by Amy Engel
“So, I’m guessing you never told them why you’re here,” I say. I want this over with, one way or the other.
“No,” Mark says, eyes sliding around the tent. “Just like you never said who your husband is.” His eyes finally stop moving, settle on me.
“I didn’t tell them I’m married,” I say, voice quiet.
Mark nods. “Smart…considering.” He takes a step closer to me and I shift backward.
“Don’t come near me.”
Mark raises both hands, huffs out a little laugh. Like I’m completely overreacting, as if he hadn’t tried to rape and kill me a week ago.
“We both want to stay here, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“Well, then, if we keep our mouths shut, there’s no reason that can’t work out.”
“You don’t deserve to be here. Not after what you’ve done.”
Mark’s eyes grow even colder, the pale blue fading to ice. “And you do?”
“I didn’t rape a little girl,” I remind him.
“Keep your voice down.”
I lower my voice to just above a whisper. “I didn’t kill a woman who couldn’t defend herself.”
Mark blows out a dismissive breath. “She was practically dead already. Who cares?”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe. But you’re just as bad.” He shakes his finger at me, like I’m a naughty child. “You married a Lattimer.”
I open my mouth to protest, and he stops me with a raised hand, a hissed reply. “And don’t give me any bullshit about how you had to marry him. I saw the way you looked at him that day in the woods. I saw the way he held your hand. And I’ll be happy to tell everyone all about it.” He gestures wide with both hands, including the whole camp within his palms. “There are plenty of people out there who blame every bad thing in their lives on the Lattimers. To them what you did is the worst betrayal of all.”
My stomach sinks as I realize my chance to be honest with Caleb and Ash about Mark has come and gone. I waited too long. Now that he’s back, I can’t risk angering him, can’t allow him to tell the truth about my relationship with Bishop. So I swallow past the rock of fear and regret that’s lodged in my throat and speak. “Fine. You don’t say anything, and I won’t either. And stay away from me.”
Mark nods. “I knew we could reach an agreement.” He turns to leave and throws me a glance over his shoulder, his eyes full of a knowing delight that makes me want to vomit. “We’re not so different after all, Ivy.”
I want to cross the tent and rake his face with my nails, grab a rock and hit him again. Only this time I won’t stop until he’s dead. “We are nothing alike,” I tell him.
“Really?” He smiles at me, the smirk that is quickly becoming the star of all my nightmares. “’Cause you seem just as concerned as me with saving your own skin.”
He is gone, the tent flap snapping shut in his wake, before I can think of a reply.
“Try it again,” Caleb says. “Don’t push so hard with the knife.” He grips my wrist and turns it slightly so the blade is angled to the side instead of straight down. “That way it’s easier to separate the skin from the meat.”
I ignore the slide of sweat down my face, the sun beating down on my bent neck like an open flame. “Like this?” I cut the dead rabbit’s fur away. Not as cleanly as Caleb or Ash, but better than the last time I tried.
“You’re getting there,” Caleb says, rewarding me with a half smile.
Ash is sitting under a nearby tree, and she tosses a small twig at Caleb’s head. “When is this lesson going to be done? I’m drowning in my own sweat over here.”
Caleb throws the twig back, a direct hit to the middle of Ash’s forehead. “You’re in the shade,” he reminds her. He looks back at me, flickering his eyes to the rabbit. “Finish it up.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, and Ash hoots.
“You want to learn or not?” Caleb says, his smile fading.
“Yes,” I say. “Sorry.” I roll my shoulders, the muscles tight from being hunched over the small carcass.
When I’m done, I hold up the skin for Caleb’s inspection. “I’ve seen better.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “I’ve seen worse.”
I grin at him and raise my eyebrows at Ash. “Careful, Caleb,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re turning into a big softy.”
Caleb takes the rabbit, along with the half dozen he skinned while waiting for me, and puts them in his bag. I give Ash back her knife, and the three of us head toward the river without speaking of our destination. We all need the relief of water. As we pass a small group working in the garden, one of the men calls out, “How many today?”
