Ashes, Ashes aa-1

by Jo Treggiari

  Lucy was surprised the—Sammy had been thinking along the same lines as she had.

  “Aidan doesn’t want to go. He wants us to hide here,” she said.

  “Really? Perhaps he has finally learned to be cautious.” Grammalie Rose squashed her cigarette on the sole of her clogs and put the butt into the box, which disappeared again into a pocket. She turned to look at Lucy. “You think Sammy is right, eh?” She patted her on the shoulder and got heavily to her feet. “You wear your emotions on your face, wilcze. I understand what you are feeling, but it will help no one if more of us are captured. We need time to plan.”

  She moved away.

  Lucy looked around. The two little kids who’d been at the end of her bench were gone. She imagined them bundled in their blankets under tent cover, a tumble of bodies like drowsy puppies.

  Others had pushed their benches closer to the fire pit. From behind her she heard the clatter of dishes and the chime of silverware. Water sloshed into tubs and people talked in low voices. Teams of four and six picked up the long tables and moved them back under the awnings. From the group by the fire she heard the strumming of a guitar, the chords spilling out in a stream of formless music. Someone clapped their hands, keeping time, and others stamped their feet against the tarmac as the guitar wove around the simple beat. And then a violin came in, a single, sustained note that seemed to climb into the air and hang there, anchoring the guitar. Lucy had never had much time for her parents’ classical music. She’d thought it cold and clean and rigid, much like her parents and their friends, and she’d always thought that violins sounded like cats being sawed in half. But this was different. Lucy felt the melody in her chest, as if her heart would explode with fullness. It was the saddest, happiest, wildest, and most human sound she’d ever heard, as if all the yearning in the world had been bottled up and then released in a pure shot of energy. She held her breath, suddenly afraid that she was about to burst into tears.

  And then the guitar switched tempo to a folkie reel, speeding up and playing a rippling series of notes wrapped around a repetitive verse and chorus, and the player’s hand slapped the body of the guitar at the end of each sequence, speeding up the momentum. The violin came in again and wove around the tune so it seemed as though the two instruments were chasing each other like a dog after a cat. And everyone was clapping in time and stamping their feet.

  The younger kids ran around the fire, lit up like little savages. Soon others were up out of their seats and linking hands and dancing. A conga line wound between the benches. It was so corny, Lucy could only squirm. Sue swept by with her pigtails bouncing, followed by a dozen people whirling in circles. Connor and Scout stood wrapped around each other, barely moving. Kids she hadn’t seen before danced together in groups or couples. Grammalie Rose, her unmistakable hawklike profile turned toward Lucy, sat near the fire, nodding her head and tapping her toes.

  Lucy was wondering how long the musicians could keep playing when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Her stomach flipped.

  Oh no! She turned, expecting to see Henry’s eager face. It was Aidan.

  “Truce?” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Sure,” she said, shaking it. He didn’t let go. His fingers tightened their grip on her own. He pulled her to her feet. She looked up into his face. His green eyes glinted.

  “You can’t just sit there like a miserable lump.”

  “I’m not miserable. I was thinking.”

  “Well, think later.” Aidan drew her toward him.

  “Oh no, you’re kidding!” She dug her heels in.

  “Come on. Come with me!”

  “I can’t dance. I failed dancing in ninth grade. My partner couldn’t walk for two weeks afterward.”

  “I think I can survive it.”

  “I practically hamstrung the poor guy.”

  “This isn’t really dancing. This is just moving around with another person. You can pretend we’re sparring. I’m wearing my motorcycle boots,” he added, pointing to his feet.

  Lucy hesitated. She could tell that her face was red, but she hoped it was dark enough to disguise the fact.

  “Maybe I’ll let you take a swing at me later,” Aidan said.

  She relaxed and let him pull her into the crowd.

