River stone, p.3
River Stone, page 3
My strength. Do I really have any? I try to think of a moment when I’ve shown strength, when I’ve been required to show bravery or courage. Nothing comes. My life so far has been day after day of routines, of fitting into the village schedule. Familiarity has been the backbone of my years. How hard will it be without it?
Growing up with the River People, I have never been allowed to think of myself as anything out of the ordinary. We have a mantra, which begins every weekly meeting: ‘We are not special. We are just survivors.’ Theodore believes it isn’t healthy to think of ourselves as lucky or selected. Pure chance has let us live. We do not name ourselves as anything other than those who dwell beside the river, a body of water we rely on without claiming it as our own.
So, I don’t have any way of knowing how I will be if I’m tested. During the Blossoming, yes, I withstood the branding. But so did Matthew and Titus and Fatima and … Emmaline? I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about her Blossoming. Poor Emmaline. She hasn’t been helping out in the hall. Titus reported she was in total shock, lying in her hut, unwilling to move or speak. I’ve never been as close to Emmaline as I have to Fatima – we have totally forgotten our fight and have been giving each other support all during these days – and I’ve always felt bad about it.
‘I thought you’d be asleep by now.’
My mother stands in the opening. The shadows from the fire make her face look even more tired and gaunt.
I hand her a bowl of soup I have been keeping warm by the fire. She takes small sips, sitting next to me on the ground.
‘Who is doing the night shift?’
‘Omar and Rama.’
‘It’ll be even harder when there are four fewer of us … I’m sorry, Mother.’
‘You know I don’t want you to do this, Pan.’
‘I know.’
My mother hadn’t argued verbally as much as I’d expected at the meeting. Her opposition just radiated out of her. There’s no point in returning to it, though. She knows my mind is made up.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks and takes another sip of her soup, watching me over the lip of the bowl.
‘To save us.’
‘Is that the only reason you want to go?’
I can’t tell her about my longings to see beyond the boundaries. She wouldn’t understand. Those who leave, who ghost, are talked about as fools. Besides, I have my own questions.
‘How do you know how to deal with all this, mother? You always said you were a manager in the days before The Burning.’
She’s never given me more than this, using some lame joke about ‘managing to get out of there’ to deflect further questions. She drinks the last of the soup and places the bowl in her crossed legs.
‘I lied,’ she finally says. ‘I was a doctor.’
I blink, hardly able to take this in.
‘Like Theodore used to be?’ I’m trying to find a reference point. We don’t really have professions anymore and I only have a vague idea of what these words mean.
‘No, he was a different kind of doctor. For the mind. I was for the body.’
‘Then why …?’
Why hadn’t she has ever tended to those who’ve fallen sick before, from spider bites or colds and fevers? Why has she never even sat by me during the times I was ill? Always my father, rubbing my aching bones.
I stay silent. I don’t want to accuse her, not with everything she’s doing now.
‘Many things happened, in the days before …’ her throat catches. ‘I’m no longer a doctor.’
‘But you are! You’re saving us all.’
‘What I’m doing is what anyone with any sense would do, Pan. Nothing more, nothing less. If you manage to find the drug, we might be able to save more of them, but that won’t be thanks to any specialness of mine!’
I don’t understand why she’s angry with me. I don’t understand her at all. She has never let me get close to her and, even now, with all that is happening, she won’t tell me the truth about her life before. I feel tears scratching at the back of my eyes which I desperately don’t want her to see. I suddenly feel too tired for this fight.
‘I should go to sleep,’ I say.
I lie down on my reed mat, with my back to her. I know this is a mean way to behave the night before I leave. I don’t care. I do care. How can she have lied to me my whole life?
‘I’m sorry, Pan. I didn’t want to …’
I feel her hand on top of my head. I close my eyes and hear her move away and lie down on her own mat, the one she usually shares with my father.
‘I love you, Pandora,’ she whispers.
I don’t say anything, pretending I am already asleep.
In the morning, my mother and I walk to the Great Hall. She talks to me about the practicalities of the drug, telling me its name, describing its colour and the type of vials it will be contained in. Her voice is hard as she instructs me on how to use a needle to inject the medicine.
‘You’ll need to find a vein, the blue under the skin.’ She sticks out her arm and I look at the river-like lines she is pointing to.
‘But … you’ll be here, to do that …’ I say.
‘We cannot know the future, Pan.’ She sounds distant, as if she’s already said goodbye to me.
Matthew, Titus and Fatima are waiting, each with a small skin bag at their feet, the same as the one I carry. Matthew wears his hat. Fatima is wearing her tan dress but, like me, she has cut it short. Titus stands, looking into the distance. I wonder what he feels for Fatima, whether he was as shocked as I was to hear the decision. There hasn’t been time to dwell on this stuff and I can understand if his parents’ survival has become his only concern now. I look at Matthew. We haven’t had time to talk about our pairing either. I hate what has happened, but it has saved me from having to deal with that part of my life for a while.
Omar emerges from the hall and shakes hands with Matthew.
My mother hugs me. I cling to her as long as I can but I can’t find any words to make it good between us.
