Ona Is An Orchid. She is graceful and singular and she is fatal. She is fragile. This is not her home. And in the light that precedes the sun she almost looks at peace, her chest rising and falling to the shallow rhythm of sleep.
The fire is down to coals. A dead soldier’s helmet sits top down upon them. Bits of rabbit and wild onion sizzle in the crown.
We will eat. Then, we will move.
Our few small things are packed. My nights become increasingly restless, and it is easier to prepare for the next day than it is contemplating the stars and hoping that laying down equates to rest.
I keep my hands busy by carving small figurines out of bits of greenwood. Its a horsehead tonight.
I throw atop the coals.
A sacrifice.
A prayer for speed.
“Ona.” I lay my palm on her good shoulder when the food starts to smell burnt. She gasps and sits up. Its quick and violent. The dreams do that. Her chest heaves now, but her heart slows quickly and she’s left blinking. “Breakfast is ready.”
Keith has adapted less well. I prod him with my foot and dance away. He mutters to himself, and snorts before settling back into sleep. I try again. “Keith.” I’m not quick enough this time. He shouts, and the next thing I know my feet are out from under me and I’m flinching, throwing my arms in front of face to catch his fists.
They rain down. Three slow, heavy blows. He plants his fists in the dirt beside my shoulders, and screams in my face. Not words, just three spit slinging, primal howls. There’s a glaze of terror in his eyes. They sharpen when Ona’s silhouette moves behind him. She’s rubbing his back, whispering something in his ear.
He rolls off of me. I make fists to flex life back into my arms. “Breakfast is ready.” The bruises are already forming.
“-sorry.” His voice is gruff after screaming so hard. He looks irritated. I can’t blame him. He says he doesn’t remember his outbursts most of the time.
He’s losing control of himself.
I’d be angry too.
I set the helmet before him, digging the pickel into the ground to keep it from tipping over. “Its fine. We’re all having a rough go of it.” At least Ona can bring him back when he goes to that place.
He fishes a finger into the makeshift pot and withdraws a vittle. He eyes it disappointedly. “Burnt rabbit. Again. Great.”
I am going to put him in the ground soon.
“Its not so bad.” Ona says between chewing.
“Do you have to char it so much?”
“I told you. We can’t afford to get sick out here we-”
“-have to make sure it's thoroughly cooked.” His imitation of my voice is rather high pitched, I think. “I know. You can still burn it. Just... burn it a little less, maybe.”
“You catch some food and you can cook it however you please.”
His eyes slit, and discordant quiet settles over us.
We pack the rest of our things in silence and set out with the sun. The day is cold. The woods are dead. The squirrels move cautiously. The birds chirp in hushed tones.
#
Its close to noon when I open my mouth to apologize. Ona begins to say something at the same time.
Keith ends up speaking. “I could get my own food. But you took my knife.” He stops and he’s staring at the forest floor, brows knit. Ona’s hand reaches to her shoulder. The cut is still healing from the last time he held the knife.
“You know why I took it.”
“That was two weeks ago. I’m fine now.”
“Yeah.” No.
He just lets a hushed growl.
“You nearly-” I lose my words. “I’m not giving it back.” He nearly killed her. The wound isn’t even close to healed. Its amazing that it isn’t infected.
“What if they catch up. I need some way to defend myself.”
“You can use your fists. We’re gonna need more than knives and sharp sticks if they catch up anyway.”
He lets out another frustrated sigh and starts trudging along again. We follow.
“What if I give it to you, and you wake up in one of those dreams in the middle of the night and kill us?”
“That won’t happen.”
“How can you know? You damn near broke both my arms this morning.”
“It just won’t. You don’t sleep at all anyway, you’d catch me.” He’s losing his edge, the latter comment is colored with a small laugh. The effort is nice.
We fall back into silence, but its easier this time. Just the leaves shuffling under our feet, the sound of the helmet, hanging from my pack, smacking against my thigh with each step.
