need you to do something for me first. Before we go.”
“What?”
Kevin reached into Aamon’s bag and pulled out a dark blade with a scarred wooden handle. Glenn started, but Kevin flipped the knife around so the handle faced Glenn, the tip of the blade pointing at his own heart.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Glenn asked.
Kevin’s smile briefly returned as he pushed his fingers through his green mane.
“Think it’s time for a trim,” he said.
As they walked out of the woods and into the town, Glenn
couldn’t stop looking over at Kevin. He was right — his green hair would have drawn far too much attention to them. But still, Glenn hated it. Almost more than his silence, turning to her side and seeing the stubbly gleam of his nearly bald head, made Glenn feel like she was walking with a stranger.
As they approached the larger building toward the end of town, the thin strains of music drifting out of its windows started to become clear. A flute, Glenn thought. Maybe a violin too? Whatever they were, they were being played fast and cheerful, lightening something in her as they stepped up onto a small porch and neared the door.
“There’s money in there, right?”
Kevin was looking at the pack that was now over Glenn’s
shoulder.
“Yeah,” Glenn said. “I think.” She slipped off the pack and dug through it until she came up with the small purse. She opened it and produced a handful of metal coins of various sizes. Kevin snatched them away and reached for the door.
A welcome blast of light and heat from a large stone hearth hit them as soon as they opened it. The room was smaller than Glenn would have guessed, and packed tight with about ten rough wooden tables, each of them surrounded by four or five men and women leaning over tankards and pipes and games of cards. The men were dressed in well-worn but sturdy-looking clothes — farmers or hunters maybe — and were big-boned and bearded, with wide shoulders and hands like dinner plates. Daggers hung from their belts.
The air reeked of smoke and food and unwashed bodies. The
music was coming from the far corner where a woman, heavyset and rosy faced, sat on a stool blowing into a wooden flute. Beside her stood an exceedingly thin man with long gray hair who drew a bow across an old violin, quick and precise. The music soared and reeled around them, and after the quiet hours of their hike Glenn became distinctly uneasy.
She turned to Kevin, reaching for his sleeve — maybe staying outside wasn’t so crazy after all — when someone shouted from the back of the room.
“Close the door! You want to kill us all?!”
It was followed by gales of drunken laughter. Glenn took a step back and the door slammed shut behind her. She expected to see the same fear that she felt on Kevin’s face, but he was already striding deeper into the room toward the bar, searching through the faces as he went.
Glenn’s head spun, overwhelmed, as she made her way through the crowds. Before she knew it, they were standing near a bearish-looking man with red hair and an enormous handlebar mustache, pouring something frothy and amber into two metal tankards from a ceramic pitcher.
“Excuse me,” Kevin called. “Is this Armstrong?”
The bartender wiped up a spill. “I’ve got one room,” he said. “It’s thirty-five. Comes with dinner. Kappie stew and beet root. You have money?”
Kevin fumbled with the coins, dropping a spread onto the bar.
The barman picked through them, pocketed some, and pushed a few coins back.
“Room’s upstairs at the end of the hall.” He raised his eyebrows over to their left. “Table’s over there. Maggie will bring you something.”
Glenn stepped toward the table but then realized that Kevin was still at the bar with his hands on the shoddy wood, the barman looking down at him.
What is he doing?
“You need something else?” the barman asked.
Kevin seemed eager to say something, but when he saw Glenn
was still standing behind him, he quickly said no, and fled.
“What was that?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing,” he said, taking her arm and pushing her along. “Come on.”
Kevin dropped the pack against the wall and fell into a wooden chair at the table. Glenn sat across from him. Sitting was a miracle.
And it was such a relief to be out of the cold with the promise of food on the way that her spirits buoyed despite Kevin’s strange behavior.
Moments later a barmaid dropped two plates and two of the metal tankards down in front of them and scuttle
d off. The plate was covered with a slop of reddish brown, a stew composed of thick-cut potatoes, carrots, and what Glenn was pretty sure were hunks of meat. She realized how hungry she was as the stew’s smoky tang wafted up to her, but a sick lump weighed in her stomach at the thought of it.
