LILAC
I’M POSITIVE HE KNOWS how much I hate it when he goes ahead to “scout.” He probably does it just to provoke me. I suppose he’s wandering off to imagine how much nicer it’d be not to have me around. Perhaps he’s even wishing he’d let that beast eat me yesterday.
I’m sitting in a patch of afternoon sun on one of the blankets, spread over the nasty forest floor. Not that it matters all that much, as I’m already carrying half the forest along with me in my dress. The hem is hanging in tatters and the skirt is muddy. I can only imagine my hair and skin are as dreadful, but as the major scarcely glances in my direction at the best of times, and there’s no one else around to see, I must try to bear it as best I can.
I know he’ll come back—he always has—but tiny eddies of fear swirl in my subconscious anyway. What if he doesn’t? What if he falls down some unseen gully and cracks his head open, and I’m left all alone? What if my last insult was one too many?
The forest is full of sound and movement I can’t track, things that flicker out of the corners of my eyes, vanishing before I can focus on them. The major doesn’t seem to notice—or if he does, he isn’t bothered. But it’s as though the forest is whispering all around us, saying incomprehensible things in my ear. Sometimes I almost think I can hear voices, though logic insists that I’m searching for the familiar in this alien world. I’m used to being around other people, and my mind is turning the sounds of the wilderness into sounds I find comforting.
Except none of this is comforting.
If my father were here, he’d tell me to stand up, pull myself together. He’d tell me not to let anyone see me fall. He’d tell me to find the power in this situation and get it back.
That makes me smile, however weakly. The only power I have in this horrible wilderness is getting under Major Merendsen’s skin. It’s so easy to undercut his know-it-all attitude, and score a point in our endless battle.
I can imagine Anna beside me, close and real for a moment. Choose what you let them see, she’d say. My throat closes as I think of her.
His opinion of me is already a lost cause—years later, when he looks back at this escapade, I’d rather he think bitch than weakling.
The sounds of branches cracking and leaves rustling alert me that he’s returning. He makes a point of making a little noise now, after the first time he appeared soundlessly behind me and ended up with a scream and a canteen thrown at his face. My heartbeat quickens, mind turning over a dozen ways to pick a fight.
But just as I’m about to speak, I see his face.
He doesn’t look at me, but there’s a rawness in his gaze as he drops into a crouch that wipes my mind clean of insults. He rubs his hand over his scalp, fingers fanning through his dark hair, lips pressed tightly together. My eyes sweep across the telling droop of his shoulders as he crouches there motionless.
I was wrong—there is one thing for me to read in the middle of this alien forest.
I’m afraid to ask, but my lips form the question anyway. “Did you find something?”
He doesn’t answer right away, pushing up from his crouch to collect the canteen from me and give a jerk of his head to indicate that I should get off the blanket and allow him to pack it away. Only after he’s done that, leaving me standing there awkwardly with my arms wrapped around myself against the chill, does he speak.
“Yes. We’re going to have to stop for a while so I can take care of it, but I want you closer so I can hear you if you shout. I need you to just do as I say for once, all right, Lilac?”
When he gives orders, my first instinct is to blast him with some kind of insult for his arrogance. But now he’s so sad, so tired, that the thought barely flickers through my mind before I dismiss it. He’s watching me, expressionless.
I nod, and a tiny bit of the tension in his shoulders drops away.
“Good. I’ll find you a spot a little ways back from where I am. You can keep resting your feet, or if you want you can help by gathering some rocks.”
“Rocks? What for?”
He turns away to shrug his pack back onto his shoulders. “There’s another downed escape pod over the next ridge.”
I’m about to fall into step, ready to follow him, when his words halt me mid-stride. “There’s a what?” The torrent of relief and hope is so tangible it nearly drives me to my knees. I don’t have time to analyze the tiny stab of disappointment—company means the end of this strange, private partnership—before words come pouring out of me. “How many people? Was it a first-class pod? Do you know anyone who was inside? Is their rescue beacon working?”