Skillful Death (58 page)

“This is it,” Bud says. He raises his bare arms towards the canopy. His torso is covered with tiny cuts, each weeping little lines of blood. “This is where I grew up.”

I drop Bud’s pack in front of me and shed my own pack behind me. I just want to curl up and sleep.

“Come on,” he says. “I know a better place to camp. It’s not much farther.”

I shake my head. The rich loam under the carpet of ferns is so soft and warm. I just want to rest my head.

W
HEN
I
WAKE
UP
, the light dances on the side of the tent. It must be either dawn or dusk. I’m not sure which. I’m alone in the tent, on top of my sleeping bag. My backpack is next to me. Without sitting up, I rummage in the pouch and pull out my water. I drink the whole dirty bottle.
 

I sit up slowly, trying to avoid the headache I can feel throbbing in the back of my skull. My stomach rumbles and then turns as I touch my head. I’ve got rat guts sticking the hair to my skull. This side of my face is swollen and the brow over my left eye is tender.

I unzip the flap and stagger from the tent.

I don’t see Bud, but there’s a fire smoldering a few feet from the tent. I limp over—my ankle is swollen too—and sit down next to the fire.
 

“How are you feeling?” Bud asks, from behind me.

I turn to see him approach. He’s carrying fallen branches he has collected. He breaks one in two and adds it to the fire.

“I’m a little sore,” I say. My speech is slurred from my swollen face.

“Me too,” he says. He sits down opposite me. He has managed to clean most of the blood from his shirt, but it has a number of holes in it now.
 

“Did you really fight a lion?”

“We both did,” he says. “I’m lucky you thought to circle him. He would have torn me apart.”

“Huh,” I say. “I thought maybe it was a dream.”

“You’ve been asleep for a while,” he says. “You might have had some weird dreams from the rat venom.”

“Rat venom? Rat’s aren’t venomous, are they?”

“I think these were,” he says. “Or maybe they just have strange bacteria in their mouths. Either way, you have some bad swelling around the bites. I’d like to get you to town and see if we can find some medicine.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t think I was bitten,” he says. “I just have a lot of cuts from the leaves.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a little nervous about town,” he says. “Back when I lived here, people didn’t react well to outsiders—not that we had many. I wanted to talk to you about what to do next.”

“We came here to talk to people, right? I don’t know why we made the trip if we’re not going to talk to anyone. Besides, how do you know for sure that we are back in same forest where you grew up? Just because we went through some bamboo? We could have just done a big loop and come out a hundred yards from where we went in.”

“No, this is it,” he says. “I can still recognize it after all these years. Nowhere else in the world quite smells the same, you know?”

I
don’t
know, but I’ve got nothing but stubbornness to refute him.
 

“So, if you agree, I propose we pack up our stuff and leave it here. Then we’ll trek into town and find some medicine.”

“Why do you want to leave our stuff?”

“An alternate plan would be for me to go alone and then come back with the medicine. I think I’d rather have you with me though, if you feel up to traveling. Do you?”

“I think I can walk okay once I limber up a bit. Why do you want to leave our stuff here?”

“Oh, why? We’ll move faster with less to carry, and if their technology isn’t exactly modern, we’ll have less on us that makes us seem foreign,” he says.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

How would you describe a forest? Even if you knew it like the back of your hand, you’d be hard-pressed to convince someone just by describing it. The boss tells me he knows where we are and then he talks about particular trees, and a creek, and a bunch of rocks. Sure enough, we find a tree, and some flowing water next to some rocks. But of course, that’s what one would find in any forest. I can’t tell if he’s been here before or if he’s just delusional. Does it matter?

My ankle feels like it’s been packed in hot coals and then wrapped in a tight bandage. The swelling isolates the joint, so it won’t move, and the skin is stretched so tight it feels like it might tear open with my next step. My hand keeps drifting to the side of my face to touch the tender skin there. Bud tells me there’s a creek coming up where I can wash up. When we get there, the water isn’t quite as deep as he predicted, and I have to crouch down next to the chilly flow so I can scoop water up to my head. The rat guts are really crusted into my head. I feel ready to pass out by the time I’m cleaned up. Bud helps me to my feet and we get moving.

“After this patch of oak, there’s a short spread of cedar trees and then we’ll be fairly near the bog where I found that big snake.”

“Yeah?”

 
“If we go around to the east, we’ll end up near where the Harvest Festival is held. If we go around to the west, it’s longer, but we’ll hit the Hyff Lane. I suggest we head towards Hyff Lane. The walking will be easier on a road and maybe we’ll even meet someone who can give us a ride.”

“Okay,” I say.

It feels like hours before we get to what he calls the bog. I must have missed the short spread of cedar trees. I have an image in my head of what a cedar tree looks like, but I could be wrong. As far as I know, they’re all cedar trees.

When the trees are low and scrubby—maple leaves, like the Canadian flag—Bud turns left and takes us along the edge of them. I have to sit down and rest for a while. We sit on the side of a small hill and look at the maple trees. My eyes are on the prowl for snakes. I don’t want to be surprised. I don’t see any.

“If we can just go a little farther—maybe no more than another mile or two—I think we’ll get to the road. Then even if we have to rest, at least we might be able to flag down a cart.”

“Why don’t you go ahead,” I say. “You can leave a trail and I’ll follow when I feel up to it.”

“No,” he says. “We stick together.”

“Then you have to give me another minute.”

I want to massage my ankle, but it’s too tender. I pull up my pant leg and pull down my sock. My skin is so sensitive that even the movement of the sock makes it burn. It’s like that feeling when the blood returns to your arm after you’ve slept on it all night. It’s a helpless agony.

