As the light of the day began to fade, the flickering orange waves of the firelight were taking over, scrawling across smiling faces as spoons dipped into cups and drew out something tasty. There were little moans and outright ‘Thank Yous’ sent Aliyah’s way for the cooking. Tonight, Fi thought to herself, was actually a nice night.
Some days, too many days, they ran short on food. Those were days when the fish didn’t bite, the squirrels got away, or the area was dry and barren, and the Family had to follow the Food Laws. But today at least, Fi could smile. Today even Maggie managed to eat some food.
Lately Aliyah had been making a lot of ‘stews’. They weren’t really stews, more like meat and forest flavors simmered in water, but the water was simmered low and long. Her broths had a nice, soothing flavor, and the warmth did everyone good, even in the heat. It was just plain comforting. Maggie smiled at Fi as she took tiny slurps from her spoon with a sigh.
“Hey there,” a voice interrupted Fi’s thoughts, startling her. Sean plopped down next to her with his cup and spoon in hand. “Whatcha thinking about?” She took a small spoonful of the ‘stew’ and sipped it. A tiny bit of squirrel meat was in the bite and she savored the taste. It was funny, she realized, she couldn’t believe how much she liked squirrel. The thought suddenly struck her as funny and she nearly choked.
“Funny you should ask,” she replied as her shoulders began to shake with laughter. “I was just thinking that I can’t believe how much I like squirrel now.” Sean burst out laughing and the heads in the circle turned towards them.
“What’s the joke?” Maggie asked.
“I was just telling Sean…how much…I like…squirrel now,” Fi choked, now laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. Sean was holding his stomach, he was laughing so hard. All the others looked at their cups and at each other and burst out laughing too. They were so loud that Fi had to shush them.
“Shhh,” she reminded them as she gasped. Heads nodded as they wiped their eyes, Kiara and Zoe looked confused. They had missed the joke.
“I think you spoke for us all there, Fi,” Maggie chuckled. “Squirrel has turned out to be an unexpected treat,” she said with a snort. She turned to Lucy, “Let’s start getting this fire down,” she nodded at the waning light. Yes, Fi sighed, it was time to put out the light. The fire fizzled and spit as the ladies poured water over it and the light disappeared. Sean’s face grew dim as her eyes adjusted.
“The other thing I was thinking,” Fi said with a smile, though Sean probably couldn’t see it yet. “Was that this was a really nice night.” She sighed. “I wish we could have more of these.” Her voice was wistful.
Sean reached out and held her hand in the darkness. She was right, he couldn’t see her either in the increasing darkness. His hand felt warm and reassuring, just like Sean, she thought. Besides her need to constantly hug everyone, she and Sean rarely touched each other and without her vision, it felt very intimate. He spoke, his voice soft.
“I know Fi,” he murmured. “I was thinking the same thing.” His thumb started to stroke the back of her hand and she felt confused. It was not that it wasn’t nice; it just wasn’t well, Sean-like.
“You know we are going to have to find Shelter soon,” she said, as her mind turned to the topic at the forefront of her mind. She was worried, as usual. They hadn’t made it as far north as she would have liked this summer. It was laughable now, she knew, that she’d ever thought that they could make it to Eden in one summer. That was a wild overestimate of what it took to move a party forward through sickness and danger and well, forest, for goodness sakes.
So now she knew. It took a LOT. Sean was silent and Fi continued. She didn’t notice that he’d stopped stroking her hand.
“I figure that we’ve made it about halfway now,” she said, lost in her thoughts. “I don’t want to get too far north before we find shelter because the winter upstate is…” her voice trailed off.
“Brutal,” Sean cleared his throat, his voice flat.
“Yes,” she agreed with a small shiver. “I think we need to start thinking about moving a little farther north and then looking for a winter shelter,” she murmured, almost to herself. Sean pulled his hand away and Fi finally noticed. “What’s wrong?” Sean sighed.