#
Perhaps my restless nights are the reason we don’t hear the dogs anymore. We’re probably starting our day a lot faster. Putting greater distance between us and them. A week after that beating and we haven’t even seen smoke from their fires.
We stop to take a break next to stream one day. A large has fallen across the trickle of water, creating a small pond. Ona and Keith rinse the journey off in the cold water. I lay back on the felled tree and sleep finally takes me.
There’s fire in my dreams. Shackles and blood and bloodlust. Deacon. The Shadow and The Shaper and The Boarhound. And my hand snatching the necklace I gave to Ona from Marion Hazwell’s neck.
I wake to a drizzle of rain. Peaceful.
“Dammit, Keith.” Its Ona. “What were you thinking.”
He doesn’t say anything. I open my eyes. Keith is sitting on the ground. Ona is crouched beside him. She’s wrapping a piece of her shirt around his forearm. There is red all over his arm. On his pants. On Ona’s hands. The rain is washing it away.
I check. The knife is still on my belt.
“Why would you do something like this?”
“I don’t know. I thought it’d help me focus.”
“Well did it?”
No answer. He looks away from her, notices that I’m watching them and stares at the ground instead.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I slipped.” He answers.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“He was messing around in water and fell on a sharp rock.”
I look at the water. Something gleams beneath its surface. I wade out to investigate. “You fell over here?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
My hand pulls a sword out of the water. The hilt is wrapped in red. The pommel is a falcon head. Its the kind of sword that the leaders of the Red Knives carry.
I show them when I get back on land.
“But that doesn’t make sense.” Keith says.
“How could they get in front of us?” I wonder aloud.
“Maybe we went in a circle?” Ona says.
“We didn’t. We haven’t seen trees like these before.”
“We should move.”
We do. The rain gets worse, but we walk through it and pray we don’t get sick. I keep the sword in my hand. We move as fast as we can, scanning the trees harder than we did during our first days on the run.
Nothing happens. The forest plays tricks sometimes.
#
Would that we were birds.
Would that we were unreachable.
Walls. Mountains. Rivers. Borders. These are not obstacles for those with wings. They are details on a map, moved beyond as easily as a finger slides across silk.
The leaves of the maple trees scatter upon the wind in bursts of fire. Red and yellow their heatless flames engulf the earth.
And maybe birds run too, but they also challenge the very ground, the very ocean, and dive quick as the golden strike of the stormclouds they dance between.
They’re scarce these days. The squirrels too. The wind blows at our backs and I smell the smoke. We are going to hit a wall. Hunger. The pursuit. Ourselves. All of these things come for us. Keith hasn’t spoken more than few words the passed three days. He’s got that look in his eyes that I don’t like.
I’m going to have to do it soon. We could leave him in the night, but it’d be worse if they caught him. I’m positive.
Would that we were birds.
We’d run from this winter and we’d never come back.
#
Before the plantation - before Ona, and the Hazwells, and the Red Knives, and the gods - I met Keith. We were thieves. We hid in the mines together. We filched chickens and rags from the nearby farms. We barely subsisted on our pluckings, but we happy.
He was always bigger, and that’d been to my advantage when we’d wandered into Aven and had to deal with the toughs.
It was summer when we met. I was running away for the first time. There were no fires giving chase in those days. Guards moving at the behest of the Lains had come in the night to drag my people from our gutters and holes. It was the dogs again. We heard them weaving back into our alleys long before they arrived. We could have run then, but there was nowhere to go. The same traits that made the alley an attractive residence were going to make it our undoing.
Mama Vys lifted me and stuffed me into a crate almost immediately. Which was good because even though the hounds sounded a long way off, they were upon us in moments.
Mostly the guards used short metal rods and blows to the shoulder or skull to subdue the trapped crowd. Their hungry swords were ready for the truly resistant however. I watched the people who’d helped me find food disappear into the night. I watched the arms and legs flail. Their faces turn red and blue in fear and suffocation. The only sound after the night swallowed them being that slap of their bare feet kicking and scraping against the cobbles.
