We didn’t answer her. A lusty chorus of night insects started up, cued by some unknowable agreement. Full dark dropped down over us along with the reality of spending another night outside. I wanted to fragment into one giant panic but forced myself to pull back from that. There was an energy to being outside in the woods at night, I had learned. I thought, Maybe I can use it. A fizzing sort of calm came over me.
But my arm would not settle. Pain mushroomed in fantastic colors in my head. For a moment I closed my eyes to watch my agonized fireworks, but I snapped them open right away. Something buzzed around my ear. Another creature—segmented and much larger, winged—hummed against my cheek. I held my breath, then made myself exhale. Only insects, flying past.
“Maybe they’re done with us,” I said. “Maybe he’s gotten her to stop. Convinced her to let us go.” But even as I said it, I didn’t buy it. It felt silly hiding under a tree in the dark. Three wounded sitting ducks. Three children playing hide-and-seek with killers.
“You can’t think that way, Win,” Pia said. “You’ll make yourself helpless. We don’t know what’s happened. All we know is Sandra is dead and they’re both still out there.”
The mention of Sandra made me ache. I couldn’t even look at her with my mind’s eye, as if all that had happened was too large to take in just by looking or it would be too damaging to do so, like staring at an eclipse.
“Who knows what happens in these woods?” Rachel said. “People must disappear all the time, right? We can’t be the first. Just look at this godforsaken place.”
Whimpering, we moved closer together and tried to warm each other, avoiding our various wounds. Lit by the moon, the river flowed like pearly lava around the big rocks that divided it. The one Rachel had clung to an hour ago rose up like a ghost rock. I wondered if I could kill someone. Could I kill Dean? I pictured the tide of intelligence in his hands as they spoke to me, the photos he rubbed between his fingers like talismans, the way his face broke open with joy the first time I signed to him. I remembered his swift fingers nocking the arrow on the string, heard the creak of the bow as he aimed at my heart.
43
Pia and Rachel fell asleep like beaten, sleep-deprived dogs next to me. Pia looked as if she had conked out on her way to finding a comfortable position but was too tired to actually make it there. She slept sitting up with arms folded, chin on her chest, long legs stretched out in front of her, leaning away from Rachel and against me. Her head weighed heavy on my shoulder and I ached to move but didn’t. She’d stopped bleeding, but in the darkness the dried blood showed black on her arm and hand and covered a fair amount of her left leg. Rachel slept curled up in a ball on the ground next to her. She snored softly, steadily, as if she were someplace safe.
The plan was to take turns on watch every couple of hours, but since I was first up and my throbbing arm kept me awake anyway, I just let them sleep. As long as I was awake and on the lookout, it seemed the best thing for us. The night turned mild, and I was thankful for it. My eyes adjusted completely; if I had a book, I could easily have read it in the moonlight. The river became a bright coil of energy I drew from to keep going.
But the rush of the water was loud enough for me to fear I wouldn’t hear the softer things, like footsteps, like the breathing of someone other than Pia or Rachel. The ache in my arm vibrated with its own noise I struggled to listen over. How much warning would we have, anyway? Would there be a thunderous crashing through the woods? A puff of air as an arrow flew past? Or just a hole appearing in one of our chests? I pictured the animal heads swinging in the night breeze over the camp—the bear, coyote, deer, moose—wondered if any had seen their own death coming before they were snuffed out.
Only a yard from me, a branch dipped and swayed with the weight of a magnificent bird, an owl by the contour of its round head and broad body. It fanned out speckled brown-and-white wings and fluffed its wedge-shaped tail, then arranged itself, tucking back all its parts in proper order. It faced the river, its tufted ears cupped toward the surging current. I was close enough to watch its bony talons unclench, then resettle, clarifying their perch on the bough.