We Leave Together, стр. 71

It was so beautiful, that he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t feel anything to cry with. No skin. No teeth. No tears.

***

Weeks later, my husband and I found this child of a demon—we found his body. He called out to me from Erin’s sacred rocks.

Where is my body?

Where is Rachel?

***

And what of Rachel Nolander and her brother, Djoss? They traveled beyond the red valley, but the demon weed ran deep inside of him. He would never truly leave the city. He couldn’t. He would come back to the city, seeking it. He would lose his tongue and ears in the night, trying to find it. He would forget himself, and become forgotten in the city.

If Rachel is the person Jona loved, than she would return for her brother. She will be in the city pulling him from the sewer and cleaning his face when he has slept in mud.

We do not search for her there.

The hills call to us.

The forest and swamps and mountains sing night music, where all the creatures of Erin sing as loud as they can their song of joy.

If she is not in the city, she will be found.

That will be enough to quiet the lost soul that haunts me still, and will be with me a long time. Jona, this will have to be enough.

Rest, now, lost child. Find your peace.

***

Calipari’s farm was far from a road. My husband and I stopped in at the tavern where Franka used to work, and already they had disappeared into the green hills.

The tavern keeper told us what direction they had taken. He didn’t know where it was, exactly. A farmer on his way into the city knew and pointed to familiar landmarks. He told us we could wait for him to finish his business inside the walls and he’d take us on his cart.

We thanked him. We pulled the wolfskin over our backs and darted into the treeline. We would find the farm ourselves.

We followed bear trails through the marshlands dodging bramble canes and the roots of high sour nut trees that rooted shallow enough to trip a man in the water. We ran into the maple hills above the mud. We howled to the moon, and to our pack, but they were both too far from us to hear.

We missed the wolves of our home.

Through the maple hills and the myrtle marshlands and to the northeast and northeast my husband and I ran, until we came upon a sweaty back digging fence stumps on barren ground. Nicola Calipari didn’t have a shovel. He was using a small, flat plank to dig.

He was surprised to see us.

I stood up, a woman. My husband stayed wolf and sniffed the perimeters of the farmland.

“Hello,” I said.

He dropped his stick. “You’re back, huh? Anything else I can do to help?”

I bowed to him.

“Never thought I’d see you two again,” he said, “Still hunting?”

“No,” I said, “Salvatore Fidelio is dead. We were unable to find Rachel Nolander.”

“Who?”

“If you encounter a woman named Rachel Nolander, tell my husband and I which way she went.”

“That’s the Senta Jona was with, right?”

“Yes.”

“What about Jona’s mother?”

“Her head was on the wall when we crossed the gates.”

He nodded. “That’s it, isn’t it? Anything else?”

I looked around his farm. He had a few sticks beginning to look like a fence. He had a plow under a makeshift hut to keep the rain from rusting it. He had a dirty tent where—I assume—Franka kept house. Her son was in a tree, pulling at acorns. He had stopped when he saw us. A man could live a long time on acorns, if he washed away the bitter in the nut.

“You have no animal to pull the plow?” I said.

“Coming soon, if my neighbor is honest.” He looked back at the fallow fields. This was a farm before the war, but so many farms in this borderland went abandoned when the armies clashed here. “I’ve got a wagon coming, too. Wagon has the grain and seed. I bought it all from this fellow Franka knew. Good price.” He grimaced. “I think it was a good price. I don’t know Bloody Elishta about farming. He’s getting it to us soon. He better.”

“What will you grow?”

“Some barley, and some beans. Franka wants a separate garden just for vegetables, but we got to get a good cash crop down first. We should get chickens, too.”

“A pig might be wiser, for now. Pigs can forage in the hills on their own, and when they are big enough, you can cure the meat to last all through the rains when the fields flood.”

“Pigs, huh?”

“Pigs,” I said. My husband disappeared around some trees on the land. “You did a great service to Erin when you killed the demon child. Then, you served us again when you wrote your maps and letters for us. The church is grateful. I shall arrange some pigs for you. They will help you through the winter. Collect their dung for the barley fields. Collect your own shit, if you can. You’ll need everything you can to feed the fields. Bury everything there.”

He scratched his neck. He looked around his farm. “You don’t think the wolves’ll get to the pigs, do you? I’ve been hearing wolves all night for weeks.”

“We are the only wolves in these hills,” I said. “Our brothers and sisters are on a long hunt past the red valley. We howl to them, far away. Your pigs will be safe from us and our kind this winter, at least, if not the next.”

He nodded. He looked down at the hole he was digging. He kicked at the misplaced dirt. He looked over his shoulder at the boy collecting acorns from the tree, who had stopped for us. We still frightened him. He stayed in his tree.

I looked directly in his face. “Are you and Franka married, yet?”

He shrugged. “We’re married because we say we’re