Yonder, p.16
Yonder, page 16
“A powerful long time, seventeen hours or so, I reckon,” Zander said.
“With luck we’ll spend much of it sleeping,” Cato offered. “Best to try while it’s still dark.”
Although we were exhausted, it was hard to settle down. Zander, as usual, had the most trouble.
“William,” he said, “how about a game of seeds and pits?”
William glared at him. “How about a game of peace and quiet? You see any seeds and pits around here?”
Zander pressed on. “We could use those nails, and maybe some bread crumbs.”
“You’d waste bread on a game? You want to play while Norbrook gets ready to ride? Remember Preacher’s words,” William said. “Cannonball Greene knows we’re missing by now.”
I sighed. “Do you all realize we’d gone miles and miles and hours and hours without talking about him? About them?”
“That’s true,” Cato said.
William shook his head. “Not talking about Thieves doesn’t make them go away. They’re still out there. Everywhere.”
I knew that, but he had failed to take my meaning. “Not talking about them, not thinking about them, even for a few moments,” I persisted. “Perhaps freedom feels something like that.”
“Too soon to talk about freedom,” William said. “It has to feel better than a growing stiffness in my bones. Right now, we’re just like we were at Placid Hall: at their mercy. No air or food to call our own. We sit when they say sit, go when they say go. Every place we stop could be a trap.”
During our talks with Ransom, he had warned against thinking too much about what would happen if we were caught. It would only slow us down, he said. I understood William’s frustration, his unease. Running never felt as risky as standing still, when we could hear our heartbeats pounding like raindrops on a roof. But Ransom advised against traveling in the light of day unless we had no other choice.
“No matter,” I said, “our bodies demand rest, even if our spirits can’t be still.”
“Norbrook won’t be resting so much,” William said.
“He’ll pace himself though,” Cato said, “out of concern for his horse.”
“Curious,” Pandora said. “Thieves are careful to avoid exhausting their animals but will work a Stolen to death.”
“Pacing or not,” William said, “he’s coming.” He cast a meaningful glance in my direction before moving to take his post near the door. Cato and Pandora found the corner farthest from the rest of us, where they commenced cuddling.
Zander squatted beside me. “Margaret, what do you think is yonder?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I reckon it’s the end.”
“The end of what? The world?”
“Everything,” he said, eyes shining. “The end of everything. You can run. You can jump. You can fall. But you can’t just sit there.”
“What if it’s really like that?”
Zander smiled. “You know, that would be fine. Fine.” He stood and began to flip and tumble about the shop, end over end.
“Enough of that foolishness,” William said. He allowed Zander a minute to find a spot on the ground before he got up and put out the candle. After the boy finally grew still and the only sounds were crickets and snoring, I found William in the dark.
“You should rest,” he said. I snuggled against his chest, burrowing into him until he wrapped me in his arms.
“And you also. I could keep watch.”
He chuckled softly. “I have no doubt you could. Perhaps in an hour or two I’ll wake you to relieve me.”
“We both know that will never happen.”
He kissed me gently on the crown of my head. I remained silent, savoring his scent, his warmth, the soft rise and fall of his breath.
“Margaret?”
“Hmm.”
“Have you chosen your new name?”
“I have a notion. How about you?”
“I’m thinking on it, but I haven’t settled. Tell me yours.”
I reached for his hand, laced his fingers in mine. “As you said, it’s too soon,” I told him. “Not until freedom. Then we tell.”
Cato
Our next guide was to come for us in a tarp-covered wagon. One of us would ride up front while he concealed the others among his dry goods and furs and thus conveyed us to Murphy’s Belt. The Deacon said we’d know him by the patch over his left eye.
We slept fitfully, as was our custom, then whiled away the remaining daylight according to our individual natures. For me, that meant staying close to Pandora. We had become skilled at expressing affection through smiles and gesture, and even those had often become unnecessary. Proximity was enough. Zander, tired of capturing beetles and bidding them race against each other, had taken to admiring a spider hard at work in the frame of a boarded-up window. He watched so intently that he hadn’t noticed William standing beside him.
“A spider is a thief among creatures,” William said. “See that beetle on the sill? He’s saying his seven. Meanwhile, the spider is setting his trap. Just a-spinning and spinning until the little bug finds himself stolen.”
William reached out to pinch the spider between his finger and thumb, but his motion was too casual, too deliberate.
Zander caught his wrist. “Don’t!” he said.
“Hush, boy,” Pandora whispered. “You’re forgetting yourself. You didn’t come all this way to give us up with a holler.”
Zander held William’s wrist until he was sure he would leave the spider unharmed. “All this way,” he said. “By Ransom’s reckoning, free soil is less than a hundred miles from Placid Hall. A short distance in truth, yet few of us ever get there.”
The boy’s remarks struck us all dumb. He retreated to one of the stalls, leaving us to wallow in doubt.
