Darkthaw (32 page)

Two blond women fuss around, chattering to each other. One helps us with our muddy clothes as the other struggles a large tub to the center of the room. My face flames hot as I am stripped bare in front of these strangers. The women take no notice, though they cluck their tongues and speak low to each other when they see the burn mark on my neck. At the sight of hot water being poured into the tub, I forget to be shy.

Matisa and I stand in the tub and scrub the mud from our skin with heavy cloths. The women help us wash our hair with a kind of hard soap that smells like spice and earth. When we are clean, they leave us to dress ourselves.

“We'll have to do something about this,” I remark when my hair is near dry. I stand, wrapped in my towel, holding up the clothes they left us on the table. There are two light blouses—thinner than I'm used to but practical enough, with long sleeves and collars that can be closed against the sun—and two strips of cloth that stretch and hook one end to the next. Can't figure those, but the real problem is the two long skirts that are so wide there's no way on Almighty's green earth they'll stay up on our hips. I pull one on over my towel and show Matisa.

“Even if we cinched them, they're . . . ,” Matisa says.

“Not practical?” I say.

Matisa nods. “Not great for riding.” She looks around the room as if she might find a solution.

One of the women reappears in the doorway and offers us a hairbrush. Matisa points to the skirts, then she gestures to the tiny window at the end of the house. The woman steps
close, peering out. “There,” Matisa says. “That.” She gestures to her bare legs.

I raise my eyebrows.

“I am showing her what the men wear,” she explains.

The woman stares at us like we're plain addled. She shrugs and heads for the door.

There's a mirror in this room. I step close to examine myself—for the first time in days. The face that stares back at me is not one I recognize: all shadowed eyes and gaunt cheeks. Under my chin is a soft pink scar, and the corner of my mouth is a flowering purple bruise. An angry red line cuts through its bloom.

I step away quick-like and turn to find Matisa's warm brown eyes on me.

“Let me braid your hair,” she offers.

She's brushing it in long, soothing strokes when the woman returns. We are still wrapped in the towels, and the blouses are a mite big, but Matisa figured out the stretchy cloths were for under the blouses, across our breasts.

The woman hands us two pairs of pants, an amused look in her round blue eyes.

“Thank you,” Matisa says.

She shakes her head and leaves us.

The pants aren't soft like my leggings, and they billow a bit, but they're tight at the ankle and with my
ceinture
tied over the untucked blouse, they're heaps better than the skirts.

Matisa is quiet as she braids my hair.

“You all right?” I ask over my shoulder.

She draws a deep breath. “Yes.” She ties the end of my plait with a strip of cloth. “I am thinking.” She hands me the brush and turns her back to me so I can brush her hair.

“Did you know?” I ask. “About what would happen at the grove? Did you know it would be bad?”

She dips her head. “For weeks my dreams have been showing me terrible things. One dream showed you being taken from me, another showed us being reunited. Both were very painful. With bloodshed.”

“But you bringing those men to the grove—you didn't have a choice,” I say.

“Perhaps not,” she answers. “But even when your choice seems clear—”

“It doesn't always feel right,” I finish.

She nods. “I am grateful to your friend, Tom.”

“Me too,” I say. I look around the cheery room, so warm, so familiar with its scent of drying herbs. Sounds of the village life outside reach our ears, muffled through the thick walls. “Do you think your people know about this village? It wasn't on Henderson's map.”

“My home is only few days from here by horseback. Our scouts would have found them easily.”

“These people seem good,” I venture, tying her hair.

“They do,” she says.

“How do you think they're surviving?” I ask her. “Do they have the remedy without knowing it—like we did?”

“I do not know.” She turns to face me. “It doesn't seem they've had a visit from
sohkâtisiwak
.”

“But that's something I don't understand. There are
sohkâtisiwak
working for Leon at the Keep, but there is also
a group out looking for you. And they can't be the same, or Julian wouldn't have needed Charlie to learn their whereabouts.” A memory niggles at the edge of my mind.

She squints at me. “Perhaps they were once the same group and they split over differences.”

“And the prisoners at the Keep?”

“Those who refused to do Leon's bidding?” she suggests.

The memory floats, not quite in reach. “But that could mean that the group looking for you refused Leon, too, but escaped. They might not be willing to help him at all. Mayhap they weren't even trading the remedy.”

“But then what were they offering Charlie?” she asks.

It rushes in at once, those last moments with Charlie. “Julian thought there was a place that could cure the Bleed,” I tell her. “He didn't plan to trade you for the remedy; he planned to trade you to find out its location.”

Matisa frowns.

“He said it was in the north.”

Her eyes widen.

“What is it?” I ask.

She looks down. “
Sohkâtisiwak
talked often about”—she looks up—“the forbidden woods.”

“The ones around my settlement?” Years ago, Matisa's people sent scouts to those forests to look for the Lost People they had been dreaming—us. When they never returned—when Brother Stockham's grandpa killed them—the woods became a forbidden place, like they were to us. No one dared venture into them. No one until Matisa.

“As they became more suspicious of our lore and my circle,
they often mentioned the forbidden woods.” She chews her bottom lip, thinking. “They believed the woods were forbidden because there was something powerful there—something to do with the remedy.”

“Did they believe the Bleed could be cured?”

She shakes her head. “I do not know. It's possible.”

But if Leon and
sohkâtisiwak
believe in this place . . . “Do you think
sohkâtisiwak
are planning to go there? The woods?”

She shakes her head. “Everyone feared the woods, even if they did not know why they were forbidden.”

