Nevermor (53 page)

“I just need to
rest,” he told her without further explanation, and before she could seek more
from him, he vanished behind the flap.

4

There couldn’t
have been many more hours until dawn, but Wren knew she was exhausted.  When
she got back to the tent with Max, Rifter was already asleep with his coat cast
aside.  It hadn’t taken much for him to drift away, and she was at least
contented to see that.

The tent was
lined with blankets and furs, and was certainly more welcoming than the ground
outside.  She didn’t even wonder who had previously slept here or what had
happened to them.  Just after she had made sure Max was settled in, she had
quickly fallen asleep as well.

Sometime after
that – she couldn’t say how long – a drizzle of rain began to fall, pattering
against the stiff hide of the shelter, pulling her out of her sleep.  She might
have slipped directly back into it if not for what she saw when she opened her
eyes.

Rifter was
sitting there, close, looking down at her.  She gasped to see his face there
looming over hers, but the shock faded when she recognized him, knowing he
wasn’t a threat.

“I can’t sleep,”
he confessed.  “I thought I was tired, but I can’t.”

His eyes were
glassy, and he stared at her face as if it was an impassable maze.  She sat up
beside him, still drowsy herself, but that did not resolve the way he looked at
her.

“I’m sure you’re
exhausted,” she told him quietly, hoping not to wake up her young brother.  She
looked over at him to see that he was still resting peacefully.

Rifter appeared
so dejected that it made her heart ache.  She couldn’t even imagine what he
must have felt.  He had lost his home.

“My head’s just
full I guess,” he said.

Mine too,
she agreed
silently.

“I keep seeing
things when I close my eyes,” he went on.  “I don’t want to lose myself to
that.”

“You’re afraid
you’ll have a bad dream?  Like before?”

He looked at her
unappreciatively and she guessed that he would like to deny it, but he didn’t
say anything.  She hadn’t forgotten about the night of the storm.  There was
clearly something that troubled him – maybe something he hadn’t quite forgotten
– which rose from the back of his mind and attacked him in his nightmares.

“I wish you
would tell me about it.  Sometimes it helps to talk about things.”

“I’ve never told
anyone
,” he informed her, and the solid way he’d said it made her feel that
he wasn’t going to tell her either.  Why did he insist on keeping such a
distance?  Why wouldn’t he come clean?  Didn’t he know that she wanted to be
closer to him?  Yet he kept pushing her away.

Wren wasn’t
going to play this game.  She started to turn, aiming to roll over and go back
to sleep without another word, but he touched her shoulder, pulling her back
in.

“Don’t, Wren,”
he entreated.  “Please.”

Her breath
caught at how intensely he gazed at her.  There was something in the way he
examined her face that made it impossible for her turn away, but yet the pain
she saw there kept her mind from drifting.  She thought of all the things she
wanted to say to him. 
I’m tired of you being distant.  Won’t you just talk
to me?  I want to make you feel better.  I love you
.  But she kept quiet. 
He pulled her close, resting his forehead against hers.  She looked at her
hands, watching her fingers lace with his until he got his own thoughts
together, and finally he spoke.

“I don’t like to
admit it, but there’s a lot I don’t remember about the past.  I’ve been here so
long that things have gotten blurry at best, but one thing that I do remember
is what brought me here in the beginning.”

She was
confused, leaning back to focus on him.  “I thought you only remembered waking
up here.”

“I don’t
remember
how
I got here or what led to it, but I do remember why I
sought this escape in the first place.  It’s been said that it was my own dream
that created this world.  I’m not sure about that; they can say what they
want.  But I know what made me want it.  It did begin with a dream – my dream. 
I dreamed about the man I was going to become.  That’s what started it.  I
don’t know what I saw, but I knew where my life was going, and I hated it so
much that I had to escape that somehow.  After that, I found my way here. 
Here, I wouldn’t have to fear that life.”

“But you still
dream about it?”

“I forget the
dream just after I wake up.  I only remember flashes of things – shadows,
darkness…  I dream of the storm.”

Rifter breathed
deeply.  He seemed relieved to have that off his chest, but Wren had other
things that were clawing at her own, desperate to get out.

“Can’t you stop
fighting him, Rifter?” she asked suddenly.  “Can’t you just pretend he isn’t
here?”

“I can’t do
that,” he said, shaking his head regretfully.

“Can’t you try?”

“It’s not that
easy,” he insisted, his voice growing darker.  “I feel him all around me, all
the time.  He poisons this place, and I
feel
that inside my body.  I
can’t just ignore it.”

He clenched his
fists at his chest and stomach as if he was going to dig into his own flesh and
rip himself open.  She believed she understood what he was saying, however. 
This was why he had been so agitated lately.

“It’s him or me,
and I’m not going anywhere.  I need him to leave here and the only way to make
sure he stays gone is to kill him.  I just don’t know how.  I’ve been trying
for a long time.”

Wren looked at
him sorrowfully.  She’d known that he would give her an answer like that.  He
was going to keep on, and he would pull the rest of them into darkness with
him.

“When I saw you
fight him, it scared me,” she confessed.

Rifter touched
her face, brushing her hair back.  It was a whisper of movement in the dark,
and she suddenly felt the notion that they were like a married couple, sharing
secrets while the children were asleep.

“I can’t tell
you that I’ll stop,” he said.  “I can’t.  But with any luck, it’ll end this
time.  Then it’ll be like it was.”

With only the
nightmare monsters to fear
, she thought sourly. 
There’s always a catch.

