by Cal, Sarah
“Are we going right now?” Merry asked, “Or waiting.”
Emma frowned. She didn’t want to wait, but she had usually went to look for the boy when it was in the evening, since he’d first appeared to her at night. She didn’t think he’d tried to take anything from the farm at day light before, unless all the patrols just missed him when he did. She had always thought he did it at night, but...
When she had been with Merry when the boy showed up, it was pretty early in the morning. So should they stay or wait... and if he didn’t who up in the day, just how long could they stay out there?
But then she sighed and frowned at herself for her indecisiveness. This was no time to start second guessing herself.
“Might as well go right now,” she finally said. “There’s no point in waiting around.”
The other question she needed to think through, was whether they would be waiting for him to come out this time.
Emma was pretty sure she didn’t have it in her to do any more waiting. It might lead to nothing, like the past few days. She was too worried to go and wait when he was just out of her reach through the woods...
But going after him would scare him. If he tried to run from them... it would hurt her emotionally, and it could hurt him physically. Emma wasn’t sure she could be fast enough through the trees to catch him before he disappeared. She hadn't exactly toured extensively through those woods. The times she’d went in, she had been following a direct route so as not to get lost. The straight way they had picked might not have been long for them to pass through in a little over a day, but there was plenty of the forest they didn’t know. If the boy knew it better, that would be even worse, because it would be easier for him to lose them.
“Merry,” she said, voice quiet, “if we have to go look for him in the woods...”
She met her sister’s eyes. Merry had been the one talking about the forest being evil. Emma wondered if she really thought that, or if it was just something Merry said in the moment that was part of her worries. After all, she didn’t want the boy with them, and he had come from the woods. But their entire walk through, Merry had been leaning on Chase’s strength. She was better now, and she could walk on her own. Emma might have been imagining it, but she thought her sister had been putting on some meat, since she ate better, because the food was available and she wanted to eat more than she usually had before. She probably got the same starvation scare as Emma.
Still, maybe rushing off alone wouldn’t be the best idea.
“Why don’t we ask Chase?” Merry suggested.
Emma nodded, though inside, she had some worry. Chase hadn't asked about the boy again, and it was like Emma had never mentioned him. It had been a while since she went out with him to wait the boy out. Actually, not only did he not talk about the boy, but Emma had the sinking feeling that he was pulling away from her, creating a distance between them.
It always worried her when Chase tried to do this. At least this time she knew it wasn’t because he was mad at her, but because of the boy. He must have been as worried as she was, she could tell even if he didn’t speak to her. Because he was off keeping his worries to himself. Emma didn’t like interrupting him on the rare occasion he got into his moods. He didn’t often act it, but Chase might be the most stubborn person she’d ever met. He gave in easily sometimes when she was involved, that she hardly got to see it until he was in a mood of his own.
But the suggestion was a good one. Emma didn’t want to bother him, but she thought, surely for this, he would break out of it. Chase was a lot faster than them, and he was the outdoors type. If they needed to run, he would help them.
Besides that, Emma just really wanted him to be there when they found the boy. She was resolved now that it was definitely going to be today. They would go into the forest, and Emma wouldn’t stop searching until they found the boy. She knew Chase would feel as she did.
“You’re right,” she said decisively, meeting her sister’s eye. “We need to get Chase for this. Do you have any idea where he is?”
Emma couldn’t be sure if he was out patrolling or helping in the fields. He had woken up around the same time as her and gone off somewhere else while she went to patrol with Harry.
“He shouldn’t be far,” Merry said with confidence. “I’m team leader, remember? I like to know where everybody goes and what they do beery day. Well, except you, because you don’t really tell anybody.”
Emma smiled, remembering she had been the one to give Merry the position. Initially, she had done it to appease her sister, but Merry had obviously taken it seriously and done her job. Emma suddenly felt very glad she had made the decision.
“He isn’t out on patrol today. He’s supposed to be out in the parsnip farm tending the crops. He’s surprisingly good at it, actually, the others say that he seems a natural, and I’ve seen it for myself. I didn’t know Chase was good at farming.”
Emma didn’t either, but it could just be one of those things she didn’t know about her best friend. His parents might have owned a farm, though he hadn't said that exactly.
“So let’s go get him,” Emma said. “Lead the way.”
Her sister smiled, and Emma followed her out of the house.
Emma went with Merry to get Chase. She knew he was as invested in finding the boy as she was. Getting him to go into the woods with them was easy, and they were on their way, hoping they could find the child.
They stopped at the tree line around where Emma had seen him both times.
“Do you think we should split up?” she asked, worried. “We could cover more ground that way...”
“But it would be a pain if one of us got lost in there. And whoever finds the kid, how will they tell the others to go back?”
Emma knew he was right, but she couldn’t help but worry.
The boy had been alone too long, and as far as she could tell, and the other patrollers, there hadn’t been any more broken stalks that indicated someone had stolen the food. The boy likely had to break them because he was so small just to reach the cobs, and he was also probably he only one that had been taking from the farm recently.
