Into the Wilderness: Blood of the Lamb (Book Two) (13 page)

Joseph's weak voice floated up from the dark. “
But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies
.”

“Joseph!” Maryam carefully shifted Ruth's head from her lap and crawled towards his voice. “You're awake!”

“Apparently,” he said. Despite the frailty of his voice, his irony gladdened her heart. But then he began to cough, so weak now he could hardly regain his breath between the spasms. Panting, he said to her: “I
saw
my father, Maryam. He was here.”

She was at his side, drawn by the immense heat that radiated from him, and bent down to kiss his dry, cracked lips, trying to ignore the pain that re-ignited in her arm. Joseph's breath smelt vile, as though dredged up from the grave.

“I'm sure I heard
my
mother too,” she said. Why argue with him, when his belief in his father's presence must surely have brought him comfort? She brushed his hair away from his forehead, feeling how his whole body shivered beneath her touch. “What can I do to help you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just knowing you're here is help enough.” She felt his hand brush her leg, and then his fingers caressed her skin. His touch still had the power to ignite the skin beneath his hand.

She longed to lie down beside him and seek the comfort of his body next to hers, but her arm was vulnerable to any movement. She had to secure it somehow, to reduce the shock each time she moved. The rope she'd used to tie herself to the boat would do, but it was still attached to the foot of the broken
mast, and to retrieve it now, while it was still dark, was difficult and dangerous. She'd have to wait till dawn.

Instead, she propped herself against the leaning frame of the shelter, bolstering herself against the slapping of the hulls, and tried to doze. Her thirst nagged at her, tipping her into restless half-dreams in which she and Joseph stood hand in hand beneath the waterfall they'd discovered in Onewēre's lush jungle, her tongue out to lap up the spray. It was so cool, so fresh, so utterly quenching that she almost cried when she was jerked back to reality by the crashing of the boat. Her throat was so dry and bloated every attempt to swallow became a conscious act and felt as if she were trying to swallow down her own tongue.

The hours until dawn seemed endless as she drifted in and out of dehydrated sleep, and so it came as a surprise when she opened her eyes from another of her thirsty dreams to find the early morning sun now shone down on them from a cloudless sky. The seas had calmed back to a choppy roll, and Ruth sat awake beside her, staring blankly out through the ravages of the shelter at the empty sea beyond.

Now it was possible to see around her, the reality of their situation struck home. The boat lay in tatters: timbers splintered, bindings snapped, and the meagre remnants of their carefully prepared provisions lay overturned in waterlogged piles. She and her three companions looked as wrecked as the boat itself: battered and bruised and broken, soaked and adrift in hostile sea they could not drink.

Worst of all was Joseph, whose feverish face now clearly showed the markings of Te Matee Iai. While the others had dark rings of tiredness beneath their eyes, Joseph's skin was
bruised almost to black. The purple rash had now consumed his neck completely, the skin blotchy and inflamed, and he was covered in deep ugly bruises, some as wide in span as an open hand. He did not seem aware of his surroundings, just lay there on his back, his eyes half-closed as he struggled to breathe.

Lazarus appeared to be sleeping, curled into a ball that accentuated the bruising on his spine. As Maryam watched he shuddered, murmuring something she could not decode. His hand shot out, his fingernails digging into the sodden deck, before he dropped back into a more peaceful doze.

Ruth's plaintive voice cut through her thoughts. “I want to go home.”

Hysterical laughter bounced around inside Maryam's head.
If only it was that easy.
She reached over for Ruth's hand to comfort her. “At least we're all still alive,” she stammered. It was difficult to talk when each dry breath was forced.
Water…
That was what they needed now.

She struggled to her feet, the movement juddering her arm. She clenched her teeth against the pain and climbed through the wreckage to the outside deck. Amidst the debris, the mast lay broken from its splintered base. Maryam's stomach flipped: if it had fallen even an arm's length further over to the right, it would have landed right on top of them and crushed them all.