“Nothing,” he said, but his voice had an edge to it. Fi was confused. What had she done wrong? He was silent for a moment and then she heard him take a deep breath. “I just wish you weren’t all business all the time. It’s non-stop,” his tone was almost petulant.
“What?” Fi asked, confused and annoyed at the same time. “What is wrong with you?” She whispered angrily, listening to see if the rest of the Family were around.
“You yourself said that tonight was a nice night,” he said in a sad voice. “And you’re right, it’s a nice night. And we don’t get those very often,” he added and then paused.
“And?” Fi said, irritated. Out with it for goodness’ sakes, she thought.
“And I thought that maybe for once we should just enjoy it,” he said and suddenly Fi could feel that he’d shifted so that he was right beside her, his leg pressed to hers.
He reached out again and took her hand, wrapped it in both his hands, and put it to his chest. Fi’s heart stopped and she froze. Oh God. She knew that he must have felt her stiffen, because he released her hand with an odd sound.
Oh no, Fi thought, he’s embarrassed. He coughed and her thoughts raced as her heart seemed to restart in her chest. What could she say? How did he expect her to respond? She couldn’t tell him, “I’m sorry, I love you, but I don’t love-love you,” like they were in middle school. Why now? Why this? Suddenly her mind settled on a thought, a way to avoid the embarrassment.
“You’re right,” she whispered to him and she thought she heard him take a deep breath. No, no, she thought! That’s not what I meant. Quickly, she corrected his thoughts. “I mean about me being all business all the time.” She reached out and found his hand and squeezed it, but he stiffened at her touch.
“I’m sorry Sean, it’s not your fault.” She was pleading with him, begging him to understand, to forgive her.
He was her best friend, her closest ally. When she closed her eyes, she could still remember the feeling of his arms wrapped tightly around her at Luke’s funeral while she cried. If she sat near enough to him she could tell that it was him without even looking, the shifting of his body was so familiar, the noises he made when he was lost in thought even more so.
Even now, she could feel the connection that was always there…could feel his need to protect her hiding just beneath the surface of his words. And now everything in the world was turned upside down and she was protecting others. And Sean wanted to turn it around even more and Fi’s head whirled at the thought. Despite her love for him, she couldn’t give him what he wanted, but the thought of having a wall between them was unbearable. If she didn’t have Sean in this time of all times… A sob started to rise in her chest and she swallowed it. There had to be some way to make him understand. Just tell him the truth, the real truth, her mind whispered and she realized it was right. She took a deep breath and released his hand.
“Sean, this is all I can think about, this world, this place, this situation,” she said. In the darkness, her whisper was soft and sad. “I don’t sleep and even when I do, I dream of this. Believe me, I wish I could enjoy things,” she added. It was honest, she thought. Though he had probably earned more from her, it was all she could offer. Beside her she could hear him sigh and she felt him stand up. In the darkness her mind raced, worried that he’d been too hurt, too embarrassed. A light touch landed on her shoulder as he placed his hand there for just a moment.
“Thanks Fi,” he said gently. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He tiptoed away to find his sleeping bag. Fi breathed a sigh of relief. For now it seemed that Sean would let his thoughts go and let her focus on being ‘all business all the time’.
And though she would give anything for i
t to be different, that was the only way things could be. If she did have feelings for Sean, she doubted she would have been able to recognize them. In this hopeless place there was only one goal, one vision, one thought, one feeling…survival.
----------- Sean -----------
As he settled into his sleeping bag, Sean fell back with a heavy exhale of frustration. What the hell was he thinking? Of course she wasn’t going to just throw her arms around him and make out with him in the middle of all this…hell. But, he thought wistfully, he couldn’t help what he felt. He loved her. Completely and utterly. He knew that now. When she was in danger, he felt like he was going to die every second…and when she was happy and joked with him, he felt like his heart would melt. And when she flashed him that smile…his heart ached as he pictured her beautiful golden eyes squeezing into happy half-moons.