“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.
“There’s … meat in here.”
Kevin pushed his spoon through the stew. “So?”
Glenn stared across the table. Land in the Colloquium was at such a premium that raising animals for meat was almost impossible.
“I’ve never eaten meat before,” she said. “And neither have you.”
Kevin dug into the mess on his plate and lifted a dripping
spoonful. Glenn winced as he shoved the food into his mouth and chewed. His eyebrows lowered, puzzled, as his jaws worked at it.
“How is it?”
Kevin chewed a while longer, then swallowed it with effort.
“Tough,” he said. “And kind of, I don’t know, bloody-tasting?”
Glenn’s stomach turned. “Uck.”
Kevin’s face darkened, the muscles of his jaw tensed. He shook his head. “We probably still have a lot of walking to do,” he said as he dug in. “Who knows when we’ll eat next. Don’t see how we can be choosy.”
Glenn poked through the stew. The bloody wildness of it rose to her nostrils. Glenn pushed the bits of meat and gristle to the side of the plate and ate the vegetables and broth as quickly as she could, washing it down with gulps from her tankard.
“So, what do we do next?”
“Stay the night,” Glenn said. “What else would we do?”
“And tomorrow?”
“Wait for Aamon and then go.”
“And if he doesn’t come?”
Glenn’s spoon hovered over the mess in front of her. She saw the horde of men rushing toward them. Aamon’s wounds.
“He’ll come,” she said.
“But — ”
“If he’s not here in the morning, we keep going to Bethany. He’ll find us there. Then we destroy the bracelet and go home.”
Glenn glared until Kevin looked away. He pushed the food
around his plate, then turned to watch the room behind them. When he was done, he leaned across the table toward Glenn.
“Maybe Opal can help you,” he said. “She told me what the
bracelet could do to the Magistra. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use it to help people instead of — ”
“Kevin.”
“You saw what Garen Tom did to that boy. He did that because of her. The Magistra. And Opal’s son and his friends. That’s all because of her.”
“I know that.”
“If we had a way to stop her — ”
“I said no!”
A ripple of quiet went through the room around them. Kevin
stared hard at her, his lips a thin line. Finally he shook his head and attacked what was left of his food.
Glenn pushed her plate away to get rid of the smell of flesh as the musicians started up another song, this one even louder and faster than the first. When Kevin had cleaned the plate, he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, a smear of the bloody stew on his chin.
The waitress appeared at their table. “Can I get you anything else, dears?”
“Sure,” Glenn answered, getting up from the table. “Slaughter whatever you have in the kitchen and toss it on his plate. Don’t even bother to cook it.”
Glenn left without a backward look and trundled up rickety stairs to the second floor. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, automatically searching for a light switch. She pulled them back with a frustrated grunt and kept going.
The landing she came to was dimly lit with candles placed in little alcoves along the walls. Glenn snatched one up, hissing as a molten bit of wax singed her fingers, and made her way through the smoky murk to the only open door she could find.
The glow from her candle illuminated a mostly bare room with just a window and a small wood-frame bed and table. Glenn lit a few other candles she found and sat on the mattress. It crunched beneath her, releasing a musty, haylike smell. The noise from downstairs came up through the floorboards, garbled but no softer.
Glenn longed for a shower. She was nearly entombed in sweat, river water, and dirt. Her muscles ached. All she needed was hot water and soap and steam to make them unfold. How did people live like this?
She pulled off her coat and fell back onto the bed, looking up at the plain wood of the ceiling. She tried to see galaxies of stars in the swirl of the wood’s grain, planets in its knots, but the image wouldn’t hold. She longed for the feel of Hopkins nestled beside her, his small body vibrating as he purred, but thinking of him only brought to mind Aamon’s face and a fresh stab of remorse.
“Hey.”
Glenn bolted upright. A man was standing in the open door, a dark figure illuminated in the candlelight. It took a moment for Glenn to realize it was Kevin. “Oh,” he said, leaning back into the hall.
“There’s only the one bed. I can sleep outside.”
“No!” she said quickly. No matter what she felt about Kevin she couldn’t imagine being left alone in that strange place. “One of us can take the floor. It’ll be fine.”