The sea was surprisingly tame after the fury of the storm. But there was little comfort in it. The ocean rippled endlessly in all directions, and there was no sign of land. Could they possibly still be on course, or had the storm pitched them into waters they did not know? There was no way of knowing. Maryam had no idea where the compass was and, until night fell again, they'd have no way to plot the stars.

She tracked the rope that bound her back to the point where it was tied, and put her concentration into freeing the knot. It was hard to do one-handed, her fingers fumbling as they caught on the swollen and frayed fibres. But at last she managed to unravel it, and hauled the rope back over to Ruth.

“I need your help,” she said. “I want to strap my arm to hold it still.”

Ruth nodded and proceeded to wind it around Maryam's body as she cushioned her broken arm against her breasts. She screwed up her eyes, breathing through her mouth to fight off the pain. Ruth worked as quickly as she could, eventually tying off the rope at the point where it looped back over Maryam's shoulder. Maryam kept her eyes shut, focusing on calming her breaths until the pain settled to a slightly more manageable ache.

Now Maryam cast about for any sign of the water containers, grunting with relief as she spied an unbroken earthenware jar amidst a pile of other debris wedged against the one undisturbed shelter wall. She and Ruth rushed to rescue it—and, miraculously, a cup as well. But Maryam's elation was extinguished as she realised all the other containers had been smashed. If they were careful perhaps they had enough to last the day, but nothing more.

Very cautiously, Ruth poured the precious water into the cup Maryam held at the container's lip. The sight of it set Maryam salivating, and it took all her strength not to gulp it all in one thirsty rush.

“Here,” she said to Ruth. “You go first.” She couldn't take her eyes off the cup, as Ruth swallowed down its contents. When, finally, it was her turn to drink, she sipped her share
in tiny mouthfuls, savouring the sensation as the cool liquid worked its magic and soothed her throat.

Now she carried it over to Joseph, and Ruth lifted his head while Maryam offered him the cup. He lay passively in Ruth's hold, his eyes fixed on Maryam's face as he took a sip. Immediately he choked, sending him into a spasm of coughing that left him limp and short of breath. Again they tried, little by little quenching his thirst. By the time his share of the precious water had been drunk, he seemed exhausted, weakly waving Ruth away as he closed his eyes and sank back to the deck.

“Give Lazarus his share now,” Maryam told Ruth. She was reluctant to leave Joseph's side, so eased herself down beside him, wriggling her one good arm under his head until it cushioned him in her embrace. The deck was cruelly hard and dug into her hip, but she didn't care—he was desperately sick, and he needed her: that was enough.

Revived a little by the meagre amount of water, Lazarus and Ruth began to sort through the wreckage and take stock of what they had left. It was a dispiriting result. The map—their precious map—was gone, and the book of celestial navigation was so waterlogged the pages tore under Ruth's fingers as she tried to separate them out. In terms of food, all they could salvage were five coconuts (and their life-saving milk), a bunch of six bruised bananas, one container of te kabubu powder (hard to digest unless mixed with water) and one squashed round of goat's cheese—hardly a feast, and barely a fraction of their original store. Their best find was another half container of water in a broken urn, which they carefully secured in place against the wall. It was not a lot to keep four needy bodies alive—especially when they did not know how far they had been blown away from land.

They decided to divide the goat's cheese first. Maryam gratefully ate her share before breaking Joseph's into pieces small enough for him to eat. But he shook his head, and clamped his lips tight together as she tried to force the soft crumbly cheese between his teeth.

“Come on, cousin,” Lazarus urged him. “You must eat.” He squatted down beside Joseph and gently touched his fingers to the pulse in Joseph's neck. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the pulse, then slowly met Maryam's gaze. He frowned and subtly shook his head. “He's very weak.”

“Perhaps if we mixed up some te kabubu so he can drink it, it might give him strength?”

“We can try, Sister, but I fear the time for food has past.”

No! He could not be saying this.
Maryam slipped her arm out from under Joseph's head and launched herself upright, determined to give her plan a try. She would not fail him now.