“But you didn't,” I point out. “You came to find me.”

“Because I was guided by my dreams, not by suspicions.”

I hope she's right about them fearing that area. And, for the first time, I'm a mite glad my people are still fearful, that our settlement is well fortified. I may not have loved ones in that settlement anymore, but it doesn't mean I wish them strife. My dream comes back to me: the fortification walls, the voices from the river, my pa, calling to me.
Make peace with it
.

“I dream about the settlement,” I say. “I keep dreaming about the Watch flats.”

She tilts her head. “What do you think it means?”

I rub at my brow. What
does
it mean? At first I thought my dreams were urging us to leave the settlement. Then I thought mayhap they were talking about the past, telling me to let go of what happened, let go of my guilt. But the last dream I had was like the first, and I was . . . burying Matisa.

I look at her fresh-scrubbed skin, long dark hair. The image of her lying in the dirt, and me heaping soil upon her.

I take a deep breath and tell her all of it. I tell her that in
my first and last dreams she is sick with the Bleed. I tell her about the war starting up around us, about the Watch flats, about the voices of the dead under the river singing out. I describe how I am burying her.

She listens careful, her eyes thoughtful. When I am done, there is a long silence. Finally she speaks. “Perhaps your dreams show you what is yet to come.” She says it real calm. “Like they have done so far.”

A sliver of fear races through me. No. That would mean they're asking me to accept that Matisa will die. Like I had to accept my pa's death, and all the rest.

“Don't want that to be true,” I say.

Again she is quiet, her eyes tracing the floor. She shakes her head. “‘Make peace with it,'” she murmurs. She looks up and meets my eyes. “Perhaps we still can. The secret of the remedy is still safe.”

I frown, trying to figure her words.
Make peace with it
. My eyes widen. I heard those words as a command, telling me to accept something I've been feeling guilt over. She hears them differently:
create
peace with it. It: the remedy.

I think on this. It's true that in my dreams she holds the remedy in her hand.

“Perhaps if we can protect the remedy long enough, the sickness will decide this war, and we will have a chance to negotiate peace with the survivors, as we always planned.”

I nod. This makes sense. But then why does she discard the remedy in my dream? And why are we at the settlement? I scrub my hands over my face. “Mayhap my dreams are just addled thoughts,” I mumble. “Been having enough of those of late.”

“The fact that you dreamt the grove and found me proves that is not true,” she says.

“But if I hadn't insisted on bringing Charlie along, I would've never
needed
to dream you. I created that mess—”

“That is not how it works, Em,” Matisa says. “And you are not responsible for others' choices.” She holds my gaze until I feel tears well up.

I blink, blowing out a long breath. The choices I've made since leaving the settlement filter through my head, filling me with a strange mix of emotions.

Matisa waits for me to speak.

“Back last fall I was determined to prove my Discovery virtue a new way,” I say. “And I did that. You helped me do that. And ever since then, the virtues haven't held the same meaning.” I swallow. “I've been thinking on my Honesty virtue. It's not one I'm real good at.”

Her face softens. “I should not have asked you to keep the truth of the sickness from Kane,” she says. “I am sorry.”

“No, that's not what I mean,” I say. “I always thought that Honesty was about being truthful with others; but mayhap that's not right. Mayhap Honesty is more about being truthful with yourself.” I press on. “You didn't ask me to keep a secret from Kane. You told me it was safer, and I made my own decision. Coming to terms with why I did it, that's the Honesty part.”

And coming to terms with why washes me in relief. Haven't been honest with myself about much these past days, but if I search deep down, I know keeping the truth from Kane was about making the choice I thought was right, the one I thought would keep him safe.

Trouble is, he might never understand that.

Matisa's face is warm, but her eyes are a mite sorrowful. “Our choices have been difficult out here,” she says. I know she's thinking on Nishwa, on sending him on alone . . .

“We'll leave straightaway,” I tell her. “The rains are not yet done; we will reach your hunters in time.”

She shakes her head. “We will leave tomorrow. We have not slept, and our horses need rest.” She pats my knee. “Let's make some tincture for your foot.” She draws herself up. “And let's find out where this village is getting its water.”

MATISA FROWNS DOWN INTO THE DANK ABYSS.
We stand at the south side of the village, peering into a stone well that looks much like the one we had at the settlement. Only—

“There is no river nearby,” she remarks, pulling her head up and frowning in confusion at Genya.

“River, no,” Genya says. “But come”—she beckons to us—“I will show.” She starts off past the barns. We follow her around the corner of the nearest building, but I am stopped in my tracks. Before me is the most bizarre cart I have ever seen. It is made from metal, with large wheels and a chimney stack stretching tall to the sky.

“What is that?” I ask.

Genya searches around for the word.

“Tractor,” Matisa says.

I look at Matisa, confused.

“It tills the land,” she says. “Helps to plant crops.” She looks at Genya. “How does it run?”

Genya frowns.

“How does it . . .” Matisa churns her hands about to indicate movement.

“Ah.” Genya twists her mouth, her blue eyes lost in thought. “The water in the air. What is the word?”

“Steam?” Matisa answers.

“Yes!” Genya says. “Steam.”

Matisa notices my lost gaze. “We have them at home,” she explains, following Genya up the hill before us.

I put this tractor in the mysteries-of-Matisa's-world basket and follow. Over this rise I can see the fence again, with its death poles poised at the ready. Genya waves to a figure who stands atop a hill outside the barrier. Another Watcher. Before us, tucked between the hills inside the fence, is a grove of dark green trees, all out of place in this sweeping, grassy landscape.