The Wall (The Woodlands) (41 page)

I shook my head, but I wasn
’t sure. It could be. My brain refused to deal with his death the same way it had refused to back down from coming out here in the first place. It threw ineffectual but heavy covers over the things that might stop me. I sucked on my lip and let my eyes brush over to her for a second. I couldn’t speak, if I did, I would cry.

She patted me again
. “Look, if it is, you shouldn’t blame yourself, no one does. He was sick long before you arrived. You should put it behind you.”

I nodded and watched her feet as they shuffled away from me, kicking a rock in frustration. I think that was the problem or at least part of it. I had put it behind me, but not dealt with it, s
o it just sat there. An angry ball of anger and sadness that kept a steady distance behind me, but always followed. And I always knew it was there.

I dragged at myself
, my own company as irritating as being with people. I knew this wasn’t helping but I did nothing other than feel sorry for myself. I wished I’d done things differently but it was too late. I could feel Joseph moving through the town, his heavy footsteps heavier still with the weight of my desertion on his mind.

I saw Matthew through the shifting trees, his face as dark as the bar
-like shadows cast across his face. He was as miserable as I was. We never spoke. I wondered if we would ever speak again or if he was done with me. It would be fair enough if he was.

By the time we got to the last stop before
Pau Brasil, everyone stopped bothering to talk to me and left me to my self-pitying behavior.

Doing my usual scratching in the dirt
, I etched a pattern of concentric circles when my arm was wrenched up violently. “I’ve had it with you,” Pietre snapped. “I thought you wanted to be here. If we’re going to get through this mission, you need to get yourself together.” He was shaking me like a ragdoll and I let him.

“
I’m s-sorry,” I said between shakes. But he was sewn-up furious and couldn’t be undone with an apology. The world was wobbling in my vision, trees were wriggling like snakes, the world was heaving. “Stop, please! I-I said I’m s-sorry, Pietre.” My voice quavered with the world as his fingers pressed hard into my arm. I felt a pang of pain as the joint in my shoulder started to strain from him twisting it.

In my rever
berating vision, I saw red hair alight in front of brown, scratchy trees.

Without a word, s
he punched him hard in the jaw. I heard the crunch of knuckles connecting with bone. I saw his eyes roll delightfully into the back of his head as he stumbled backwards and hit the ground, letting out a small, “Ugh”. He sat in a daze for a second and then he scraped himself off the ground, storming lopsidedly away from us, clutching his face. I stared at Careen, mouth agape.

“
What? He was taking it too far. He needed to be taught a lesson.” Smiling with her perfect white teeth, she held out her hand and I took it. She looked into my eyes seriously. “He’s right though. You need to snap out of it and focus. You have a job to do.”

She was right.

We walked away, with him cursing her in the distance. “Shouldn’t you go apologize or something?”

Careen raised one eyebrow in a perfect arc and smiled wickedly,
“He’ll get over it. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.” She grabbed my arm somewhat urgently and we skittered across rocks and dirt towards our spinner.

W
e climbed in the carriage. Careen closed the door and pressed the lock button down. “I’ve had enough of him today, haven’t you?” she said. I smiled. I’d had enough of Pietre from the moment I met him. I was glad Careen was starting to agree with me.

A bit of light
poked through the trees now and settled in our hair. I could do this. Despite Pietre’s stupid way of demonstrating it, he was right. I was here and I had to stand by my decision. One more night and we would set off for Pau, for my mother and my baby brother or sister. I needed all the strength I could muster for this. The rest of my woeful feelings would simply have to wait.

The weather had been mild right up until the last stop
, the sun lightly warming and only the slightest breeze to rustle our hair. But the temperature started to drop as soon as we pulled up to the Pau Brasil stop. We shrugged on our packs, and the door hissed open. The cold wind hit our face like a block of ice had formed around the outside of the spinner. Quickly, we pulled out our winter coats and gloves. Pietre held the map in front of his face, constantly wiping the sleety rain from the screen and pointed northwest, directly towards a dark grey, craggy collection of rocks. It couldn’t be called a hill more than a hostile, sharp and uninviting tumble that looked like it would cut you just for looking at it. So this was the outside of my old home. It seemed fitting. I closed my eyes and prayed we would not be climbing over it.

