Chapter 1
It was the blood that caught Thea’s attention. Dark crimson smeared across the cheek of a pale face. She crouched down over the body to get a closer look. The girl had been injured recently; the edges of a jagged gash that ran across her forehead were just starting to swell. The blood gathered in a pool over the girl’s left eyebrow and dripped downward, outlining the curve of her finely boned jaw. Thea had never seen her before. She was small, probably twelve or thirteen years old, with a crop of mud-caked hair and long eyelashes.
Thea pushed herself back up and looked around. It was dark. Really dark. Her nose wrinkled as she peered into the gloom. Where was she? Even in the dead of night, she should’ve been able to see the outlines of the other houses, but there was only a dim shaft of light illuminating her and the girl. She peered upward. Where was the light coming from?
All of a sudden, strange noises echoed out of the darkness behind her, and Thea quickly twisted to see what they were. But there was nothing. A gaping, black void. She cocked her head and listened intently, her ears straining and her heart beginning to pound. There! She heard it again. It was then that Thea realized the sounds were voices.
Her muscles tensed as the circle of light surrounding her and the girl slowly expanded outward until the figures of two men emerged from the shadows. They were only a few yards away from her and the bloody mess of a girl at her feet. Thea could tell that the men were angry; they were yelling and pushing each other, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying.
She took a step forward over the body of the girl. The larger man, she realized, was Darren, a brutish male who lived on the outskirts of the Valley, his shack not too far from her own place. But the other man was a stranger, like the girl. He had jet-black hair and a thin frame, but Thea could tell there was deadly strength hiding beneath those bones. She watched as the two men struggled, tugging back and forth at something between them, their corded arms straining with the effort. She willed her pupils wide, taking in as much of the dim light as possible, but the object of their brawl remained unclear.
“Hey! Over here!” she yelled and waved her arms, but neither Darren nor the stranger seemed to hear her, though they were only a couple of lengths away from her and the girl. Thea wasn’t scared of either of the men. No, it was the darkness that was starting to make her feel itchy—and the strange light overhead. She looked down and wiggled her fingers. And the way that everything seemed slightly out of focus.
Something wasn’t right.
Thea bent her knees and felt around in the mud until her fingers caught the edges of something hard. Perfect, this was exactly what she needed.
She dug the medium-sized stone out of the muck. After judging its weight in the palm of her hand, Thea leaned back and flung the thing at Darren’s head, putting the full power of her body into the throw. But instead of getting his attention, the rock missile sailed right through Darren’s skull as if it were made of flesh-colored smoke! Thea gasped. The man hadn’t even so much as flinched as the rock tore through his almost skin; he just continued to wrestle his dark-haired opponent as if nothing had happened.
Thea sucked a breath in through her teeth, trying to settle the distinctly uneasy feeling that was clawing at her stomach. She glanced back down at the injured girl and jumped back in surprise. She was gone! The girl had just…disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Thea blinked and ground the palms of her hands into her eyelids. What the hell was happening to her?
And that’s when the voice spoke for the first time.
“Keep her alive,” it whispered softly from the empty space behind Thea’s right ear.
Her muscles tensed, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Thea whirled around, ready to face this unknown assailant, but as she did she noticed for the first time that her staff was clenched tightly in both hands. Had it been there a moment ago? For the life of her, Thea couldn’t remember. Either way, its familiar presence felt reassuring. She flipped the weapon around and shoved its rusty metal tip out into the darkness.
“Who said that?” Thea demanded, her tone hard and threatening.
“Keep her alive,” the voice repeated, like the edges of a cold wind. The words wrapped around her and sent a chill straight down her spine. The voice had moved. Now it spoke from somewhere just beside her left shoulder. She pivoted toward the sound, the thick treads of her boots grinding into the dirt and her staff poised to strike. But no one was there.
And then Thea saw the two men vanish, their bodies suddenly melting into black void, just like the girl. Her chest tightened. A hundred fights she’d fought, and nothing frightened her more than this bizarre encounter and the disembodied voice taunting her in the night.
