My vision tunnels into some future where Jinn and I are safe from the pursuing Cheeters. The sea of people parts before me. With a glance over my shoulder I confirm that it seals itself behind. The Cheeters will not have it so easy. It is a small rebellion, but a meaningful one for me and Jinn.

“Rav!” Emm’s voice grabs at me. I turn to find her. My frantic flight comes to a sudden halt. The street, or something on it reaches up to trip me. I sprawl in the dust. Jinn rolls out of my arms. She does not cry, only sits up and looks at me as if I am stupid.

“Damn it!” I try to rise. Emm’s shadow falls across me.

“Rav, what the heel? Is that blood?” She recoils at the sight of me. Blood stains my face and clothes. It mats my hair. Street dirt clings to it. Dust clogs my nose. Sweat stings my eyes. “Get up!” she orders. “Are you hurt?” Her question is directed at me, but she has already moved on to Jinn.

“Run!” I choke on the word.

“What?”

“Hafta run, Emm!” I pull myself to my feet.

“Why?”

I don’t answer. I just go. Fig her if she doesn’t follow. The Cheeters aren’t after her.

“Seph, catch her!” Emm yells. She has tried again and again, unsuccessfully, to do it herself. Four times her grasping fingers have slid down my shoulders and back. I have never run so far or so fast. She could catch me easily if Jinn didn’t weigh her down.

Seph traps me easily and wraps me up. “Stop! What’s wrong with you?”

“Let me go!”

“Rav, stop!” His strength overcomes me. The muck that covers me rubs off on him. “What happened?” He is disgusted. It’s written on his face. I squirm violently, but he does not let me slip away.

“She won’t tell me what happened!” Emm says.

“Cheeters! Hafta run!” I can barely get the words out, the dust is so thick in my mouth. I think I busted my lip when I fell.

“Cheeters?” Seph’s muscles tense to their limits as his guard goes up.

“Rav, whose blood is this?” Emm asks, pinching the front of Jinn’s shirt.

“Pa!”

“What?”

“Where’s Pa? Talk Rav!” Seph orders, shaking me.

“Pa is dead! We need to run!”

“Where’s Ma?” Emm demands.

“Dead! They’re dead! We need to run!”

“What are you talking about?” Emm asks.

Why can’t I get through to them. Why won’t they face the reality that I can’t un-see.

“We have to run now!” I scream.

They finally understand.

We run.

***

“Our stew’s probably sludge,” Emm worries, when we are safely away from town. “What if an ember has caught the rug?”

“Then the house burns down,” Seph informs her, matter of fact. “We can’t think about that now.” He lights a cig and passes it to her. It is the only one we have for the long walk to our grandparent’s house.

I wish I had a cup of beer.

“We’re going to have to make do,” Emm says, not reading my mind, just arriving at the same place in hers. She takes a long drag, proving herself to be the stingy bitch I know her to be, then passes the cig to me.

“How far is Nana’s?” Mephi asks.

“Another hour. I don’t know,” Seph admits.

“Jinn’s gonna need a change.” Emm’s nose wrinkles as proof.

We are all ignoring the nightmare I have walked us into. I have imagined the deaths of my parents. I suppose all kids do. I just never thought it would be so...nonchalant.

None of us seem to really feel it, yet. That will change.

“Change into what?” Seph asks. “These are the only clothes we have.”

“You’ll have to give up your shirt.”

“You give up your shirt!”

“I’m a girl.”

“Right. No one needs to see you without a shirt!”

“Fig you!”

“Are we gonna eat soon?” Mephi asks, pulling Seph and Emm out of their petty bickering.

“When we get to Nana’s,” Emm assures him. “There’s a stream. Seph, off with it!” Emm guides us to the water, laying Jinn on the soft grass and stripping off her soiled clothes.

“For Jinn, not for you!” Seph declares. His shirt comes off. He drapes it over Jinn’s head, then peek-a-boos it away. She giggles. The horrors of the morning found no roost in her mind.

Seph wraps his shirt around Emm’s head leaving her to extract herself from it. Jinn reaches for it, trying to help. Everything is a game when you are a baby.