“Seven,” Caleb says.
The man smiles. I think his name is Andrew. Or maybe Albert. “Not bad.” He looks at me. “Caleb teaching you the tricks of the trade?”
“He’s trying.”
“She’s holding her own,” Caleb says.
The man nods, leans his weight on his hoe. “Doesn’t surprise me. Any daughter of Justin Westfall’s has gotta be a quick learner. Your daddy’s a great man.”
I remember the way my father sat and watched me be dragged out of the courtroom, destined to be put out beyond the fence, and didn’t say a single word in my defense. The way he wanted me to kill an innocent boy. “Yes,” I say.
“Must’ve been hard on him, watching you be put out.”
“Yes,” I say again, voice a low rasp. It’s the only word I can find.
The man shakes his head. “Surprised he didn’t follow you out.”
I duck my head, bite the inside of my cheek to keep the tears at bay. Caleb’s probing gaze on my bare neck burns as hot as any sun.
“Come on,” Ash says, pulling at my hand. “We’re heading for the river,” she tells the man. “Need to wash off the rabbit guts.”
I let her lead me away, put one foot in front of the other, and pretend I don’t feel Caleb’s eyes on me every step of the way.
I’m trying to be quiet as I follow Caleb and Ash through the woods, but every few seconds I snag a branch or snap a twig beneath my feet, and finally Caleb rounds on me, eyes narrowed.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“Don’t. Talk,” he bites out through a clenched jaw, and I realize this is not just an exercise, that we are tracking something, or someone, who is a genuine danger. When we’d started the return walk to camp after setting a series of snares and Caleb had veered off, mumbling about following a trail only he could see, I hadn’t thought much of it. Just assumed he was teaching me more about tracking, although even straining until my eyes hurt I couldn’t see the signs he was following. I should have noticed the way Ash got quieter and quieter as we moved deeper into the trees, her shoulders tensing up, her hand hovering above her knife.
Now I make an effort to be more careful, falling slightly behind as I pick my way gingerly across the ground, which suddenly seems strewn with objects put there just to thwart my stealthiness. Ahead, I hear the murmur of voices, and my head whips up, my body freezing in place. Caleb drops down to a crouch, and Ash and I follow, the three of us hidden behind a stand of bushes.
Craning my neck, I can just make out two men sitting together in a small clearing. One of them is drawing something in the dirt with a stick. “Here,” he says, using the stick to mark a spot on his crude map. “We’ll go in here, once it’s dark. Take as much food as we can, any weapons we see, and get back out fast.”
“There are going to be people around,” the other man says, “even if we wait until the middle of the night.”
The first man shrugs. “Then we’ll take care of them.”
While I’m wondering what Caleb will do with this information, whether he’ll set up additional people on watch around the camp or maybe move the food supplies, he’s already moving away from us. I glance over at him, startled, and he gives Ash a quick motion with his hand. She nods, puts her own hand down flat between us, gesturing for me to stay where
I am, before creeping off in the opposite direction from Caleb, leaving me alone.
My heart is beating so loud I’m surprised the men can’t hear it from where they sit. My thighs ache, but I don’t dare adjust my position. I know which way Caleb went, but when my eyes scan the tree line I can’t find any hint of him. I would feel better if I knew what Ash and Caleb were doing, how long I might have to wait here, and what I should do if the men turn in my direction.
The man with the stick suddenly stops talking, holding up a finger to silence the man next to him. I hold my breath, move my eyes just to the left of them, as though my gaze is what drew their attention and looking away will solve the problem. Both of the men stand, one of them swiveling his head toward my hiding place. I don’t know whether he’s spotted me, if it’s wiser to hold my ground or flee. Every muscle in my body tenses, ready to spring up and away if he moves closer. But before the man can even take a step, something whistles through the trees and he crumples to the ground. One of Caleb’s bolts protrudes from his eye. I suck in a breath, my legs suddenly numb. I have to put a hand down to steady myself, my fingers sinking into the warm dirt at my side.
