“Well—”
I don’t care what Timofei has to say. Bran thinks his sister is dead. He doesn’t need anyone making him feel worse. I narrow my eyes at the long haired Guardian, giving him the darkest look I can manage as I lead Bran away from him.
“Are you okay?” Branwell asks, watching me from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah. Of course.”
“You could do me the decency of not lying. Are you lying to yourself as often as you lie to everyone else?”
I don’t say anything because I don’t have to.
“Well.” His hand comes down on my shoulder, anchoring me. “You needn’t lie to me. I feel a bit of what you feel. We have both lost our sisters, but we’ll get them back. Horatia will emerge from her depression and I will find Bennet wherever she has ended up.”
“You don’t believe that,” I say, repeating his words from earlier.
He kicks the damp grass and mud sprays in front of us. Up ahead I can see Tia with Hele and Dalmar. I don’t run to her. She isn’t the only person I need to spend time with, I’ve realised.
A brief burst of pain makes me jolt. I turn to my friend in shock. “Did you just poke me in the arm?”
“You’re supposed to thank me for attempting to make you feel better.”
“You were trying to make yourself feel better.”
“You should thank me regardless. It’s good manners.”
“Thank you, Branwell.” I aim a deadpan expression at him, letting more and more sarcasm drip into my voice with every word. “You made me feel so much better about myself. Whatever would I do without you?”
Bran rolls his eyes.
I smile to myself as we walk on.
***
Branwell
18:07. 11.10.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Harwich.
We settle in a town that used to be called Harwich when it was inhabited. It smells of the sea, all bitter salt, with an underlying musty scent that reminds me of my father’s attic. Roads are framed by narrow houses that huddle together against powerful gusts of wind. It’s not the most unpleasant of places, but it could be better, cleaner. Abandoned houses litter every street, which means I don’t have to endure another night of half-sleeping on the packed earth, startling awake every few minutes because a breeze has crept over my face and my paranoid mind thinks insects are crawling over me. Still, the pervading silence is about as unnerving as the dead coming back to life.
Eventually the chatter of Guardians helps alleviate the eerie quiet, becoming a loud crescendo as disagreements arise. I gather that most Guardians want nothing but to sleep, but the council are making them work first on clearing out cluttered buildings, making a kitchen usable, and stocking important buildings with their supplies before they can rest. Honour, his family, and I are somewhat separate from the main huddle of Guardians so we escape to a quiet road without anyone protesting.
We stumble in an exhausted daze past terraced houses that would surely have been picturesque in their prime. They’ve fallen into disrepair now, with exteriors weathered and windows broken, much like everything else we’ve seen on this unending trek. I follow Honour who follows Miya into a tall, thin house with crumbling sage-green paint, hollow windows, and an open doorway that gapes like a desperate mouth.
Inside I find relics of life—an arm chair on its side, picture frames smashed on the floor, an overturned table with tea cups and old newspapers lying beside it. I stoop to pick up one of the broadsheets, accidentally unseating a family of rats. I jump back with a screech, fear adding speed to my heartbeat. Miya shoves past my arm, retrieves the paper, and offers it to me with an exasperated glance.
Thanking her, I turn my focus to the date of the newspaper. 17th of September 2015. The air tastes like dust when I suck in a sharp breath. I’m strangled with a reminder that I’m far from my home, that I am decades in the future in a world without hope. Despair must show on my face because Miya slaps my arm in her alternative to an embrace. She says, “It could be worse, you could be dead.”
She’s right, of course. I am alive. I’m thankful for that. Still, there’s a deep unease slumbering behind my ribs that won’t be shifted. Wandering through these isolated towns and vast, empty fields, along sun-cracked roads and dirt trails as old as time, I’ve somehow managed to convince myself that nothing was amiss, that I could have existed in any era. Being without futuristic technology for the past week, with nothing glaringly modern anywhere in sight, I’ve convinced myself I was home. But this isn’t the nineteenth century. This isn’t my home at all.
