Ashes, Ashes

by Jo Treggiari

  She had a wild impulse to just dump the turtle and eat acorn porridge and dried berries for the fourth day in a row, but her acorn flour store was getting low, fresh meat was rare, and she needed the protein. She suspected, too, that there was more squirming weevil than powdered acorn at the bottom of the old coffee can. Perhaps if she just shoved the meat back into the saucepan, put the lid on, and left it to sit for a while over the bedded embers, the flesh would fall from the bones and she’d have turtle soup or turtle tea. There were a couple of shriveled wild onions left, some woody mushrooms she could toss in. She’d eaten far worse.

  Lucy stuck the turtle in the pot and covered it, piling the smoking wood around it. She rinsed her right hand in the bucket of water, getting most of the blood off, though not the dark matter stuck deep under her nails, and wiped it dry on her jeans. Her left hand throbbed, and she wondered if the bandage was on too tight. Her skin felt greasy with sweat. She stripped off her thick sweatshirt. Underneath she wore a tank top. Lucy sniffed at her armpits, wrinkling her nose, and then quickly sluiced her upper body. Now that the waters were rising, she’d be able to bathe again. It had been far too long. Weird how she hadn’t noticed the odor of stale sweat and grime that permeated the shelter. Time to change the bedding grasses and air out the rush mats she had pieced together during the long nights. Lucy had ended up with cuts striping her palms and fingers and looking as if she’d lost a fight with a bramble bush. She would light some sage bundles later to clear out the musty stink and the smell of dead turtle.

  She pulled her sweatshirt back on. Her neck felt tight, her hands shaky, and the wound beat in time with her heart. She wrapped a shawl and then her sleeping bag around her shoulders and sat as close as she could to her small fire. The smoke burned her eyes. She was procrastinating. There were things to do before nightfall, but she had checked the calendar notches she had cut into the bark of one of the four support trees and knew the moon would be full, which would give her more light than usual. She could get a later start, and a few minutes’ rest would do her good.

  Beyond the cracks in the interlaced willow screens she had made to disguise the small clearing where she lived, she could see the huge, red sun setting above waters that looked as thick and black as molasses.

  Lucy dreaded this time of day, when there was a pause and her thoughts rose up and threatened to submerge her. As long as she was busy doing, she could keep the loneliness at bay. She drew the edge of the sleeping bag up around her ears, the shawl over her head, and nuzzled into them, smelling the nose-tickling mustiness of leaf mold, ground-in dirt, and the dried grasses she slept on. Her mind buzzed at her like an annoying mosquito.

  She needed to walk the circumference of her camp, check the snares she’d set, the trip wires, the bundles of grass she had laid down on the ground that would show her if anyone heavy-footed had come near. Lucy groaned. She was so tired. Her days were always long, but sometimes it seemed as if it didn’t matter how early a start she got.

  She thrust the sleeping bag aside, bundled up the shawl, and got to her feet, popping her neck and shrugging her shoulders up and down a few times to work out the tightness. She checked a few more things off her mental list: She needed drinking water, so she’d have to make a wide arc and pass by the lake, and she needed as much wood as she could carry, now that the rains were gathering force. There’d been two torrential downpours lasting ten or twelve hours already, and it was only the beginning of June by her rough monthly calendar. She’d been less than careful about keeping track of the days and nights. The Long Wet brought monsoons, riptides, flash floods, and sudden lightning fires—the worst of them falling roughly in the middle of the cycle, but if anything was true these days, it was that the weather was erratic.

  She’d check her snares, of course, hoping for a ground squirrel or rat, and her fishing lines, although during the Long Dry the lake waters had receded, leaving about twenty feet of dry, cracking mud before the first dribbles accumulated in shallow pools. A mudskipper maybe, a newt, or a salamander, though she didn’t like the gluey taste much. It was too dark to go digging for shellfish by the sea. She’d plan on doing that tomorrow.

  First she listened. But there were no noises except for the rhythmic hum of insects. Next she peered through a hole in the mesh of supple willow limbs that screened the front entrance to her camp. Lucy knew every tree, every bush, every grassy hump silhouetted in the gathering dusk. It was a landscape she had peered at and studied night after night. She had counted the weird hummocks carved out of the earth after the last quake—there were twenty-three of them standing guard like silent sentinels.

