“Good luck?” she whispered, with a bitter laugh. “Assst! We’re going to need it.”
13
Jenseny ran. South at first, because she figured they wouldn’t be as quick to search for her there. North were the farms, the flatlands, all gentle terrain and shallow rivers, a far more welcoming land than that which she had chosen. She imagined they would be searching for her there, expecting that a child, like water, would naturally flow toward the point of least resistance. South were the mountains, harshly forested, a tangle of cliffs and trees covered over in places with matted vines that clung to the canopy and blanketed the landscape in half-lit gloom. But there were few faeborn creatures in the great woods—most preferred to hang about the northern cities in the hopes of catching unwary travelers, or of breaching the warded walls through sheer force of numbers—and she was more than a little afraid of the sunlight anyway, so the southern woods were good enough for her. Good enough for now.
There were other Protectorates to the south, she knew, strung out like beacon lamps at intervals along the rocky shore. At first she thought she might find sanctuary in one of them, but the concept of dealing with strangers—any strangers—chilled her to the core. In her newborn terror it seemed that such men were not individuals, but mere fragments of a greater whole which had cast her out, condemned her, and now sentenced her father to die a gruesome death for having dared to shelter her. They were Other, and she was . . .
Alone.
So alone.
She dreamt of her father. Some nights the dreams were good, bits of their life together replayed in all its loving intensity. But waking up from those dreams was a little bit like dying, because it meant rediscovering that he wasn’t there, he wasn’t going to be there, not now and not ever again. More often the dreams themselves were bad. Some were nightmares proper, gruesome replays of her confrontation, distorted imaginings of what his death must have been like. Then there were others, even more frightening—dreams in which her father was his normal self but she was not, dreams in which she screamed at him, screamed at him for leaving her and for not being there for her and for daring to die when she needed him so badly, oh so very badly . . . Those were the dreams that upset her the most, and she lay afterward on the damp loam shivering with guilt and shame, feeling like she had somehow betrayed his love without quite knowing how.
Sometimes the creatures of the night would come after her. She was usually aware of their approach long before she could actually see them, though she couldn’t have said how she managed that. Maybe it was the Light. It didn’t make the truth visible exactly, not like it had with her father’s killer, but sometimes when the air lit up really brightly with its colors she would get a crawling sensation up along her spine, and then she knew that something was coming. Then she would run and run and pray (to the gods of this world, which her father said was a safe prayer) that it would go find some other prey, forget about her, not notice if she stopped to hide . . . and as often as not it did. Maybe the Light did that, too. It had never been more than a diversion to her, something that made the voices around her seem stronger and all the colors brighter, but maybe here in the Outside it was a more active force.
She should have asked her father about that while she had the chance.
She should have asked him so many things . . .
She slept during the day because she knew that was the safest time to let her guard down, and tried to find a cave or a crevice or some other sheltered space to do it in. Once she had tried making a lean-to out of her blanket and some fallen branches—her father had taught her how—but the noise from the sunlight was so terrible that she couldn’t sleep, not even with her head wrapped up tightly in her jacket. Why hadn’t he warned her about that? He had tried so hard to make her ready in case she had to go Outside someday, why hadn’t he ever told her that the sun came into the sky at dawn with a crash like a thousand cymbals being slammed together all at once, that the slender beams which poked down through the canopy at noontime struck the ground with such explosive force that when she lay on the ground she could feel it shake beneath her? Was it possible that he’d never heard these things himself? Like he’d never heard so many other things that were likewise a part of her world?
Oh, dad. She mourned for his limitations even as she mourned the loss of his life, mourned the barriers that had been between them even when they were closest. There was always so much he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel . . .
But you loved me. You always loved me. So much . . .
Why couldn’t I have saved you?
Day passed slowly into night and back again, over and over, exhausting and endless hours filled with a bleak despair. Once when the Light was strongest (it had cracked across the valley like a bolt of cloud-to-cloud lightning, rainbow colors flashing in the clear night air) she had dared to ask the unaskable, namely if the creature that had killed her father was actively trying to find her. The way she figured it, maybe since the Light would help her see and hear so many other things it would help her with that, too. She held her breath, waiting. And suddenly it seemed to her that the woods were very still, very quiet, oh so empty . . . like nothing big was moving except for her. Then the Light was gone, and she was left wondering if she’d gotten her answer or not. Or whether it was just her own loneliness reflected back at her, like in some giant mirror that reflected not your face but the essence of your soul.
She needed her father. Or someone. Anyone. As long as it was someone she could trust. But who was that? Members of the Church would kill her on sight, and the creature who had murdered her father must have allies . . . With sudden horror she realized that if they could eat her father and take his place, they could probably do that with anyone—which meant that anybody might be one of theirs. Even her old nurse. Even the other Protectors. All eaten and replaced, with . . . them.
Shivering, she fell to the ground and wrapped her arms about her knees. Her pants were threadbare, ripped by thorns and rough bark and too many days of sleeping on the ground; her shirt was so muddied and dusted with clay that it nearly matched her skin. Suddenly the dirt and the scratches and the tiredness and the fear were all too much for her, and she lowered her head into her arms and sobbed helplessly, wishing it would just end somehow. Wishing her father hadn’t raised her to always keep on fighting, because you never knew (he used to tell her) how the future might be a better place, so long as you got there to see it. Only now she couldn’t imagine any better future, couldn’t envision anything but more of the same forever and ever, running and hiding and forcing herself to eat berries from the brush even though she could hear them screaming as she pulled them loose . . . and being alone. Utterly. Now, and forever.
Tears weren’t enough, but they were all she had. Think of them as prayers, her father had once told her. That was back when her mother died. Think of every tear which falls as a message to your mother, wherever she is, that you love her very, very much. Because people couldn’t cross into the land of the dead without being dead themselves, he explained, but prayers and love could make the crossing. She always thought of that when she cried, even when it was for some other reason. So that something in her tears was always good, no matter how upset she was.
There was nothing good now. Only a loneliness so terrible that it drained her of the last of her strength, a feeling of helplessness—and hopelessness—so absolute that she didn’t see how she was going to survive the next hour, much less make it through the next few days. Why did it matter, anyway? What future was there for her? Why had her father invested so much time and energy into seeing that she could take care of herself, when in fact the best she had to look forward to was a quasi-animal existence, homeless and companionless and living off berries until the snow came and there were no more of those, and then it would be freezing cold and there would be no food unless she hunted and no one at all to be with her, no one to help keep her going . . .