The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (18 page)

“Red redder reddest,” he muttered, and a line of spit ran
down into his filthy beard.

Terrified and revolted, I turned my face away from
him—and my heart leapt.

There in the moonlight, at the edge of the clearing, was
another man, just barely out of the shadows. Unlike the thing holding me, he
was normal looking—or, rather, better than normal. Beautiful wouldn’t be
putting it too strongly, if a man could be called that. He had long fair
hair—in the moonlight I couldn’t tell whether it was blond or silver, or
how old he was except to say he was definitely a grown man, far older than
me—and he was tall and straight, with broad shoulders, and dressed in clothes
covered in a pattern of dark and light that made him blend in with the shadows
and moonlight.

 
“Have you been
hunting,
Caliban
?” he said. His tone was clear and
amused, as if he were humoring the creature. “What have you found?”

My captor took me by the shoulders and shoved me out in
front of him.

“Red,” he said. “Red girl.” And he yanked off my cap and let
it fall to the ground.

 
The other man
nodded. “Like moth to flame,” he said quietly, his eyes on me. “Cover it up
again, there’s a good girl.”

I bent and picked up my cap, and as quickly as I could,
twisted my hair up and hid it.

The man in the distance remained rooted where he was,
looking at me
consideringly
. He was clean and
handsome, and had every appearance of sanity. I wanted to call out to him for
help, but there was something dangerous in his aspect, something I couldn’t
quite put my finger on, so I stayed quiet.

“Are you out here alone?” he said finally.

There didn’t seem to be any point in lying, so I nodded.

He untied something from his waist and tossed it towards us.
It fell right at my feet—a small leather bag, the top pulled together in
a tight gather.

“A treat for
Caliban
,” the man
said. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a treat, hasn’t it,
Caliban
?”

My captor snatched up the bag. Then he began slapping at my
back, almost hard enough to knock me off my feet.

“You’ve dusted her off very nicely,” the man in the distance
said. “Now let her alone before you break her.”

The hands stopped pawing at me. I could feel him standing
behind me, but he wasn’t restraining me any longer, wasn’t holding onto my arm
or any part of me.

“Come to me, girl,” the man said. “He’ll let you. He knows
you’re mine.”

“Then he’s mistaken
,” said
another
voice. I swung around but couldn’t see who was speaking. “Lieutenant Jensen!
Bring the prisoner to me.”

The man behind me grabbed me up, flung me back over his
shoulder, and began hurrying toward the edge of the clearing in his stumbling,
halting gait—not toward the beautiful man but a quarter turn away from
him. “Red redder reddest!” he said excitedly.

“Well done,” said the voice, and my captor jerked to a halt
in front of a bank of shadows. “Set her down.” I was unceremoniously dropped onto
the ground like a sack of grain, and when I got to my feet I found myself face
to face with an old man who was wearing the same sort of splotchy clothing as
the handsome younger man.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” the old man said in an
undertone, then raised his voice. “Jensen! Cover my retreat.”

The man stood up as straight as he could, clutching the
leather bag to his chest. “Sir!” he said, then turned and trotted off, stuffing
the bag into his shirt as he went.

“Come.” The old man didn’t look at me. He said that one
word, turned, and set off into the woods.

I looked back over my shoulder, towards the handsome man,
but he had vanished. Taking a deep breath I did the only thing that seemed
possible: I followed the old man deeper into the woods.

He moved swiftly for someone his age, and quietly. I had to
hurry to keep up, and more than once stepped on something sharp or hard, but I
was afraid to pause for fear of losing him. He made several sudden turns for no
reason that I could see, and twice reached out and without a word pulled me up
behind him into the branches of a tree, where we seemed to be waiting or
hiding.

The first time we did this I saw nothing. We waited for
awhile, then climbed down and went on. The second time, however, the enormous
four-legged wild creature—or another like it—came and snuffled
around the base of the tree. The old man was beneath me, and I hoped he knew
how to fight the thing off if it began to climb.

But it didn’t climb. After sniffing all around the tree on
all fours, the creature stood up just like a man and peed on the tree. The
sight, combined with the pungent ammonia smell, made me gag, but I fought the
reflex back for fear the thing would hear and come scrambling up the tree after
me.

Then it walked away on two legs, and as it walked I could no
longer tell why I’d ever thought it was an animal. It looked just like a naked,
dirt-encrusted man.

We stayed clinging to the tree for a long time, so long that
I began to wonder whether we would stay there until daylight. Finally, though,
the old man climbed down and dropped to the ground and I followed, carefully
avoiding the place where the creature had marked the tree.

We walked on, and soon it seemed like every few steps there
was another large boulder. Some we went around, others, because they lay in a
narrow path hemmed in by bramble-choked woods, we climbed over. My adrenaline
rush had by now long faded, so I concentrated on following the old man’s steps,
on keeping up without falling or making noise. I tried to move like him, a
secret creature of the night. I lost all track of time.

At some point I became aware of a faint hissing
noise—I thought I had been hearing it for some time without noticing. It
seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. But the clouds had covered the moon
again, and I could see very little, even less than I might have because it was
dark enough now that I didn’t dare gaze about lest I trip in the darkness or
lose the old man.

I was only a step behind him and skirting an especially
large boulder when he spoke to me for the first time since we’d begun the trek.

“Come inside,” he said.

At first I couldn’t tell what he meant. Then I realized that
what seemed to be a shadow on the sloping rock wall behind him was a hole
almost as tall as I was.

I followed him to it. It was the opening to a cave.

