We Leave Together, стр. 61

The sun set beside them all. Jona and the private of the tower stared north, to the top of this hill covered in pine. The blue sky misted in orange and purple. Evening twilight, and the two men sat there, looking up to this spot on the hill in the distance until it became a silhouette of a tower rising over the trees, like a giant land creature with four fat legs and a jagged back. Ahead was the last tower, at the edge of the woods that Dogsland called her own. Beyond that tower was a red valley that took so long to heal, and beyond that terrible boundary was a new city’s lands. Jona knew that an army was coming to that tower, and he looked out ahead to the watch tower’s horizon, seeking out the lines of smoke. There were none.

“Have you ever lit the fire?” said Jona, to the private.

“Aye,” he said. “Once it dries off a bit, the raiders come. Only getting too wet for an invasion. Can’t march horses in mud. Can’t do anything with the mud.”

“It’s not raining tonight.”

“It will,” he said. “You wait. There’s already clouds for it from the west. It’ll be a hard one, too. Ocean’s over that way, I hear, and it always sends the worst this time of year.”

After nightfall, the spurned private lit a pipe. He puffed away quietly. It smelled so peaceful. Then, it smelled of rain. The heavy rain fell hard, flooding the roads for a day. There was nothing to do but wait and watch the hills for the warning fire.

Even in the worst of the storm, birdsongs drifted away to the cadences of bugs. And owls in their trees gently cooed their territory in the dark. And wolves far away howled to the waxing moon, my husband and I and our pack were smelling something wrong traveling the woods, but we did not know it yet and our place in Jona’s death had not begun.

Jona took a deep breath in the dark, while the private fell asleep beside him. He closed his eyes. He held real still, smelling rain and the sweet damp of the pine forest hills.

He wondered if this was like dreaming.

Tomorrow was another day. Calipari rested in the back of the cart with a damp cloth over his eyes. Jona drove the mule.

They kept a pile of paper in a heavy leather sack to keep the rain out of it. They kept a series of reports about their inspections. Calipari filled them out before they left each station. They were destined for a room of files where they would be skimmed quickly by a clerk and filed away.

Calipari shoved coins in Jona’s pockets. Calipari had led them off the path to this barn on a little milk farm.

Jona stumbled into the dark. He had a flask in his hand. He hadn’t tasted a drop. He listened to an old horse breathing heavily in a stall. The stench of cows and horses and pigs was everywhere, but Jona could only sense the old horse wheezing.

An oil lamp crept out of the darkness. The dim light spilled across an anonymous woman. She pressed one finger to her lips.

Jona closed his eyes. He held the flask out to her. She took it. Jona turned away from her. He took off his cloak. He spread the cloak over a low pile of hay and told her just to hold him a while, and do nothing.

“I just want to hold you a while, until you fall asleep. Okay?”

She shrugged. “I could do more.”

“I know, and you’d be good, too. But, I can’t right now. I don’t want it. I just want to hold you and watch you fall asleep. Can we do that?”

She shrugged. Pressed into her, it was all wrong. She smelled like the animals and a little bit like spoiled milk. She felt wrong, too, with too-soft flesh and bones pushing uncomfortably. She snored when she slept. He thought she was faking to get rid of him, and he was fine with that. He left the cloak and the money. It was drizzling outside, and he pulled his collar up. He walked back to where Nicola was asleep under the cart.

Salvatore was wandering these hills, following in Jona’s footsteps.

He wondered if Salvatore had some trick to keep the girls from throwing up and trembling all pale and terrible as if they were giving birth to their own death.