Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner [42]
I rocked Rebecca until she stopped fidgeting and her breath deepened into sleep. I wished I had an extra blanket. I wished a blanket or jacket were enough to keep her warm. “Your watch?” I asked Allie. She'd insisted on taking one again.
Allie looked to the sky. Scraps of cloud drifted over the moon. “I'm glad you called me back, Liza. But next time you might want to ask first. Because for someone else it might be different. And the healer can't decide alone.”
Our food was low with the loss of Matthew's and Allie's packs, so at dawn I went hunting. Samuel's bow served me well. I loosed my arrow with hardly a sound, bringing down a chubby woodchuck that would feed us for a couple days. When I returned to camp, Matthew and Allie were setting up a spit to cook the meat, as if they hadn't doubted my success.
Matthew grinned. “Figures you'd beat my rabbit. You always were the better hunter.” I remembered that rabbit dangling from Matthew's jaws, remembered the sound of his teeth tearing fur and crunching bone. If the thought made Matthew uneasy he gave no sign, just asked for my knife so he could skin the woodchuck. I left him and Allie to that job and checked on Rebecca. She slept wrapped in my jacket, her arms and legs curled inward as if for comfort. At my approach she smiled but kept sleeping.
I fashioned my raincloak into a sling so that I could carry her with me as I worked. She was only shadow, I told myself—but I'd felt strange leaving her behind when I hunted.
We spent the morning cooking the meat and then carving it. We stored it in the same plastic containers where Samuel had packed the jerky and cornmeal, yellowed containers that cracked if you handled them wrong but whose lids sealed well otherwise. The meat would only keep a day or two, but we'd likely finish by then, anyway.
We left a little after noon. Matthew took the pack again, Allie took Tallow, and I carried Rebecca. If Samuel's map was right, the Arch was less than two days away.
Glowing stones appeared in the road again, lit shades of orange and red, green and blue. Sometimes the road's black rock glowed as well. We slowed down, keeping watch for those lights as we walked. Rebecca slept, cried, slept again. A few stray strands of my hair fell into her face, and when I drew them away they were clear instead of black.
The road narrowed. Maples and sycamores stretched branches overhead, sun turning the edges of their leaves to gold. Had autumn been like this Before, green leaves turned to fire as if by the light? Bright maple seeds twirled to the ground, trailing sparks behind them. Saplings grew through cracks in the black stone, slowing us further as we walked around them, staying out of reach of their young branches.
The sparks faded as the afternoon progressed. We reached a wider stretch of river. The bridge was gone here, too, but rockfalls had dammed the water. The crossing was difficult, but we managed. Allie clung to my hand all the way.
On the river's far side we began a long, slow climb. Near the crest of a hill another road crossed ours. On the map there were more roads here, and they looped around each other in a complicated cloverleaf pattern, but there was no sign of that cloverleaf now. Light reflected off the dust in the air, making the place shimmer. The light brightened and I looked away. I didn't want more visions.
Yet as we reached the middle of the crossroads, light exploded behind my eyes. I fell to my knees, rubbing my temples, willing pain and light to go away. Rebecca wailed, but the sound faded as the light brightened. In that brightness I saw—
Black roads buckling like leather, tossing away the cars that rode their surface. Roots breaking through black stone, twisting metal until blood streaked the steel like a child's mud paintings—
People running alongside tall buildings, falling