“Wren,” he said
softly, pulling her eyes up toward his.  “I do feel better now that you’re
here.  I don’t know why, but I do.  I don’t think it was a mistake that you
found this place.  I think I called you here because I needed you, but I didn’t
even know it then.”

Wren’s girlish
heart fluttered, but the secret woman in the back of her mind knew better.

He doesn’t mean
what he’s saying.  All he cares about is his war.

No, he loves
me.  I just have to be patient.

Don’t be such a
child.  He doesn’t know what love is.  Neither do you.

“Wren, do you
love me?” he asked.  The sound of that question was musical to her.  It made
blood pulse in her ears.

She wasn’t sure
if she should have told the truth, but she couldn’t lie to him.

“Yes,” she
answered with a nod.

When he kissed her,
she didn’t push him away, but she had a difficult time holding him close. 
Though he was warm and his kiss was soft, she wasn’t sure she felt the same
thing she once had.  She closed her eyes as tight as she dared, letting him
guide her, hoping that her doubt would disappear somewhere so that she could
swallow it down.

He let his greed
take him over, kissing her harder, burying his tongue in her mouth.  She let
him push her back against the ground and tried to lose herself in him.  He was
absorbed in her – she could tell it by the way he breathed.  She wanted that
for herself.

Was she really a
child, or was she a woman?  She would know it soon.

His hand brushed
against her leg, slowly pushing up her gown.  He wanted to undress her, feel
her skin against his.  The thought of his nakedness had not bothered her
before, but now that she imagined it in this way, it was too much.  She felt an
unfamiliar tingle shoot down through her belly, and a nervous chill followed.

I can’t do this…

“Stop,” she said
suddenly, pulling away from his kiss.  There was confusion in his eyes as he
looked back at her, out of breath.  He didn’t understand why her hands were on
his chest, resisting him.  She had to make him understand.

“I – I’m not
ready for this,” she said.  It was all she could think to say.

Rifter didn’t
respond.  He only looked at her with pain and humiliation in his eyes.  She had
hurt him; she could see it.  He was off of her in an instant, beyond the flap
of the tent before she could even get up.

Wren didn’t want
him to go, but she wasn’t sure what she might have said to make him stay.  She
rose up to go after him, brushing past the flap.  He had only taken a few steps
in front of the tent, standing there in the night with his back to her.

“Rifter,
wait...”

It was too late
to get him back.  She had ruined it, and he didn’t heed her.  In fact, when she
said his name, she triggered him.  He took off straight up into the air where
she could not follow, leaving her stranded with her guilt.

1

The next day was
gloomy.  Gray clouds covered the sun, promising more rain.  The boys had built
up their own fire again, keeping to themselves since the Tribals would have
nothing to do with them.  They had been allowed to stay close, but were
continually watched by wary eyes.

Wren slept late
inside the tent.  She had been kept awake by her tears over what had happened
with Rifter.  She wished that it had gone differently, but she could not bring
herself to believe that it was entirely her fault.  She just wished Rifter
hadn’t run away from her like that.

I just need to
talk to him.  I embarrassed him, but he’ll forgive me if I explain myself.

Once she was
brave enough to venture out, she approached the others where they were
loitering around their fire.  Max was there with Henry, who was showing him how
to tie a sturdy knot.  She didn’t say anything to that.  There was nothing left
to say.  The others were cooking meat that they’d hunted down that morning, and
while she would agree that it smelled good, she had too much trouble in her
belly to be hungry.

“Where’s
Rifter?” she asked them.  She held herself as if she was cold, but really she
was just guarded, in case they would all attack her with harsh looks and words.

As if they even
know
. 
At least, I hope they don’t.

“I think he’s
out in the woods somewhere,” Toss said helpfully.  “Said he was going for a
hunt.”

Her
disappointment was showing clearly on her face.  She knew they all saw it.  But
at least Rifter had come back after taking off like he had.  He just wasn’t
here now.

“Everything
alright?” Finn asked her.  She looked up at him as if she had forgotten that
the rest of them existed.

“I just wanted
to talk to him,” she said, shaking her head in denial.

She sat down on
a fallen tree near Toss, looking at the fire in a trance.  She had hoped Rifter
would have been back.  Beyond that, she wasn’t sure what she should do with
herself.  She needed to make him understand what had happened between them, and
how she felt about it.  She didn’t want him to get so far away from her that
she couldn’t get him back.  She needed him.  She wanted him close – just not
that close yet.

“How are you
holding up?” Toss asked, and she snapped to.  They had all been through a lot –
too much that they weren’t prepared for.  She guessed she was holding up as
well as they were.

“I keep telling
myself that maybe this will end soon,” she said.  “If we can just hold on,
maybe Rifter can get rid of the Scourge this time for good, and it will all be
over.  We can start again somewhere else, but we won’t have to worry about it
anymore.”

The group was
quiet, doing what they did so well – eyeing one another, communicating without
words as if they could read each other’s minds.  Wren was tired of being left
in the dark.  She almost spoke out against them, but she didn’t have to.  Finn
erupted first.

“Alright, that’s
it!” he said, throwing his hands up.  “I can’t do it anymore!”

“Finn,” Nix said
with an air of warning, but the other boy didn’t stop.

“No!  No more
dancing around it.  She needs to know.”

Nix didn’t say
anything else, conceding to the inevitable.  He crossed his arms and looked at
the ground, not willing to be a part of it.

Finn looked at
the rest of them to see if he would get more disapproval, but they said
nothing.  When they didn’t oppose him, he turned and knelt down in front of
her, looking into her bewildered eyes.