He rolled over and punched the ground through his sleeping bag and then immediately regretted it as a sharp pain shot through his knuckles. He suppressed a groan and then sighed as he rubbed his hand. She loved him too, he knew. Just…not in the same way. No matter how much it hurt, he could understand. The truth was that he didn’t know how or when his love for her changed. One day, it just did.
But love wasn’t the only thing that changed, he thought, resigned. It was nice of her to blame her lack of feelings on the world around them. He knew she was partly protecting his feelings, but to some extent, that had to be true. He used to think of her affectionately as ‘his Fi’, but when he watched her now he realized that she was never ‘his’ and that she was barely ‘Fi’.
At least, she was barely the Fi he had grown up knowing. She wasn’t the girl who thought longer about what to wear to school than when her homework was due. She wasn’t the girl who was so lost in her daydreams that she could also lose her keys three times in the same day. He took a deep breath as he felt the warning of tears. And she wasn’t the girl he’d held in his arms as she sobbed at her little brother’s funeral. Now she was somebody else. A warrior. And she didn’t need his arms around her any longer.
Shelter
----------- Fi -----------
“I say we go check out that one in the distance,” Fi said, pointing at a low shape on the horizon, centered in the middle of mostly barren dirt fields. Sean peered into the distance at the farmhouse Fi had indicated.
“I guess so. I mean, the fact that it’s so far off the roads is great, even these roads,” he said, kicking at the dirt and gravel road that had brought them here. “On the one hand the house is really obvious because there is nothing around it,” he began as he weighed the pros and cons.
“But,” Fi said, skipping ahead toward the fields, “we can also see someone coming from really far away.” Sean bolted after her and grabbed her arm.
“Exactly” he said. Startled, Fi realized that Sean was right. They would have to wait for nightfall to approach. “You’re right Sean,” she said, her face appreciative. “As usual.” She smiled, patting his arm. Turning back to walk across the road to the forest, she gestured for him to follow her. “Let’s wait in the forest until nightfall.” Sean trotted to join her.
As was common for them whenever they explored together, the two would spend the daylight hours killing time. It was odd, Fi thought, that in the midst of this disaster what she often felt was boredom. It was hard to spend whole days just sitting around, unable to really go anywhere. They had chores and they chatted and played games, but there were definitely times when everyone was flat out bored. To fill time, she and Sean would fall back on silly conversational games like, ‘Would you Rather’ to keep themselves entertained. Or they would talk about the way times had been before…more of a ‘What do you Miss’ version of the game.
“Would you rather,” Sean began first as they lay in the leaves with their heads on their packs. Fi stared up at the pattern of the tree leaves above them, framing the sky. Thank God this situation didn’t kill all the trees, she reflected. It was sad enough seeing the barren fields as they traveled. She listened to Sean’s options: Take a hot shower everyday (always a popular choice) or Have the Internet back.
“That’s a tough one,” she sighed. At least the shower was something that maybe, just maybe, if they found Eden, would be a possibility. The Internet probably wouldn’t be back, Fi thought, maybe for the rest of her life. However long that would turn out to be. She decided. “Have the internet back.” Sean agreed.
Warm water was nice, but nearly everyone felt lost without their tablets. The only exception would have been her father, Fi thought fondly. Mike had to be the only physicist as resistant to technology as he was, she thought, chuckling. He had appreciated the Internet, of course, but he had often complained about the lack of ‘mental quiet’ it created, as he put it. Fi shook her head, ‘mental quiet’ would be nice, but it didn’t come from a lack of technology, she knew. She had no technology and absolutely no ‘mental quiet’ either. It was her turn.
“Ok,” she said, “Would you Rather…Eat chocolate cake.” Sean groaned in appreciation. “Oooooor,” she added, “Eat a giant bowl of pasta with meatballs.” Sean’s groan lengthened. His stomach gurgled and they both laughed. The sound lightened Fi’s heart. She was so incredibly thankful that the small cloud between then had passed. Sean seemed to be ok now.