Being stranded here hurts even more the second time I’ve had to discover it. I wish I’d never forgotten, wish I never had to remember all over again.
I throw the newspaper back to the floor and weave my way around the furniture to find Honour and the others. Miya is watching me curiously and at a loss for conversation, I press my lips together into a reluctant smile. She looks dumfounded, unsure how to respond. Eventually she decides on a glare, which seems to be something Miya falls back on. A natural state of sorts. It’s not the darkest glare I’ve seen her turn on a person, however, which I take to mean she doesn’t wish me true harm. I feel oddly privileged. Miya is an enigma I cannot unravel, but what I do know is that she is brave and fierce and loves her siblings very much. She has a great deal of my respect for that.
I’m so caught up in my thoughts that I stumble into a wooden table. The kitchen is cluttered with bodies, and although everyone looks about ready to drop there is a suspended moment of silence filled with relief. Relief to finally finally be static and appreciate the simple fact that we are all in one piece.
“There are a few bedrooms upstairs,” says Yosiah after what must have been five minutes of comfortable, blessed silence. He looks to Miya for permission and then frees her brother from where he has fallen asleep in a chair, the boy looking small and fragile in Yosiah’s arms. Miya nudges her sister until the girl takes her hand and then the four of them clatter up the carpeted stairs in the hallway, calling soft goodbyes and see you in the mornings.
“Four.” Honour’s rasp cracks the silence. He scratches the side of his head, leaving a mess of hair sticking up above his ear. “There are four rooms. They’ll take one, which leaves three.”
I sense his eyes on me. Looking up, I say, “I don’t mind sleeping in the sitting room.” The arm chair looks comfortable enough, even if it’s a little dusty. I’d be happy to curl up and sleep anywhere.
“You won’t have to.” He comes around the table to lean against the worktop next to me. Heat bleeds into my arm where his shoulder touches mine. “Tia and I will be in one, Dal and Hele in another, and you can have the third.” He manages a weary smile. “I’ll even let you pick which one.”
Dalmar chuckles, shaking his head at Honour. His golden hair has been blown into disorder by the coastal wind outside. “Who died and made you king of the house?”
“Good question.” Honour plucks an old, unopened letter from the counter, brushing dust from it. “Alan Montgomery.” He smirks at Dalmar, mirth in his eyes. “Alan Montgomery died and made me king of the house.”
Hele breezes across the kitchen and takes the envelope from him. She fixes him with a look of severe disapproval. “Don’t disrespect the dead, Honour Frie.”
“Why not? They’re dead, they don’t care.”
“I care.” She uses the sharp end of the envelope to point at him. “And so should you. How would you feel if someone was laughing about your sister’s death?”
Honour hangs his head, the cocky amusement vanishing as quickly as it came. As much as I agree with Hele, I’m sad to see Honour’s bright personality leave him for the downtrodden one I’ve become used to. The transformation is so drastic, so obvious, that it adds to the ache in me. An abrupt urge to reach out and hug him comes over me, a desire to comfort my friend when he’s so clearly in need of it.
I hear Dalmar and Hele say goodnight as if through ears stuffed with cotton wool. When my a
ttention focuses back on the wooden cabinets, grimy curtains, and speckled floor of the here and now, Horatia has left too.
Honour is rummaging through a cupboard stocked with paper boxes. I watch him select a pale yellow box and turn his attention to one of the long backpacks we’ve been carrying across the country. He gets out the little stove we use to heat food and purify water, along with a small, scratched canister of gas, with a hiss of triumph.
“Want a cup of tea?” he asks, assembling the stove on the table top.
I slump into a chair and kick off my boots. “Only if it won’t poison me.”
“It’s only tea. It might taste old and rank but it won’t kill us.” The stove comes to life with a rumble, a ring of tiny flames glowing orange. He sets a cracked pot of water to boil before pulling out a chair opposite me. It fills the kitchen with a God awful screech. “I hope it won’t kill us.”