That too faded leaving only the razor sharp tranquility that comes in those moments of resigned clarity. I’m either going to die, or I’m going to get away. It was a thought I resigned myself to.
After an eternity spent listening to my own hushed breathing day broke. I abandoned the crate.
The roofs were the quickest way out of the alley, but the storm pipes that one had to climb to get to them couldn’t take an adults weight. I scaled them in record time that day.
A stolen loaf of bread later and I was walking away from the city.
Keith found me later that year, a curled up bundle of bones in an old barn, trying to keep warm in the freezing winter. He knew how to make fire and what berries were good to eat. And I knew how to steal. We taught each other and spent the next two decades together.
#
“We should go north.” Ona says when I shake her awake one day. There’s something drawing her there.
“South would be warmer.” Its the only argument I’ve got. We’re not heading anywhere in particular, just generally east at this point. We passed a small village a week ago. I managed to acquire a few blankets and some hard tack. “The Shaper was from there.”
“We need to go north.” She asserts.
I don’t argue. Keith doesn’t either. He just stares at us, his heavy breaths ghosting upon the wind.
#
They’re on top of us the next evening.
I can the smell the burn of their camp. Why have they come this far? Three runaways are not worth this expedition. Ona could make quick work of them, but I don’t want her to. I hate seeing her like that and the way she leaves the trees. I shake Keith awake and pray he doesn’t have an episode.
He doesn’t.
We slip through the woods toward the smoke. In a small clearing we stop. I reach for the knife. Its sheath hangs empty on my hip. Keith cracks a tree branch under his foot and I look at him. Steel glints in his hand. He wasn’t asleep. That’s why he didn’t wake with a start.
“I’ve seen the way you two’ve been watching me.” He says. “I’m not letting you do it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think I’m off. You think I’m a burnt mouse away from snapping.”
“No. We’re just worried about you. You haven’t been the same since the plantation.” Somehow the truth and the lie are the same thing.
“The fucking plantation.”
“Yeah.”
“We have murderers after us. Who know how many, or why? Of course I’m not going to be on edge. You’re the one who’s off, you’ve barely changed at all with this fucking flight. Are enjoying this- this shit?” His voice is getting louder.
“Just listen-”
“You’re cooking got worse. You burn fucking everything now. And you took my knife!” He lunges then.
The knife scrapes my shoulder and plants in the tree directly behind me as I dance to the side. My fist catches him in the cheek and he tears the knife free as head snaps back. It sails from his hand and lands atop the rotting forest floor.
Somehow we end up on the ground. He’s on top of me. He’s got my shirt bundled up in his left hand and my arms pinned beneath his knees. His free fist is making a mess of my face with the rhythm of blacksmith’s hammer. So this what an anvile feels like. My head keeps snapping back into the dirt.
He stops. Through the blood and bruising I feel something fall wet upon my face. Tears are coming from his eyes. “You were going to do it tonight.”
My words won’t form at this moment.
“Tell me you were going to kill me tonight.”
I give up, “. . . Yeah.”
“Fuck, Edmund. What did we do? This isn’t how it was supposed to end.”
“No.”
He climbs off of me. I work my way to a sitting position. He’s collecting the knife.I reach my hand up to my face. My fucking nose is a disaster. I heard it when I spoke.
He’s coming toward me.
“Keith. I’m sorry.” Its not a plea. I was going to do the same him. I wasn’t going to tell him about it though.
A branch snaps at the edge of the clearing. I see his head snap to look over me.
“He made me.” He’s saying almost immediately, like a child trying to get out of trouble.
I don’t have to look to know that its Ona. I start working my way to my feet. “Stay down.” Her command fills the air like a river breaking a dam.
I stay down. Vomit bubbles up from my stomach and lands yellow and empty on leaves beside my face.
She walks passed me. Her short, cedar hair peaks from beneath the wool cap I filched for her.
“Ona.” I don’t want her to do this.
“Quiet.”
“Ona.” Its Keith this time. “I didn’t mean it.”
