Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [5]
He watched his stepfather from the bushes. He was there to see him in the morning, when he came out of the house and went to the crops or to the processor that refined them into a white powder, and there to see him as well at night. Each time his stepfather left the house he carefully locked the door, and though Soren had tried a few times to break his way in, the windows were strong and he wasn’t successful.
Maybe I’ll make a trap, he began to think. Something his stepfather would step in or fall into or something that might fall on him and crush him. Could he do that?
He watched. His stepfather took the same route to the field every day, a straight and straightforward line along a dirt track his own feet had carved day after day. He was nothing if not predictable. The path was clear enough that there was little chance of hiding something on it or digging a hole without his noticing. Nor were there trees close enough to drop something from above.
Maybe it had been enough, he tried to tell himself. Maybe he could just forget about him and leave. But even though he told himself that, he found himself returning, day after day, to stare at the house. He was growing stronger, his young body lean and hard, nothing wasted. His hearing had grown keen, and his vision was such that he could now see the signs of when something had passed before him on the paths he traveled. When he was sure nothing and nobody was listening, he told himself stories, mumbled whispered fables, versions of things his mother had told him.
Several years later, thinking it over, he realized that he had become trapped, neither able to go into his house nor leave it behind completely. It was as though he was tethered to it, like a dog chained to a post. It might, he realized when he was older, have gone on indefinitely.
And indeed it did go on, Soren growing a little more wild each day, until something suddenly changed. One morning his stepfather came out and Soren could see there was something wrong with him. He was coughing badly, was hunched over—he was sick, Soren realized with a brief shudder of fear, in the same way Soren’s mother had been. His stepfather went to the crops, weaving slightly, but he was listless, exhausted, and by midday he had given up and was headed back. Only he didn’t make it all the way back. Halfway home, he fell to his knees and then laid there, flat on his stomach, his face pushing into the dirt, one leg jutted to the side. He was there a long time, unmoving. Soren thought he must be dead, but then as he watched his stepfather gave a shuddering breath and started to move again. But he didn’t go back to the house. Instead, he crawled his way to the truck and tried to pull himself into it.
When he failed and fell back into the dust, there was Soren, above him and a little way away, his face expressionless.
“Soren,” said his stepfather, his voice little above a whisper.
Soren didn’t say anything. He just stayed there without moving. Watching. Waiting.
“I thought you were dead,” said his stepfather. “I really did. I would have kept looking for you otherwise. Thank God you’re here.”
Soren folded his arms across his tiny chest.
“I need your help,” said his stepfather. “Help me get into the truck. I’m very sick. I need to find medicine.”
Still Soren said nothing, continuing to stand there motionless, waiting, not moving. He stayed like that, listening to his stepfather’s pleading, his growing panic, followed by threats and wheedling. Eventually the latter passed into unconsciousness. Then Soren sat down and stayed there, holding vigil over the sick man, until two days later his breathing stopped and he was dead. Then he reached into his stepfather’s pocket and took the keys and reclaimed the house.
IT WASN’T easy work to drag his mother out of the house and bury her, but in the end, his fingers blistered and bleeding