Once An Eve Novel

three



THAT EVENING, I TOOK ARDEN TO MAEVE’S HOUSE. THE narrow two-story home was connected to six more, the whole row of them nestled into the side of the hill. Residences in Califia were easier to conceal if they were spread out, so of the six, hers was the only one that was occupied. The walls were patched in places, the floors a mosaic of mismatched tiles. Arden and I were in the small bedroom upstairs, our skin rosy in the lantern light. Maeve slept in the next room, Lilac beside her.

Arden stripped off her long black shirt and stood before the dresser in her tank top, pressing a wet towel to her face and neck. “When I arrived and you weren’t here, I thought the worst,” I said, leaning against the bunk bed where I slept. The room’s flowered wallpaper was peeling in places, a few strips held up with tacks. “I thought the soldiers had found you. That you were being held somewhere, tortured, or …” I trailed off, not wanting to go on.

Arden worked at her skin with the towel, clearing away patches of dirt on her arms. In the lantern light I could see each of her vertebrae, tiny pebbles trapped beneath her skin. I remembered her face the last day I had seen her, when we were hiding behind the shack. Her cheeks were full, her eyes alert. Now she was so thin her shoulder blades jutted out of her back. Fresh scabs dotted her scalp.

“They never caught me,” she said, not turning around. She watched herself in the cracked mirror, her reflection split in half. “The day I left you by Marjorie and Otis’s house, the soldiers chased me through the woods. I got a lead on them when I reached the outskirts of town but there wasn’t anywhere to hide. I found this metal door in the street, a sewer, and went underground. I just followed the tunnels, moving through the sludge, and kept waiting for them to track me there. But they never did.”

The giant dog lay at her feet, its chin resting on the floor. I kept my eyes on it, remembering all those warnings we’d heard at School about people being mauled by the packs of wild dogs roaming the woods. “Where’d you find him?” I asked, nodding at the animal, whose head was nearly as big as mine.

“She found me,” Arden laughed, setting down the towel. “I was roasting a squirrel. I guess she’d been separated from her pack and was hungry. So I gave her some food. And then she started following me.” She kneeled down, taking the dog’s head in her hands. “Don’t judge Heddy by her appearance—she’s really sweet. Aren’t you, girl?”

Arden looked up at me, smiling, and I noticed the thick red scar that snaked down her collarbone and over her right breast. It was still bleeding in places. Just the sight of it made me wince. “You’re hurt,” I said, standing to get a closer look. “What happened? Who did this to you?” I grabbed her shoulder and turned her toward the light.

Arden swatted me away. She fished the towel from the washbasin and covered her neck. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m here now and I’m not missing an arm or an eye. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Let’s not leave it at that,” I said, but Arden was already climbing into the bottom bunk. She threw herself down next to Lilac’s old dolls. Most of them were naked, their hair matted from years of neglect. “Arden,” I said again, pleading. “What happened?” The dog followed me to the ladder and whimpered, trying to get up on the mattress.

Arden sighed. “You don’t want to know.” She pressed the wet towel to her chest, willing me away, but I didn’t move.

“Tell me.”

She turned to me, her eyes glassy in the lantern light. “I got lost,” she said, her voice soft. “That’s why it took me so long to get here. I went north out of Sedona and then I found Heddy. We’d been together a week when it got so hot I could barely walk during the day. Heddy kept darting under the bushes, trying to avoid the sun. Finally I decided we’d just wait out the heat wave. Find a place to rest.” She moved the wet towel over her cracked lips, sloughing off the dead skin. “We took our supplies into this underground parking lot. As we went down each ramp it got cooler, more bearable, but darker, too. I was trying to get this car door open when I heard a man’s voice. He was yelling, but nothing he said made any sense.”

I lay down beside her, curling myself into a ball. Her mouth twisted into a half smile, and she looked up at the bottom of the other mattress, its springs straining against the fabric. “It was so dark, but I could smell him. It was foul. He grabbed me and pushed me over the hood of a car. He was choking me, and I felt the blade on my neck. Then, before I could even process it, he was on the ground and Heddy was on top of him. She kept going until he was quiet.” I looked down at the dog, whose face was crusted with dirt. Patches of hair on her neck were missing, the exposed skin pocked and scabbed. “I’ve never heard silence like that.”

“I hate that I wasn’t there,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Arden.”

Arden pulled the towel away from her neck. “I didn’t even realize he’d gotten me until after we were above ground, in the light. Heddy and I were both covered in blood.” The dog jumped onto the bed and lay at our feet, the mattress sagging under her weight. She rested her chin beside Arden’s foot. “I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for her.”

Arden ran her hand over her head. Soft black fuzz was growing in, but I could still see the skin of her skull. “That’s why I did this. I thought it would be safer to travel as a man. Only a few other Strays spotted me after that, and they all left me alone. A single man in the wild doesn’t draw as much attention as a woman.”

“I hope that’s the case,” I said, my thoughts drifting back to Caleb. My gaze settled on the window. Maeve’s house was up the road from the water. I could just make out the moon’s reflection on the surface of the bay. “Caleb found me after I left you. He tracked me down, and we came here together.”

“They wouldn’t let him stay, would they?” Arden asked. She pulled the crocheted blanket over herself, her fingers peeking out from the colorful wool squares. “They thought it was too dangerous?”

“His leg was wounded. He could barely walk,” I said. I twisted a fistful of blanket in my hands, not wanting to revisit that moment at the end of the bridge.

Arden shifted so her body was pressed against the wall. She tucked her toes underneath Heddy, who was still curled up at the foot of the bed, the sound of her breath filling the small room. “He’ll find his way back to the dugout,” she offered. “He’s been living in the wild for years. He’ll be okay.”

I ducked under the covers, careful not to upset the dog. “Right, I know,” I said softly, pressing my cheek against the musty pillow. But the thoughts took hold again. I kept imagining Caleb in an abandoned house, his leg badly infected.

Arden closed her eyes. Her face relaxed, her features softening. She fell asleep easily, her grip on the blanket loosening a little with each passing minute. I inched closer to her, letting my head rest on her shoulder. I lay like that for a while, listening to her breaths, each one a faint reminder that I was no longer alone.