By late afternoon, the shadows stretched the length of the smithy and we could no longer discern one another’s expressions. By sundown we were parched, famished, and tormented by the prospect of failure. Our resources were dwindling, and our patience had diminished in equal measure. Even later, we became more frustrated when the occasional sounds of humanity had faded and all we heard were our growling stomachs and the ominous baying of distant creatures. Once we were certain midnight had come and gone, our predicament was clear: no help was coming.
Even Zander had lost much of his usual verve. “We should go on our own,” he urged. “We can follow the Drinking Gourd. I’ll show you.”
“The boy makes sense,” Pandora said. “There’s nothing we can do here but turn to dust and bones.”
“Agreed,” Margaret said.
She and Pandora gathered themselves and prepared to leave. I rose from the ground, stretched and shook my limbs. William stood in front of the door, arms folded. He turned to me.
“Your thoughts?”
“I have none better.”
“Then let’s go.” He quietly swung open the door.
Margaret stared at William as she moved past him. “Oh,” she said, “you think we were waiting on you to decide?”
We crept outside under a sky completely absent of stars. Zander’s knowledge would be useless. No sound or scent provided a hint of the proper direction. We shuffled fearfully in unyielding darkness, holding on to one another, as lost in time as we were in space. The blackness overhead hung low and heavy like something solid; the more we moved the more it descended until we scurried with bent backs, afraid to straighten and bump our heads. Unlike us, sound seemed to move with relative ease. Footfalls, heartbeats, and cracking twigs discouraged us from speaking and thereby adding to the din. We might have traveled for as long as three hours, but in truth I had no notion. I felt turned around, helpless. I feared we were approaching a mesmerizing despair that Ransom had warned us about. He said that Stolen on the run sometimes began to long for all they’d known, no matter how terrible it had been. At least it was a hell they knew.
The ground beneath our feet turned unreliable, threatening to betray us whether we moved or paused. It felt as if we were descending from high ground, down, down toward the center of the earth. Then we were climbing up again, scrambling and struggling to avoid sliding back into a formless void. On we trudged, knowing one another by the rhythm and violence of our breath. Huff. Puff. Stumble. Pause. Stumble. My muscles conspired against me, and my eyes burned from the effort to see.
“The moss,” Pandora whispered. “Remember the moss.” Ransom had told us it grew on the north side of trees. Timber was sparse around us, but when we touched wood we slid our hands along the trunks. All we found were splinters and loose bark. Pandora sighed, far too loudly for our circumstances. I heard her sink to the ground just behind me. Another exhalation and a soft thump told me that Margaret had joined her. Feeling my way, I lowered myself next to Pandora and wrapped my arm around her. Zander sat next, followed, after a long interval, by William. Too exhausted to speak, we huddled together and fell into an intermittent sleep.
* * *
When daybreak approached and our band remained intact, I considered the likelihood that fortune favored us after all. We rose and stretched, except for Zander. He remained low to the ground, squatting on his haunches. To our right, faint pinks and oranges streaked across the sky, now faded to gray.
“The sun is rising over there, so north would be here,” William said, pointing. “We’ve wandered sideways.”
“Yes,” Margaret agreed, “but exactly how far?”
“Exactly? That’s hard to reckon,” William replied. “Now that we can see where we’re going, we can straighten ourselves out.”
“We can also be seen,” Margaret said. “Maybe we should find some place to shelter until dark.”
William snorted. “There is no shelter anywhere in sight. Sitting still is out of the question.”
“But we’re worn out,” Zander protested, still squatting.
For the boy to admit exhaustion was unusual, if not unheard of. William took no notice.
“Time is wasting,” he said, extending a hand to Zander. “We’ve been worn out before.”
The day remained dreary and full of thunder that never led to rain. We made our way through cornfields, sucking dew from leaves and feeding ourselves on stray ears. Unroasted, they were a bother on our stomachs, and we consumed with caution despite our hunger. We passed through country that to some eyes may have seemed beautiful, but I can say without hesitation that its splendor escaped me. Until I set foot on free soil, all land was more godforsaken than blessed, less a pastoral paradise than a hell to endure. During our captivity we often suspected the environment of working against us, not for us. Nature conspired as much as any other force to influence our deprivation.
With sunlight waning, we approached a wood. The copse of oaks, maples, and poplars suggested a place to hunker down and rest until nightfall. We had a stretch of about two hundred yards where we’d be completely exposed before reaching the tree line. We moved low to the ground, scurrying until we reached the midpoint, when we burst into a ragged trot. Upon entering the woods, we bent from our waists and took in great gulps of air before any of us could speak.
“We come from Strong,” Pandora said.
I reached out and took her hand as we proceeded. William and Margaret were immediately behind us, with Zander bringing up the rear. We had gone about thirty paces when Pandora stopped abruptly. William nearly stepped on my heels.
“What?” I asked her. “What is it?”
“Flies.”
A sudden delirium of insects enveloped us. They worried our eyes and ears, swarmed our mouths and nostrils. We batted at them furiously, none more than Pandora. She opened her mouth to scream but the flies rushed in. She spat, choking. Shaking violently, she went to her knees and pressed her hands and forehead to the ground. I threw myself upon her until the cloud passed.
