The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (2 page)

I put my hand
to his face, his skin so cool, so ready to pull into a grin. He traced under my eye with his thumb and said, “You know, that shiner makes you look dangerous and sexy.”

I snorted,
the unfamiliar rumbling of laughter working its way through my body. I smacked his head to the side with the force of a feather. “Shut up!”

He
grinned, and my heart swelled like sunlight was trying to push out of it, painfully. “Seriously. It makes your wrong eye stand out less,” he said with a wink. I rolled my eyes, wondering which eye he thought was the wrong one.

I slid down and
rested in the mud, the water seeping into my trousers. Rash squatted beside me. “So, that’s your dad, huh?”

I put my head in my
hands, trying to wish away some of the complicated feelings I was having. “Yep, wrong eyes and all.”

We waited as long as we could
but with time pressing down on us, Pietre to find, and the constant threat of wolves, I could only let the trees cradle me for so long. I had to roughly staple myself back together so we could get home.

Still clutching Rash like I was scared he would disappear
, I let him drag me back to the others.

The light filter
ed through the trees, heavy with mist, making the air dance with every disturbance. It was close to morning but the clouds hugged the ground, refusing to untwist their grip and return to the sky. Pelos, Lenos, my father, or whoever he was, stood with Careen, mist swirling around their knees like grasping spirits, both their faces lit up by the glow of the reader. I cocked my brow at him. I swear he used to be taller.

He turned, took a step towards
me, and paused. “Are you hungry, Rosa?” My name sounded bizarre coming from his dark lips. But my stomach reminded me we hadn’t eaten in over a day by clenching and gurgling. I nodded. He smiled at me, dipping his hand into his backpack.

“Careen said you left your supplies with the other Survivor, e
r, Pietre? Here, take some of these.” He held out a zip lock bag, the muffins inside popping with canned raspberries. It was an old specialty of his, and the memory struck me like I was being twanged like a rubber band. I accepted the food. It was delicious and just how I remembered. I played with the wrapper, folding it into a tiny triangle. He was watching me, watching my old habits resurface, making himself recall things, too. I shoved the paper in my pocket.

He off
ered a canteen of water and I grabbed it, washing down the sad muffin stuck in my throat. “Careen tells me you escaped from the breeding program,” he said, his words staccato-clipped, his face animated. “What was it like? Did you meet Este?”

I gulped and glared at Careen. She recoiled, confused.

“It was a nightmare,” I said, trying to match his clipped tone. “And, no. I didn’t meet Este.” I rolled my eyes.

“Oh. No matter
. Such a brilliant woman. Just imagine what she could accomplish if she used her skills for good,” he said, tapping the air. Then, as if twisting to reveal another side of his personality, his tone changed to smooth and lulling. “Was there a child?”

Rash
took a step back from me, giving us a small amount of privacy, which I didn’t want, scratching his leg nervously. Careen also hung back, both of them observing this odd reunion. Watching the two of us interact in this awkward manner was like watching two strangers who had met maybe once, someplace, but couldn’t quite remember where or when.

S
omething pulled at me from inside. Cage bars shot up in front of my eyes. I hugged my arms around my chest. “There was a child. I mean, there is,” I said.

Rash’s eyes widened as he started to comprehend what I’d just said.

Pelo’s face relaxed into an easy smile. “I’m a grandfather,” he said proudly, mostly to himself.

I hugged myself tighter, trying to hold myself back from launching at him. Grandfather.
The word infuriated me. He had no claim over my child, no right to a relationship with him. I put my hand to my head, feeling a radiating headache from where I’d clipped it on my mother’s table. She had much more right to claim grand-parentage than he did. I stared at him, willing him to change into her, wishing it so hard I thought I might collapse in a soaking mess of tears in front of everyone. My failure squashed me under its weight, robbing me of energy and breath.

I took a step towards
him, not sure what I wanted to do.

He leaned back, tapped his chin,
and spread his arms wide. “Well, this is wonderful! It has begun. The breakdown of the system. And you’re part of it, Rosa. We are part of it!” he said excitedly. He didn’t say,
oh you poor thing, that must have been hard for you
. Or even
how did you manage to escape?
My impressions of him started to form around the thin frame I’d already constructed from the day he left me. His priority was the cause, the rebellion. I was a side project, which failed.

As if
reading my mind, he threw in as an aside, “Well done. It must be difficult, raising a child on your own.” I cringed at the odd congratulation. I didn’t deserve it.

I heard Careen suck in a breath ready to blurt, “
Oh, she’s not…”

I cut her off and stared at her lips, pinning them together with my mind
. “I’m
not
doing too badly, am I, Careen?” I nodded my head, begging her to keep quiet and nod along with me. I couldn’t deal with the questions that would come from bringing Joseph into the conversation.

*****

The next few hours went by in a blur of Pelo peppering Careen with probing questions about the Survivors. I’d decided on Pelo because he didn’t feel like my father, but calling him by his new name seemed wrong as well. He knew more than me about the coming plans, but he wanted specifics: the colors, the shapes, the tastes. He seemed to demand full sensory explanation, and it was amusing watching Careen try and beat him back with her short answers.

