16 – 3
I don't remember much of the day it takes us to reach Sockeye Bend, and what little I do recall is disjointed, unfocused; little islands of clarity adrift in banks of fever-fog: the gentle rain of melting ice, the glitter-gleam of sunlight through water, the gnawing of a five-day hunger, and Clarke. She's the bridge between every moment, the arm around my waist, and the shoulder on which I rest. I'd be dead without her.
It's never far from my thoughts.
“Hey,” she jostles me, her voice destroyed by an endless cough and the cut of cold air, “Zira, hey, we're here, we made it!”
I look up from the path we followed to see it become a rustic lane following the gentle curve of a slow-flowing river. The Bend itself begins with a line of carefully trimmed trees that run the center of the lane and split it in half. I imagine carts passing each other by on their way in and out of town, their drivers exchanging greetings between the pruned trunks.
The lane becomes a street, paved in stone and covered with fallen leaves. Wrought-iron fences guard access to quaint little cottages with shingled, sloping roofs and clean, cold chimneys. Most windows are shuttered, those that aren't have their curtains drawn. The street continues, following the river's turn around a corner and out of sight. Clarke's taken by a fit of coughing before we can follow suit. She pulls away from me and staggers over to brace herself on a fencepost.
They fold her over and leave her gasping in-between, so wetly awful that they leave streaks of pink on her lips and, after she wipes them, the back of her hand. She's not trying to hide it anymore, either too worn-down to care or believing that, feverish as I am, I can't see. Either way, I go to her side and put my hand between her shoulders. She spares me a glance, a sunken blue eye peeking through a dirty curtain of tangled, ink-dark hair. Is that a smile I spy, just there in the corner, or blame?
If I were her, I know which one it would be. If I were her, every time I looked at me I would see the reason I'm cold, tired, and coughing my throat bloody. I'd see the one responsible for leaving me haunted by fear and grief. If I were her, I'd blame me.
I stand like a stump while she catches her breath and straightens with a worn sigh. It's a smile, small and faint. She shows it to me and rasps, “Sorry,” as if there's a single thing she should be sorry for.
How do I tell her that? Better yet, how do I make her believe it? I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until it sinks in. Don't smile at me, I should shout, this is my fault, blame me! I did this to you, to both of you! Me!
She steps into me and drops her brow to my chest. I pull her into my arms, press my cracked lips to her hair. A little shudder of a sob hitches her shoulders. She breathes it out. “It hurts,” she whispers, so soft I barely hear it.
“I know,” I'm just as quiet, “M'sorry.”
For all of it, I should say. For everything, I should say, but I don't. I leave it with the rest, because I'm a coward and a fool and a failure of a daughter; a silly, stumbling child, getting people sick and getting them killed. If I speak, she'll realize. If she realizes, she'll leave. If she leaves, I don't know what I'll do.
“There'll be an inn,” I say, trying to encourage and surely failing, “or a boarding house, somewhere with food and a fire. Just up ahead, I'm sure of it.”
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I feel her nod, feel her breathe as deeply as she can. She finds what little remains of her resolve. When she looks up at me, I see it in her eyes. “Just up ahead,” she says.
“Right around the corner,” I nod. Her lips twitch. No smile this time, Goddess bless. I couldn't bear another, not now. “Here,” I pull her arm up and across my shoulders, “you got us this far. It's my turn.”
If we'd arrived yesterday, she'd protest. I see the urge in her frown, just as clearly as the relief in the rest of her. Exhaustion all but drops her where she stands and she sags into my hold with a sigh. I guide us down the street, the river burbling along behind the cottage row to the left of us.
Around the corner, the Bend opens up into a plaza of large, smooth pave-stone; bordered on three sides by shops and service buildings, by the river on the fourth. A mail post sits next to a smithy, with a water trough in between; all empty. A tavern fills a far corner, its sign naming it Bend at the Bend, with a painted stream flowing around the letters like they were stones. Its door is shut, its windows dark, and only now do I realize.
Every door we've seen has been shut. Every window we've passed has been dark. The only audible sounds have been us and the river. It's empty. It's all empty.
- - -
A chill wind gathers up a scatter of fallen leaves and spins them across the plaza, their swirling rustle and damp slide an unpleasant thing to hear in this unsettling quiet. I smell the river: wet-earth and water, stone and some musty scent that reminds me of the mire behind Port Viara's jail. A shiver starts at my nape and crawls down my spine. It's slow and strange, unpleasant as the leaves tripping around our feet.
“What?” Clarke asks, concern in her eyes, “What is it?”
A large well squats in the plaza's center, its bucket down and rope taut. I keep coming back to it. “I don't know,” I answer, “I don't like this.”
Her free hand drifts to her piece of ice, dormant in the hollow of her throat since we fled the Port. “Nor I,” she agrees, “but...”
But we're sick, I finish, we're hungry, thirsty, and cold; but we were dying out there and here, no matter how strange it is, we at least have a chance.
Merigold won't find us here. She can't, there's no one to tell her. Even as that soothing thought occurs, my eyes go back to the well. What is it about that still, steady bucket rope? Is it just that I'm thirsty? I haven't had anything to drink since a pinch of snow yesterday.
Could be. Maybe not.
The river burbles on, the plaza stays empty, and the buildings stay dark. Nothing moves, save for the dance of leaves. “We'll be careful,” I say, “and...we won't steal. We're not thieves. We'll – We'll pay it back, somehow.”
Clarke nods. “Somehow,” she echoes softly, then looks over to the Bend at the Bend, “Should we start there, then?”
If nothing else, there'll be a place to sit. “Alright.”
We have to pass the well to reach it. The rope's straining to hold the weight, its dry fibers creaking and cracking. What's it holding, I wonder? What's down there? It can't just be the bucket. Water's heavy, but not that heavy. Is it that someone, a drunkard, had thought themselves funny and put in stones or sand instead of water?
Could be. Maybe not.
I smell the river again, only this time there's less of wet-earth and water and more of stone and mire-must. It gains a pungency that makes me wrinkle my nose, puts an oily taste on my tongue. “We shouldn't draw from the well,” I say.
Clarke pauses in peering through one of the Bend's windows to ask, “What, why?”
Is it that someone was cruel, killed an animal, and dropped it down there?
Could be. Maybe not.
“I think it's fouled,” I answer, “I can smell...it's off.”
“I'll have to take your word for it,” she says wryly, her own nose congested into uselessness. Back at her task, she goes on, “I can't see anyone, but there's cups and such on some of the tables, so...they were here at some point. Try the door?”
It's unlocked. Hell, it's open; all I need do is give it a push, and in it swings. She joins me on the threshold, looking into the darkened taproom. There's a layer of dust over everything, fat little motes drifting in the air. Whoever was here, it was quite awhile ago. Floorboard nails groan as I take a cautious step inside. I mean to call out, but instead almost whisper, “Hello?”
No answer. I take another step, narrow my eyes to peer at the gloomy back of the room, where the daylight doesn't reach. Dust tickles my nose, building into a sneeze I do my best to stifle into my elbow. It still rings loudly in here. I freeze. So does Clarke, her hand at the hollow of her throat.
Nothing.
No one's here.
Clarke moves with the same amount of caution. “What happened here?” she asks, “Where – is – everyone?”
My eyes are pulled over her shoulder, out into the empty plaza and onto the well. The bucket rope hangs, still and sturdy, holding a heavy weight that smells of stone and mire-must.
“I don't know.” I answer.