  The guitarist was playing even faster, a galloping tune, a wild jumble of chords, and the violin soared above it, a high, sweet note. Aidan took both her hands in his and whirled her around, swinging her until it seemed her feet left the ground. Then he brought her closer, one hand clasping her own and the other around her waist. She put her hand on his shoulder, lightly, but she could feel the heat of his body, and they were moving together in a line, up one side of the fire and down the other, and her feet stumbled, but it didn’t matter because he was holding her up. Lucy stared at the neck of his sweatshirt, too shy to raise her eyes any higher, conscious of the tickle of her hair against the wet nape of her neck and the sweat sticking her T-shirt to her back, and the drum of his heart. She was out of breath and she couldn’t stop laughing.

  They whirled and turned, and people’s faces came out of the shadows, lit by flickering firelight and tinted by red flames. She caught glimpses as she spun by. The masked S’ans at their table painted a surreal picture, like a photograph of a Venetian carnival Lucy remembered seeing once long ago. The kids were hysterical, exaggerated in their every movement, heads thrown back, bursting with the giggles. Lucy closed her eyes, feeling giddy. Aidan bent his head to her ear. She felt his warm breath against her cheek. “Lucy,” he murmured, “you are so—”

  The music stilled. It was abrupt and jolting; the last upstroke of bow on violin sounded harsh and grating. Aidan stopped moving. His hands let go. Lucy stood trying to catch her breath, scraping back the curls clinging to her sweaty face, unsteady on her feet now that the earth had stopped spinning.

  From the direction of the road, a figure appeared out of the shadows.

  Her face fell into the narrow shaft of light thrown by a lantern.

  Lucy recognized the sleek black hair and the silver bangles on tanned arms.

  It was Del.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BUNNY HUNTING

  The tough stalks of grass tickled Lucy’s chin. She shifted, earning herself a glare from Aidan. He put a finger to his lips. She scowled back. I get it! Be silent! But they’d been lying there on the ridge for over an hour watching the clearing, and nothing had moved in all that time. Her neck was cramped from holding her head at an awkward angle, she had to pee, and the ground was hard and still damp from the morning rain. Plus, she was lying on her knife and it dug into her hip bone.

  The sun beat down. Del lay between them, head lowered, her long black hair tied back in a thick ponytail. She’d taken off the silver bangles she normally wore five inches deep on both arms. No jangling allowed. Lucy studied Del under the cover of her eyelashes. She looked like she was brooding. Even now, three days after she had appeared out of the darkness, she still seemed shaken up and not really present. She didn’t say much about what had happened, just a few words at the supper meeting called for the day after the dance. She told them that she’d managed to break out of the waiting room the Sweepers had put her in, but she hadn’t been able to provide much detail. The room had been white-walled and stark, and the maze of corridors leading to it were dark and lit only by bare bulbs. A long spiraling stairway rose up the middle of the tower. Del had somehow found a door to the outside, and then, after hours of stumbling around in the pitch-black, she’d been able to orient herself and make her way off the island. She didn’t have any idea what had happened to Leo and the others. She’d been separated from them early on, but she did know that Leo had still been unconscious. The Sweepers had had to drag him from the van. At this point she’d started sobbing, and Grammalie Rose had ended the discussion, folded Del in her arms, and taken her from the square.

  Aidan had even tried to ask her privately, hoping she could offer some details about the tower,
the hospital, ways on and off the island, but she just shook her head and pressed her lips together. “It was dark. I was scared,” she’d said, rubbing at her wrists. And the next day, when a bunch of them had been put to work in the pouring rain, shoring up the dikes along the canals with bags full of rubble and old masonry, Del had been even quieter. She’d responded to Aidan’s questions and to Henry’s flirtation with silence and the smallest of smiles. Only when she’d glanced at Lucy did something flit across her face. It had almost looked like fear.

  Lucy had taken her cues from Aidan, and he was definitely concerned. He could barely take his eyes off Del. Lucy thought back to how he’d dropped her hand during the dance and stepped away abruptly. How stricken his face had been, as if he’d woken up and discovered that the girl he’d been dreaming about was not the girl he was with. She got the sense that there was a history between Aidan and Del, but she couldn’t figure out if it went beyond friendship.

  “The dynamic duo,” Henry called them. “Inseparable.” Lucy hadn’t been completely successful in squashing a twinge of jealousy. She wondered again what Aidan had been about to say to her during the dance. “Lucy, you are so—” he’d whispered.