  Nothing seemed different, but lately she’d had the unsettling feeling of eyes on her. She checked for movement. The air was so still, the grasses didn’t stir. She pulled up the black sweatshirt hood. Then she picked up a couple of plastic gallon jugs for the water, looping a length of rope through the handles, slung a woven grass bag over her shoulder, checked that her knife was snug against her hip, and lifted the front door screen out of the way.

  A long puddle of water lapped against the piled sticks and brush she’d stacked against the outer walls to keep the rainwater from seeping in. She splashed through, feeling the cold wetness through the thick leather of her boots and a double layer of socks, ducked her head slightly, and replaced the screen. She backed up about five feet, making sure her small fire pit was invisible from the outside. It was. Good. She’d spent a lot of time stuffing most of the larger chinks with moss and dried grass recently. Plus, now that the rains were coming, the willow sticks she’d shoved into the ground to make thicker walls would begin to grow and leaf-out. Willow was amazing! A cut stick would take root easily. The four slender, flexible trees she had bent down and bound together at the top to make the sloping roof were already bushy with new growth.

  If you didn’t know the camp was there, it was almost invisible against the surrounding foliage and shrubs, like the snug, domed nests the field mice made themselves out of grass stalks. She glanced at the sky. The moon was beginning its rise, full as she had hoped. Purple clouds boiled; the wind had suddenly picked up and the scent of rain was heavy. It would mask the smells of smoke and cooking turtle, she thought. Taking one last look around, she set off toward the lake, her nerves stretched tight and jumping.

  The terrain was already changing. There were splashes of green leaves within the dusty gold. And the ground was spongy underfoot, treacherous with puddles and sinkholes. There were pretty much only two seasons now—drought and flood.

  Her boots squelched a bit, but so far they were not leaking too badly. It was so quiet—save for the scritch of small claws scrabbling up tree trunks and the angry, explosive noises of disturbed squirrels. She always thought they sounded as if they were cussing her out. On the way, she inspected various snares she’d concealed under bushes and by likely holes, crossing back and forth along the narrow spit of land, her senses in hyperdrive. They were all empty. One showed signs that a predator had gotten there first. Tufts of silver fur snagged in the branches, a few driblets of blood. She kneeled down, touched the soft, downy clumps. Rabbit, she thought, rather than squirrel. Too bad. Rabbit was a delicacy these days, but she couldn’t help but be glad that there were still foxes and coyotes around. So many animal species had been wiped out in the plague.

  As if to echo her thoughts, a howl rent the air. She stiffened. She knew the clear belling and crystal sharp barks of the foxes and coyotes as they called to one another. This was deeper, urgent—the sound of a hunting pack of dogs. Her head swiveled in the direction of the baying. She thought it was at some distance yet. But behind her. She shuddered, fighting the urge to break into a panicked run. Not just behind her, but between her and her camp. Most predators were still scared around humans; her smell was enough to keep them at a distance. But the packs of feral dogs were large and hungry, and they had no fear of people.

  She considered. She’d work her way to the lake and circle around, giving them wide b
erth. The land rose slightly just beyond the water’s edge, and she’d be able to get a better look. And she could check the water levels at the same time. There was the tarnished bronze statue of a girl sitting on a large toadstool surrounded by an assortment of strange characters, and Lucy used this to keep track, scratching lines into the metal every second full moon. The last time she’d looked, the water had been barely lapping at the girl’s toes, but by the middle of the Long Wet it would be up to her shoulder level. Lucy couldn’t remember the girl’s name now, although when she was a child her mother used to bring her here to climb on the statue. She recalled jumping from toadstool to toadstool, feeling the smooth, sun-hot metal, playing king of the castle with other kids. The bravest of them leapt from the hare to the man in the top hat or perched on the girl’s head, gripping the long locks of her flowing hair. That wasn’t Lucy, though. She never made it higher than the girl’s lap—broad and solid and safe.