It was barely light. Just enough to see the blac
k mass of rock and the dark, thickly wooded forest sprawled beneath it, the trees leaning towards it as if in worship. Everything else could be shadow or form. It was too hard to tell. I imagined eyes watching us as we traipsed headlong into the howling wind, each drop of rain pelting our faces like sharp bits of gravel.

Pietre
yelled, his voice barely cutting through the wind, trying to convince himself as much as Careen and me, “Bad weather is a good thing. It will keep the predators away.” I thought,
After a night of walking through this, I might want a wolf to end my misery.

We walked all night. Freezing cold and soaking wet
, there was nothing to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other. I was sandwiched between an angry and determined Pietre in the lead, and an unrepentant Careen in the back. I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, could only walk. We couldn’t hear each other anyway. The way the wind swirled around us and slammed against the grey rocks that seemed to continue to rise higher and higher out of the ground to our left, it was like some deranged woman was screeching in our ears, her hands cupped to her jagged mouth, warning us to turn back. It went on for hours, endless hours.

As the sun rose
, the wind eased and we could at least hear each other speak. We were so cold our lips were blue—every extremity felt like it was splintering and migrating away from the rest of my body. I honestly don’t know how we managed to keep walking, but we did. We found a cave not too far off course and made camp. We couldn’t make a fire; it would be too easy to spot, especially during the day. So we huddled together in our sleeping bags and tried to sleep, pressing ourselves into the shadows of the scooped-out cave that felt and smelled like the inside of a rotted carcass.

I thought I would have trouble sleeping
, but after a night of walking, my body collapsed in dreamless exhaustion. I only awoke when someone was again shaking the life out of me.

“
Rosa, wake up. We have to get moving again,” Careen whispered.

Pie
tre snored loudly, sleeping sitting up awkwardly, with his back pressed against the bare rock. I kicked him with my boot and his eyes snapped open, the sheen of purple still evident along his jaw where Careen had punched him. He rubbed his chin absentmindedly and winced when his hands brushed over the bruise. Smiling, he held his arms out to Careen and grappled her into an embrace. She fought him at first but then relaxed against his chest. My eyes started to sting for how much I missed Joseph and Orry. When I watched the two of them in their bizarre, dysfunctional relationship, I was jealous.

“
I’m not sorry,” Careen whispered.

“
I know, me either,” Pietre said.

When they
’d finished snuggling, which I took to mean he’d forgiven her for hitting him, we started out for another night of walking. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, hoping when I opened them the entrance to the cave would not still be streaming water. I prayed for the rain to end.

I wish I hadn
’t.

Our packs were heavy and we were so
fatigued, but we kept moving, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling every so often in the dark and following the red arrow on Pietre’s handheld.

It was still impossible to talk, not th
at I had much to say. Thoughts were rubbed clean from the constant outward assault on my senses. All our concentration went into not falling over, not losing each other or losing our way.

The world was black and slimy
, the pale light of the handheld illuminating only the closest branches, slick with rain and slippery with moss. It showed us what direction to take but it didn’t account for tree roots and jagged rocks. The number of times we fell over in the mud or walked directly into a huge rock, seemingly placed there just to annoy us, I couldn’t count. I started to despise that red arrow, blinking tauntingly and not seeming to bring us any closer to our destination.

At the end of the second night
, the rain eased and we all sighed in relief. Pietre even clapped me on the back happily. Pulling off his hat and running his hand through his hair, he gave me a genuine smile. I pulled back in surprise.

“
What?” he said, looking boyish and self-conscious all of a sudden.

“
Nothing, you just look different when you smile,” I commented shyly, instantly regretting it.

“
I smile plenty,” he snarled, returning to his abrasive self. “Just not when you’re around.”

I shrugged. I
’d expected that.

We
’d been walking to the right of the jagged rock formation and dragged our sorry bodies up into another cave. This one was shallower and smaller, but at least it wasn’t wet and pelted with horizontal rain.

We ate quickly and shrank into our sleeping bags, lying touching each other.
Normally, I would have objected but I was actually quite grateful for the warmth. Even though the rain had cleared, the air was so much colder.