His fingers slide across the middle of my palm, like he’s reading my fate, tracing the lines with the tip of his finger. “Are you okay?” he asks gently.
I nod, reaching out for him—needing the anchor of him—and I touch his collarbone, my fingers traveling up the slope of his neck to his jaw.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I give him a tiny smile, a convincing little lie.
“How are the others?” he asks, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, his breathing slow and rhythmic. I know the sound of his lungs, of his beating heart—even during the gathering, among the pattering heartbeats of so many others—I can always pick out the measured rhythm of his. Because it belongs to me. I know it as well as my own.
“They’re fine,” I answer.
“Anything to report from the gate? Has Theo said anything?”
Before the start of our weekly gathering, he likes to discuss the business of the community, if I’ve heard anything—conversations muttered in the community kitchen, speculations passed from ear to ear while members wander the corn rows in the evening—things only I can hear when no one knows I’m listening.
I also feel the shifts in the weather, the approaching cold as winter nears or a storm drawing close during the night. I know when the crops are unhealthy or when a woman is pregnant. I know when there is a quarrel and when two people are in love: little things that help Levi to govern, an assurance that he sees and knows all things happening within the community.
But right now, I only want to press myself close to him and let the sound of his heart drown out my thoughts.
“You could ask him yourself,” I answer.
“Yes,” he agrees, lowering his hand from my hair. “But you’re the only one I trust to tell me the truth.”
Levi and I have spent most of our lives side by side, even when we were kids. Levi would stand in the cold creek up to his knees, holding a net made of wire and string we constructed ourselves, and I’d wade upstream, hands in the water, ushering the quick, glistening fish toward him. Together we’d hoist the wriggling things up to the shore and wait for their last gulping breaths to leave their lungs.
We’ve always needed each other—as if we’d never be as strong alone as we were together.
Levi breathes softly, and I know his mind is churning over something. “Do you think the others are starting to forget why we’re here?” he asks, his voice slipping away like water from steep rooftops. He often worries the members of the community are growing restless, he worries our borders aren’t safe, and he worries everything we’ve built here will break apart with the autumn winds.
I hear him lean forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands folded together. I touch his shoulder. “The others are content,” I assure him. “Nothing’s changed.”
And for the most part, this is true. Aside from the rare desire for medicine or packaged food or a good bottle of brandy, most never speak of the outside. Many have never even seen it. The rest barely remember it.
Yet I now know Theo has gone down the road past the boundary. He has broken our most vital rule. But I don’t say a word to Levi—because there is a kernel of doubt growing like a seed inside me. Something I don’t yet understand, a memory I can’t explain, even though the burden of saying nothing is already starting to swell at the back of my throat.
I pick at the edge of the couch, finding a loose thread. It will need to be mended—a constant battle to keep our small life within these woods from unraveling. What little we have must last: stitch and thread, mud and nails. Keeping the forest from taking back the land, the homes, and us trying to live within it.
“They pretend,” Levi answers. His gaze is looking elsewhere, not at me.
“They’re only afraid,” I say. “The trees have been breaking open along the boundary again.”
Levi is quiet for some time, his thoughts toiling over this, before he finally says, “If we stay on our side, if we don’t cross the perimeter, we’ll be fine.”
Protected, safe, eyes shut against the dark.
But if Theo is infected, the rot could spread through the community in a matter of days. And in a few more, there would be no one left. He was stupid to do what he did.
I reach forward and touch Levi’s knee. The heat of him soothes me, and he relaxes beneath my hand. “They trust you,” I assure him. “They’ve always listened to you.”
This is his other constant worry, the paranoia tunneling through him: He fears the others don’t trust him like they trusted Cooper, that someday they’ll mutiny and decide he isn’t fit to lead. Cooper was loved, he was the one they followed into these woods all those years ago with promises of a different life. He built this community, kept them safe, and they all loved him for it. When Levi took over, it was not because he had won their loyalty or trust, it was because Cooper chose him to lead the group once he was gone. And for many of them, Cooper’s belief in Levi has been enough.
Yet, Levi still feels the burden of the role he’s been given, a battle with his own self-doubt. And I’ve often wondered if power does this to a man: unravels him slowly over time, doubt itching beneath his flesh until it’s all that’s left.
He reaches forward finally, stroking his cool fingers across my skin, tracing a line from my earlobe to my lips. In the dark of my mind, I see him. I know the curve of his mouth, the lazy shape of his eyes, as if he were always squinting away from the sun. When we were younger, when my eyesight was starting to fade, I tried to memorize his face—brand it into my mind. I would place my lips to his and hold on to those moments for as long as I could. I was terrified I would forget him someday, that he would become only a gray, indefinite outline in my mind.