She walks up to him and places a hand on his shoulder. You’d think a snake had just latched onto him from the look he gives it. He doesn’t keel over though. “Pick Ed up. We’re going back to camp.”
#
“You’re going to start going east again, Keith.” She’s cleaning the blood off my face with a rag.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe you can draw them off our trail. If they don’t follow you, settle in the first town you come across. We’ll keep going north. You can leave at daybreak.”
“Ona. I’m sorry.”
“Apologize to Edmund.”
“I’m sorry, Ed.” I think he’s done crying. My eyes are closed. He’s too difficult to look at “I can’t go- I’ll be alone.”
“Better that than dead or a killer.” Ona is steel.
He sighs. I fall into sleep. Fists cure restlessness apparently. He’s gone before I rise.
He is the closest thing to family that I have ever known.
#
The helmet swinging from my belt, clicking against the exposed bit of the sword poking from its makeshift sheath of cloth, is the only source of noise as we walk now. We are not quiet with other people, but silence has always settled in the moments when it is only Ona and me.
It is two days since Keith departed. It is odd, the guilty relief that has grown with our distance. I don’t think I’ll lay down without it.
“Are you okay?” She doesn’t seem any different, but I ask anyway. I ask everyday. Less now than when we started, but at least once. Are you okay? I ask. And she responds with the same lie every time.
“I’m fine.” She always says before asking me back.
Except that’s not what she says this time. She doesn’t say anything. She watches the ground and keeps walking. Our strides are smaller the further along we get. Whether its the hungry exhaustion, or some unconscious attempt to delay arriving wherever we inevitably will I do not know.
I don’t repeat myself. She heard me. She’s done lying, I think.
An age passes.
“Are you okay?” Its quiet. Blunt. Not a whisper, just quiet. And angry.
“I’m fine.”
Another age.
Then, “You’re a liar.”
I feel the silence pushing against me. I want to say something, but there’s nothing to say to that. She’s right.
I tell her. “You’re right.”
“I know.” She stops and turns on me. There’s a finger in my face, the nail is chewed unusually short. She bites them before she sleeps at night. Keeps her mind from wandering where she doesn’t want it to, I think. “You’re not fine.” She’s definitely angry.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. We were counting on you be fine, and you haven’t been. You’re a fucking liar.”
“Ona.”
“We were counting on you to be fine and you aren’t!”
“Ona.”
“You were going to kill Keith, Edmund. You’re the one that’s supposed to keep us level, and you were going to murder your best friend. You called him your brother and you were going to slit his throat one night.”
She’s disregarding the fact that he’s the one who attacked me. “How could you know that?”
“I watched you watching us. You’re not the only that can’t sleep at night. I watched you stare at him night after night, trying to convince yourself that it was the right thing to do.”
“He was broken, Ona.”
“You broke first. You broke and he knew, and so he broke too. And now he’s gone, and you two are going to die with that day being the last you spent together.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. I push past her, and start walking again.
Its an hour before I realize she hasn’t followed. I give her fifteen minutes to appear before trudging back. She’s in the same spot, sitting on the ground, waiting.
“You want me to fix it?”
She stares at me. “Its too late.”
“I’ll go find Keith.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll keep going north?”
She’s quiet. “Yeah.”
“Is that okay?”
“No.”
“But you can’t backtrack. They can’t get a hold of you.”
“I know.”
“It’ll only be a few days. I’ll be back and Keith will too.”
“I know.”
“I’m going now.” I offer her a hand.
She accepts it and pulls herself to her feet. “Okay.”
Her eyes are wells of jade.
“Ona-”
“I know.”
She knows.
“Hurry up and get back,” she says.
Her arms slide inside of my cloak. They wrap around my back and squeeze. She’s almost the same size as me, but she feels small when my own arms coil around her shoulders. The world is a vast and moving thing, but we’re together in that moment our breaths enter and exit with same rhythm and in that moment we stand still and exchange strength and hope. We matter, and the only place that could possibly exist is where we are together.
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