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Emm washes Jinn’s bottom in the stream, wrapping her in the shirt. It is mid summer and the water is warm, but none of us feels like swimming. Our minds are elsewhere. It doesn’t occur to me to wash myself. My mind is everywhere but where it should be. This is not a leisurely stroll. The shadow of that knowledge is darkening all of our thoughts. Seph is keeping a careful watch behind us now. The Cheeters ride wolves. We are on foot. So far there has been no sign of them.

“We should stay in the tree line as much as possible,” Seph decides.

Emm ties off Jinn’s new diaper and hands her to him. His eyes dart nervously, he bounces her mindlessly on his hip, not realizing that she is not the one who needs to relax. Emm rinses out Jinn’s dirty clothes, ringing as much of the water from them as she can. When they’re as clean as they’re going to get, she drapes them over his shoulder to dry and takes Jinn back. Chores allow her to stay focused and calm. Knowing there is nothing I can do does the same for me. What’s done is done. There is no going back. Our old lives are over. The thin razor’s edge we walk leaves no room for sidetracks.

“Let’s go,” Seph orders, leading us all into the woods. It’s his turn to focus. He leaves his anxiety by the water’s edge.

“Here Jinn,” Mephi says, teasing her with a blackberry. She reaches out for it, grabbing it and pulling it straight into her mouth, along with his fingers. He lets her pick the next one out of his palm. A few minutes, and a few berries later her face and hands are stained purple.

“That’s enough,” Emm warns. “We don’t want her to get sick.”

“Aww, she likes them though.”

Mephi found them by the stream and filled his shirt with them. He and Jinn seem to be the only ones with an appetite. The ignorance of youth is still upon them.

“Bad things happen to orphans,” Seph warns us, twenty minutes farther down the road.

“We’re not orphans,” Emm says.

“What would you call four kids with no parents?” he asks. She has no answer. “We could run rough-shod in an orphanage.” It is a bizarre thought. I cannot fathom where his mind is or the dark future it is preparing for. “We have the numbers. Five of us? We’d be a gang.”

“They won’t keep us together,” Emm worries.

“We’d be a bad influence,” Seph affirms. “They’d have to split us up. We’d be tainted goods. They’d assume our parents ruined us.”

“Why?” Mephi asks.

“Because all Heathens are bad parents.”

“They’d take Jinn from us, at the least,” Emm says. She looks around nervously. “We can’t let them.”

Seph is confident, “We’ll be safe at Papaw’s.”

“Am I going to miss school tomorrow?” Mephi asks. Our situation is starting to dawn on him.

“There is no more school,” Emm informs us. “There’s no one to pay the fees.”

There won’t be any job at Bircham’s either. She doesn’t mention that. It’s probably too painful to think about. Seph is unemployed now, too, thanks to me. I’m sure it’s in the front of his mind.

We’re all farmers now, I realize. Up before the break of dawn, to beat the mid-day heat. It might not be so bad. Noon siestas are definitely a plus.

“Nana might pay?”

“Country kids don’t get school, Meph. That’s why Ma and Pa moved us to the city right after you were born. They wanted us to have an education,” Seph tells him. He’s the only one old enough to remember the move.

“Why don’t country kids get school?”

“They have too many chores,” Emm says.

I groan. I hate chores.

“Both parents are home in the country,” Seph adds. “In the city both parents work. School is just a babysitter for city kids.”

“I didn’t like school anyway,” Mephi admits.

***

Jinn is a wide-eyed wonder. Nana’s eyes are just as bright. Mine are heavy. She sits in Nana’s lap, holding most of Nana’s attention. Everyone else is focused on me.

“Can she not speak?” Papaw asks.

“She’s in shock. It probably happened right in front of her,” Nana says. “Ask her again tomorrow.”

Again and again Papaw has tried to wrestle my secret from me. It’s a given that Ma and Pa are dead, but the details are locked in my head and Jinn’s. Neither of us is giving them up.

Papaw concedes saying, “I’ll ride into town and see what’s become of their things.”

“Take the boys to help.” Nana suggests. “I’ll clean these three up while you’re gone.”

Papaw nods his agreement, stoops to kiss her, dons his cap and invites Seph and Mephi to follow him.

Nana rises, tucking Jinn on her hip and starts Emm moving. “Get some water. There’re rags in the drawer there. You’ll all have to share the spare room,” she says, heading for the hallway. Emm does not hesitate. Pot in hand she follows the boys onto the front porch. A moment later the handle squeaks in protest as Emm pumps it up and down. The splashing water makes the pot ring.