“Show yourself!” Thea screamed at the space where the voice had whispered last, but everything was silent. There was nothing around her but darkness and the beat of her frantically pounding heart. Thea braced herself.
And then someone was shaking her.
Chapter 2
“Get up!” a bony woman with auburn hair twisted into a tight bun barked in Thea’s ear and poked her fingers into Thea’s side. Thea managed to peel open her eyes, her lids like sandpaper, and peered around groggily. The woman frowned. “I don’t have all day, girl,” she snapped and yanked down the tattered blankets.
“Mirrim,” Thea groaned, her head still foggy with sleep. “Wha’ the? What’r’you doing here?” She yanked the covers back up. “Go away; it’s too early to deal with you.”
“Ha!” the woman spat and gave Thea another good shove. “As if I care. Wake up, I need a favor.”
Thea moaned and threw her arm over her head.
But Mirrim was not a woman to be deterred by something as ineffectual as an arm. She grasped the raggedy, gray blankets wedged beneath Thea’s torso and with a quick heave rolled her onto the cold, wooden floor below.
Thea landed with a thud, her right hip exploding in pain as her elbows crashed into the unforgiving planks.
“Ow!” she grunted. She was awake now. Awake and mad.
She rolled onto her stomach and pushed up off the floor, brushing the tangled mess of her own auburn hair off her face. Out of the corner of her eye, Thea saw that a small twig had caught in the shoulder of her bed shirt, and she flicked it off impatiently. She glared at Mirrim. Why did the bag of bones think she could just barge in any time she wanted?
“Get out of my house,” Thea growled and jutted her chin out defiantly.
Mirrim crossed her arms, widened her stance, and thinned her lips into a straight line. The woman was settling in for a fight. Thea’s hands clenched. She would not let Mirrim get under her skin. She would stay in control.
Apparently, Mirrim was determined to test this resolution.
“My, my! Someone’s in a snit this morning, aren’t we, Thaaay-ya?” Mirrim cackled, drawing out Thea’s name in a way that made her grind her teeth with irritation. The woman shoved her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “Don’t you think it’s a bit rude to speak so disrespectfully to your own mother?” she demanded.
Thea sighed and rubbed her forehead. It was too early for this kind of crazy. Her head felt fuzzy, and something was nagging at the back of her mind. She tuned out Mirrim’s ranting for a moment and tried to think.
Yes, that was it. The blood and the girl. The two men being swallowed into the darkness and the creepy voice. The whole thing had been a dream. Of course! A nightmare caused by some kind of hallucinogenic reaction to bad meat or chemicals in the water. Thea wanted to be relieved, but Mirrim’s shrill voice was making it extremely difficult to concentrate. She took a deep breath and held up her hand, cutting Mirrim off midstream.
“What do you want?” she asked in measured tones.
“Humpf! If you think that I raised you to talk…”
“Enough!” Thea yelled, finally losing her temper. “Tell me why you’re here, or I throw your bony butt out into the mud right now!”
Mirrim squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Well, if you must know, Miss High and Mighty, I need some more of that tree sap. The rain’s been getting through my roof at night, and all the firewood’s damp. Can’t burn anything.”
All this for tree sap?It was enough to drive Thea mad.
“Why don’t you fix your roof then?” Thea said as her eyes scoured the floor. She reached left, under her bed, and pulled out a pair of worn leather pants. She tugged them on as Mirrim answered.
“Well, Alex said he was going to do it the other day, but…”
“But as usual, your men don’t deliver on their many promises,” Thea cut in. She shook her head and pulled a thick woven shirt over her curls. As her tousled mop of hair popped out of the neck, she sighed. Mirrim never expected her men to actually do any of the things they promised her. She just came to Thea whenever something needed building or repairing.
