Into the Wilderness: Blood of the Lamb (Book Two) (27 page)

She shook her head reluctantly. “No,” she said. “I need to stay with him until I know for sure that he's cured. I gave my
word to him—I can't let him down.” Her pulse was crashing round inside her head like footsteps in an empty room.

Charlie slipped his hands into his pockets and whistled tunelessly under his breath as he considered her words. Then the whistling stopped. “Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll get Vera to tell me how to administer the pills and to explain away your absence from the hospital before it reaches my boss's ears. But, once your friend is well, you have to promise me you'll return for the operation and make no more fuss.”

“All right,” she agreed, too in need of Veramina's expertise to argue the point. “Thank you. But please don't put yourself at risk.” She thought of Brother Mark back in the Holy City, and how he'd died trying to aid her.

Charlie waved her worry away. “Let me tell you something so you'll understand. When Vera and me first met, we had a child—a girl.” His eyes grew distant for a moment and a soft smile lit his face. “We called her Sarwendah. It means wholly beautiful, and she was…She'd be about your age now if she'd lived.”

“What happened?” Maryam prompted. She didn't want to rush him but she could hear Lazarus coughing again inside the hut.

“We lived on a small island some way from here—my parents went bush to escape the madness of the mainland and the endless wars—but the downside was we had no access to medical supplies. Sarwendah was two when she slipped one day on toxic coral down at the wharf. The wound on her leg got horribly infected and, no matter what we did, it wouldn't heal. We were advised to amputate, and in the end we had no choice but to agree. It made no difference. Without antibiotics she still died.” He blinked his eyes as though damming back his tears.
“When we found Vera was expecting our second child, our son Lemah, we decided to shift somewhere with doctors and drugs on hand. Vera got a job at the hospital when the kids were older, but the only work I could find was here.”

“I'm so sorry,” Maryam said.

He shrugged. “I try to do what I can here in my own small way. But you, Maryam, must not throw your life away. It's hard in here, I know, but you
must
keep faith that things will change.”

Maryam smiled, thinking that faith was the very thing she'd lost. But she knew
that
wasn't the kind of faith he meant, and she appreciated his kindness. “I'll try,” she said. “But now I have to get back to Lazarus. That coughing is only going to get worse. How long will it take for you to find out about the pills?”

“I'll go and call Vera now and come back right away.” He charged off down the walkway, leaving Maryam to wonder how he could speak to his wife without having to leave the camp. There was still so much she didn't know about this complex new world.

Ruth, meantime, was hovering in the shadows of the hut. “It's all right,” Maryam reassured her. “He's going to find out how to use the pills.”

“Thank the Lord,” Ruth burst out. “Aanjay simply doesn't know.”

As Maryam took up her place at Lazarus's side, Ruth told of her conversation with Aanjay. “She said the locals cure the plague by boiling up the leaves and flowers of a special tree—it's that essence the Territorials use to make their drugs—but she doesn't know anything about the right dose of pills and says it's far too dangerous for her to guess.”

Maryam could tell that Lazarus was listening by the way his eyes clouded as this news hit him hard.

“It's all right,” she reassured him, “Charlie's wife works at the hospital and will tell us how to use the pills.” Now she told them about Veramina and how she stumbled on the cure, downplaying the part about her arm.
Now is not the time.

There was nothing to do at her tale's end but wait for Charlie to return. Each minute felt like an hour as the girls tried to lower Lazarus's temperature by sponging down his feverish face and neck. At last they heard Charlie's heavy tread on the walkway outside.

“Mission accomplished,” he announced as he entered the hut. “Give him six immediately and then two every four hours until all the symptoms pass. She says the one box should be enough, but that if you need more she'll see what she can do.”

Maryam couldn't help herself: she leapt up and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said. To think this white man had risked his job for her—for Lazarus. This was a rare and wondrous gift.

Charlie patted her awkwardly, then backed away. “Don't forget our deal. I'll come and check up on you before I end my shift.”

