The Wall (The Woodlands)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

What was I going to do for two hours? We were leaving at dawn. I felt restless and wasted. Tears started to come and I found myself kicking into a run and tearing down the dark streets towards the one place I thought I might find some consolation.

  I rapped on the worn, wooden door frantically, my chest feeling hollow, a painful lump rising in my throat as I became more and more hysterical. No one responded so I started knocking more loudly, the skin on my knuckles busting and white. A light clicked on and I heard her creaking across the floorboards, surprised her weight even made a noise. A shadow passed in front of the curtain.

  “Addy, let me in. Please,” I pleaded, pressing my forehead to the door, the ‘please’ sounding more desperate than I meant it to.

  The door opened a crack and the old woman peered out into the darkness hesitantly. When she recognized me, she relaxed. “Rosa, what are you doing here? It’s four AM. Goodness child, come inside before you freeze to death.”

  “I’m sorry to wake you. I’m sorry, I… oh, damn it.” Addy raised her eyebrows at my cursing but she softened when I succumbed to crying. Nothing I tried to say came out right. Nothing made sense.

  Addy led me to the living room and sat in an armchair. I laid my head across her lap and soaked her dressing gown with salt water. She shushed me and stroked my hair until I calmed down long enough for me to tell her what was going on.

  I lifted my head and stared into her grey eyes. “He’s going to hate me. He thinks I’m leaving him. I don’t know, maybe he’s right. Maybe I am, but not forever. Oh Addy, do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

  She took both my hands and squeezed them hard, looking deep into my defective eyes, looking past them and into me.

  She said, “I was told once, we can’t choose when we are born. We can’t choose when we die either. The important thing is what we do with the time we have.”

  I stared at her blankly. “What do you mean? Do you think I am doing the right thing or not?” I was shaking her arms. It was like shaking a handful of barley.

  “Think about it, Rosa,” she said, winking one crinkled eyelid at me.

  I scrunched up my blotchy face. I wasn’t in the mood for riddles. I stared around her cluttered dwelling. Handmade dolls and little porcelain ornaments covered every available space. Crocheted rugs and scarves dripped off the ends of coffee tables and chairs. There was a lifetime of possessions here, a lifetimes worth of making, sharing, living.

  Right then, I got it. This wisdom, this unearthly knowing that the crumpled-up woman had inside her, was more valuable than most things I could think of. That’s why they separated us. We can never be full, never have that understanding, when we are forbidden to seek counsel from our elders. It was very clever. Clever and evil.

  Without it, we were like a packet of shiny pins, all looking for a hold, always ending up clattering to the dirt, half-buried or finding someone else’s sharpness. I felt gratitude and guilt for the privilege of being able to pin part of myself to her. The other thing I knew was, like she said, I had to make my time count for something. I had to try to save my mother and her child. Whether it was right or wrong, I was going to try and Joseph might never forgive me. The realization filled me with renewed hope and a plummet of dread.

  Addy insisted on making me tea and feeding me. I knew better than to argue with her. But as the sun rose, I said my teary goodbye, hugging her and kissing her forehead, which felt like dry hessian and smelled like dried lavender.

  As I walked towards the hospital, pictures of Orry floated around in my head. Orry smiling at me, blinking his odd eyes, and gurgling. The pain I felt for leaving him was so strong I could barely breathe. I should have said goodbye to him but I was too much of a coward. I knew if I saw him, saw the adoration in his eyes when he looked at me, I would never go. I felt bad I was leaving Odval out of the loop but Orry was safe with her and she knew where to find Joseph.

  Goodbye, my loves. Please wait for me.

  I climbed the stairs wearily. Soon, Joseph would wake and notice my absence. I should have left a note but I had no idea where to start or how to explain. Nothing I could write or say would make this hurt any less. I touched my neck and ran my finger along the edge of my pledge charm, thinking of when I was wearing nothing but that necklace and letting my breath hum out of me for a second of recollection.

  Apella’s door was ajar and the soft glow of candlelight shone through the gap.