Stunned, we brushed ourselves off.
“A puzzlement,” Margaret said. “What was that?”
“There,” Zander replied.
We followed his pointing finger. The flies streamed toward the body of a Thief slumped in the wreckage of a wagon. A single trail extended beyond the sturdy tree the dead man had crashed against, but its ruts were shallow and must have provided little traction for his wheels. His horses were gone, as were his boots. One blistered toe poked through the hole of a threadbare stocking. A patch sat askew over the remnants of one eye.
“Our escort,” I said.
“He must have been on his way to meet us,” Margaret said. “We’re heading in the right direction.”
“Unless he was himself lost,” I said. “Besides, we don’t know if he was coming from Murphy’s Belt.”
“He’s been stripped of supplies,” William said. “Someone’s been here before us.”
“And they could still be near,” Pandora added.
We hushed at once and moved farther into the woods. Under the dense canopy, Pandora and Margaret found a shallow depression a little more than two yards long and just wide enough to hold us if we all lay side by side. We got in it and draped brush over ourselves like a blanket, with William and me at opposite ends. Zander was positioned in the middle between the two women.
“How like a grave this is,” he observed, but Pandora quickly shushed him.
Aside from his comment none of us dared even to scratch until we sensed that danger had passed. By then the night was full upon us.
The long stillness had stiffened me beyond any notion of comfort. My muscles rebelled, furious that I was calling upon them yet again without supplying them with proper sustenance. I fought off dizziness as I stood and stretched. I could feel the blood pulsing inside my skull.
William gave no indication of unease, physical or otherwise. He was eager to resume our journey. To his consternation, our women were neither ready nor willing. Still in our hiding place, brush strewn around her, Margaret sat with her hands in her lap. Pandora remained beside her, watching her with concern.
“I can go no farther this night,” Margaret said.
“We can go no farther,” Pandora added. She placed a palm tenderly on Margaret’s back.
“We must,” William said, glaring at her. “Need I remind you that sitting still—”
“Need I remind you that I am with child?” Margaret moved her hands to her belly. “Have some consideration.”
William softened. “Of course. Forgive me.”
“Perhaps,” Margaret said. She turned away and looked off into the trees. Her exhaustion spread like a plague, deflating our bodies and spirits. For the moment we were out of arguments, opinions, imagination. We gave her the last of the corn. The rest of us would hold out until the dawn, when dew would reduce our thirst. Until then we struggled to keep our tongues moist and considered the prospect of digging for worms and culling bugs from the underside of rocks. We all understood that we would do what we had to.
When I lay down beside Pandora, she was speaking softly into her clasped hands. “Ancestors, make us thankful,” she said.
“Thankful?” I said. “Tonight the word is bitter in my mouth.”
“Man, what are you prattling on about?”
“We have no food, no water. No idea where we’re heading.”
“You have me, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I better have you.”
“Indeed, you do.”
“That’s plenty, then. Quit your whining and get some rest.”
* * *
William woke before me. I spotted him standing a few feet away. His back to me, he was looking down at the ground. I rose and approached him. Soon I saw the focus of his attention: footprints. They weren’t ours. Before retiring for the night, William and I had carefully brushed away any signs that might betray our presence.
“A visitor,” William said without turning to look at me. “Looks like he stood here a while but withdrew before approaching.”
“Norbrook?”
“Perhaps, but he would have left no trace.”
“Unless he wanted us to know,” I said.
Still stretching and yawning, Pandora and Margaret joined us. Margaret looked better than she did last night, albeit weakened still. Pandora squatted and studied our discovery.
William turned to me. “Wanted us to know what?”
“That he’s watching us.”
“Then why didn’t he just capture us when he had the chance?”
“Because he enjoys the chase,” Margaret said.
As we struggled to make sense of this new development, a breeze stirred up and swirled around us, carrying with it a horse’s unmistakable whinny.
Zander approached. “Did anyone else hear that?”
Pandora nodded. “We all did,” she said.
“We need to run,” I said. “Now.”
William shook his head. “If it’s Norbrook, we can take him.”
Margaret was incredulous. “Take him where? It’s folly enough to linger near one dead Thief, and now you talk of harming another?”
“We don’t even know if it’s him,” I said. “We don’t know who it is. Or how many.”
Suddenly, Zander began to giggle. He doubled over, beside himself with merriment.
Pandora put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I reckon,” he said, straightening. “Just thinking about my seven, that’s all. I didn’t say them this morning.”
“This is certainly not the time to think on such things,” William objected.
“You would say that, William. As for me, I can’t recall the last time I neglected—”
A loud report interrupted him. Zander dropped to his knees. He swayed, then fell on his side. Pandora knelt beside him, but he feebly waved her away. “Better to lose one than all,” he said. Blood oozed from underneath him.
Another loud report forced us all to the ground. Bark exploded from a nearby tree, spraying dust and bits of wood. William began to crawl toward Zander, but I grabbed him and held him in place.