“Ravenna, come along now,” Nana calls from the hallway, when she realizes I am not moving. “What’s it take to light a fire in you, girl?” she asks.

Her question forces a different query into my head. I look to the hearth where a fire should be, but it is empty and cold. There is no pot of eternal stew. They were not expecting us. There is just the two of them. It is not a question of will they feed us, only can they?

“Ravenna Brady!” she orders in the voice she used to control my headstrong pa. “Move girl!”

***

“Strip!” she commands me, settling on the floor with Jinn in her arms. She peels off the overly large shirt and blows a zerbert on Jinn’s belly eliciting a peal of laughter from her.

“Here’s the water, Nan. It’s not warm.”

“It’ll do, Emm. Thanks. Help your sister. Pond water moves faster than she does.”

“Oh, rags!” Emm remembers. She hurries out. There are lots of drawers and cabinets in Nana’s kitchen. They open and close one by one until Emm finds the one that stores Nana’s cloth scraps. She’s back in a flash and working on my face while I struggle out of my torn pants.

“My knee,” I realize. I scraped it pretty good when I fell. This is the first I’ve noticed it.

“Your face is worse,” Emm informs me. “Look up.” She brings the damp rag to my chin. “You’re a mess.” She turns to Nana and says, “I need to wash her hair.”

“On the porch, not in here,” Nana tells her. She strokes her own rag down Jinn’s face, covering her eyes, then leans in close and “boos” the moment they are uncovered.

Jinn giggles after each ‘boo’ mesmerized by everything Nana does.

She was mostly protected when Pa’s blood splashed across us, me taking the brunt of it. Nana has made short work of cleaning her up.

“Let’s put this baby to bed,” she says, lifting Jinn and herself from the floor. “Ya’ll be quiet when you tuck in,” she warns.

“C’mon,” Emm orders. I follow her out, leaving my clothes where they lay, my skin raising bumps in protest of the cool night air.

“Not there! We drink out of that!” Emm scolds, directing me to a spot on the far end of the porch, away from the spigot and the bowl under it. Before I am even settled, she dumps the pot over my head, eliciting a curse from my shivering lips. The water is much colder than it was on the rag. Her fingers go to work massaging the caked blood. She retrieves a second, then a third pot. “One more should do it,” she informs me, going back to the spigot for number four. I’m sure the job was done with three pots. The fourth is just Emma getting her shots in while she can. Our war is never ending.

A double layer of shiver bumps later and she’s off to get me a towel. I stand frozen, naked, hands at my sides with no idea what to do in the interim. The porch creaks under her feet, the screen door bangs, and the house shakes as she moves down the hallway. The crickets assault my ears with their song; It grows louder the longer I listen.

The sounds of Emm’s journey reverse themselves and she is with me again, rubbing me vigorously with the rough length of cloth.

“Here’s a shirt for you,” Nana says, coming quietly onto the porch. Jinn’s done for, so be quiet,” she reminds us.

I don the shirt - it is twice as big as it should be - and follow her back into the house with Emm in tow. Nana opens the door of the little bedroom and ushers us in and under the covers. “Your brothers’ll have to squeeze in here, so don’t be bed hogs,” she warns in her soft, firm way.

The bed is larger than I thought, much bigger than the bed Emm and I shared. I sink into it. It’s goose down, not scraps of pillow ticking and excess cloth like the four-poster. It’s too soft. It gives under my weight, miring me, making it difficult to find comfort. I cannot lay flat in it. My head and feet don’t sink as far as the rest of me does. I am pulled toward Emm and the deep furrow her weight makes. She is me plus half a me.

She wraps her arms around me, spooning me, her hot breath raising the hairs on my neck when she tells Nana, “We’ll make do.”

“See you in the morning,” Nana says, then turns and lets herself out, taking the candle with her.

I welcome the dark. I curl away from Emm, accepting that I am as comfortable as I can get, knowing in my dreams there is no discomfort. I feel my lids closing over my exhausted eyes. A memory jolts me upright.

“Mycah!”

“Shh,” Emm warns, pulling me back down.

I resist her. “I can’t sleep without Mycah!”

“You’re gonna have to.” She pulls me close, stroking my hair, soothing me.

“I can’t.” I don’t want to. I do.