Walking the Ruins

Empty rooms and a lamp

I step from the boat and climb onto the jetty. My knees hurt and my legs are wobbly from being cramped up for too long.

Clumsily striving for balance on the rocking vessel, Anna tries to follow me. I reach out to her. She grasps my hand, and I pull her up, holding her steady once she stands beside me.

"Can you walk?" I ask.

She nods, her eyes wide open, scanning the surroundings.

"Wait," I say, and I tie the boat, it's the only one we have. Then I place her arm on my shoulder, and we walk along the path towards the house. Its windows remain dark—the sky is still bright from the setting sun, so maybe they haven't yet lit a light inside.

With tension rising in my chest, we walk around the side of the building and come up to its entrance. My heart is pounding as I push the door open and call into the gloom inside. "Hey, we're back!"

No reply. I enter. "Rose, Kevin!" louder this time. But the only answer is Anna's breathing behind me.

As I step into the main room, its familiar smell of the embers in the cooking range welcomes me. And there's another scent, too—cooked potatoes? The table, the chairs, a clutter of other aged furniture in the last light of the day, all of them are wonderfully familiar. They look as if the inhabitants just left a few moments ago.

"Where are they?" Anna asks, looking around the room, the whites of her eyes luminescent while the rest of her face nearly blends into the dark background. I pull up a chair and make her sit on it.

"Hey! Rose, Kevin!" Leaving Anna, I move to the back of the house, looking into various rooms and calling their names. The place looks perfectly normal, yet it's empty. I clench my teeth as I unlock the back door and step out into the garden. Vegetables welcome me silently. They are arranged in orderly rows, like Rose's handwriting. Things are thriving here. But where are Rose and Kevin?

A scraping sound reaches my ears, it suddenness like a bolt of electricity running through me. It comes from the front of the house. I quickly walk along the path between the wall and the patches of plants. As I reach the corner, I peek around it. The door stands open, we probably left it like that.

I hear steps on the floor inside.

Moments later, I enter the main room, immediately recognizing Rose and Kevin. They are staring at Anna, and Anna is gawping back at them. It's a frozen moment of complete surprise, utterly precious. The image shatters as they hear me enter and turn their faces towards me.

"Hey..." I start, but emotion constricts my throat, and I am unable to continue, my lips opening and closing without a sound, like the mouth a fish torn from its waters.

"Leona!" Rose exclaims, then throws herself at me. We hug.

And I am home.

Tears blur the scene in front of me. "Rose," I whisper, starting to regain my voice. "Kevin!"

Kevin has approached, too, and places his hand on my shoulder, his grin setting his glasses askew—I smile back, so broadly that my face feels as if it might split. "Leona, it's so great to see you," he says. Then he looks back towards Anna, maintaining his smile and raising his eyebrows.

Disentangling myself from Rose, I briefly wonder how to do the introductions. I know that there are rules for this, rules as to who has to be introduced to whom first, etc. But who cares, we've left that world of rules behind, and it's just so wonderful to be here.

"This is Anna," I say, the words barely finding their way through the lump still sitting in my throat, "and this is Rose and Kevin". I make wide gestures towards each of them in compensation for my soft, teary voice.

Anna smiles weakly and shyly, her dark eyes darting back and forth between us. Having grown up in a small, closed community such as hers, I wonder if she has ever been formally introduced to anyone in her life.

"Welcome!" says Rose warmly, approaching Anna where she sits. Then she halts, mouth open, staring at Anna's injury. "Kevin, will you please light the lamp, dear?" Her tone of voice is suddenly serious.

Kevin walks over to some metallic piece of furniture that I have not noticed before. It was not here when we left for our expedition. It looks like a stove, an old one. As he opens a flap close to its bottom, I see embers glowing inside.

"What has happened?" Rose asks. The fingers of her left hand daintily touch the darkly stained sleeve around the wound on Anna's arm.

"She got shot," I say. "Her wound needs taking care of."

"Shot?" Kevin asks, looking at me in astonishment while holding a stick with a burning tip in his hand. His gaze turns to an antique-looking lamp on a shelf in front of him. He puts the fire to its golden metal base and fiddles with the thing. A yellow flame rises, making his hands and face glow warmly.

Still fascinated, I watch as he carries the light over to the table, only then remembering his question.

"Yes," I repeat, "she got shot. It's a long story. We'll tell you ... but first things first. The wound looks bad. The skin around it ... it's all red. As if it's infected."

Rose has turned Anna around to examine her injury in the lamp's light. She noisily pulls air through her teeth while we watch in silence. Then she touches Anna's face while Anna looks up at her. "Wait here." Rose walks over to one of the wooden cupboards, opens it, and rummages through its contents. Moments later, she returns with a small box. I recognize the medication I took while recovering from the bear's attack. The antibiotic.

"We've only got two pills of this left," Rose says, her words sounding grave, and she shakes her head. "Not enough. But that's all we have. Kevin, can I get some water?" She opens a blister from the pack, holding the pill up in front of Anna. "You take this now."

With a perplexed face, Anna takes it from Rose's hand. She looks at me, hesitating.

"You swallow it, then you drink some water," I help, doubting that she has ever taken a pill before.

She does as instructed, accepting a glass proffered by Kevin, and drinks eagerly.

Meanwhile, Rose goes back to the cupboard and returns with a wooden crate, placing it on the table beside the lamp. "Kevin, we need a kettle of hot water and then some girly privacy," she says.

Kevin stokes the fire in the stove and places a kettle on it. Then he pours water from a large jug. "Do you need anything else?" he asks, still holding the jug in his hand, an affectionate smile focused on Rose.

"No, thanks." She shakes her head, briefly returning his smile, then focusing her attention on Anna's wound.

"OK," he says. "I'll go outside to get some fresh water." He leaves the kitchen.

While Rose starts taking off the top of Anna's pajamas, she briefly glances at me. "Where are Jenny and Steve?"

I hesitate. It's a question I have expected. I have even pondered how to answer it while paddling over the lake, but there's no short answer. Saying that they are chipped would not be helpful, not now. "They are still up there, in the valley. It's a long story. Let's talk later."

If Rose has heard the strain in my voice, she does not let it show. She retrieves a piece of cloth from the crate, studies the wound while pressing her lips into a thin line, and finally starts to clean it.

Watching her deft moves, I think of Steve and Jenny, think of their vacant faces when I last saw them. I feel the warm, happy glow in my chest slowly being replaced by the hot fire of anger. And there's something else, too, a growing cold—the realization that I may lose again what I have just come back to.

I won't abandon my friends up in that valley.

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A/N

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