“Go!” the captain screamed when Iris remained standing blankly.
Iris nodded and stumbled through the dusky light to the back of the lorry. Soldiers were being loaded, and she waited, not wanting to push her way through. Eventually, one of the privates saw her and hefted her up into the crowded bed without a word.
She sprawled on top of someone groaning in pain.
Iris shifted her weight, unbalanced by the two bags on her back. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Miss Winnow?”
She studied the bloodied soldier beneath her. “Lieutenant Lark? Oh my gods, are you all right?”
It was a ridiculous thing for her to ask. Of course, he wasn’t all right—none of them were all right—but she suddenly didn’t know what to do, what to say. She gently moved to sit beside him, wedged between his body and another soldier. The lorry jerked and rumbled forward, jostling everyone in the back.
Lark grimaced. In the faint light she could see the dirt and blood on his face, the shock haunting his eyes.
“Lieutenant Lark?” Iris glanced down at his hand. His fingers were splayed over his stomach, coated in bright blood. As if he were holding himself together.
“Miss Winnow, I told you to retreat. Why are you still here? Why are you in this last lorry with me?”
The last lorry? Iris swallowed the acid that rose in her throat. There had been so many other wounded soldiers at Station Fourteen. She shouldn’t have taken a seat. She shouldn’t be here.
“I wanted to help,” she said. Her voice sounded rough and strange. Like it belonged to someone else, and not her. “Here, what can I do to make you more comfortable, Lieutenant?”
“Just sit here with me, Miss Winnow. Everyone … they’re gone. All of them.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. That “everyone” was his platoon. The Sycamores.
She closed her eyes for a moment, to center herself. To tamp down her rising panic and tears. She was sitting in the covered back of a lorry, surrounded by wounded soldiers. They were driving east, to where Avalon Bluff lay, kilometers away. They were safe; they would reach the infirmary in time.
The cut on her chest flared.
Iris lifted her hand and pressed her palm over it. That was when she realized something was missing. Her mother’s golden locket.
She swore under her breath, searching around her. But she knew the necklace was long gone. The chain must have broken when the grenade’s blast hurled her forward along the ground. The remnant of her mother was most likely still there, in the place that had blown her and Roman apart. She could see it in her mind’s eye—the locket now trampled into the mud of the trench. A small glimmer, a faint trace of gold among shrapnel and blood.
Iris sighed, lowering her hand.
“Are you well, Miss Winnow?” Lark asked, bringing her back to the present.
“Yes, Lieutenant. Just thinking of something.”
“Where is Mr. Kitt?”
“He was wounded earlier. He’s already in transport.”
“Good,” Lark said, nodding. He clenched his eyes shut. Iris watched the blood continue to pool through his fingers. She could feel it slowly seep into the leg of her jumpsuit. “Good. I’m glad … I’m glad he’s safe.”
“Would you like to hear a story, Lieutenant Lark?” Iris asked quietly, not sure where the question came from. “Would you like to hear how Enva played Dacre for a fool with her harp beneath the earth?”
“Yes. I would like that, Miss Winnow.”
Her mouth was so dry. Her throat felt splintered and her head was throbbing, but she began to spin the myth. She had read it so many times in Carver’s letters; she had his words memorized.
When the soldiers in the lorry around her fell quiet, listening, she wondered if perhaps she should have chosen a different myth. Here she was, talking about Dacre, the author of their wounds and pain and losses and heartaches. But then she realized that there was power in this story; it proved that Dacre could be tamed and bested, that Dacre was not nearly as strong and shrewd as he liked to be perceived.
“I owe you a story in return,” Lark said after Iris had finished. “You once asked me about the Sycamore Platoon. Where our name came from.”
“Yes,” Iris whispered.
“I want to tell you now. We all grew up in the same town, you see,” Lark began. His voice was low and raspy. Iris had to bend closer to catch his words. “It’s a place north of here, hard to find on a map. We’re farmers; we toil under rain and sun, we know everything about the loam, and we count our lives by seasons more than years. When the war broke out … we decided we should join the fight. There was a group of us that could form our own platoon. And we thought that if we joined, the conflict would end sooner.” He snorted. “How wrong we were.”
Lark quieted, his eyes closing. The lorry hit a pothole, and Iris watched as his face grooved in pain.
“Before we left home,” he continued, even fainter now, “we decided to carve our initials into the great sycamore tree that overlooked one of the fields. The tree was on a hill, like a sentry. It had been struck by lightning twice but had yet to split and fall. And so we believed there was magic in that tree, that its roots gave nutrients to the soil we tilled and planted and harvested. That its boughs watched over our valley.
“We carved our initials into its bark. It was a prayer for the magic of home to watch over us, even as the kilometers came between us. A prayer and a promise that we would all return someday.”
“That’s beautiful, Lieutenant,” Iris said, touching his arm.
He smiled, opening his eyes to look upward. Blood bubbled between his teeth.
“I didn’t even want to be lieutenant,” he confessed. “I didn’t want to lead us. But that’s how the cards fell, and I carried that weight. Carried the worry that some of us might not return home. That I would have to go to these mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and wives and husbands. People I had known all my life. People who were like family. And say … I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to protect them.”
Iris was silent. She wondered if he was about to slip into unconsciousness. If the pain of his wounds was too great. She wondered if she should keep him talking, keep him awake.
She reached for his hand.
Lark said, “I’ll have to say it over and over and over, now. If I live, I’ll be full of nothing but regrets and apologies, because I’m the last one. The Sycamore Platoon is gone, Miss Winnow. We woke up this morning to one world, and now the sun is setting on another.”
When he closed his eyes again, Iris remained quiet. She held his hand, and the last of the light waned. Eventide was giving way to the night, and once she would have been terrified of Dacre’s hounds and the possibility of their attack. But now there was nothing to fear. There was only grief, raw and sharp.
She was still holding Lieutenant Lark’s hand an hour later when he died.
There was smoke in her hair, smoke in her lungs, smoke in her eyes, burning her up from within.
And Iris covered her face and wept.