  “I think you should tell her. She’s much stronger than you realize,” I heard her calm, cool voice say.

  “Yes, but will it really help her to know? Won’t it just hurt her more?” I recognized Matthew’s low tones, the protective strain behind the words.

  “Matt, I have come to love Rosa as a daughter and I would do anything to protect her. But she must know. She will find out eventually. So it should be sooner rather than later and in a way we can control.” Alexei’s voice was shaky but strong in its meaning.

  I leaned closer to the door. My heart warmed but in an uneasy way at the word, ‘daughter’. I had no idea he felt that way about me. Did I see him as a father? Perhaps. I certainly found him embarrassing. I had affection for him but little patience. From what Joseph explained to me, that was precisely how one should feel about their father. Family was wrapping itself around me in defense. Don’t go.

  I knocked lightly on the door with my knuckles. It creaked forward slightly. The room went silent. I wondered if I should pretend I didn’t hear anything. Probably.

  I walked in and Apella was sitting at her kitchen table, hands warming around a steaming mug. Matthew was standing facing Alexei, who was wearing pajamas, what was left of his hair sticking straight up, with his glasses sitting too loosely on the end of his nose. What a ridiculously awkward man he was.

  I kept my eyes on Matthew. “Just tell me. I don’t want to be lied to anymore. Whatever it is, just say it.” So much for pretending I didn’t overhear.

  Matthew stood over me. His blue eyes shone in the candlelight but were barely able to draw attention away from the dark circles that hung under them. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Cal passed away earlier tonight.”

  I stepped backwards like he had punched me in the stomach. Dead.

  Dead?

  It was harsh to say it but I muttered under my breath, “Well, I guess it’s all worked out quite neatly for you, hasn’t it?”

  Apella walked over to me and helped me into a chair. Well, she arranged my frozen limbs and forced them to cooperate into a sitting position. “Rosa, you’re being unfair.”

  “I know,” I said woodenly. “Why didn’t you use the healing machine on him?”

  “It doesn’t work on cancer. It can only repair normal cells. Even if we had used it, he would have continued to get sick.”

  “Right,” I said, blinking unevenly. I didn’t know what to say. Was I supposed to be relieved? I didn’t feel much of anything. I didn’t really know Cal, not the real Cal. I should have been sad for him and his family but all I felt was a bottomless nothing. “Thanks for being straight with me,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” Alexei asked, crouching down to look into my eyes. I managed a half-smile balanced with confusion.

  “I think so?” It came out like a question.

  “I have to go,” Matthew said quietly. “We leave at dawn.”

  I pulled my head out of my soft, squishy cloud long enough to register that Matthew was coming with us. I hoped he was going to one of the other towns. I couldn’t look into his penitent face anymore.

  Apella and Alexei hovered over me, waiting for me to do something. Erupt into tears… melt into a puddle of self-loathing, I don’t know. I was blank. My mind turned white as snow and I was nowhere in it. Apella shook my shoulder and I heard her whisper, “She’s in shock. Get her a glass of water.” Alexei’s hand slipped off my leg. I hadn’t even noticed it was there. I could feel my eyes blinking slowly, snapping scenes like a camera. Table. Cup. Fireplace. Strange picture of person screaming. />
  What was I doing before this?

  My two unlikely parents kneeled before me. Alexei held the glass to my lips and I sipped slowly. Apella tucked my hair behind my ear so she could see my eyes. “Rosa, you have to get going. You’ll miss the train.” Her words were far away, an echo.

  Alexei’s rough hands grabbed my face and held my eyes to his. It occurred to me that I’d assumed his hands would be soft like a baby’s, like he’d never worked a day in his life, but I was wrong. I’d been wrong about so many things. “We are both so proud of you, for what you are about to do. You’re very brave, Rosa. Do you know that?”

  Things clicked over. Wheels started turning. Brave? I was brave? I could be. I will be. I slid the door down on the past with a bang. Nothing could be gained from dwelling on this news. I will be brave.