Ignoring the stabbing pain that shot through her arm, she shook some of the te kabubu powder into the empty cup. Next she scooped a little of their store of water in on top and stirred it into a thin creamy paste. She licked the mixture from her finger to check it was not too thick to swallow: the flavour was insipid but the consistency just about right.
Please Lord, please. Don't take him yet.

She knelt down at Joseph's side, carefully raising his head until it rested in her lap. “Come on,” she pleaded with him. “Just try to take a little of this.” She dipped her index finger into the paste, then placed the finger to his lips. He opened his eyes again, staring up at her with a glassy lack of focus as he licked the paste away, his tongue as dry and ridged as a lizard's. “Good. That's good,” she said, dipping her finger in to repeat the process.

Again he licked the te kabubu paste away, and her heart seemed to lift and soar. She would save him, she was sure of it—all she had to do was keep him nourished and hydrated until they drifted into land. She smiled down at him, determined to raise his spirits with her warmth, just as he whispered something she could not hear.

She bent down over him, as far as her arm would allow. “What did you say?”

“Remember that I love you,” he whispered, the scent of the te kabubu not strong enough to mask his putrid breath. He could barely keep his eyes open, the lids drooping as he struggled to hold her gaze. His breath came in rattling bursts, with long gaps between each exhalation.

“I love you too,” she murmured back, aware of the tingling in her nose that warned of tears. There was something way too final in his words, as if he used them to say goodbye. She would not let him think like this. Had to give him back the will to live.

“Tonight we'll plot the stars with your mother's book,” she burbled, hoping to catch him up in the confidence she now feigned. The book, of course, was now too sodden to read. “If we can roughly figure out where we are now, then we can watch the wind and currents, and calculate the closest land. We will make this work, Joseph, I promise you. We've come too far to—”

Her words froze on her lips. He had not breathed.
He had not breathed!
She waited, willing him to inhale.
Come on. Come on.
His eyes still fixed upon her face, but there was no focus at all now, no light, no life. She dropped the cup, not caring that the precious paste now spilt, and grabbed him by the shoulder, shaking him.

“Breathe, Joseph, you have to breathe.”

As her heart pounded with panic, he dragged in another rattling breath. His body jerked, shocked by the additional air, and his eyes cleared of their haze and settled on her face. He smiled, and slowly mouthed her name.

She smiled back at him, transmitting her love for him out through her eyes.
Thank the Lord he is still here.
“That's better…you had me going then!” She trawled her finger through the spilt paste, pressing it to Joseph's lips. “Come on now, lick it up,” she prompted him, shaking his shoulder ever so slightly to rouse him into action.

As she did so, she heard something clink beneath him on the deck. She rolled him a little, reaching into his trouser pocket to see if she could make him more comfortable by removing whatever lay inside. Her fingers touched on something small and round.

She drew it out, and for a fleeting moment was confused by what she held. The compass!

“Look,” she cried out to Lazarus and Ruth. She waved the compass at them, buoyed by the thought that now they had another means to claw back some small sense of control. She tossed it to Lazarus, remembering he'd seemed to know how the strange little object worked. “Does this help?”

“Damn right it does,” he replied, studying the compass face as Ruth bristled at his blasphemy. “This helps a lot.” He leaned over, grinning broadly at Joseph. “Trust you to come to our rescue, cousin. What you won't do to make a good impression on the girls!” He chuckled at his own joke, prodding Joseph playfully on the arm.

Joseph did not react. His head lolled limp and unresponsive
in Maryam's lap. She looked down at him, and her stomach contracted as she saw how his eyelids drooped over his eyes.

“Wake up, Joseph! You can't give up on me now.”

Again she shook him, leaning right down over him despite the pain that seared her arm. She put her ear to his sweaty, discoloured chest. Listened for the beating of his heart…for any hint of breath.

It could not be.
There was nothing. No pulse. No breath. No hint of life. She shook her head, willing it not to be true. He could not leave her, could not just die here like this in her arms. She jiggled him, again and again, calling out his name as though she could summon his spirit back from the brink. Beside her, Lazarus and Ruth moved in to still her hands, their faces bleached, eyes wide with shock.