Better Off Dead (19 page)

“Stephen Richards,” I answered before another quote popped into my head. “I always liked this one: ‘Life’s managed, not cured,’ Phillip McGraw.”

“Life’s managed, not cured,” Bill repeated before nodding. “I like that one too.”

“Bill?” I asked, as something occurred to me. “Do you know other guardian angels?”

“Sure I do, why?” Then a glower came over his features. “If you think you can exchange me for another one …”

“No, I have no intention of doing that,” I interrupted him. I’d never even considered exchanging him for another angel. Well, at least not in the last few days, anyway. However, if given the opportunity, I wasn’t sure if I would exchange him. Miraculously, over the last few days, I’d actually begun to like Bill. His jocular presence provided some comic relief, which I appreciated. As much as I couldn’t imagine attempting this trek without Tallis, I also couldn’t think about doing it without Bill. He helped soothe my relentless anxieties, which were mostly caused
by this mission and heightened by Tallis.

“Good, ’cause there ain’t no refunds, sistah,” he said and then studied me, as if he weren’t sure if I was telling the truth.

“I like you, Bill,” I said with a smile. “I wouldn’t think of exchanging you.”

“Well, thanks, sugar lips, I like you too.” He threw his arms around me then, hugging me tightly. When he released me, I wobbled a bit before regaining my balance.

“The reason I asked,” I continued, before clearing my throat, “was because I wanted to find out if you might know the guardian angels of people that I know?”

“Well, seems like the only people you know are me and Tallis, and he ain’t got no angel,” he said, lifting his chin in Tallis’s direction. “An’ I guess you could say I’m my own angel.”

I looked at the bladesmith who was doing a good job of managing to maintain at least a ten-foot lead on us. “Why doesn’t he have an angel?”

Bill shook his head. “Dunno. Prolly because he’s in a different category than you or me.” As he exhaled, he finished, “I’d call it the ‘Asshole’ category.”

I laughed, having already reached the same conclusion about Tallis, myself. But I still had reasons for asking the question about guardian angels in the first place. I needed to steer the conversation away from the Tallis tangent. “I meant in my old life, people I knew in my previous life.”

Bill cocked his head to the side. “Yeah, I might have. Who’d ya have in mind?”

“Um, my mom,” I answered in a soft voice. “Do you know her angel?”

Bill shook his head. “I know of her angel, but don’t know her personally. I can tell you she’s a woman, though. She ain’t hot or nothin’, which is prolly why I don’t know her.” With a laugh, he added. “I make it my bidness ta get in the know when they’re hotties.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes before focusing on a subject that was more than important to me. “Is my mother’s angel a good one?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Never heard of her havin’ any problems, if that’s what you mean?” Then he eyed me more pointedly. “Why are you askin’?”

I exhaled a long sigh. “I’m worried about my mom. She’s all alone now,” I tried unsuccessfully to keep my tears at bay and wiped them away with my shirtsleeve. Glancing up at Bill, I attempted to smile. “I was all she had.”

Bill nodded and was politely silent for a few seconds. “You know you can’t contact her, right? That sort of thing is strictly prohibited … it only leads to problems.”

“Yes, I know,” I answered in a hushed tone, wiping my eyes again. “That’s what Jason told me.” I exhaled. “I was hoping you could put in a good word to her angel, just let her know that my mom needs extra help right now.”

“Sure, I’ll do that as soon as we get back,” Bill said with a comforting smile.

“You mean
if
we get back?”

“We’ll get back, don’t you worry none,” he said with enthusiasm. “An’ when we do, I’ll be sure to talk to your mom’s angel.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

“Keep in mind, that part of our work as angels isn’t just protecting you guys but it’s also about helping you through shit times like this, so your mom’s angel prolly is already helpin’ her through it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked hopefully.

“Think back to when you were going through a tough time in your life. Did you ever feel like someone was there with you to help you through it?” I nodded. “Yep, that’s us,” he finished and then paused for a second. “Your mom’s angel is right there with her, baby doll. Don’t you worry.”