Cassie hugs Fatima.
There’s no one to farewell Titus.
We pick up our bags and begin to walk along the path named the Dead End. I am at the front, with Matthew only one step behind me. The sun shines as we leave the village – and everything we have ever known – behind us.
The path does come to a dead end, but we know to press on through the forest towards the river. Omar and my mother have talked us through it. We just have to follow the river west, then south and we will eventually come to the harbour of the city, though neither of them could really give us a sense of how long this might take.
‘It wasn’t a time for counting days,’ Omar admitted. ‘We just kept on walking.’
This was the closest Matthew and I have come to hearing about the immediate days after The Burning for our parents. Rama has always been willing to discuss the time long before – the different countries, different food, the languages spoken, and the ‘technology’ which died – but Omar, like my mother, wasn’t fond of speaking about this part of their past. I guess they wanted to erase it from their memories, that strange dark period when they thought they could be the last, and only ones, left alive.
As we walk along the river bank, I wonder at this forgetting. The sandy edges are gentle on my bare feet and when I get hot, I stop and cup water in my hands, splashing the coolness onto my face. The forest on our left is exactly like the woods surrounding the village: patches of juvenile pines with thin, scrappy trunks (Rama says they are only about thirty years old and are the remnants of attempts at cultivation) mixed with naturally occurring oaks, their spreading branches providing sporadic shade. In the undergrowth, the occasional scurry of a rabrat, in the air the buzz of flies, and all around the sweet smell of the weed-flower, the small, pink star with a yellow middle growing in clumps along the bank.
My fear drops away for the briefest of moments, the beauty taking hold of me.
‘It isn’t going to be like this the whole way, Pan,’ Matthew says, overtaking me. I’ve slowed down in my distraction. He stalks ahead.
I know he is probably right, but I have to try to be positive. This is the beginning of a journey that will save everyone. We are moving towards the place of all our hopes and maybe the land around us is going to be kind.
But Matthew is so right. By afternoon, the river is lined with rocks and boulders which cut at our feet as we crawl and climb over them. We have to keep side-tracking into the woods, only to encounter an undergrowth of prickled bushes, horrible, curly tangles of thorny branches we have to push through or risk losing sight of the water. We force ourselves on for as long as possible. By sundown, we are scratched and bruised, grateful to have the excuse of approaching darkness to stop and rest.
‘I’m too tired to help make the fire,’ Fatima declares and throws herself on the ground of the clearing we’ve found. I know if I sit down, I won’t be able to get up again and I start gathering wood.
‘Then I guess you’ll be having cold goateep.’ It’s the first time I’ve heard Titus speak to Fatima directly. His voice doesn’t hold any affection.
Fatima pushes herself back up off the ground. She keeps her head down. She’s on the verge of tears.
‘I want to go home,’ she mutters under her breath. The two boys, rolling a large log they’ve found into the middle of the clearing, can’t hear.
I am sympathetic – I have had the same thought over and over during the terrible scrambles and the cuts of my skin – but this isn’t the time for self-pity. We can’t be the girls who couldn’t handle a mildly rough time, who limp back to the village after only a day’s journey, letting everyone down.
‘It’s too late for that, Fat. Come on, you can do it.’
She joins me in picking up kindling.
Soon, we have a fire going and sit silently, eating bread and warmed meat. Fatima refuses to look at Titus.
I have slept outside of our hut during really hot nights, our village laying down mats in front of the Great Hall. I loved these times, with the soothing of the young ones by their mothers, songs spiralling up into the humid air.
Out here, without anything familiar surrounding me, the open sky, overrun with stars and illuminated by the three-quarter moon, scares me. Out here, the tiny pin-points of light are what my father meant by thousands: the many, many, many. They don’t make me feel safe or comforted, though; they make me feel small and unimportant.
We all lie near the fire on the hard ground, but separately. Matthew hasn’t tried to come close to me. He might be afraid I’ll push him away and humiliate him. I don’t even know how I would react. Right now, I wouldn’t mind warm arms around me, no matter who they belonged to. He still hasn’t tried to speak to me about the Blossoming and there were times today when he might have. Maybe he isn’t as happy about me being his Chosen as I’d assumed? Maybe we’ll never talk about our supposed future together and it will all be forgotten about completely? The idea should bring relief, but it doesn’t.
When I finally fall asleep, I dream I am floating in the black spaces in the sky, dipping my fingers into the starlight.
I wake in the darkness, somehow aware there is someone else in the clearing. The fire has almost gone out, only embers remain, and the shadowed figure hangs back from it, knowing they will be given away by its glow. My heart hammers, trying not to imagine what kind of creatures might inhabit this unknown forest. I force myself to speak, not wanting to lie in wait for an attack.
‘Who’s there?’
I wish my voice sounded stronger, more threatening. I’m trembling and my words are too weak to wake the others.
‘Ssssh, it’s just me, Pan.’
The voice is instantly recognisable. She moves into the light of the dying fire and her face, though less full and without its usual toothy smile, is still beautiful, framed by her golden hair. Emmaline.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m coming with you to the city.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I came out of it, Pan, just after you’d left. The shock just … lifted off me and I knew I had to follow you. Help you.’