  I stood and they stood with me. “Thank you both so much.” I hugged them and strode to the door. Newfound strength welled from their faith in me. I turned and gave them a smile. “You’re good parents. Though I don’t know where you find the strength, with a daughter like me.” I heard a sigh from both of them and the sound of Alexei laughing quietly.

  It was a gift. I wasn’t sure if I felt they were my parents but they were as close as I had at that moment.

  I ran down the stairs, telling myself over and over, You can do this. You can do this. I tripped my way towards the station on the other side of the Wall, trying hard not to think about Joseph’s hand searching for the warmth of my body beside him and finding nothing but cold, empty sheets.

  The plan was to ride the spinners as far as we could. In some cases, that was within a few kilometers of the target town. In others, it was a few days’ walk to the outer ring of the town. We couldn’t use the dogs. They were too noisy and we couldn’t hide them or feed them once we reached the wall of the outer ring we had to climb. Deshi had invented a small device to be placed over the latch of the gate of Ring seven. It would open every gate simultaneously for four hours. We were to slip in and out as quickly as possible. Some Spiders had been detained in other towns. With those, the Survivors would incapacitate the guards and grab them. No killing allowed.

  Each Spider had a homing device embedded in their upper arm, so at the time of rescue, we would all know exactly where to find them using our handheld trackers. The Spiders knew we were coming and would be ready. We didn’t know their names and they didn’t know ours—it was safer that way.

  None of this really applied to me but Careen and Pietre went over and over the details as our spinner traveled out from dawn to a bright scarlet-and-pink sunrise. I just stared out the window, dreaming about my night with Joseph, blushing at the thought of our skin touching, his lips brushing over new places. I missed him like a pulsing hole in my heart. Careen snapped her fingers in front of my face.

  “Rosa, this is important.” Her head was a flaming hue with the sunrise penetrating through the curtain of her strawberry hair. It matched her temper.

  Pietre had a handheld and he was showing us where the spinner would stop and how far we had to walk. It looked like we got the worst town. Pau Brasil was at least sixty kilometers from the train line.

  My mind receded like the tide, pulling on the facts like sand, grabbing the information for a second, only to have it wash out of my grasp with the next wave. I pictured Joseph waking and realizing I was gone. Orry would already be awake and searching for the comfort of warm milk in his belly. Odval would be wondering why I was taking so long. I ran my fingers along the cool, plastic table, swirling circles and imagining the weight of my child in my arms.

  “We will walk at night and hide by day. There’s no snow, at least, but it means there may be Woodland police patrolling the borders. Is there anything useful you can tell us about Pau Brasil?”

  My ears pricked and my senses returned as I remembered how much I hated Pietre. “Not really, they’re all the same,” I mumbled without looking at him.

  “Figures,” he said snidely.

  My head snapped up, regarding his snarling expression with distaste. Did he ever really smile? My anger reached out like a straggly hand looking for something to hold onto. It found Pietre’s hateful face and dug in with pointed fingernails.

  “Don’t speak to me,” I said, my face brimming with hot-blood anger. “I haven’t forgotten what you did. You’re an intolerable man. Well, not even a man—a boy. And I wish you would drop off the end of the earth!”

  Joseph would be storming around the house, banging into things and clumsily getting dressed. He would be so sad; I will have made him so sad. He will hope I’ve changed my mind. I could see his face looking to the door, hoping I was coming back. My heart heaved at the pressure I put there. What was I doing?

  As I expected, Pietre enjoyed my outburst and a sickening smile crossed his lips. He put his arm around Careen, who looked up at him confused, and pulled her closer. I directed my voice at Careen’s blinking face. “I know the plan and I would like to get some rest before we charge off into the wilderness again, all right?”

  She nodded. Poor girl, she had no idea what was going on between Pietre and me.

  I returned to staring out the window. I tried to force my face to relax but I felt like I was trying to unroll a tightly wound map. Every time I took the band off and tried to flatten it out, it would curl back up again. I sighed deeply. We would travel for a week like this, close to each other, invading each other’s space. Already it felt like the sides of the spinner were pressing down on me. I didn’t know how I would stand it. Pau Brasil was the last stop on the line.