Though I’d been following the old man through the woods for
ages, I was reluctant to be trapped with him in a cave somewhere deep in the
wilderland
. Then again, I didn’t want to be outside alone
if the wild man who’d abducted me showed up again. There was also that
mysterious hissing noise, louder than ever now. So, deciding the old man was
the least scary of three scary things, I followed him inside.

Once in the pitch blackness of the cave I changed my
mind—the old man was a certain and present danger, and the wild man and
the noise only possible future ones. So I turned back, creeping quietly, and
pressed myself against the cold stone wall beside the opening, trying to see
out into the darkness, trying to see if it was safe to creep out there and away
alone.

 
Behind me came
the sound of a match being struck and a sudden glow of light. I turned and saw
the old man setting a lamp in the middle of the floor of the cave, saw too that
the cave wasn’t a bare hole in the rock, but a home. One part of the
rock-walled room was crowded with stacks and stacks of short metal cylinders
with paper labels, and the rest of the wall space was lined with stacks and
stacks of books—more books than I had ever seen, more books than I knew
existed. In one corner stood a pallet-like bed with a bright cover, and at its
foot a large rectangular box with hinges.

For a hole in a rock the place was quite civilized. How long
had this man been out here, fending for himself in the woods?

In the lamplight the man still looked very old, at least as
old as the Watchers, but he also looked wiry and strong. His face was deeply
lined from his nose down to the corners of his mouth, and around the corners of
his eyes, and he had no hair except for a silvery gray stubble that matched the
uneven stubble on his chin. His eyebrows were silver and his eyes were a
startling bright blue. As I studied him, he opened a tin container and took out
a handful of dried apple slices.

“Hungry?” he asked. I nodded and he brought the apples to
me, along with a cup of water from a covered bucket on the floor; then he went
back and took out apples and water for himself and sat on the end of his
pallet, eating.

The apples were sweet and satisfying, the water cold and
fresh, and I finished them quickly. I stood there turning the empty cup over in
my hands, waiting for the food to hit my bloodstream and stop my trembling, and
as it did I began to realize exactly how exhausted I was—so exhausted, I
couldn’t go one step further, not unless some new burst of fright sent more
adrenaline coursing through my veins.

The old man ate another piece of apple. He hadn’t so much as
glanced at me, since he’d handed me food and water.

Cautiously I slid down to a sitting position, resting my
back against the rocky wall. Safe or not, and whether I wanted to or not, I had
to rest. Worse, safe or not I’d soon be asleep. My eyelids were heavy and my
limbs too relaxed, and t
he hissing sound outside
didn’t help. Now that I was sitting still and not hurrying through the woods, I
could hear a rhythmic quality to it, a soft and gentle shushing. It rose and
fell, rose and fell, pulling at my tense muscles, unwinding the tight cords in
my neck and shoulders, lulling
me to relax.

Without thinking I reached up and pulled off my black cap.
The old man gave a sharp intake of breath. He looked startled, and then pained,
and then—and this was oddest of all—tender.

When our eyes met, he spoke. “Jensen spoke truer than he
knew,” he said, in a quiet and musing voice. “Red indeed.”

His words made perfect sense, coming as they did when he’d
seen my hair, but somehow I felt he was changing the subject.

“What is her name?” he said.

My heart leapt in panic and I scanned the cave, trying to
see who he was speaking to—someone hidden in the shadows, or behind the
books. Someone else to fear.

I could spot no one, and no one answered him. His eyes were
fixed expectantly on me.

Maybe in my exhaustion I’d misheard him. Maybe he’d only
asked me my own name. After a moment’s further lingering uncertainty, I
answered. “My name is Red,” I said.

The old man shut his eyes and began to laugh, a long lilting
cackle that raised goose bumps on my arms. He laughed so hard he cried, holding
his stomach and rocking. He made no move toward me or I’d have been gone, out
of the cave and into the night, regardless of whatever else was out there.

After what seemed like a very long time his cackles
subsided. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and shook his head, still smiling.
“Red in hair and Red in name. Jensen was twice right. That’s a record.”

“Does he know me?” I ventured.

The old man’s forehead furrowed. “No, no. Not like you mean.
Knowing is pretty well beyond him now. Sometimes he doesn’t know me. Most of
the time he doesn’t know himself. Fortunately he remembers being scolded for
eating people, so he decided to give you as a gift to appease his gods.”

I didn’t follow everything he said, but the part about
Jensen eating people was perfectly clear. The skinned man on the steps of the
circle flashed into my mind, and the man missing his hands.

“How old are you, Red Girl?” the old man asked, pulling up
his feet so that he sat cross-legged on his pallet.

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

“Seventeen years old . . . how time does fly.
A lifetime for you, the blink of an eye for me. Where do you work?”

 
“In the fields.”

“Who are her parents?”

I stared at him. Was he still talking to me?

“I don’t know,” I said.

He began laughing again, that cackling, disconcerting laugh.
“Of course not,” he said. “The joke’s on me. But it isn’t funny, so we’ll try
again.” He eyed me narrowly. “She needn’t be afraid.”

I discovered that, without realizing it, I had begun edging
toward the doorway.

“No, no, she needn’t be afraid,” he said again. “I don’t eat
children. Or adults, for that matter. Nor do I give them to Angel for
playthings.”

“Who
is Angel?”

“You saw him,” the old man said. Now I was
you
again. “He’s pretty, but pretty is
as pretty does, and he does wicked things, so he isn’t pretty at all.”

I blinked hard. I was so tired, and so frightened, and the
old man’s words were hard to follow. “So Angel is the handsome man, and Jensen
is the—” I caught myself, not wanting to give offense—“the one who
caught me. And who are you?”