Which meant, he hadn’t eaten since the time Emma gave him something from the farm to eat.
“What if he’s died out there,” Emma worried out loud. “Or if he ran into the wrong hands? We have no idea where he could have gone, and we don’t know these woods well enough to know where else they could lead...”
In fact, he probably made it to the farm through these woods, so it could be connected to where his parents had died. The boy was too young to have wandered so far away from home. What if he went back that way? And the people that killed his parents got him...
Her heart ached in her chest, and she pushed the thoughts away. If that happened, then the best thing would be if they killed him quickly. She didn’t want to think what cruel people could do with someone so young and defenseless. She didn’t want to think a fellow human being would hurt a little boy like that, but even before the world went to hell the possibility was always there. It was just higher now.
“I’m sure that isn’t the case, Emma,” Chase said, trying to comfort her. “He’s probably just laying low somewhere.”
“Well, we can’t just stay here waiting and worrying,” Merry said decisively. “If we’re going in, we go together and cover as much ground as possible.”
With that, they walked into the woods.
They spread out without losing sight of each other through the trees so they could cover more ground, and Emma couldn’t help the anxiety creeping up on her the longer it took for them to find the boy. After a while, she realized there was silence to one side of her where Merry should have been. She stopped, listened, then went back, looking for Merry. She was standing still when Emma saw her, and she looked up as Emma approached.
“I’ve found something that might help,” she said reluctantly. “Though I don’t know how much.”
Emma waved her hands impatiently.
“Just tell me where, Merry.”
She pointed. “I found a pair of kid’s shoes, battered and worn by lots of walking. But there isn’t anywhere around the area, and there’s no way to know how long he’d left them there for.”
Emma imagined the child wandering around barefoot, stoned and sticks digging into his tiny feet. Merry was right, he could have left the shoes at any time. Emma couldn’t even be sure if he’d had them on the past two times she caught sight of him. She was having trouble walking through the woods in her shoes, and he ran over this rough ground.
“Can you point out where you found them?”
Merry did, and Emma looked back the way they’d come. He was always going away from the farm, so they’d have to go farther out. She wasn’t sure how much he position of the shoes would help, but they didn’t have anything else to go on. If not for those shoes, she might as well have imagined the boy existed, for all that she’d seen of him for nearly a week now.
Chase had come up behind them, and asked. “What’s going on?”
“Merry found some shoes that belonged to the boy,” she explained quickly. “We’re going to follow that direction and hopefully we’ll find something.”
Her searching became more anxious as they went ahead, and she was cursing herself for letting him go twice
She tried to call out to the kid, opening her mouth and cupping her hands around her mouth, before she realized she didn’t even know his name, and just calling him kid probably wouldn’t be enough to catch his attention without scaring him.
“Dammit!” she cursed under her breath instead, moving at an even faster pace.
Then finally, they got something. There was a shuffling in the trees up ahead, Emma almost missed it being frantic, but then she was frozen and holding her hands out to stop the other two.
“Guys, stay back,” she warned. “I think he’s up ahead. If we keep going forward making noise, we might scare him off.”
She was also glad she’d stopped herself from calling out to him. If he’d heard them before they got this close, they could have lost him.
They all waited, staying still, and Emma really hoped it wasn’t the first animal they’d come across here. She held her breath as there was more shuffling. Then the boy emerged, looking terrified.
For a moment, she was overwhelmed with relief to find him, and her eyes blurred in tears. But then she blinked them back and crouched down, holding a hand out to the boy.
“You can come closer, little boy. None of us will hurt you—we want to take you somewhere safe and give you some food, and something to drink.”
The boy didn’t move, clutching something, and Emma noticed it was an old teddy bear, frozen and unable to speak because of his fear. Emma’s heart went out to him, and she waved for him to come closer.
“I know you’re scared, and that your parents are gone, so we can give you everything you need and make you better. Just come with us?”
Emma noticed how skinny the boy was and how pale he looked. They would need to have Carol check him over, just to be sure he was fine. But there was no way they could let him go this time, so when he didn’t move, she took the initiative to approach him first, her impatience not letting her wait for him to make the first move, not this time.
She approached him cautiously, and his eyes roll into his head. Emma caught him before he could collapse.
“We must get him back to the farm,” she told the others, terrified for his life.
Chapter Nineteen:
They hurried back to the farm.
“What’s wrong with him?” Merry asked.
But Emma had no idea what to tell her. She didn’t know whether the boy was okay or not, and she didn’t see much point in stopping to check. Emma was afraid she wouldn’t know, anyway.
She could guess he was exhausted or hungry, but what if there was something more than that? If he had gotten hurt, or ill, and it wasn’t something that would be apparent to them. The best chance they had of a diagnosis was getting him to Carol, or Karen.
Emma didn’t need to answer, though, because Chase did it for her.
“Whatever it is, we just need to get him back. There isn’t much we can do for him out here, anyway.”