“There are worse ways to die.”
He hums in agreement, slouching forward and resting his head on his arms. When his eyelids flutter shut, I carefully move the stove away so he won’t accidentally catch himself on the boiling pot.
“You don’t need to look after me.” His voice is caught on a yawn. “I already have Hele to fuss over me.”
“I wasn’t fussing.”
He cracks one eye open and gives me a look. He reminds me of a cat, baleful and sleepy. “You were fussing.”
I take the water from the stove, turning the gas off before we waste too much, and wage a silent disagreement while I make the tea. There’s no cream or sugar, so the tea tastes bland but it’s better than anticipated, warm lemon simmering on my tongue. I push a mug across the table to Honour but he’s dropped off, snoring softly with his mouth half open and his cheek against the wood. So much for sharing a late night tea.
The tea gets cooler as I wait for Honour to wake, watching his fingers twitch at something in a dream. I’m amazed at him falling asleep so quickly, but I find the table top isn’t so unappealing a bed as the ground was these past three days.
I give his shoulder a gentle shake but he’s sleeping so deeply that he doesn’t stir. If he were several pounds lighter I might consider carrying him upstairs to a real bed, but I doubt I’d get through the kitchen door with Honour in my arms before something disastrous happened. I have a vision of knocking his head against the doorframe.
“What in the world am I supposed to do with you?” I whisper, pillowing my head on my arms. Before I realise what is happening, sleep has curled around my shoulders. The kitchen and the sage-green house fritter away.
***
Miya
00:59. 12.10.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Harwich.
I’m there again—on the train. Another version of myself stands at Yosiah’s side, her life falling apart when she sees the resolute expression on his face. I’m somewhere in the crowd, watching myself. I don’t want to watch. I know what will happen.
I have to stop it.
I have to stop him jumping. He’s not going to make it to the next train.
I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and shove through the crowd of Guardians. Every scream burns my throat as I order everyone to move, but nobody even glances at me. I keep pushing and pushing through the bodies, shouting myself hoarse, but the Guardians never seem to end. I’m not getting any closer to Siah. I’m invisible and made of air. I’m not going to make it.
I grab a hand rail and vault myself into the air, straining to see above the river of heads. Yosiah’s white Guardian jacket billows around him as he hurls himself out of the train and into the darkness of the underground tunnel beyond. The last thing I see is his dark hair, whipping wildly with the wind of the tunnel. And then nothing. No Siah. Just the train doors and a gap of midnight between them.
The scream that comes from my throat is inhuman.
I slip to the floor and my efforts to push and shove become more desperate, more violent. I punch a guy in the stomach but he doesn’t move an inch. I scream but he doesn’t react. I’m trapped here, rooted to the grey plastic floor, while Yosiah dies on the train tracks. I want to go with him, to die with him, but I can’t move.
I start to sob, and then I’m thrown into the present.
“I’m here,” Yosiah whispers. He crushes me against his chest.
I don’t realise that my cries have spilled out of my dream for a while. It takes me even longer to realise that I’m choking on Yosiah’s name with each breath. “I’m here,” he says, again and again. “I’m here.” It takes a hundred heartbeats for it to sink in. He’s not on the train or dying in the tunnels. He’s here and he’s okay.
“It’s just a dream,” he murmurs.
“No, it’s not.” I shake my head, ignoring how weak my words come out. Yosiah’s eyes are steady, dim light catching his golden irises. Looking into them calms me. I speak the next words without a sob. “It’s not just a dream. It happened.”
His fingers run over my cheeks, my jaw; my eyes close. “Tell me.”
“The train … when you jumped.”
“I’m not there anymore. I’m here.”
“I thought you were gonna die.”
“I know.”