I hear Caleb’s voice from a distance, but can’t make out his words, my gaze pinned on the dead man. His companion stumbles backward, eyes swinging from the body to the woods where Caleb is hiding. He has some kind of sword in his hand, but doesn’t seem to know where to aim it with no visible adversary. He turns toward the sound of Caleb’s voice, and Ash streaks out of the trees behind him, buries her knife in the base of his skull, and pulls it free again before his body even hits the ground.
My ears ring, my breath coming in panting gasps, like I’ve suffered a blow to the head or been smothered in a thick blanket, everything muffled and distant. Sound returns slowly—the faint buzz of flower-drunk bees, a gurgle of blood erupting from the mouth of the man Ash killed, the crack of Caleb’s footsteps through the trees. I fall forward on my hands and knees, my view of the carnage partially blocked by tangles of my own hair. Ash stands between the bodies, blood dripping from her knife, her face hard and remorseless. Caleb emerges from the trees to my left, crossbow held loosely in his hand.
“You all right?” he asks me, not waiting for my answer before he steps around me to meet Ash in the clearing. He pulls his bolt from the dead man’s eye socket with a wet squelch that pushes my stomach up into my throat. I thought I was tougher now, had grown a thicker skin. But I am still too innocent; part of me has remained sheltered, even here beyond the fence, from what really happens when the world falls apart.
I lever myself to standing, stumble into the clearing after Caleb. Ash glances at me as she wipes her knife on the pants of the man prone at her feet. Her eyes are kind, but hold no apology. She does not seem like a friendly puppy now. She looks as quick and deadly as I imagined her to be that morning I first spied the knife on her hip. A shiver ripples up my spine as I think what she could have done to me back in Birch Tree if I’d been any type of threat instead of half dead already.
“Guess you figured they weren’t worth saving,” I say, my voice high and giddy, like I might burst into laughter at any second. Or tears.
Caleb looks at me. “We don’t do second chances out here. Not with people like this. You protect you and yours the first time. Because that might be the only chance you get. You waste time asking questions, second-guessing when you already know the answers, and you end up dead.”
I nod, force myself to look at the bodies, blood seeping into the dirt in black-red halos around their heads. The air is heavy with the metallic tang of death. Bishop once told me that the world we lived in was brutal and that we tried to pretend otherwise by hiding behind normality, scared to face the truth. No one here is pretending. Caleb told me life beyond the fence was dangerous, and now I’ve seen it firsthand. No one’s sugarcoating the reality, trying to convince me things are better than they seem. There’s a relief in that, an honesty that makes this brutality somehow more bearable than the kind cloaked in wedding dresses and courtroom trials.
“Now what?” I ask, straightening my shoulders. “Do we bury them?”
Ash glances at Caleb. “No,” she says. “It’s too much work. And we’re far enough away from camp that even if the bodies draw predators, it won’t put the camp in any danger.”
“Okay,” I say. My voice already sounds more my own. Stronger. I point to the knife in Ash’s hand. “I need one of those. And lessons on how to use it.”
Ash and I practice with our knives every afternoon. Luckily for me, she is a more patient teacher than Caleb. I’m quick to learn how to properly hold the knife and how to thrust with it, but throwing it is a whole other story. After days of practice, I still haven’t hit the tree by the river we are using as our target, let alone the bull’s-eye painted on its bark. Caleb would probably have stabbed me with my own knife by this point, just to save himself the aggravation.
“Aaargh!” I scream when my knife flies through the air only to hit the ground and bounce. “I’m never going to get this.”
“Yes, you will,” Ash says with a smile. She releases her own knife with a quick flick of her wrist, and it buries itself in the center of the bull’s-eye with a quiet smack.
“Now you’re just showing off,” I tell her as I walk to retrieve my knife.
“It takes time, but you’ll get it. You have to. Sometimes there’s no way to get in close, so throwing is your only option.”
“Where do I aim, exactly?”
