Animals We Made

Consider Lily | Part 3

Quintus stabbed at the ground, breaking it up even more. His weapon twinkled in the darkening night. The girl assisted him by scooping up handfuls of loam. He monitored the horizon for caravans. Should he be identified as the killer of his Roman associates, it'd guarantee his demise, and submission to the Emperor would be unavoidable.

Lily wept as she pawed at the dirt.

"Are you mourning your oppressors?" Quintus lashed his sword, cutting at roots and weeds. "If you don't hush, I'll bury you with them."

"You rescued me." Snot trickled from her nose. "Why?"

"Because I'm a fool."

"No, there's something pretty in your heart."

"Let me alone, you desert rat."

"You're not as evil as you want to be."

As the hour trundled on, he and the girl dug in silence. The vastness of the plain afforded them the isolation they required. Quintus worried, however, about the corpses in the open. He dragged them one at a time into the same bush from whose leaves his vomit plipped and plopped. The girl herself complained of nausea after a while, and she began to spasm and whimper and retch.

A moth fluttered past her.

She watched it go as if she'd just seen an angel.

Quintus tore a piece of his cape. Knotting the fabric around his wounded arm, he groaned. Then he rolled the bodies into the pits he'd dug with Lily. While she tried to help push the corpses, the girl wasn't strong enough. He let her participate in the endeavor all the same, and before long the graves were fed.

"Now what?" said the teenage child, better suited for an orphanage than a revolt. "Do we leave them?"

The Roman scoffed while piling dirt over the bodies. Lily mimicked his efforts. After the four horsemen were buried, the night grew still as their deaths.

Quintus imagined the men he'd killed would be uncovered within the month.

"Follow me." He wiped his blade on his torn and ragged cape.

The girl stumbled after him without protest.

He lifted her onto his horse and mounted it himself, and they rode, abandoning the other beasts in the field.

"Aren't you curious where we're going?" Quintus pivoted on his saddle to monitor Lily.

She clung to him from behind, her face blank. "Not anymore."

"Just like you don't know what the truth is anymore."

"I know what the truth is."

"What is it then?"

She picked at the dried blood crusting under her fingernails. "Now you're the one asking questions."

He returned his gaze to the wilderness ahead.

The ancient text he'd quoted earlier now invaded his brain once more.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What profit does a man have of all his labor which he takes under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes, but the earth abides forever.

"What do you mean?" hissed Lily.

Quintus whipped the reins. "About?"

"You just said, 'Forever.' "

The Roman could only laugh. "Did I?"

" 'Forever,' you said. 'Forever.' "

"Hmm." Quintus peered up at the winking stars. "I guess I ought to cut out my own tongue."