It’s quiet for a long time. I use the silence to sort out my thoughts, to line them up in some kind of order. Ten minutes could have passed before I speak again. I make fists of Siah’s shirt and say in a voice stronger than I feel, “You cannot. Do that. Again. You can’t just run off and risk your life. I know you’ll want to and I know you’ll try, but if you ever feel like doing anything as fucking stupid as that again I’ll kill you. We’re supposed to be friends, Siah. We tell each other things like that. We don’t hide them. But if you ever do anything so suicidal again—”
“I won’t.” I can hear the promise in his voice. He slides his hands over my shoulders and down my spine to press me against him. I expect the usual sick nervousness to come, the urge to get away from his smothering touch, but it doesn’t. Siah’s closeness is welcome. Right now I need it. The nightmare made every emotion in me turn to fear, and I don’t want to lose the bit of comfort his arms give me.
“What happens when you want to do something like that again?” I murmur, looking down at my hands. “What’s gonna happen when you leave again?”
He goes perfectly still. “I’ll take you with me.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you before?”
“There wasn’t time.”
A flash of irritation makes me want to argue, to shout, to shove him away, but I daren’t. I press my face hard against his shoulder. “What if there isn’t time again?”
He tightens his hold on me, his palms hot against the small of my back. “I’ll make time”
“What if—”
“Miya.” He kisses my hair and all my arguments turn to ash. “I’m not leaving. I learned my lesson; I’m meant to be with you. I won’t separate us again.”
I close my eyes, inching my arms around his waist until I’m flush against him. He’s too warm but I don’t want to move. I say, “You’d better not.”
After a while of nothing being said and of neither of us moving, I detangle my limbs from his. A note of unease has worked its way into me now my fear has receded. “This is supremely fucked up.”
He watches me closely, his hands now pressed together in his lap. “What is?”
“How dependant I am on you. I’m supposed to be tough and independent and scared of nothing but …” I turn my face out of the light, move out of reach. “The thought of losing you rips me apart.”
I feel equal parts shame and dread, hearing it said out loud.
“Miya. Do you think I can survive without you? Do you think I’m not the exact same? When I jumped, when I went to help those people I knew exactly what I was doing and I knew what to do. But as soon as we were out of immediate danger, I fell apart. I didn’t know what to do, how to do anything without you beside me. You’re always with me, and that’s the way I want it, the way I need it.” He takes an
unsteady breath. The bed dips as he crosses the space I put between us to touch my shoulder. This time it does make me uneasy, but comfort like this, touching, is something Siah needs. And he hates talking about things this way, all deep and devastating. If he can bear the words for me, I can bear the touch for him.
“I’m not leaving you again,” he says, “because I can’t. I don’t function without you and I’m too selfish to want to. So you don’t have to worry.”
It takes a minute of listening to the night, of focusing on my breathing, for me to calm down enough to think a single clear thought. Relief and heartache is all tied up in me, and I can’t explain either of them to myself.
“Wow,” I whisper. “Glad you got that out?”
His laughter sighs over the back of my neck. “Yes, actually.”
I hide a tiny smile in the dark, my fears put to rest by his desperate rant.
He asks, “Do you think you can sleep again?”
“Probably.” I don’t think I’ll have another nightmare tonight. I think Yosiah has chased them away. I stretch my arms to kill the stiffness in them and crack my knuckles before lying back down on my side, snickering at Siah’s disgusted groan.
“Why do you do that?” he grumbles, lying beside me.
“Because you hate it so much.”
He closes a hand around my hip and pulls my back against his chest. “Well, stop it.”
That’s asking for it. He knows he’s asking for it. I crack my fingers, slowly, drawing out every tiny pop so it pisses him off even more.
“Go to sleep.”
“Why? The night is young, Yosiah.”
The hard point of his chin prods my shoulder blade. “Are you scared to go back to sleep? I’ll wake you if you have another nightmare. If you want, I can stay awake just in case.”
“It’s fine, Siah.” It’s not a hundred percent fine but I’m not freaking out anymore. I still feel like he might disappear any minute but it doesn’t feel like someone’s squeezing the life out of my heart. I’m about to tell him this when he wraps an arm around my middle. My body prickles with discomfort and awareness.
The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) Page 3