  So what? So strange-looking? So awkward? So annoying? Or maybe, so amazing? It was conceivable, but it didn’t seem likely.

  And Del hadn’t helped matters, either. She’d been distracted, even less friendly than usual (if that was possible), and full of mean looks. Like early this morning, when they were out picking tomatoes and snap peas for their lunch she’d barely said a word, but she seemed annoyed that they were all together again. Lucy had decided to ignore her and focus on her first hunting experience.

  Now something stirred in the large thorny bush in front of her. She raised her bow. Aidan’s bow, actually. A crescent of smooth red oak rubbed with olive oil until it shone. Aidan put up his hand.

  Bird, he mouthed, and motioned downward. That’s right. She wasn’t to draw on a bird. They were too hard to hit, many of them were sickly, and they couldn’t afford to lose arrows. Same went for deer if they were lucky enough to spot one. Just the thought of a whole deer made Lucy’s mouth water. She cradled her chin on her arm and watched a column of ants carry tiny white eggs from one hole to another. She stifled a yawn.

  When they had first hiked up to the ridge, Aidan had sat beside her on the grass. He’d strung the bow for her, shown her how to check the straightness of her arrows. She had eight slender lengths of springy ash, the tips needle-sharp and hardened in fire, the fletching cut from pliable plastic containers. Lucy had enjoyed Aidan’s closeness, liked watching his deft brown fingers and the slight frown that ruffled his forehead as he explained something to her. There was a lot of physics involved in shooting a bow, apparently.

  “So is the wind coming from a good direction?” she’d asked.

  Aidan had nodded. “From behind, so we won’t be shooting into cross drafts.”

  Del had snickered. Her hand had swooped down and plucked the arrow from Lucy’s grasp. She’d turned it over in her hand, hefting the weight.

  “You aim, you point, you fire,” she’d said, sitting down between them. There was no room, but she had squeezed in, anyway. She’d flashed Lucy a triumphant look and Lucy had moved over to the right. She wasn’t in competition for Aidan. She didn’t exactly know how she felt about him. Del had made it pretty obvious what her feelings were, and since then, Lucy had been almost hyperaware of the girl.

  Lucy couldn’t help noticing that Del’s body was right up against Aidan’s now. Del’s thigh pressed along the length of his leg, her tanned arm inches from his own. She had a purple bruise along one cheekbone and stripes of raw flesh where the Sweepers had fastened her wrists with plastic cuffs, but she was otherwise unhurt. Lucy wondered how she’d gotten away from the Sweepers when no one else ever had. She opened her mouth to ask the question, but stopped when Del leaned forward to whisper something in Aidan’s ear. The tip of her ponytail swept across his face and he reached out and moved it away, his fingers tangled in the shiny black locks. Del laughed, casting a glance over her shoulder at Lucy. Lucy looked in the other direction.

  She went over the instructions for shooting an arrow in her head, trying to remember everything Aidan had told and shown her. Months of training were squeezed into a few short hours in between the other work that needed to be done. At first she hadn’t been able to hit anything. Just holding the string back without letting her hands shake was harder than it looked. And her fingers always seemed to be in the way when she released, sending her arrow into a wobbly, crooked trajectory that, nine times out of ten, landed it in a bush or the dirt. She’d also had to pretend she felt nothing when Aidan guided her arm or stood behind her with his hands on her fingers and his chest leaning into her back, while Del watched his every move with a glacial stare on her face. Lucy had bitten the inside of her cheek so hard that it bled, but she’d finally made a shot. At least, her arrow had struck the tree the target hung on and had quivered there for a few seconds before falling to the ground with a plop.

  “Great!” Aidan had said. “How did it feel?”

  “Good.” She’d lowered her eyes. Not as good as having his arms around her shoulders, but she thought her fingers were getting used to the cramping grip on the arrow and the pressure of the bowstring and the quick, fluid motion she needed to master to send the arrow off on a straight path.