“Do you think my mom knows that?”

Bill shrugged. “It’s hard to say.” Then he grew quietly pensive. “You remember that time when you were maybe ten or so, and your mom took you to the pet store in town?” I gave him a puzzled look, wondering where this story was going, to which he just nodded and continued. “I know you’re gonna say your mom took you to the pet store lotsa times, but this time was different. You were looking at the rabbits and she went ta pick out some dog food, and while you were oohing and aahing over the bunnies, a strange man walked up and stood next to you. He was maybe thirty-five. You remember?”

I looked at Bill, and my mouth dropped open as I recalled everything he’d just said as though it were only yesterday. “He asked me what I liked to do in my free time, and I told him I liked going to the movies.”

Bill nodded. “And then he asked you who you go to the movies with, and you said your mom.”

“Yep, and he said he’d like to take me to the movies sometime,” I finished for him. “He asked me to meet him in the pet store the following Saturday so he could take me to the movies.” I never had forgotten the incident, and looking back on it now, as an adult, I realized the man’s motives for what they truly were.

Bill nodded, his face hard and angry. “You remember hearing a voice inside your head that told you to get away from him and go find your mom?”

I nodded just as something dawned on me. “That was you?”

He smiled widely. “That was me.” We just stared at one another as the weight of his words sunk in. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “Whenever you find yourself in a bad situation, or feel overcome with grief, we can and do reach out, but we do it in ways that aren’t obvious. We have to be subtle.”

“Is that why your voice in my head sounded like my own?”

Bill just nodded and we were both silent for another few seconds. Then he added, “Your mom is gonna be fine eventually, baby doll. It will take a while because the pain is so fresh and new, but she’ll get through it. I promise you.”

Looking down at my feet, I wiped a few more tears from my eyes, but I could honestly say that his words did make me feel better.

***

“We will stoop haur fur th’ nicht,” Tallis announced, dropping his shield and backpack beside the charred trunk of a tree. We’d arrived at a clearing of sorts, maybe a ten-by-twelve-foot open space in the skeleton-tree forest.

“Don’t you mean we’ll stop here for the day?” I corrected him. Since we’d just spent many hours walking through the forest, daytime had to be arriving soon.

“Nae,” he said as he studied me pointedly. “Thaur is nae daytime here. Oonly dark. An’ ye moost accoostem yerself tae th’ neverendin’ darkness ur ye wilnae ken when tae sleep an’ when tae wake.”

I swallowed hard, looking up at the black sky and realizing that was all we would see for who knew how long? Bill dropped down onto the dirt beside me, resting his back against a tree, as he stretched his short legs out in front of him. Then he crossed his ankles, wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes. “I’ll be takin’ a snooze if anyone needs me
.”

“Each oone ah us will tyke turns keepin’ watch while th
’ oothers sleep,” Tallis started.

“Good, I’ll volunteer to sleep first,” Bill interrupted without bothering to open his eyes.

Tallis frowned at me, but neither of us said anything. Instead, he removed my sword from the scabbard around his shoulder and handed it to me. “Keep thess cloose tae ye at aw times.”

Standing up, he opened the backpack and pulled out what looked like an ancient relic. It was a bow with three even more primeval arrows. After retying the backpack, he slung it behind the closest tree.

“Where are you going?” I asked, afraid to be left alone.

“We hae tae eat,” he answered simply. Befor
e I could argue, he stomped off, disappearing into the line of burnt trees.

My stomach flopped at the thought of being basically alone. I could already hear the sonorous hums of Bill snoring and had to shake my head at the fact that he was comfortable enough in this … place, that he could fall asleep so easily. But then I remembered he was an angel and couldn’t be harmed. Such was most definitely not the case for me. I sat down against the tree where Tallis left his things and pulled my knees up to my chest, fingering the blade of my sword, which lay on the ground beside me.

