The Lost Village(77)

“Shit,” I hear Max mutter, and there’s too much adrenaline in my body for me not to react instinctively. I take off after her.

The passage is so narrow that my shoulders scrape against the walls on either side. It almost feels like I’m elbowing my way through them, and I practically fall out onto the street on the other side. But now I see her.

She’s running as fast as she can down toward the river, but that isn’t quick. There’s something wrong about the way she’s moving—it’s a lumbering, hobbling gait, and one leg drags behind her.

Of course. Her ankle.

“Tone!” I call after her again. I can’t help it, pointless as I know it is.

I keep on running toward her, and it doesn’t take me long to catch up. Her breathing sounds strange, too; it’s more than a pant, it’s like a muffled hum. I hear Max and Robert running behind me.

I close the last of the distance between us with a few powerful strides and grab her arm, feel her skin and bone under the sleeve of her dirty knitted cardigan.

She erupts. With a loud, moaning wail of sheer panic she wrests her arm free, then flings it out as she twists, knocking me square on my temple and throwing me off balance. I manage to break my fall, but the blow is so powerful that I see stars, and I bite a gash into my lip on impact.

I lie there for a few seconds, trying to make my head stop spinning. I’ve never been hit before. I roll onto my side and blink away the spinning and the pain, and see that Max and Robert have managed to get hold of her.

Tone is struggling like a wounded animal, kicking and trying to bite at them. Her eyes are flitting around, unfocused. I try to meet her gaze, but there’s no recognition there, only mindless anxiety and rage.

Her hair is ruffled and stiff with dirt, and her lank, blood-encrusted fringe is stuck to her forehead by a dirty, smeared scab. She can’t put any weight onto her bad foot, but time and again she tries to step on it. Finally she kicks out and yelps in pain when it hits Max’s thigh. I shudder—as much from Max’s gasp as from the sight of the abnormal bend in her ankle.

“Stop!” says Max. “Tone, stop, try to calm down, we won’t hurt you, we don’t want to hurt you, we want to help you.”

I want to tell him he sounds too angry, too worked up, too agitated; to tell him to try to speak calmly, softly; that she might not be reacting to his words but his tone; that he has to show her he means her no harm. But I can’t get a word out.

“She can’t hear you,” Robert says thickly, then, linking his arms around her, he just sits down.

Tone is slight in build, with narrow shoulders and hips, and however hard she flails and fights, she can’t escape his firm grip. She gives up after a few seconds, stops kicking and squirming, and drops that awful, raw moan. It turns into a heavy pant.

It’s only then that I realize my entire body is shaking.

I squat down in front of them, partly to be at Tone’s level, and partly to hide the fact that my legs can’t hold me.

“Tone!” I say, trying to meet her eyes. “Tone, it’s me. Alice.”

She doesn’t look at me. She’s staring down at the ground, still panting breathlessly.

The blood on her forehead has run down to her eyebrow, clumping her fine strands of hair into strange, lumpy forms. I try not to let my eyes drop to her hands, but I do.

She’s too sick, I think, trying to convince myself over the pounding of my heart in my ears, over the taste of iron on my tongue and her raspy, panting breaths.

Emmy’s much stronger, it wouldn’t have been possible, Tone could never have overpowered her.

But the voice of logic is impossible to turn from.

And if her ribs were broken?

If Tone was out of her senses, like now, and she had no means of escape?

I think the tears are about to start again, but they don’t. That blessed, welcome blurriness never arrives. Tone’s contours remain sharp, and I stare at her in the dirt and sunlight with dry, swollen eyes, unable to escape the recognition growing within me.





NOW



At first I suggest taking Tone back to the church—which seems like the most obvious thing to do—and neither of the others make any objections. But as soon as Tone catches sight of the place, she starts going wild again, kicking and struggling enough to almost topple Max. It’s only when we back off into a side street that she calms down again.

“What is it about the church?” Max asks. He directs the question at me; we have all given up trying to communicate directly with Tone.

“I don’t know,” I say, completely drained. All I want is to sleep. “But we probably won’t get her in there.”

There’s something horrible and disturbing about the sight of skinny little Tone suspended between the two bigger men, something that triggers a sort of primal fear in me—not for her, but for them. I want to tell them to let her go, to leave her alone. Despite having just seen her swinging, roaring, and kicking; despite her unfocused gaze and that awful, bloody mask she’s wearing.

And those hands. Those thin, dirty fingers that my eyes keep being drawn to, that I can’t stop staring at.

I’ve reached some sort of limit. I’m so tired I don’t even feel heartbroken anymore, just resigned.

“What do we do?” Robert asks me. I see my own state of mind reflected in his face. His skin is gray.