  Now she raised herself on her elbows, positioned an arrow against the bow, and tracked across the glade from left to right, ignoring the soreness in her muscles. Her fingers sweated in the stiff leather glove she had to wear to keep the thin nylon cord from flaying her skin. She had her jacket on to protect the inside of her arm, and the leather was uncomfortably hot in the sun. But at least it wasn’t raining. What did they used to call it before the climate went all haywire? An Indian summer. They were getting an odd respite from the usual constant heavy storms of the Long Wet. Unfortunately, it seemed as if every flying insect in the world had decided to take advantage of the weather, and they were mating up a storm. Midges, blackflies, and mosquitoes hovered in black clouds. Lucy’s legs were clad in cutoff jean shorts, and she’d already counted fifteen bites in rings around her ankles. She squirmed, trying to rub the itches against the stubbly grass, and Del kicked her, then pointed.

  Something moved on the sunny slope just beyond the shadows thrown by the spindly trees. It was buff-colored and small. Its pointed head came up and Lucy saw the long ears lying flat against its body. Del looked hard at Lucy with her blazing blue eyes, made sure that she had seen the rabbit, too, and then mimed the action of loosing an arrow. She touched her index finger to a spot just below her shoulder blade to remind Lucy where to aim. The arrow would travel directly to the heart. Death would be quick.

  Suddenly, Lucy’s fingers felt thick and inflexible. The arrow shaft was slippery and weighted wrong, and she couldn’t focus her vision. She pulled the bowstring back. The rabbit’s head came up again. It stopped in the middle of chewing a mouthful of grass. Wisps hung from its mouth like a straggly green beard. Lucy felt the scrape of the plastic fletching against her cheek. Her fingers were numb and sweat dribbled into her eyes. She couldn’t let go.

  Del exhaled, raised her own bow, took aim, and shot. The arrow thrummed, flying straight and true, and hit the rabbit with a force that spun the animal into the air. She was up on her feet and racing toward it before Lucy had lowered her bow. She stared at the ground. She’d caught rabbits, squirrels, and woodchucks before, but in snares. Traps tripped while she wasn’t there. This was different, and it was nothing like aiming at a piece of wood.

  Aidan touched her arm. “Hey, I puked the first time,” he said in a low voice. “Del’s always been better at killing things than I am.”

  Lucy felt her mouth twist. “It just wasn’t the same.”

  “I know. You can try to imagine that it’s a tin can or whatever, but it never works. All I can say is try to do it fast and try to do it right.
”

  Del stalked back to them. The bunny swung from her gloved hand. Lucy looked away from the limp head, the eyes like foggy blackberries. A small red hole bloomed on its back. Del wiped her arrow against a patch of grass and stowed it with the rest in the quiver she wore slung from her shoulders. She hunched down next to Aidan. She danced her fingers up and down his arm.

  “If we’re lucky,” she said, “the other rabbits won’t be alerted and we can get a few more. They come out in force just before sunset.”

  Lucy squinted up at the sky. The sun was behind them now. She rolled over to look at the clouds drifting.

  Sure enough, as the sun lowered in the sky, more and more rabbits poked out their quivering noses. They nibbled grass and chased one another, innocent and carefree, reminding Lucy of the camp kids playing kick-the-can.

  They’re food, she told herself, but it was no good.

  She heard the soft whicker as Del notched an arrow.

  Lucy watched as Del shot four rabbits in quick succession before finally missing one. Instantly the animal darted to the top of a hillock and drummed the ground with its back foot. The other rabbits vanished into their holes. There was a curious light in the girl’s eyes. It wasn’t pleasure, but a glint of something. Like she was paying the rabbits back for an insult. Lucy was happy that she had finally missed.

  “I’ll get them,” she said, clambering to her feet. She was stiff. The rabbits were hard to find in the long grass. Their soft, brown bodies splayed in awkward positions. They were smaller than she expected. Lucy picked them up, holding them by their velvet ears, feeling the uncomfortable heavy, boneless quality about them. They were still warm, and they flopped like stuffed toys. One remained lost in the undergrowth despite careful searching.

  When she walked back to the others with the dead animals, Del exploded. “I shot four. Where’s the other one? Do you think it’s easy?”