All I could think about was the deathly stillness of the woods. Aside from Bill’s rhythmic snoring, there wasn’t another sound. The uncanny quiet started to undo my nerves. Was everything dead here? If so, what did Tallis plan to hunt? ’Course, Tallis knew these woods since he’d traversed them many times on his way to the Underground City, so I imagined something managed to survive in them. And it was that something that was starting to give me heart palpitations.

I had no idea how long I sat there, frozen. My own fear crippled me and even though I could feel pins and needles starting up my legs, I couldn’t move. Hearing the sounds of footfalls on the dead tree branches covering the forest floor, I grasped my sword and hopped onto my feet. In response, the stinging pins and needles ran all the way up to my knees but I ignored the pain. Instead, I planted my feet shoulder-width apart and held the blade in striking position, ready for whatever was out there to make its presence known.

“At ease, Lass,” Tallis’s rich baritone interrupted the thudding of my heart. I couldn’t help the inordinate sense of release that washed over me.

I didn’t say anything but leaned my sword against the base of the tree and watched him fling something bloody and heavy beside it. I couldn’t see all of it, but what I did see looked
decapitated. Tallis kneeled down and started rummaging through his backpack. I took a few steps closer to him without knowing what I was doing. It was just as if my body knew Tallis meant safety as much as my mind did, and consequently, it wanted to be close to him. With a raised brow expression, Tallis let me know he didn’t like me hovering over him.

“Um, what can I do to help?” I asked quickly, trying
to cover for basically crowding his personal space.

“Can ye build ah fire?”

I nodded emphatically, pleased there was something I could do to help. Acting the role of a peasant in “Middle Ages,” my medieval reenactment group, I’d managed to learn how to make a fire using nothing but wood and my bare hands.

“Ye can build ah fire?” Tallis asked again, disbelief in his tone.

“Yep, I can,” I answered with steely resolve, already having decided that the hand drill would be my best bet. Determined to prove myself, I searched the nearby surroundings for small sticks and something to use as tinder. The sticks were easy to find, the tinder not quite as easy. After gathering an armful of branches and twigs for kindling, I dropped them into a pile at the base of the large opening Tallis designated as our camp. Then I started scouting the area for something flammable—something very dry that would ignite quickly and start my fire.

“At the base ah the trees ye will fin’ deid lichen,” Tallis offered.

“Thanks,” I muttered, irritated that he felt the need to advise me when I intended to prove myself useful in at least something. The base of the closest tree had no dead lichen or moss, so I moved to the tree where Bill lay snoring away. There was a mass of brown and fibrous-looking stuff that I assumed was the lichen. After scraping off a few handfuls of the stuff, I added it to my twigs and branches. Placing my tinder to the side, I separated my kindling from the rest of the branches and piled it into a pyramid shape. I reached for half of the dried moss, which I placed inside the kindling at various spots.

Then came the task of finding a suitable fireboard. I scouted through the branches I’d assembled, trying to find something for my board and spindle. For the fireboard, I needed wood that was relatively soft. In “Middle Ages,” I’d passed the fire-starting test by using a juniper fireboard. With no idea what sort of trees were in this forest, I could only hope some were soft wood. I found a branch that had a relatively flat surface, then realized I needed Tallis’s help.

“You didn’t happen to bring an axe by any chance, did you?” I asked hopefully.

“Aye,” he answered from where he was leaning against a tree, watching me.

“Great! Could you cleave this in half so I can use it as my fireboard?”

“
Wif pleasure, lass,” he answered. He took the branch from me before rummaging through his backpack until he found his axe.

Using a nearby stump, he placed the broad branch down and cleaved it in half. Then he
knocked off the rough side of one half, creating a nice looking plank. He handed it to me as I thanked him with a smile, and prayed the wood was soft. Pushing my fingernail into the board, I watched my nail indent it, which was exactly what I was hoping for. I glanced up at Tallis again. “Could you cut a V-shaped notch into it, please?”