My ankle is bruised all to hell, a million shades of purple, blue, and black. Bud is hunched over, looking at it with me.

“I can carry you,” he says.

“Unnecessary,” I say. “I’ll be okay again once we’re moving.”

He ignores my obvious lie and helps me to my feet. We’re moving.

When we get to the road—it could be any road, really—Bud is overjoyed. He declares it Hyff Lane and talks about all the things we’ll find if we follow this road. This is the road where Baron used to live with Sasha and his family. If you follow it farther, this is the road that crosses Masty Stream. It’s really just two wheel ruts with grass growing up in the center. If two carts met going opposite directions, they would need to find a place to pull into the woods to pass.
 

Bud sets off at a brisk pace down the road and turns around when he sees that I can’t keep up. He fetches me a long stick to use as a crutch. It’s a good idea, and it compensates well for my limp. Bud disappears at one point and comes back with a few apples. They’re big and sweet. After days of meat and greens, the sugar rushes to my head and feels good there. It’s like instant energy.
 

“They grow year-round here,” he says. “It’s the weird climate. I mean, there’s a peak season because of the sunlight, but you can always get apples. There’s a grove over that hill. I used to come here sometimes when I was a kid. It’s a little overgrown now with vines, but the trees are still good. I wonder why nobody is maintaining the orchard.”

“Maybe everyone left?”

“No, there must still be people around. This road would be overgrown in a year if it didn’t have traffic to keep the brush down. Do you see how tall the underbrush is on the sides? I think this road still gets a lot of traffic to kill all the grass in these ruts.”

“Oh,” I say.

As if to prove his point, we hear something mechanical approaching. It’s a dull grinding sound interspersed with chuffs and hisses. I turn to watch it approach. Bud stands next to me. We’re blocking the road. As the thing approaches, I hope it has brakes. The vehicle looks like a cart but it has some sort of engine in back that’s throwing up puffs of white smoke or steam.

The driver looks to be in his fifties. He’s carrying a couple dozen extra pounds, has long sideburns, and a funny hat that looks like a beret with a rim on the sides.

Bud speaks in a language that I don’t quite understand. It doesn’t sound like Russian, but it has the same tone, like he’s swallowing the backs of his words.

I’m surprised when I understand the man’s reply. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He was bitten by a rat,” Bud says.

“On my ankle,” I add. Bud shoots me a sharp look. Did he want me to keep quiet?

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“A different rat,” I say.

“You’ve got bad luck with rats.”

The man was sitting in the center of the front seat, but now he climbs down from his motorized cart and walks around to the back. He lets down a tailgate and moves some stuff around.

“You can sit here, but you have to hold on or you’ll fall. I’m only going to the Yarrow Road, and then you’re on your own.”

“Thank you,” Bud says. He helps me up to the tailgate and then jumps up beside me.

It’s a bumpy trip and the engine blows hot steam back on us. I’m surprised at how quiet the engine is. The forest streaks by. I can’t see well to the front of the cart, but it looks like the man is steering the contraption with ropes. Bud’s not even paying attention to the weird vehicle. He’s just watching the woods with a big, dumb smile on his face.

My foot feels like it’s filling up with blood. It feels like a big tick on the end of my leg, and soon it will finish feeding. It will then either drop off or explode. I lean back and accidentally rest my arm on hot metal.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

After an eternity of jostling, the man brings the weird steam-powered cart to a halt. Bud jumps down and helps me ease my way to the ground. He waves and the driver waves back before taking a left.

“We’re going straight. He’s going towards the granary,” Bud says.

“He seemed nice enough,” I say. “Not too xenophobic.”

“Did you see how he was dressed?”

I didn’t pay much attention to the guy’s clothes. Except for the hat, nothing struck me as unusual.

“No,” I say.

“He was wearing pretty modern clothes. I’m not sure he guessed that we are outsiders.”

“I figured everyone knew each other here,” I say.

“No, certainly not. At least not when I lived here.”

Bud starts walking and I limp behind. I assume we’re still on Hyff Lane, but it’s a much different road here. You could fit two carts abreast and the whole width of it is firm, packed dirt. On either side, the trees grow tall and spread their limbs wide, conspiring to drape the road with a canopy of leaves. In the center of the road, spots of sunlight dance around—the first direct sun I’ve seen in days. It’s dazzling. There are so many trees here that you’re always covered by limbs and leaves. I wonder if the residents even know that the sky is blue.

Around a bend, we find the road blocked. A tall gate on wooden wheels is drawn across the road. In the forest, on either side, we see a line of sharpened pickets staked out between the trees.

“What’s this?”

“I have no idea,” Bud says. He walks to the side of the road and grabs a couple of sharpened poles of the fence. He pulls himself up to see over the top. He returns to me and speaks in a low voice. “There’s a camp down the road a bit with armed men.”

“Should we turn back?”

“We have to get to town,” he says. “You’re not looking great, and I don’t want to trust your health to some herbalist on the outskirts of the village. We don’t have a quarrel with anyone here. Let’s see if they will let us through.”

“This seems like a bad idea,” I say. I must look worse than I feel because Bud ignores me and walks up to the big gate. There’s a doorway cut into the side. He knocks on it.

“Hello?” he calls. After about a minute, Bud knocks again. The door swings open and Bud is pulled through. The door slams shut.

On my side of the gate, all is quiet. In fact, aside from the occasional bird, I don’t hear a thing. I don’t hear Bud being interrogated, or hustled away, or stabbed, or shot, or anything. I lean on my stick and wonder what to do. The door creaks and I see it swing open about an inch. I take a step forward.