  Now she moved quickly. There was no cover but scrubby grasses and spindly bushes. The ground underfoot had changed from loose, sandy earth to cracked, oozing mud. The lake was to her left. It had dwindled over the hot season to a series of small, murky pools surrounded by rings of soft, slippery sludge. A larger expanse of water lay far beyond her reach, as smooth as glass. Her fishing lines were marked by twists of bark. Lucy pulled them up, and, finding the hooks empty, tossed them back into the shallow water. All around her was the plopping sound of frogs, as they woke to her presence and alerted one another. The splashes they made sounded like a string of tiny firecrackers going off. She needed her spear to catch frogs. They were too quick, too alert.

  The dogs had stopped barking. The night was silent again except for the small animal noises. Lucy crouched and submerged her water bottles to fill them. The flow of water gurgled gently. Her eyes darted around, her head lifted. She pushed her hood back so that she could see better. The quiet was unnerving after the cacophony of howls and barks. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She was being watched. Slowly, she got to her feet, capped the jugs, and hung them from her neck, easing the rope into position so it lay across her shoulders. Then she loosened the knife in its sheath. She strained her ears, listening hard. Suddenly there were small, ominous noises coming from all around. A rat snake rustled past, its heavy black body as thick around as her wrist. There was the squeal of something just caught.

  Lucy pulled her hood back over her face, trying to blend into the inadequate shadows. She froze. Directly across from her, at the edge of a pool of fresh rainwater, belly flat to the ground, was a cougar. So close she could see the pink tongue lap. They locked eyes. Lucy barely breathed. She tried to remember if the manual said she should play dead or make a racket. The cougar didn’t move. Lucy’s fingers fumbled at the hilt of the knife, trying to prepare herself for an attack if it came; quietly telling herself to slash a volley of cuts; reminding herself that the blade was broken, that stabbing would have no effect. But behind that voice, the knowledge that she’d be helpless against two hundred pounds of lithe muscle and bone, a natural killer, and the hope that death would be quick and the pain numbed by fear and shock. Maybe she shouldn’t be making eye contact? Perhaps that was a threat? She closed her eyes and murmured a quick prayer. Her thigh muscles quivered. She ducked down, trying to move smoothly. Her feet slid awkwardly in the mud. She slipped and fell backward, the weight of the water bottles pulling her off balance. Quickly she was back up on her feet, knife in her hand. Her jeans were so coated in mud, they looked like a statue’s legs. The cougar was gone, soundlessly, no movement of grasses even to mark its passing. And now Lucy realized that the dogs were yelping again, an excited chorus of barks, much closer, and she heard the crash and thud of many paws trampling the earth.

  There was an ominous rumble overhead. Immediately, as if the sky had ripped open, the rain began, a torrent drenching her to the skin and plastering her hood to her skull. The ground was instantly hammered into sogginess. Lucy looked to her right. She saw hillocks of flattened grass too low to conceal a ground squirrel, and the tossing sea beyond. To her left was a series of muddy pools fast expanding and the shifting sludge that would slow her down, sucking at her boots, and beyond it the rain-shattered lake. She could make out the silhouette of the statue. The rainwater had already pushed the level up above the top of the toadstool, much higher already, she thought, than at this time last year. Directly in front of her, past a patch of soggy scrubland and up a slight rise, was a thick stand of trees, shadowed and dark. Behind her, she saw the first dog loping in her direction. Its muzzle grazed the ground, plumed tail up, fur raised in a spiky ridge over its back. Through the sheets of rain it looked like an illustration from a children’s fairy tale cut out of black construction paper. Wolflike.

  Without hesitation she sprang forward toward the grove, dodging around the hummocks of slick, sharp grasses, running, like a panicked rabbit, in a crooked line, until she was pushing through dense and prickly bushes, ignoring the barbs that caught and tore her skin and snagged her clothes. She secreted herself behind the nearest tree—a pine, wind-battered and salt-poisoned, with rough, shaggy bark, and no branches low enough or strong enough to hoist herself up on. The rain drove into her eyes. She wiped a streaming hand across her face. Her water bottles tugged at her neck. She lifted the rope over her head and hurriedly stowed the bottles under a nearby shrub. Her grip on her knife was slippery, and she rubbed her hand uselessly on her wet pants to dry the moisture from it. She tightened her grasp and leaned her forehead against the tree, trying to catch her breath. She had a cramp in her side and she kneaded it with one bunched fist. Pressing her body against the coarse bark, she squinted her eyes against the drizzle to make out the shapes of the dogs.

