Month: February 2018

“A plague on them,” he mutters through clenched teeth. “A thrice-cursed plague.”

I stand in the corner, half hidden by curtains, and say nothing, like a good slave. I’d like to tell him that he’s already brought down a plague on his people, that it’s his fault they are dying in the streets, but I know better. A slave can’t talk that way to a king, not even a drunken one.

He’s standing at the window, although the breeze coming in through the lattice smells of death. Death from the streets, death from the courtyards where he’s hung every sorcerer and enchanter, doctor and physician in his kingdom. They all told him they could cure the plague that is ravaging the streets, but they couldn’t. Only I know how because only I know what brought it on.

He leans against the window frame, clutching his head in his hands, and shouts for me again. He’s too drunk to know where I am, and I don’t come. He wants more wine, and I’ll bring it to him—soon. Not yet.

But he’s tired of waiting now and sober enough to realize that I can’t be far off. He shouts again, cursing, and says, his voice slurred by wine, “Will! Where are you?”

In a minute he’ll come looking, and I won’t be hard to find. I pick up the chalice he sent me for and come forward, offering it to him. “My lord.”

He snatches at it, cursing me. “At last. Do I have to trade my kingdom for a glass of wine?”

I watch him drink it and smile, seeing the drug already taking effect. He staggers, looking confused, and collapses into a chair. Tomorrow he’ll wake in the dungeons, forgotten by his loyal subjects in favor of their new king. I bow to him again, mockingly this time, and turn to leave. “As you said, my lord. Your kingdom for a glass of wine.”

They get on when the train stops for the third time. I see their red caps, their uniforms through the crowd, and I curse myself for riding as long as I did. I know how dangerous trains are, but it’s a long, long walk home through the rain. I thought I’d get lucky. I have before. Once or twice.

But it seems my luck has run out.

I pull my cap down over my eyes, hunch into my seat, and pretend to be looking out the window. Watching the rain fall, just like any normal person would on a long trip home. I can’t get off now. If I move, they’ll see me, and there’s nowhere to run on a train. Maybe if I pretend to be asleep, they’ll let me alone, check me later.

But I’m a coward, and I can’t close my eyes. Not while they’re searching for me.

So I watch the rain instead.

The lady across from me is knitting. A scarf, or something like it. Bright red. Like blood. I can’t look at it, can’t look at her or them. I watch the rain, begging them to pass me by, to see a boy on his way home, a student on his way to class, a delivery boy on his rounds. Anything but what I am.

Only she’s noticed. She looks at the men, then at me, and I can see that she knows what’s happening. They’re two aisles away when she shoves the ball of yarn into my hands. “Hold this for me, Stephen,” she says. As if my name really is Stephen, as if I really know her. “And don’t slouch, child.”

I take it, so confused I can’t do anything else, and the men walk by me without flinching, without a second look. Because I’m with her, and the Infected are always alone. Always.

They fall asleep as soon as the fire is lit. Firelight flickers on the walls of the cave, on the dirt floor and their weary faces. We don’t dare take roads through this country, and walking through fields and bogs is hard with their short legs and tired feet. Tramps aren’t a welcome sight this far south. The last farm we stopped at sent us packing with dogs on our heels. Cole still has a bruise from the rocks they threw. We might be luckier in the cities, but we don’t dare risk even a small town. Not yet.

Another wolf howls, and Cole smiles at me when I look up. He’s tired, I can see that, but he won’t sleep tonight. Our feet were bleeding when we passed through the first bog this morning, and the wights are following us now, drawn to blood and weary hearts. He’ll stay awake to keep them off, although I’ve told him three or four times that I’m not tired, and haven’t lain down yet to prove it.

He’s afraid of the wights, I think. And of being found. We’re always afraid of being found. We avoid the roads, beg at farmhouses, and eat bitterroot and wild potatoes to keep from being caught in a town or village. It’s worse for him than it is for me. When we ran, I was still a child, still six months shy of the right age. But Cole is a year older than I am, and to the men that ran our workhouse, he stole me. Me, and the nine other children we’ve dragged along with us. We shouldn’t have taken so many, but I couldn’t leave any of them behind. We belong together, all of us, and to leave even one behind would have hurt too much.

So he’s a thief who stole ten children from the mills they worked in. If they catch us, I’ll go back to the workhouse. But they’ll hang him.

So we stay awake together, listening to the wolves howl until the sun rises.

The taxi is already loaded, everything I own, everything I want to take with me already in the trunk. The meter is running, but I ask the man to wait and go down to the creek.

The sky is gray this morning, but the rain has finally stopped. Ice clings to everything. I slip three times before I make it down the path and reach the creek bed, but the ground beneath the old willow is dry. I push aside the thin branches and touch the old, twisted trunk. We used to play here when we were children. My brothers and I would moor our raft beneath the branches and leaves to keep it safe from prying eyes, from pirates and mermaids and goblins. And from the neighbor’s kids. This willow was our fortress, our safe haven.

Now it’s nothing. An old dead tree. I trace the heart carved into the bark, the initials I left there three summers ago with a boy who is long gone. This tree saw everything when I was growing up. My first broken bone, my first fish, my first kiss. I stayed in an empty house on a deserted farm for the memories in its branches. My brothers left a long time ago. One of them is in the Navy now, the other a bartender in a town without a name. Neither of them call.

I should have left too. I am leaving. The farm is sold, the house ready for its new owners. I’ve said goodbye to everything but the willow, and a new life awaits. A new me. It’s what I want, it’s what I’ve needed, no matter how painful it is. So, before the taxi driver gets impatient, I let go of the person I was here. I leave her weeping with the willow, lost in what should have been, and climb back up the path to the taxi waiting for me.

I have a future. Even without the willow.

She brings me with her when she goes out. Children bring in more money, she says. Children without shoes, without good clothes, with hunger in their faces and pinched cheeks. Everyone will stop for a hungry child.

So I go with her. We sit on the curb together, watching the rain fall, huddled together to share the warmth of a single threadbare blanket. The cobbles leech all the feeling from my bare feet, but she’s never let me bring so much as a box to sit on. I suppose it only helps if I’m cold.

I let her do the begging. She’s tried to get me to help, but I’m sitting here with her in the cold. That’s all the help she’ll get from me, no matter how ungrateful she says I am.

Instead, I watch. I watch the people go by, the families pushing strollers, the girls out shopping together. I watch the businessmen chatting on their phones, the women tugging their children on a little faster when they see us, the old war vet who sits opposite us and feeds the pigeons. I watch them all, and I remember their faces. Their clothes. The way her makeup is smudged, the way he keeps his hood up, his headphones in. The way she smiles and he doesn’t. I store them all away, their faces, their expressions. When we finally have enough, we go home, and I pull the sketchbook out from under my mat and draw the ones that I liked. The ones were messy, the ones that captured my notice. I don’t beg, but I steal their faces, their portraits. The way they looked at me, the way they looked at each other.

It’s a harmless kind of theft. I doubt they’ll ever notice.