  Along the way, we would stop and drop off the others close to their assigned towns. Each group had a designated time they had to return by if they were to catch the train back. This was entirely dependent on our little group. We would have to bring the spinners back from the end of the line and pick everyone up. “Timing is extremely important,” Pietre drummed into to me, pressing his finger into the table until it turned white and beating me about the head with the information. I rolled my eyes and nodded, arguing with him was pointless and a waste of my moping energy.

  The landscape was peeled back. It whirred past us and held no interest to me anymore. Bleak and brown. Greenery mottled the background like camouflage clothing but I was blind to the beauty. The leaves rustled like the trees were shaky fingers scared to touch us. They reflected my anxiety. I still couldn’t decide if I’d done the right thing. I hoped maybe when my feet hit the grass and I was trekking towards my mother, I would feel differently. But my purpose escaped me. It was like trying to find my key; I knew it was on me somewhere.

  The spinners stopped every six hours for toilet breaks and leg stretches. It was unnerving going from the cool, pristine environment of the spinners, to the dank, mossy richness of the woods. Usually, I would have loved the difference. It would have motivated me. The others were certainly energized. They could see change around the corner. Normally, the atmosphere would have been infectious. I could see the anticipation rolling around them like a velvety blanket, comforting and reassuring them they would be ok. But I could only catch the corner of it and it seemed frayed and easily torn. All I could see was naivety. I worried they didn’t realize how dangerous this would be. They seemed too confident that nothing could go wrong.

  I spent the first break, and every one after that, quickly peeing and squatting on a rock. I sullenly dug in the dirt with a stick to see how big a piece of dirt I could excavate without it breaking into smaller pieces. The others practiced their moves and went over their plans. Gwen approached me on the first day. She put her hand on my shoulder, an unfamiliar move for her, and it felt more like a slap. Her face scrunched, showing those odd dimples on her cheeks. “Is it Cal?” Her voice wavered. Did she grieve him or was she just nervous?

  I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure. It could be. My brain refused to deal with his death the same way it had refused to back down from coming out here in the first place. It threw ineffectual but heavy covers over the things
that might stop me. I sucked on my lip and let my eyes brush over to her for a second. I couldn’t speak, if I did, I would cry.

  She patted me again. “Look, if it is, you shouldn’t blame yourself, no one does. He was sick long before you arrived. You should put it behind you.”

  I nodded and watched her feet as they shuffled away from me, kicking a rock in frustration. I think that was the problem or at least part of it. I had put it behind me, but not dealt with it, so it just sat there. An angry ball of anger and sadness that kept a steady distance behind me, but always followed. And I always knew it was there.

  I dragged at myself, my own company as irritating as being with people. I knew this wasn’t helping but I did nothing other than feel sorry for myself. I wished I’d done things differently but it was too late. I could feel Joseph moving through the town, his heavy footsteps heavier still with the weight of my desertion on his mind.

  I saw Matthew through the shifting trees, his face as dark as the bar-like shadows cast across his face. He was as miserable as I was. We never spoke. I wondered if we would ever speak again or if he was done with me. It would be fair enough if he was.

  By the time we got to the last stop before Pau Brasil, everyone stopped bothering to talk to me and left me to my self-pitying behavior.

  Doing my usual scratching in the dirt, I etched a pattern of concentric circles when my arm was wrenched up violently. “I’ve had it with you,” Pietre snapped. “I thought you wanted to be here. If we’re going to get through this mission, you need to get yourself together.” He was shaking me like a ragdoll and I let him.

  “I’m s-sorry,” I said between shakes. But he was sewn-up furious and couldn’t be undone with an apology. The world was wobbling in my vision, trees were wriggling like snakes, the world was heaving. “Stop, please! I-I said I’m s-sorry, Pietre.” My voice quavered with the world as his fingers pressed hard into my arm. I felt a pang of pain as the joint in my shoulder started to strain from him twisting it.