The Book Gatherer

Chapter Eight

Honi woke to a bug crawling into her mouth.

"Plegh!" she cried, spitting it out. The beetle wiggled its legs pathetically in the air before rolling over and scuttling away. She launched another wad of saliva at it before it could burrow beneath the layer of crunchy leaves that covered the little clearing they'd made camp in. Jeje looked over, lazily chewing her way through a leafy branch torn from a tree.

Grimacing at the sour taste in her mouth, Honi dug through the saddlebag she'd used as a pillow to find her inkskin. Too late, she remembered it was empty just as she touched the mouth to her lips and tasted nothing but stale air.

"Stupid thing," she muttered as she threw it back in the saddlebag. "Stupid bug waking me up. Stupid headache. Stupid dreams. Stupid him." She glared across the smoking campfire at the essie's sleeping form. She'd been too tired the previous night to tie him to a tree. But it wasn't him she was thinking about, it was her dreams.

She remembered strong arms, warm and brown as her own, cradling her close. She remembered a voice, though not the words, soft and quiet and so full of the love a parent possessed for their child, murmuring lullabies into her ear.

Scowling, Honi turned her back on Goggles, tugging off the thick socks she'd worn to protect her feet from the autumn night's chill. She balled them up and punched them into the saddlebag, then stole a glance over her shoulder. Goggles was still sleeping. That he rested so peacefully made her angrier. How could his sleep be so easy after the headache he'd caused yesterday? First the screaming, then the arguing, then slowing their progress until it was nonexistent.

As she stared at him, fingers deftly plaiting five yearbraids into her hair, she thought about just leaving him behind.

You can't, she reminded herself as she tied the rest of her wild black curls up with her yellow zigzag headscarf. He'll either die or find his friends and chase after me again. As much as she would love to, she couldn't risk it.

We shouldn't have risked it, we shouldn't have, Mother had sobbed into little Honi's ear.

Wisk what, mammy, wisk what? Honi had asked, not understanding, never understanding, not even when—

Honi tried to push the memory away. It was long ago, it didn't matter anymore. But the dream clung stubbornly on.

She remembered a hand, knuckles bloodied and broken, trailing in the dirt, watching it go by with her thumb in her mouth, not understanding why. Not understanding later when mammy was screaming and crying and when Auntie Raulie was squeezing her to her chest. Never understanding until that night when the fire was lit and smoke full of spirits, memories, grief curled toward the sky. Mother knelt before the flames and offered a book to the Earth Serpent in hopes that he would remember her husband burning alongside the other fallen warriors.

She remembered the smell of that burning book, distinct from the crackle of wood and slippery fat of flesh. She smelled it now.

Honi whipped her head up to find the source of the stink. The essie boy was crouching over the fire, a pitiful flame wavering on the ashes of wood before him. His eyes were closed, head bent forward as if in prayer, and as Honi watched he threw something in with his bound wrists that made the flames and smell flare. His nostrils flared as he breathed it in.

"What are you doing?" Honi cried, scrambling to her feet. "Is that a book page?"

Goggles ignored her, just breathed in the smoke.

And suddenly Honi was in the fire, stomping on the hot coals with her bare feet, not feeling the pain when it was so fierce within. Goggles cried out, yelling at her, but she didn't hear, didn't stop stomping and kicking until the fire was out, the wood scattered, the ash smeared up to Honi's ankles. Only then did she stop, legs shaking, breathing heavily, staring at a thin wisp of smoke that curled up to her nose. It smelled of burning books, still. Ink bubbling in a boil, page corners blackening and curling, the words of stories of memories bleeding out, rising to the stars. Lost.