As soon as he was gone Maryam counted out the first six pills and coaxed Lazarus to swallow them, taking a sip of water after each to wash it down. Still, he gagged on every pill, but when the last of them was taken relief flooded over her like summer rain. For the first time in so long she felt light, tentative flutters of hope.

All through the afternoon she kept watch on the position of the sun, trying to gauge the passing of each four hours so she could give Lazarus his next dose of pills. He dozed fitfully, his fever ravaging his strength, and she tried in vain to convince
him to eat. In the end she gave up. She was giddy with tiredness herself. The pain-dulling effects of the paracetamol she'd taken that morning had worn off, too, and the burning in her infected arm was so unrelenting she had to grit her teeth to hold back tears. But when Ruth suggested she seek out more paracetamol, Maryam brushed the offer away. They daren't draw any attention to themselves while Lazarus still lay hidden in their hut.

Later, as evening fell, Lazarus grew agitated and bad-tempered, his fever rising so sharply he began to rave. To make it worse, he stubbornly refused to take the pills, spitting them out and rolling away to face the wall so that no one could coax him further. When Charlie called by to say that he was going home, he found Maryam pacing the hut in exasperation.

“You're sure I'm giving him the proper dose?” she asked, so tired and sore herself she could hardly speak.

Charlie gave her and Ruth an assessing look. “You've both done all you can. Now it's up to him. For goodness sake, get some rest.”

“But he's worse!”

Charlie sighed. “You have to prepare yourself—even if he takes all the pills, they can't work miracles. Vera says that if the Sumber Kemusnahan is too far down the track, then not even the pills can bring him back.”

“But they're supposed to be a cure.”

“Bodies can only take so much strain. Now you have to leave it in the hands of God. I'll be back in the morning to see how you are. Get some rest in the meantime, for pity's sake.”

Neither Maryam nor Ruth could speak as they watched Charlie leave. Maryam was the first to find words, though they were hardly coherent. “But Aanjay said…and Jo…”

Ruth took comfort in what she knew best. “If he's right,” she said, “why don't we pray? The Lord will help.”

“No!” Maryam couldn't take this now. She ran outside and leaned against the outer wall, watching as a cloud of moths beat themselves to death on the bare walkway lights. It occurred to her that this was how she felt: every time she moved towards the light, it turned out to be an illusion, a cruel trick of fate. Let Ruth pray to the Lord if it helped her, but Maryam would
never
again seek His help. The only person she could totally rely on was herself. And she would not let Lazarus die. Somehow she had to find the will, the strength inside, to take her life in hand and stop merely reacting to every new problem as it struck her down. If this
was
her only life, then she determined now to make it count. Or if, as Aanjay believed, it was only one step upon the road to something better—the thing Aanjay called enlightenment—then she must learn the lessons that might reward her with a better lifetime in the next. Whichever way, she was certain now her fate rested solely in her own hands.

She let out a long slow breath and felt a kind of peace descend on her. She could hear Ruth inside the hut, praying above Lazarus's reedy feverish ravings, and as she listened to their desperate duet she suddenly knew what to do.

She stormed back inside, apologised to Ruth for her rudeness, then popped two more pills from the foil. Too quickly for Lazarus to fight her off, she pushed them into the corner of his mouth and used her index finger to force them down his throat. He gagged but automatically swallowed before flailing her with a torrent of feverish abuse.

“You bitch. You total lying whore…” On and on he shouted, but whether he flung the words at her, or at someone
in his past—perhaps his mother—Maryam didn't care. It was poisonous Te Matee Iai that spoke, not the boy.

She grabbed his arm, jerked him up until he was high enough off the mat to slip his arm over her good shoulder, and lugged him to his feet. She was so determined now, her own pain merely fuelled her strength as she forcibly began to march him out the door.

“What are you doing?” Ruth cried, buzzing around them like a worried bee. “You can't take him outside. The women will see…”

“I need to cool him down.” She didn't wait to argue the point, just dragged him, struggling and cursing, over to the showers.

She pushed Lazarus into the first empty stall she came to, propping him up against the wall with her shoulder while she turned on the tap. Cold salty water rained down on them both as she manoeuvred him to a sitting position on the ground under the shower's cool but patchy flow.

