They listen to her. They believe in her. She brought them all this far. Not Reed. He is a totem leader, and not even that, not any longer. She gives them the hope that allows them to be led. Hope is a good and dangerous thing, Reed thinks. Hope is the moment that never comes and life is the shit you wallow through when chasing it.
They have not slept together in weeks. More and more often he has trouble keeping his patience around her. He tries to sit by himself—he tries to lie by himself—but she always finds him. When she asks a question, sometimes he does not respond at all, and when he does, his answers are often clipped, sullen. She wants to know why he is so angry and he tells her he is tired; that’s all. He’s so tired. Which is and is not the truth.
He has fantasized about her death. A snake will bite her. Her horse will throw her. She will eat a poisonous mushroom. When the bats stole her, he couldn’t help but feel a kind of relief. Now we can rest. Now we can stop this race to nowhere. That’s what he thought.
Every morning, when Lewis wakes, his hand goes immediately to his pocket, searching for the tin that isn’t there. Reed has seen him suffer through his days and nights. He knows about the sweats and cramps and headaches and bad-tempered hallucinations. He understands because he feels much the same without her, Danica.
He misses her like a drug. His nose in her hair. His tongue along her collarbone. Her nipples tightening into points when traced by his fingertip. He hates himself for his weakness but cannot deny it. His need for her. She once, when they were still naked and breathing hard and pressed together damply, said the word love into his neck. When he asked her to repeat herself, she said, “It was nothing,” and he said, “No, you said something,” but she would only dart her tongue from her mouth and trace the shape of his ear.
Whether she actually feels love for him, he doesn’t know. But he must for her. What else would have drawn him back to her, again and again, despite the danger? What else could make him feel so bruised inside now that she is out of reach? He hears her breathing in the river. He tastes her in the salt of a pebble he clacks between his teeth. And, for so long, he has imagined her face over Clark’s. Sometimes the only thing that keeps him going is the thought of them together in a lush, green space with rain falling softly.
Earlier today, they speared seven trout from the river, and now they crisp and brown over the fire. They offer Lewis some, but he waves it away. His skin appears as pale and brittle as an eggshell. Clark asks how he is feeling and he says his joints burn as if padded by coals and every blink feels like a snuffed candle. She asks when he might be ready to pack up and move on, and he says another day or two. Then he coughs into his fist and says that before they go any farther, this one time and one time only, he plans to send his owl to the skies and deliver a message to the Sanctuary.
Clark asks him why in God’s name he would do that.
He hoods the blanket over his head and tightens his grip on it, making a kind of bonnet. His face is lost to shadow except for the sharp white nose peeking out. “To give people hope, of course.” He has an acidic way of speaking that shrinks his audience into something so small and insignificant he might flick them away. He explains that the mayor has no doubt claimed they are dead, and who knows what dismissive lies he invented to excuse them away. If they are indeed journeying this far for more than themselves—if they plan to return someday and bring down the wall—then they need to give people a reason to hold out.
York tongues a fish bone from his mouth, pulls it from his lips, and flicks it into the fire. “Going back. Damn. With all the miles we’ve traveled, with all the miles still waiting ahead of us, that is the last thing I want to think about.”
Lewis ignores him. He will send the letter to Ella and she will find a way to spread the news to others.
Clark says, “If anyone sees that owl, she’ll be dead.”
“I’m sure that’s a risk she’ll be willing to take.”
Reed says, “If you’re sending a letter, I want to as well.” He feels Clark’s eyes on him. “I have a— I have some people I’d like to let know I’m all right.”
“You said it yourselves. A letter risks lives. The more letters, the more lives. One will speak for us all.” Lewis rises and excuses himself. He is tired. He must rest. He toddles to his bed now, twenty yards away from their campsite, a willing exile. He uses his staff to keep his balance and to stir the fire he keeps for himself. He adds two logs to it. With a rusty stiffness he lowers his body to the ground. He wobbles there a moment, fighting sleep, but instead of crushing his head into a pillow, he reaches a hand into his satchel and extracts a piece of paper followed by his quill and inkpot.
Reed follows and watches from a short distance as Lewis begins to write—no doubt composing the very letter he mentioned, wishing to send it off before they can question him further. His pen slashes the paper with a speed unavailable to his legs. This is how he will always be swiftest, on the empty page, not the open plain, in his mind and not his body.
But before he finishes the letter, his chin drops to his chest, his posture curls. Sleep overtakes him. A minute passes. Then he startles awake and folds the letter in half, and then in half again, and again, until it is a tiny white square.
The owl perches on a nearby stump. He crawls over and kneels beside it. The action seems to exhaust him. He slumps against the stump, resting his forehead against it like a man praying at an altar. He wakes when he loses his balance, when his body begins to slide. He reaches for the owl and toys with a lever. Its breast swings open to reveal a small cavity into which he fits the letter. By this time all his energy is spent. He curls his body at the base of the stump and succumbs to sleep.
Reed sneaks a sheet of paper and uses the still-wet quill to compose a message. He pauses twice when Lewis stirs or hitches his breathing. His words splotch and the paper tears in his hurry. Then he folds the letter into a small square and seals it with pitch from a split log and tucks it into the owl’s breast for Lewis to send skyward when he wakes.