“Wait!” he says. “The cave where I’m living, you can find it easy. It’s just south of where the big river bends, you remember? Near that heron pond we fished in once. Find me,” he says. “Find me,” he begs.
I look over my shoulder one last time, then sprint to the bus.
Chapter 45
Incinerated. This is what it feels like to think about Jude. The feeling of my own cells burning out one by one. I imagine the cave where he’s sequestered himself, farther in the backwoods than even the Community, practically a lifetime away from another person. The way his nose had knit back together, the haggard way he walked, like he’d been broken and would never heal. So different to how he used to be, but then so is everything. Even the tree house is gone, the tree house that weathered winters of knee-high snow and summers so hot the smell of bodies in the Community was almost too much to bear. Everything Jude and I went through happened in that tree house.
Jude found me there the night I ran away. He stood beside the larch, chopping wood, an ax clutched in his hand. His face was smiling, but it contorted when he saw me, saw what was missing. I didn’t realize till Jude caught me that I was falling.
We crumpled to the ground, and I only remember flashes after that—Jude’s ax lying discarded in a drift of yellowed pine needles, the sleeves of my dress choked with blood, the blood already on Jude’s shirt.
He carried me the rest of the way to his house. In the doorway, his father stood frozen. His skin was pale and flushed heavily at the cheeks, the way I’d learn that his face always looked, as though a lifetime of hard winters and hard alcohol had burst every blood vessel. He looked like a shadow of Jude, like a less alive version with a mess of wiry white beard and a look in his eyes like he couldn’t believe what had just crashed into his life.
Jude brushed past him through the open door and laid me down on the couch. I got a good look at my stumps and started shivering. My heart still jerked angrily and my toes had turned a pale yellow, a color the exact opposite of blood.
“What in Sam Hill?” Waylon shouted. His speech was slurred, but I don’t think he was drunk. It was just how he talked, like the hinge of his mouth wouldn’t close properly. “Who’s that?”
“Her name’s Minnow.”
“She one of them cult people?”
“Yeah, and she’s hurt real bad. Oh God, she’s hurt real bad.”
“Why’s she bleedin’ so—” He stopped when he saw my stumps, darting a hand to his face. “They did this to her?”
“Shut up, Daddy, and do somethin’ useful!” Jude shouted. His hands were squeezing my wrists to try and stop the bleeding.
Waylon scanned the room helplessly and ran out the back door. Jude whimpered a little, his fingers slipping over the blood. “It’s gonna be just fine,” he whispered, but his throat was shaking so hard, his voice was all but lost.
Waylon barged back inside with a boxy bottle full of clear liquid in his fist. I knew it had to be the moonshine he made, the stuff that had turned his legs to jelly and his mouth to mush.
“No, Daddy! She ain’t drinkin’ that.”
“It’s her choice, son,” Waylon said. “The drink’ll make the pain better.”
I shook my head.
“We gotta get those things cleaned,” Waylon said. “It’ll hurt like a bitch without somethin’ to take the edge off.”
“I don wannit,” I slurred.
“Fine, fine, I hear ya,” he said.
Waylon ordered Jude to get a pail and heat some water.
“She gon’ be feverin’ soon, if she’s not already. Thas what’ll kill her, if anythin’. Gotta be ready to fight it.”
Jude carried in a pot of water from out back and placed it over the fire. After he stoked the embers nice and hot, he kneeled and leaned over me so his face was all I could see. Waylon sunk each wrist into a shallow bucket of moonshine. I tried to hold the scream in because surely they could hear me in the Community, but it tore through my chest on its own.
“I know, I know, I know, I know,” Jude chanted. He held my face in his hands, bloodying my cheeks. He was blinking and crying, glancing around frantically as though searching for something to take the pain away.
“Minnow,” he said. “You see that light?”
My eyes roved jerkily. The cabin had one glassed window and through it I could see the torsos of pines ringing the house, lit with moonlight.
“That’s the forest folk’s lanterns,” he said. “They’re knee-high and they bite, but if you catch one, it has to grant you three wishes.”
A fresh wave of pain rolled hotly over me, and I let loose another scream, stifled by my clamped teeth. I knew the pain was unbearable and yet, somehow, I kept continuing to bear it.
Jude spoke again, his voice high and fragile. “I’ll go out later and catch a forest folk, Minn. Okay?”
“Okay,” I parroted.
“I’ll wish your hands back first. Then, I’ll wish us away from this place, to our own little home somewhere no one has ever been. You hear my words?”