Gradually his curses petered out and Lazarus slipped back into a listless doze. His forehead was growing cooler, and the ugly marks that marred his skin began to lose their angry bloom. Maryam let the water flow for a little longer, trying to judge the delicate balance between cooling him enough to bring his fever down and giving him a further deadly chill. At last she turned off the tap and, with Ruth's help, dragged him back to his feet.

As they dripped their way along the walkway, Maryam was no longer bothered about the curious stares of onlookers. She sensed she could rely on the unspoken unity between the detainees to keep Lazarus's presence secret for now. Back at the
hut they stripped him of his sodden clothes, averting their eyes from his private places, and lay him back under a dry blanket on his mat.

The whole episode had eaten every last scrap of Maryam's strength. She stripped off her own soaked dress and wrapped another thin blanket around her like a sarong. Then she lay down to rest. She drifted off to the musical whisperings of Ruth's rekindled prayers, setting an alarm in her subconscious so she wouldn't sleep too long. Lazarus would need another dose of pills four hours from now.

She stirred from a muddled dream of Joseph to find Ruth sound asleep and the camp deathly quiet. For a moment she just lay there, trying to determine why this silence should matter so; then, with a sickening lurch, she realised she could no longer hear Lazarus's rasping breaths.

What if she had chilled him so much he was dead?
She sprang up from her mat and stumbled over to his side. Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dark and she couldn't tell if his chest still moved, so she dipped her head down, placing her cheek close to his mouth and nose to see if she could feel any shift of air.

“A naked angel,” Lazarus croaked, as Maryam reeled upwards with shock. She'd forgotten her blanket! “Heaven is better than I hoped!”

“Pig!” But she laughed too, and gathered the rug around herself as she settled by his side. “How are you feeling now? You gave us quite a scare.”

“Really? I don't remember much.” Lazarus fumbled for the cup she offered and took a sip. “I
did
have a nightmare about some crazy girl trying to drown me, though.” He chuckled, but instantly it brought on another fit of coughing.

Maryam retrieved his next dose of pills. “Take these, or that same crazy girl will stuff them down your throat again.”

This time Lazarus swallowed the pills without a fuss. He groaned as he flopped back on the mat. “I feel like I've been beaten up again, only this time from the inside out.”

To hear him speak like this, still groggy but lucid and cracking jokes, gladdened Maryam's heart. He was going to survive, she was sure of it now. Like the Lazarus of old, he'd come back from the dead. “Try to get some sleep,” she urged him. “I'm sorry I woke you.”

“I'm not.” He reached out a hand and placed it on her knee. “I owe you a lot. Everything, really. How can I ever thank you?”

She pressed her hand over his for a moment then firmly lifted it back onto his chest. “Get better. That will be enough.”

She tiptoed outside, hoisting her blanket up over her shoulders. She was too stirred up to sleep. The site of her infected wound burnt as if branded by a red-hot ember and she feared the outcome for her arm, but for the moment she would push back her anxiety and try to focus on the good.
Joseph, do you hear me? He's going to live.
She thought how joyful he would be, how happy that his cousin had been saved.

An unannounced tear tracked down her cheek. Then another. And another.
If only it were Joseph who now lay inside the hut reborn…
She retrieved the small blue stone, her talisman, from the place where she had stashed it on the crudely formed shelf beside the door, and pressed it to her forehead, right between her two closed eyes—sure she could feel its cobalt magic permeating the layers of skin right to her brain. It encircled the gnawing pain in her, diffusing it with coloured calm. Behind her eyelids the swirl of blue summoned up the mainstays of her
past: the blue-eyed boy she had loved and lost…the pristine lagoon around that special island, Oneweēre, where her mother's bones now lay…

To think that all along Te Matee Iai could be cured. A miracle far more convincing and enduring, surely, than any Father Joshua could conjure up. Imagine what it would mean to the people of Oneweēre if they had access to it: no more families torn apart, no more painful deaths. And no more bleeding of the Sisters—in fact, no more excuse to hold the Sisters hostage at all.