The Glass Arrow(74)

I am torn in half. I will not leave Kiran to die, but I need to find my family. If something happens to them while I’m this close, I will never forgive myself. If Kiran dies, I will never forgive myself. I snatch a stick off the ground and break it over my knee. I break the halves, and then the halves, until my hands are blistered and my hair is damp with sweat and there is nothing more to break.

When I return, Daphne’s curled in a ball against the wall, sniffling again.

“You should try to get some sleep,” I tell her.

She doesn’t answer.

“Daphne, it’s going to be okay. I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this.”

It’s not true—the last scrape I got in that was this bad, I ended up at the Garden.

She rolls over and faces the opposite way.

“You hungry?”

Silence.

I stare at the back of her head. Her red hair is a nest of sticks and mud and bits of leaves, but she doesn’t even bother to clean it up.

“Want a meal pill?”

“There’s only two left.” She sounds miserable. “We’re going to starve.”

I’m relieved she’s talking at all.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I say, more to myself as I blot the sweat from Kiran’s brow. “I’ve got the glass arrow.”

It’s an echo of the past, something my ma used to tell us when we were little. I use the water to wipe the dirt off Kiran’s face. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him so clean and I feel a little bit like I’m looking at him without his clothes on. His skin is smooth, pale in the reflection off the water. He’s got light freckles on his cheekbones I never noticed until just now. His lips are parted just a little. I skim the edge of his mouth with my fingertip, gently, and then draw back quickly and make sure Daphne didn’t see.

“What’s a glass arrow?” she asks without turning around.

I sit back on my heels.

“It’s just a story my ma would tell.” It was like saying, Don’t be afraid, I’ll take care of you, but I don’t tell Daphne that.

“So let’s hear it.”

I take a slow breath, suspecting that this will end in her making fun of me. But for some reason, I tell her.

“Once, a long time ago, when the grass was grazed too thin and the game was scarce, Fox and Deer sang to Mother Hawk for food to end their families’ suffering.”

She snorts in her snooty way, but I keep going.

“She flew down from the sky with an arrow made of green glass and told them that she’d give it to the winner of a race across the country.”

“What were they supposed to do, eat it?” Daphne rolls onto her back, staring up at the woven roots overhead.

“Fox thought the race was a waste of time and went to the lowlands in search of food. So Deer ran the path Mother Hawk had chosen alone. Into the mountains, across the sky, and back down into the valley. When he was through, Mother Hawk gave him the arrow to do what he would. He gave it to Fox, who placed it in the bow, drew back, and pierced Deer through the heart.”

“Deer wasn’t too smart, was he?”

“Just listen.”

Daphne’s breathing is slowing.

“Deer’s blood seeped into the ground, and from that place grew enough grass to feed his family for generations. But Fox and his family starved.”

“Why didn’t the deer just kill the fox?”

“A deer can’t live off a fox,” I say, quoting my ma. “But a family can live off one sacrifice for a long time.”

“So give this magic arrow to me,” she says after a while. “I’ll shoot you and eat you.”

Daphne doesn’t get it. She wouldn’t. She knows nothing about sacrifice.

She’s quiet, but just when I think she’s fallen asleep, she speaks.

“I wish I was ten years old again.”

“Me too,” I say before I think about it.

“Everything’s wrong out here. Even the sky. It’s like … there are holes in it. Bright spots.”

“They’re called stars.” Pity softens my words. I can’t believe she’s never seen stars on a clear night.

“Why do they do that?” She fans her fingers to represent the glow. “It can’t be normal.”

I take a slow breath. “My ma said they were the souls of those who have passed, waiting to return to their new forms.” I eye her through my lashes, wondering how she will attempt to make me feel foolish.

She’s staring at me. “Your birth mother? Not a Keeper?”

I nod.

“You think she’s one of…” She points to the sky.

Unsure how to answer, I only shrug. Sometimes I think she’s up there. Watching. Waiting to return. Sometimes I think she’s already back in her new body, spreading her wings and soaring over the mountaintops, free from disease and the hunters. Free from me.

Sometimes I wonder if her stories were always just stories, and she is part of the earth, nothing more.

Silence. Daphne is looking back up at the sky.

“It’s kind of pretty I guess.”

I want to tell her I think so too, but she’s already asleep.

*

NIGHT COMES AND KIRAN’S fever rages on.