“W
e’re not likely to be pursued,” Pelo said, his smile cartoonish, “Most of the soldiers, save a skeleton force, have been sent to search of your settlement. They left a week ago. So they have a bit of a head start on us.” I wondered why he smiled at this. The idea that Woodland soldiers were on their way to my home still filled me with absolute terror, but I had to hope that, as with everything, the Survivors were prepared for this outcome.

Careen flipped her hair and a thin lipped almost-smile spread across her face. “They don’t have S
pinners though.” Her voice was distant as her eyes searching the terrain in front of her. “We’ll catch up.” She was barely listening to the animated stick insect beside her. Her thoughts were with Pietre.

Pelo clasped his hands together in eagerness, hungry for information. “Spinners?”

I laughed as Careen tried to explain what a Spinner looked and felt like.

Their voices faded out as
I stared at Rash like he might be an apparition. I could almost see his shape wobbling and wavering in front of me.

Every now and
then, he’d crack a joke, he would smile, and he would support me as much as he could as I tried to overcome my concussion, but I could tell this was overwhelming for him.

My struggles came from deeper inside. I was trying to put two men together in my head. The m
an I’d looked up at, whose every move, every word, had been mesmerizing to me. Back then, everything he’d said had to be The Truth. His voice was brimming with promises, his enthusiasm, catching. Looking at him now, through older eyes, he was exactly the same… but completely different. Because I was different. He was like an excitable toddler in a grown man’s body, his reactions to everything naïve and over the top.

*****

We pulled through the woods, mud splattered up to our knees, our boots twice as heavy with all the caked-on dirt. We scanned back and forth, looking for signs of wolves or soldiers. It was unnervingly quiet. We had only the food Pelo had scraped off his kitchen counter, muffins and a few oranges. The forest only offered dried remnants of berries left by other animals. As we dragged on, every branch and slippery log started to look the same. Had we turned around? Was that the damned red arrow leading us back to Pau?

I was filthy and miserable
. The loss of my mother and my new sister bobbed in and out of my head like a tainted tea bag. I’d blown it. At least I knew they would be safe from Paulo. My only consolation was Rash, trudging along, keeping up easily, dragging me by my jacket sleeve.

“So
, a kid?” he asked, his dark eyebrows rising in surprise.

I nodded
. “His name’s Orry.”

I let my mind wander from Orry to Joseph, wondering what they were doing right now. Was he missing me? I missed him so much I couldn’t breathe. When I closed my
eyes, his memory wrapped around me like golden tethers. I thought of our night together, and I thought I might crack open right there. I put my arm across my chest, feeling the pain physically wound me.

A hand patted my shoulder awkwardly
. “That bad, huh? What? Does the little terror scream all night and crap all day?”

I pressed my fingers to my lips, letting the memory of
Joseph’s kiss lag there. “Rosa?”

“What? No.
Well, sometimes, but mostly he’s perfect.” My beautiful boy, how did I leave without saying goodbye?

Rash lowered his head, shaking it
minutely. “Who would’ve thought it? Miss
I’m never having a kid
,
happy with a bouncing baby boy.”

I smiled sadly. “It wasn’t that simple. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point.
Joseph helped,” I whispered.

We pushed through low-lying branches, some showing signs of life,
persistent, hardened buds that would soon sprout blossoms. I let one spring back and slap Rash in the chest. He coughed dramatically. “Ahem. Joseph?”

I wasn’t sure how to say it
, how to make Rash understand the tunnels I had pushed through to get here, the darkness Joseph dragged me out of, and what was on the other side. Love.

I jerked Rash to me and whispered
close to his ear, my voice breaking a little as I said, “I fell in love, ok? It’s complicated. He’s Orry’s father. Umm, not that we had… umm, not then anyway.” I was confessing way too much here, my words jumping over one another in a jumble. “You know him. He was at the Classes; he came from Pau like me. He rescued me,”
from so many things.

Recognition
followed by amusement flickered over Rash’s face. “You and beautiful blond man had a baby?” Rash laughed. “Nice one, Soar.” He knocked my shoulder and I flew forward, scratching my arm on some barbed, black rocks. I glared up at him, but when I saw his true and somewhat congratulatory smile, my face softened. I didn’t have to manufacture words for Rash. I didn’t have to give him part of the truth and hide the rest. He was my friend, and he accepted every part of me.

The
realization came coupled with a bleeding graze on my hand, drawing my eyes back to the black rocks. I followed the way they scattered and built, collecting stature as they went. I smiled slowly. The beginnings of the black, craggy cliffs were to my right. We were close.

I cupped my hand to my mouth and yelled out
carelessly for Careen.

She turned
, whip-like, knowing instinctively what I was shouting about. I pulled myself up and started running, leaving the men behind.

Careen grabbed my hand and we ran
along the base of the cliffs, snatching looks upwards, searching for holes, signs. It suddenly felt like minutes were important, that if we didn’t sprint, somehow Pietre would be out of time.

My mind felt giddy
. How long had it been since I knocked Pietre out and ran for the wall? Two days maybe? It wasn’t long, but he was injured and unconscious and… I picked up the pace, grabbing at the sun-warmed rocks and levering myself forward. We scrambled over and around, pushing out when they were too high. Pelo and Rash wound their way behind us, picking carefully over our plough marks of snapped branches and dug-up dirt.