“Not the heart,” Ash says, matter-of-fact. “It’s too hard to get the knife positioned right. You don’t want it hitting a rib and not doing any major damage.” She makes a fist and presses it to the middle of her chest, right into the soft hollow in the middle of her rib cage. “Here. Hit them here and they’ll go down. They might not die as fast, but they won’t have much fight left in them.”
“Have you had to do it a lot?” I ask her, eyes on the tree. “Kill people?”
Ash yanks her knife from the target. “Enough,” she says. “It’s just a reality.”
Lately, every time I close my eyes at night, those men dying at Caleb’s and Ash’s hands plays like a movie against my eyelids. It’s not horror I feel or fear; more of a realization that life has a way of coming full circle. I refused to murder Bishop, dropped the rock rather than kill Mark. But this world may turn me into a killer regardless. But if I’m going to survive, I know Ash is right: I have to learn how to defend myself, and I can’t be afraid to use the lessons she teaches me.
“Those men we killed the other day?” Ash says, like she’s a mind reader. “That’s how my dad died.”
“I thought he died of an infection.”
“He did. But it was from a wound. He was stabbed in the leg. We tried to heal it, but…”
I remember the remorseless look on Ash’s face, the way her blade sank into that man’s neck without hesitation. “Men like that?” I ask. “They’re the ones who hurt him?”
“Yes. But a bigger group.” The word comes out on an uneven exhale. “We made a mistake. Not killing them as soon as we were sure of their intentions, and my dad paid the price.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill me when you first saw me,” I say. “Caleb probably wanted to.”
“No. He wanted to leave you, though. But I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why not?”
Ash shrugs, her eyes on the knife in her hand.
“Caleb said you were looking for someone to save,” I say carefully. “Was that because of your dad?”
Ash looks up from her knife, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “I made my dad a promise. When he was dying. He always said following my mom out here, saving Caleb, raising me…those were the things he was most proud of. I tried so hard to save him, but nothing worked.” She hurls her knife hard at the tree, buries it to the hilt in the bark. “So yeah, after he was gone, maybe I was looking for someone to help, someone I could save the way I couldn’t save him. Do something good to
honor his memory the way he did so many good things in his life. And when I saw you passed out in the road, half dead…” She shakes her hair out of her eyes, swipes the back of her hand down her cheek to brush away a tear. “I thought of my dad, and I knew I couldn’t just leave you there.”
“I would’ve died if not for you,” I tell her. “I’d gone as far as I could on my own.”
“Nobody can make it out here alone, Ivy.” Ash smiles at me. “Except maybe Caleb.”
I smile back. “He is kind of inhuman sometimes.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Ash says. “He’s tough, but not as tough as he pretends to be.”
“I bet he could hit the damn tree with the knife,” I mutter.
Ash slings her arm around my shoulders. “Sure he can. But he couldn’t at the beginning either, no matter what he claims.” She takes her free hand and closes it over mine, around the hilt of my knife. “Now, stop stalling and start throwing.”
It takes little more than a month for my pact to stay out of Mark’s way and keep my mouth shut to evaporate. I’ve kept busy, helping in the garden, washing clothes in the river with Ash, learning to track and set snares with Caleb, who is uncharacteristically patient given the fact that my still-healing shoulder makes me a slow student. I can skin and gut a rabbit or squirrel almost as fast as Ash. I’m settling into my life here. Accepting that this is who I am now, that Ash and Caleb are the closest thing to family I have. It’s a careful kind of affection, the type that won’t hurt me too much if it ends, but it’s something, at least.
I’m not sure I’m destined for happiness, but I think this is a life I can make work. Except for Mark. The deal I’ve made with him sits in my stomach like a meal of jagged rocks. I tell myself that I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m keeping myself safe, and Mark will have to conform to the morals of the group in order to stay, so there’s no harm done. But I don’t believe it. Every time I see him gather around the fire in the evening, share a bowl of stew with the person next to him, laugh at something Caleb says, the shards in my stomach cut through me. Remind me of who he really is, and who I am to have traded my own safety for his. I remember Caleb’s words about not giving people a second chance to hurt you and know I made a mistake that day on the riverbank.