She rubs her hands together, then holds her palms over the last remnants of heat. How has she found her way to us? She must have travelled some of the way in the dark.
‘My father taught me tracking skills, you know,’ she answers my unasked question. ‘I will be useful.’
I can’t really argue with her. She has the same motivation as all of us.
‘Besides,’ she draws her face into the shadows again, ‘I only have my father – if he dies, I’ll have no one.’
She puts down her bag and begins to clear away debris and leaf litter to make a space to lie down.
‘Goodnight, Pan. I’ll see the others in the morning.’
It’s hard to go back to sleep. How will it be with Emmaline around? Will she be the leader now? Will both the boys follow her without the questions they keep throwing at me? Why have I never really been her friend? Is it because of her looks or her position as Theodore’s daughter or her innate ability to make me feel so young and pathetic compared to her? All three, I suppose.
Only when fatigue is pulling at me, when my brain is in the fog of almost-sleep, do I recall Emmaline’s words ‘if he dies, I’ll have no one’ and realise this must mean, during the final Blossoming performed on that horrible day, Theodore didn’t choose anyone for her.
5
The next morning I try to smile and look as happy as Titus when he sees Emmaline has joined us. He and Matthew hug her without hesitation and I lamely explain how I’m not surprised because I woke up and saw her last night, my way of covering my lack of enthusiasm.
Fatima is almost as bad as me. Her forced smile is thin and she mutters something about being pleased to see Emmaline active, before busying herself with repacking her bag. I don’t think she has anything to worry about in terms of Titus and Emmaline, to me they act pretty much like brother and sister, but it’s not as if I can give Fatima lessons on not being jealous.
After breakfast – some dried, salted goateep meat tasting like desiccated dung – we start out again. Only this time, Titus and Emmaline lead the way. Though they are not exactly verbose – none of our recent experiences have made us chatty – they speak to one another more in one hour than the four of us did all day yesterday.
In one of their moments, Titus points out the light on the water and Emmaline stops to gaze at it. She cups a lock of hair behind her ear. Out of the blue, she eloquently begins to recite:
‘The shining of the water’s waves,
The silence of our deep and brave,
Tossed amongst the world at last,
Dream, but not of wonders past,
We step upon new, fertile ground,
Lost, and yet, newly found.’
My fingernails dig into the palms of my hands. These are words I’ve learnt too, we all have: the first stanza of the village poem, composed by Theodore, though I would never be able to speak it like this.
‘The Burning has come, we are not gone …’
Only when she breaks off do I realise Emmaline is crying. Titus places his hand on her shoulder. She shrugs him off and resumes walking.
‘Survivors now, we stumble on,’ I whisper, finishing the poem, swallowing my own tears.
The rest of the day passes in silence.
After four days, even I am tired of the water reflecting the sun onto my face and the constant trickle of the river. How soon the new and different becomes familiar and irritating.
Sometime on the third day we passed to the other side of the river, driven by the increasing difficulty of finding a way through the boulders and bushes. I’d pushed for this move, claiming the opposing bank was clearer, though I was probably motivated by thoughts of the cougar hunter. We are on his side now.
Despite my ulterior motive, the forest on this side is thinner and it’s easier to follow the river close to the bank. We are in the shade and I don’t have to worry about Matthew getting sunburnt or Fatima’s sweating face. The trees are large pines: many years’ worth of long green bristle-like leaves have fallen, turned brown and now cover the ground. They are positioned almost in lines and all is quiet inside.
We have run out of goateep meat so keep our eyes out for any edible berries or roots to dig up and cook at night. We still have plenty of bread, but I have no clue what we will do when this is gone.
In the distance, we have begun to glimpse the mountains, another obstacle none of us were prepared for. Omar and my mother didn’t mention them, so maybe we’ve lost our way because of changing to the other side of the river … I’m not going to admit it, though. I can only hope we might be able to avoid the mountains, somehow.
We continue to hardly talk. Fatima avoids Titus, even as he’s always hovering near Emmaline. I avoid being alone with Matthew. Matthew seems to be happiest walking on his own. I’d imagined the five of us would actually discuss our plans, sometime along the way we’d crack these hard shells we seem to have placed around ourselves, but it hasn’t happened yet.
When I get a chance to tell Fatima about Emmaline’s lack of a Chosen, she can’t find any explanation for it either.
‘Why would Theodore do that? Did he fall sick before he came to it?’
‘I thought of that. But there isn’t any drinking during the Blossoming. And if my mother was right, it was the root-juice that gave them the virus.’
We are walking a fair distance back from the other three and, for a moment, we stop. I know I am back in our village and I suspect Fatima is too.
I think of my father. I try to picture him miraculously well, sitting up and giving my mother one of his joy-filled smiles. They weren’t a common occurrence. Those smiles only came when the day’s work hadn’t been too exhausting or the village meeting wrangling hadn’t been too disheartening or my own mood and my mother’s had been exactly in sync with his. There were enough memories of them, though. Laughter, water fights, a witty comment about his cooking skills and his whole face would come alive.
