Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [100]
She neither resisted nor responded. A faint smile curved her rosy lips, but it was not for me. It was for whatever unknowable thoughts—if they were thoughts at all—lit the minds of the Dead. I sat there, holding my lost love, for too long. Then I stood, pulled her up with me, and began to walk.
Wherever I went in the land of the living, Cecilia must be led along the same route in the country of the Dead. That was the only way I could be sure of not losing her. I had to keep her with me, separated from me by only the dirt-and-grave-clogged passageway between my two worlds. I had to do that. I had to.
I’m not sure I was quite sane.
We walked for long hours through the hills and around the steep ravines of the country of the Dead, over the shaking ground and under the stormy sky. I left her in a place I would be sure to recognize even in this trackless place where countryside stretched and distorted; it was on a hilltop, beside a swift-running mountain stream. There were other Dead there, men and women dressed in strange clothing, in stranger armor, a whole crowd of motionless Dead. Once, much must have happened in the counterpart of the hilltop, on the other side. All of the Dead sat or stood or lay peacefully, and there would be no difficulty in recognizing them when I returned.
I crossed back. Then I plodded uphill, short of breath, weak with hunger, and fell asleep beside Maggie just as the sky began to lighten into dawn.
“Roger. Roger. We should be going.”
I could not move. “Sleep,” I muttered. “More sleep.”
“You can’t,” Maggie’s voice said. I hated that voice. “Someone might come after me. Or after you. We have to go.”
“Can’t.”
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Tired.”
She said nothing. I opened one eye to her bleak face, and it was that bleakness that gave me strength to sit, to stand. I had brought Maggie into this. I had to get her out.
None of that was true. Maggie had brought herself into this, and I had been willing enough to abandon her to go onto Soulvine Moor, looking for Cecilia. Yet it was also true that I now felt responsible for her. Or was it? I didn’t know what was true anymore. I stumbled forward.
I don’t know how I kept going that morning, on no food and almost no sleep. But there came a moment when I could go no farther. The strength built up in the two days of eating outside the Soulviners’ round ceremony chamber—all that strength was already gone. I sat down on the track, and I could not move.
“Roger?” Maggie said.
“I . . . can’t.”
“It’s all right. Lean on me. Just a little farther, there you go, just get off the track into these trees . . . See, we’re almost there. ...” Encouraging, cajoling, patting me with her free hand, Maggie got me into a little copse and laid me onto the weedy ground. All morning it had been clouding, and now a light drizzle began to fall. I was glad of the rain; it hid my tears. I was at the very end of my strength and wits, the latter never much to start with. Exhausted in body and spirit, I fell asleep.
And when I woke in the evening, the rain had stopped. There was a fire. Food cooked over it. The goatskin bag swelled with water. And there was Jee, blowing softly on the whistle I had made for him.
“He brought the food,” Maggie said before I could say anything, “and the ropes for snares, to catch small game. He told me it was all right to make a fire because Tob has not yet returned from his long hunt.”
“Jee can’t come with us.”
“He says he won’t go back.”
“Maggie . . . consider all the ... no.”
Jee stared at us both, expressionless, the whistle held halfway to his lips. He cupped his other hand protectively over it.
Maggie said, all in a low rush, “I lied before, Roger. I didn’t want you to know. His father beats Jee. He beats Jee’s mother, too, and he would have beaten me except that he hoped I would lie with him. He stole the two silvers you left me. I was only going to wait for you another day because that’s how long I thought I could hold him off,