Kevin stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Well …
you should take the bed.”
“No, you can — ”
“Hey, who’s the jerk who let you pilot that boat all night? Take the bed, Morgan. Seriously.”
Glenn settled onto the mattress as Kevin crossed the room and sat down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. He pulled his boots off, then collapsed against the plaster wall with an exhausted sigh.
His face was ashen and deeply lined. He yawned and brushed the stubble on his head back and forth under his palm.
“Guess I cut it a little uneven, huh?”
Kevin shrugged. “I keep expecting it to be there, I guess.”
“How’s your side?” Glenn asked.
“Better. Opal gave me some different stuff. Wouldn’t have made it this far if she didn’t.”
“Good,” Glenn said. “Maybe without you constantly whining
about your gunshot wound we’ll actually be able to make some time.”
Kevin looked up at her, surprise quickly growing into a wide smile and a small laugh that Glenn was happy to echo. His face lit up, so distinctly Kevin. In that moment there didn’t seem to be a trace of Cort in him.
Maybe it was never even there, Glenn thought. Maybe it was all in my head.
Below them, the violinist finished the song with a flourish, and the patrons of the inn shouted their appreciation. Heavy treads moved from the tables to the bar and back again. The front door opened and closed and the bar grew more silent in stages.
“Look,” Glenn said. “Downstairs and all — the fighting — it’s stupid. We’re just … we’ll be fine. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
Kevin pulled a spare blanket off the end of the bed and lay down on the floor. Glenn drew the covers aside and laid down too. The mattress was thin, but the blankets were heavy and warm.
It struck her how close they were, him lying just inches from her.
Glenn leaned over the side. Kevin was flat on his back, cramped in the tiny space, his eyes shut. She saw him as he was only days ago after she had stayed after school to help him study and they’d tramped through Berringford Homes together, and then as he was sitting at a train platform, a haze of snow blowing between them.
It struck Glenn how their whole life had been made up of such little things. Homework. Teachers. Tests. Names of bands. The sound of each other’s voices bouncing back and forth between them like a game. How when he looked at her, his body close, his brown eyes black in the dark, there was a swell in her chest that she had to force down, terrified it would rise up and overtake her.
Were they really little things? she wondered. Or am I just seei
ng them from far away?
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
It was Glenn’s own voice, but she barely recognized it. Her arm snaked out and drew the covers back. Kevin lay motionless in the dark.
“It’s too cold,” she said. “And we need to rest. Come on.”
There was a rustle. The blankets rose and fell and then, after a long pause, there was Kevin’s warmth filling the bed next to her. She was on her back and he was on his. A narrow corridor of air was all that separated her body from his. Glenn thought of a line of surface tension resting on top of a lake, a thin membrane riding between air and sky on one side and the dark shifting depths below. She remembered placing her hand on the flat of Opal’s wall that night and seeing that illusion for what it was for the first time.
Nothing is separate, she thought. Everything is one thing.
Glenn wondered what it would be like to push against the tension, to feel it as it flexed and bent and broke. How warm it would feel to be on the other side. To feel arms around her, Kevin’s chest underneath her head.
The noise from below subsided. All that was left were scattered voices and the clatter of tin as plates and tankards were gathered from tables and returned to the bar. Footsteps creaked up the stairs and down the hallway as people moved into their rooms for the night. Quiet settled throughout the inn.
Drawn by an island of warmth, Glenn’s hand moved beneath the covers to Kevin’s chest. She was only inches from him when he shifted and there was a faint metallic clatter beneath his shirt. His hand fell on whatever it was and stilled it.
“What did she make you promise?”
“Nothing,” Kevin said. “Just … that I’d be safe. That’s all.”
Glenn waited for more, but moments later his breathing became slow and regular. She turned and stared up at the ceiling, wondering why, for the first time in his life, Kevin Kapoor had just lied to her.
Late that night Kevin pulled the blankets aside and slipped out of bed. Glenn watched out of half-closed eyes as he dressed quietly in the dark and then disappeared into the hallway. His footsteps whispered along the hall and down the stairs.