It was enough to appease Merry because she didn’t ask more questions, but it only had Emma in a state of panic.
Please let nothing happen to him, she begged, glancing down at him before looking back ahead.
She tried to move her legs faster, frustrated, but the ground was hardly even, and it was harder with a body in her arms. She was trying not to jostle him, hoping if it was an injury she wouldn’t make it worse, but speed came fast, and she knew she was failing. She held him close to her chest, fighting the urge in her hands to hold him tighter.
The boy couldn’t have been older than seven years old. Emma thought of all the things that he had likely endured and felt her eyes tearing up. She had to bite her lip and force the tears back, though, because they only clouded her vision. She could cry once they had him somewhere warm and safe.
The body in her arms felt too still, though; too light. She couldn’t help worrying.
“Emma, would you let me carry him?”
The voice was Chase’s, one of the people she trusted most in the world, but she instinctively curled the boy closer to her and shook her head.
“Emma?” he called her name, sounding impatient.
“I’m fine,” she snapped back. “Just keep going, Chase.”
He made a sound of frustration, loud enough that she could hear with all the noise they were making as they passed through the trees.
“Emma, come on. I could probably get him there faster if I ran ahead. Just let me have him.”
But she shook her head. Her heart quivered in anxiety at just the thought of letting him go, and she knew that no matter what he said, she wasn’t going to give the boy over to him.
A part of her felt bad. Chase was right that he could get the boy there faster. Emma could have cursed at herself for her selfishness. She knew if she handed the boy to Chase and he ran ahead, he would leave her and Merry behind. She wasn’t so absorbed as to not realize her sister was already struggling to keep up with them, and Emma didn’t want to have to choose between following Chase at her fastest speed, and slowing so she wouldn’t leave her sister behind. Merry wouldn’t take it well. Emma didn’t want to make the choice.
But more than that, even if she put her all behind it, she couldn’t keep up with Chase’s speed, and she didn’t want to have the boy so far away from her. Whatever it was that motivated such thoughts, be it her dormant mothering instincts waking up, Emma didn’t put too much thought into it.
Chase kept offering to help carry the boy, but Emma remained adamant to release him. Eventually, Chase got the idea and stopped asking, so the other two were in the lead. Or at least, Merry tried.
It wasn’t like the boy was even heavy. She could barely feel the weight in her arms, and she didn’t have to look under the boy’s dirty clothes to know he was too thin. She wondered if he’d eaten anything at all since she gave him food, and she hurried her steps just a bit faster, feeling relief when the house came into view that she almost stumbled. She righted her feet, though, and forced her legs even faster.
It couldn’t have taken that long, but Emma felt like it had been hours since they left the farm house.
“Carol!” she called out while they were still a few feet away. “If you’re out there, I need your help! Please, hurry!”
She hadn’t checked if Carol was around, and she was suddenly worried. What if she was supposed to be out patrolling the fields? Her mind scrambled to try and remember the rotation, but since everyone did as they were supposed to, she hadn’t been paying too much attention to it. She probably failed in her job as leader, but it didn’t bother her nearly as much as the body in her arms.
Their only alternative was Karen, and though Emma would have preferred Carol, Karen would be of some help. Only Emma didn’t
know where she was, either, and she couldn’t help but curse.
Luckily, though, Carol was around. She came running when she heard them, and Emma almost smiled when she saw her. If she didn’t feel so much like crying, she would have anyway.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes falling to the body in Emma’s arms, then she stilled.
She was shocked to see the child in Emma’s arms, who was woozily coming back to consciousness. She stopped running towards them, instead standing there and gaping at them, and Emma felt impatience stir in her chest.
“Carol!” she called out, frantic, her voice sharper than she intended, getting the other woman’s attention. “We found him and he passed out,” she said quickly. “Something is seriously wrong with him and we don’t know what to do. I need you to look him over.”
Carol snapped out for her preoccupation. Emma knew she was a good nurse, and more than anything, she cared about the comfort of her patients. Her face firmed into the grim face she usually had when she was concentrating hard on what she needed to do.
“Get him upstairs so I can examine him and hopefully make him better. I don’t have anything I can give him, but if we’re lucky, he won’t need drugs.”
Emma nodded, hoping for the same, and moved. “I’ll explain everything later,” she promised.
Upstairs, Chase opened the door to their room, and Emma went in without question. He had rushed ahead of them into the house, and Emma shot him a grateful look as she passed. Carefully, she lowered the boy onto the bed, feeling her breath hitch once he was out of her arms.
She hesitated there for a moment, the urge to pick him up and hold him close still there. But then Carol was there and Emma was moving aside. She needed to let the other woman look the boy over, though it was still hard.
Emma stood aside as Carol examined the child as best as she could. She might have been standing a bit too close, but if Emma disturbed her work, Carol was nice enough not to mention it and tell her to move away a bit. Emma didn’t know what she was doing, even though she’d played nurse at a make shift hospital back home with Carol for a time. She saw Carol run her hands over the boy’s chest and press a little on his stomach and sides.