  The throng broke apart, dozens of dogs fanning out and then coming back together as they caught a trace of her along the lakeshore. The moonlight made shadows everywhere. They had definitely found her trail. The rain might slow them down a little, the puddles she had sloshed through would mask her scent, but they were serious about tracking her and unlikely to give up. She could hear the heavy panting and excited bursts of barking as they called to one another, like the high-pitched yelps of puppies scuffling over a bone. They were so close.

  Lucy forced herself to leave the comforting solidity of the tree and move backward, as quietly as she could, sliding her feet through the mush of wet leaves. She took shallow breaths, darting quick glances over her shoulder, making for the place where the trees grew thickest. Black shapes wove back and forth, just beyond the pines in front of her, as the dogs tried to pick up her scent on the wet ground. She crept toward a cluster of pine, elm, willow, and leggy maples. The tall trees stood trembling; water cascaded down from their branches. She backed against the smooth trunk of an elm, the biggest tree in the glade. Too high overhead, wide branches spread out against the dark, fractured sky. The moon was directly above her. She hunkered down, listening to the sounds of the dogs coming ever closer. She held her knife in both hands, the blade pointing straight out in front of her. She’d kill at least one or two before they savaged her. The cramp was back again, jabbing into her side with a ferocity that made her wince; her lungs felt starved of oxygen; her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Then the crack of a branch snapping, loud as a gunshot, made her look up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DOGS

  What are you waiting for? Come on, grab it!” hissed a low voice. A hand dangled a few feet above Lucy’s head. She blinked against the rain streaming into her eyes. Long fingers waggled. The rest of the person was shrouded in shadow. She stumbled backward, brandishing the knife. Behind her, at the perimeter of the small wood, the barks coalesced into a uniform baying and delighted howls, and she heard the sound of many bodies plowing through the undergrowth. They had found her.

  The person made an annoyed explosive sound halfway between a curse and a grunt. “Well?”

  She could tell it was a male voice. The hand gestured impatiently. “I can’t hold on much lon
ger. Are you coming or what? Do you want to be dog food?” She took one last look over her shoulder and jumped for the hand. Her fingers grabbed and slipped. The branch bucked under their weight. For a brief moment before she dropped to the ground, she saw his eyes—light-colored, not the bloody red eyes of the S’ans.

  He grunted again. “And put that pig-sticker away before you cut off my nose. You’re going to have to help yourself get up here, you know. I’m barely hanging on.” Lucy hesitated; she didn’t think the branch would hold them both. He leaned farther forward. His arms were bare and his skin was tanned, unblemished save for the silvery puckered scar of the vaccination on his biceps. She thrust the knife into her sweatshirt pocket, unsheathed. Dangerous, but she wanted it close at hand. Heavy bodies thudded through the underbrush. She turned and saw two dogs angling in, mouths open, black lips peeled back from their long, spittle-flecked fangs. They covered the ground with terrifying speed. She could see the lean muscles bunching as they prepared to leap.

  She turned back to the tree and the hand that was still held out toward her and jumped for it. His grasp caught, slipped again, and then his fingers tightened around her wrist. She scrabbled at the trunk with the blunt toes of her heavy boots, reaching out for a branch or something to hold on to. The gash across her palm stung. She felt the wound split open again under the bandage. For one horrible moment she hung suspended just a few feet from the ground, and she imagined a dog’s sharp teeth grinding into her ankle. There was a volley of awful noise: crashing, panting, and a chorus of snarls.

  He heaved, she kicked desperately, her left foot hit something with a solid thwack and a yelp, and all of a sudden her momentum carried her up to the high branch he straddled, so quickly that she almost went over it and back down to the ground, but he kept hold, jerking her back. Lucy threw out her free arm and clasped it around the branch, then swung her leg across. Looked down. Ten or twelve dogs were clustered around the bottom of the tree. One blew a froth of bloody bubbles from its shattered nose. More dogs were coming, the pack, rearing up on their hind legs, jostling for position, black claws digging into the bark.