She finds the Girl’s small body. She follows her arms to her hands. Then she reaches across the rowboat and feels for the Boy.
They’re each using one paddle. They’re rowing together.
“We did it, Mommy!” the Girl says.
Malorie is on her knees. She realizes she smells bad. Like a bar. Like a bathroom.
Like vomit.
“We untangled us,” the Boy says.
Malorie is with him now. Her shaking hands are upon his.
“I’m hurt,” she says out loud.
“What?” the Boy asks.
“I need you two to move back to where you were before Mommy fell asleep. Right now.”
The children stop rowing. The Girl presses against her as she goes to the back bench. Malorie helps her.
Then Malorie is sitting on the middle bench again.
Her shoulder is throbbing but it’s not as bad as it was before. She needed rest. She wasn’t giving it to her body. So her body took it.
In the fog of her waking mind, Malorie is growing colder, more frightened. What if it happens again?
Have they passed the point they are traveling to?
The paddles in her hands again, Malorie breathes deeply before rowing.
Then she starts to cry. She cries because she passed out. She cries because a wolf attacked her. She cries for too many reasons to locate. But she knows part of it is because she’s discovered that the children are capable of surviving, if only for a moment, on their own.
You’ve trained them well, she thinks. The thought, often ugly, makes her proud.
“Boy” she says, through her tears, “I need you to listen again. Okay?”
“I am, Mommy!”
“And you, Girl, I need you to do the same.”
“I am, too!”
Is it possible, Malorie thinks, that we’re okay? Is it possible that you passed out and woke up and still everything is okay?
It doesn’t feel true. Doesn’t go with the rules of the new world. Something is out there on this river with them. Madmen. Beasts. Creatures. How much more sleep would have lured them all the way into the boat?
Mercifully, she is rowing again. But what lurks feels closer now.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, crying, rowing.
Her legs are soaked with piss, water, blood, and vomit. But her body is rested. Somehow, Malorie thinks, despite the cruel laws of this unforgiving world, she’s been delivered a break.
The feeling of relief lasts the duration of one row. Then Malorie is alert, and scared, all over again.
thirty
Cheryl is upset.
Malorie hears her talking to Felix in the room down the hall. The other housemates are downstairs. Gary has taken to sleeping in the dining room, despite the hard wood floors. Since his arrival, two weeks ago, Don has warmed up to him greatly. Malorie doesn’t know how she feels about that. He’s probably with Gary now.
But down the hall, Cheryl whispers hurriedly. She sounds scared. It feels like everybody is. More than usual. The mood in the house, once supported mightily by Tom’s optimism, gets darker every day. Sometimes, Malorie thinks, the mood extends deeper than fear. That’s how Cheryl sounds right now. Malorie considers joining them, perhaps even to comfort Cheryl, but decides against it.
“I do it every day, Felix, because I like to do it. It’s my job. And the few minutes I step outside are precious to me. It reminds me that I once had a real job. One I woke up for. One I took pride in. Feeding the birds is the only thing I have that connects me to the life I used to live.”
“And it gives you a chance to be outside.”
“And it gives me a chance to be outside, yes.”
Cheryl tries to control her voice, then goes on.
She is outside, she tells Felix, ready to feed the birds. She is feeling along the wall for the box. In her right hand are apple slices from a can in the cellar. The front door has closed behind her. Jules waits inside. Blindfolded, Cheryl walks slowly, using the house for balance. The bricks are coarse against her fingertips. Soon they will give way to a portion of wood paneling from which a metal hook protrudes. This is where the birds hang.
They are already cooing. They always do when she gets this close. Cheryl heartily volunteered to feed the birds when discussion of the chore came up. She’s been doing it every day since. In a way, it feels like the birds are her own. She speaks to them, filling them in on trivial events from the house. Their sweet response calms her like music once did. She can gauge how close she is to the box, she tells Felix, by how loudly they sing.
But this time she hears something besides their coos.
At the end of the front walk she hears an “abandoned step.” It’s the only way she can explain it to Felix. It sounds to her like someone was walking, was planning to walk farther, then suddenly stopped.
Cheryl, always on high alert whenever she feeds the birds, is surprised to realize she is trembling.
She says, “Is anybody there?”
There is no answer.
She thinks of returning to the front door. She’ll tell the others she’s too freaked out to do this today.
Instead, she waits.
And there is no further sound.
In the box, the birds are active. She calls to them nervously.