He signed, “It’s okay.” Shrugged.
I climbed up to sit by him, the fieldstones cold under my thin shorts. He reached in his mouth, pulled out a purple LEGO piece, and set it down on a flat section of stone. He smiled with pride. After a pause, he reached back in and withdrew a dozen more—blue, yellow, red, and orange—and lined them up in a row. In dreamworld, this made sense. Marcus helping out in his way. One last time he reached in and extracted bits of colored paper, which he carefully arranged on the rock in front of him. Studiously, he bent over his work and jockeyed the pieces around, like a puzzle. I looked down. It was Rory’s map.
A branch snapped. My eyes flew open, and Marcus vanished. I stared into Sandra’s face, her eyes bright with fear. Slow as death, I turned my head to look through the branches that covered my face.
Longbow slung across his shoulders, Dean towered over us from where he stood on the lip of the stony foundation, his dark form blocking the sun.
33
His breath came ragged and heavy as if he’d been running, and I could smell the tang of his body under the strips of cloth that covered him. With aching slowness, I lifted a pine bough off my face. Leaves rustled as Pia turned in her sleep, then stopped, nudged awake by Rachel, whose own breathing had quickened from the depths of slumber to shallow gasps.
Dean gazed down on us, his expression ravaged and sad as if he already regretted what he had to do. “Hello, Dean,” I said and signed.
He didn’t sign back.
“Wini!” Pia whispered harshly. “What are you doing, don’t—”
In one fluid motion, never taking his eyes off me, he reached behind his shoulder into a leather quiver of arrows, drew one ablaze with cardinal feathers, and nocked it to the string of his bow. He pulled back to full draw and aimed all that power and savage accuracy at my pounding heart.
“No,” I said and signed, forcing my fingers to move. “Please, no, please.” The bow squeaked under the strain of his draw, the muscles of his forearm standing out in ropy lines. How could anything so motionless be so full of energy and intent, so alive? I thought of the slaughtered creatures roasting over the fire at his homestead, how they had once been wet nosed and bright eyed, flying or bounding through the forest, armed with the things small creatures are armed with—speed, camouflage, sharp claws, a vicious beak, the talent for impossible stillness—but how even with all that brilliant nature, only a fraction of their numbers survived. How most were lost, tiny throats clamped in the teeth of predators, dead in seconds.
I knew that if I moved or made another sound I was done. I would die in that place, my friends as witness. He had made a promise and he meant to keep it. Our death meant that the only life he knew would go on.
I visualized myself brilliantly alive, sprinting through the forest to safety.
Prayed.
He jerked his upper body a fraction to the left and let the arrow go. The movement was so small it could have been a hiccup or twitch that saved me. A flash of crimson, the arrow sliced the air over my head and shot past me. I heard a thwump and turned to look. It had plunged—just inches from my neck—into the soft old mortar between the stones, fully halfway up its shaft, as if it would have preferred to go all the way through.
I exhaled.
Rachel threw off the pine boughs that covered her and sat up, grimacing, a rock clenched in one hand. Sandra lay frozen in place, eyes locked on the arrow that still shuddered between the stones.
“Don’t, Rachel,” I whispered to her.
Dean turned his fierce gaze to Rachel, dark eyes burning. There was nothing he couldn’t do to us. She dropped the stone in the dirt.
“Jesus, talk to him, Wini,” Pia said.
“You found us,” I said and signed, for those moments unable to think of anything else.
But he had dropped his eyes. Wouldn’t look at me, at anyone. Shoulders slumped, he seemed defeated somehow, almost embarrassed. A complete change in affect, though we tensed when he laid down the bow and reached across his shoulders to lift the tube of arrows off his back. He dropped it on the damp ground near where we lay, then dug inside a slender leather bag tied around his waist.
He held out something brown and withered. Nobody moved. He squatted and placed it on the stones.
Finally meeting my eye, he signed to me, “Are you hungry?”
I got to my feet, watching him every second. “What is it?”
He signed, “Squirrel.” Then: “Dry.”
I gestured at all of us. “Is there enough for my friends?”
He nodded and withdrew more meat from the whip-sewn sack. I picked up a small piece and ate it, my mouth almost too dry to chew, hunger the farthest thing from my mind. It tasted like some gamy old meat that had been left out in the sun, or the horribly overcooked pork chops my father used to force down our throats every Sunday.