After they grew tired of playing, Fi took the time to check over her gun, disassembling and cleaning parts of it once again. She cleaned her gun nearly every day, the steps becoming like a rhythm to her, another meditation. It gave her a sense of calm to feel the gun in her hand. Often she cleaned Sean’s gun for him as well, since he did not have the same taste for it that she did.
Whenever she cleaned the gun, her thoughts drifted back to those first nights at home, after she’d stolen her .22. In the early hours of the morning she would lock her door and sit in the middle of her floor to take the gun apart and put it back together over and over. She even learned to do it by feel, with her eyes closed. It would be good practice if she ever needed to work with it in darkness, she’d thought. The truth was that what little sleep she used to get had evaporated with her father’s illness, so she’d come up with all kinds of steadying time-consuming rituals to pass the time while everyone else slept. Late night television had not worked as a distraction. It was so disconnected from her pain and anxiety that she couldn’t watch it. And ‘Pretty Dresses’ had long since gone out the window. Cleaning her guns had always managed to keep her calm. After cleaning her own gun, Fi moved on to Sean’s. He had dozed off beside her as the sun sunk lower in the sky.
The sun descended and the bird songs began their slow changeover from day to night calls. As she finished reassembling Sean’s gun, the satisfying clicks as it all came together gave the ready signal. It was time to go, she thought, rousing Sean and handing him his gun. He nodded and they got ready, pulling on their packs.
Once the sky turned to black, they darted from the cover of the forest and made their way across the barren, dusty fields. As they approached the farmhouse, both drew their weapons. They split and moved around the house. They couldn’t make any sound now. Each step they took had to be made on their own. Fi moved around the front and crept up to the porch. A thick, undisturbed layer of dirt lay across the porch steps and floorboards, glowing in the rising moonlight.
Good sign, she thought, taking careful steps up the porch. A shiver ran through her for a moment as she prepared to enter. There was no sound but the creaking of the wooden shutters in the night breeze. Turning the doorknob, it clicked open and she breathed in as she pushed. It let out a creak and Fi froze, hardly breathing. Pressed against the wall beside the door, she waited, listening. Nothing. Fi leveled her gun in front of herself and whirled through the door.
The house was laid out simply in the center hall style of many farmhouses. To the right was a small dining room and to the left was a living room with a large couch. Directly before her were the stairs to the second floor. Through a doorway from the family room she could see a gli
mpse of the kitchen. It was important to be careful, she thought, with Sean exploring the house as well. They had to be sure they didn’t shoot each other. She tiptoed around with care and ended up meeting in the kitchen. Fi saw Sean’s silhouette in the kitchen and she gave their owl call. He stopped and then continued toward her.
“Seems like it’s clear,” he whispered as he flattened himself against the staircase wall beside her with his Glock drawn. She hummed her agreement.
“Me up, you down, meet here?” She gave commands to Sean in the form of a question to check his thoughts. He was always assessing risks.
“Yes, fine,” he agreed. Fi turned to move up the staircase. It felt like every step creaked. It took forever just to get up the stairs. Squeak. Freeze. Wait. Go. Squeak. Freeze. Wait. Go. It was annoying, but necessary. Fi was sure she heard a telltale squeak from Sean’s stairs as he descended from the kitchen to the cellar. She smiled. When they met back downstairs, Fi decided to pull out her flashlight so she could really get a sense of the place. They holstered their weapons.
“It’s definitely empty,” Fi said in a low voice.
“Yes,” Sean agreed as Fi swung the red beam of light around the room. There was a heavy layer of dust everywhere. The fine dirt from the barren fields surrounding the house had worked its way in through cracks in windows and doors. Their finger and footprints were the only disturbance in the dirt that they could find. No food had been found in the house, but that probably would have been too much to ask, Fi thought.
“Fireplace, huh?” Sean said, peering up into the soot stained brick chimney of the fireplace in the living room. “That’s pretty much a necessity. Looks like it’s been used, so let’s just hope it’s safe,” he said and Fi nodded. They both knew that the winter was going to be frigid. The fireplace sealed the deal on the farmhouse as far as Fi was concerned.
Eden's Root Page 18