“Fine,” she said. “If it’ll get you to stop badgering me, go ahead and take some.” Thea gestured to a cluster of small clay pots on a shelf in the corner of the room, and Mirrim quickly scurried over. Thea took a strip of cloth from the makeshift table beside her bed and began to twist her thick curls into a knot. She yanked hard on the ends and tied the whole thing on the side of her neck. By the end of the day, wayward tendrils would escape their tight confines and plaster themselves all over her face. She should just hack it all off.
As Mirrim messed about in her things, Thea bent over to tie a leather belt around her waist and pull on her boots.
“And don’t let this give you any ideas about that roof, Mirrim. I’m not fixing it. Not this time.”
Mirrim nodded absently as she peeked under the lid of one of the jars. It must have been the right one, for she snatched it up and thrust it in her pocket.
“Sure, sure. Whatever you say,” she muttered and hurried out the door before Thea had finished tying her laces.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Thea exclaimed when she looked up saw the empty spot where the jar had stood. “Freaking woman took the whole thing!” She leaped to the doorway, but it was too late. Through the early morning gloom she could see Mirrim’s thin figure beating a hasty retreat. She was fast, too, having spent most of her life skirting the angry fists of drunken men. Thea wished, not for the first time, that there were locks left somewhere. Anywhere. She’d travel a hundred miles and trade ten jars of sap for just one lock and key—anything to keep that pest out of her hair and her house for good.
Now that she was dressed and in a thoroughly horrible mood, Thea decided to skip breakfast and hunt. And she would have to find some more sap now that her supply was gone. She grabbed her staff from its resting place by the door and stepped out into the dewy, gray mist.
* * * *
Thea didn’t know why everyone still called this morning. It was the same all day, every day. The thick layer of clouds overhead, and dim, damp, and cold below. The whole world was one soggy, slate-colored mess. The weather only shifted when it rained, which was often, or when night fell, darkness rolling over the earth like an inky tide.
“Stinking depressing is what it is,” Thea muttered and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. She’d been born under the canopy and would probably die staring up at its ominous, pressing weight, but that didn’t mean she’d ever get used to it. There was something innately human about wanting to feel the sun warm your goose-pimpled flesh, burrowing into the very core of you until every atom radiated heat and vitality and life. But that would never happen for her. Or anyone. Ever again.
Thea’s boots squelched through the mud as she trudged across the wide plain toward the forest ahead. She settled her staff over both shoulders, the crooks of her elbows resting on its smooth, familiar shape.
When she reached the line of trees that marked the edge of the plain, she ducked inside, keeping her head down and the rusty metal tip of her staff out in front of her. Dark, leafless branches tangled overhead, and thorn-covered vines clutched at her feet. The farther Thea moved into the wilderness, the darker it became. It was as if she were piercing the black soul of the horrible, lifeless place.
* * * *
She emerged hours later covered in mud but swinging more than one grungy carcass off the back of her belt. She paused a moment, letting her pupils readjust to the slight increase in light outside of the trees. Thea was pleased, the dark mood created by Mirrim hours ago all but gone as she greedily contemplated a day or two of hot meat roasting over her hearth.
It took about five minutes for Thea to recross the plain back to her tiny, one-room shack. It was set slightly apart from the rest of the shabby dwellings, closer to the dark river that bordered the edge of the forest and wrapped around her settlement. Those who lived here called it the Valley because of the three tall mountains that loomed over their stretch of flat, muddy land like grim sentries.
Thea liked living away from the others, and they seemed content with the arrangement as well. So when she heard the deep bellows of angry men near a small group of houses to her right, she instinctively turned away. She could go another way, avoid trouble, and still get home. But as Thea altered her route, she couldn’t help but spot something strange out of the corner of her eye. Something small and bent lying on the ground. She paused. No, it couldn’t be.
Thea’s breath caught as she turned back toward the fight and slowly inched closer, keeping her body low and the walls of a dingy shack between her and the figure on the ground. Then she saw the two men locked in an angry embrace. Instantly, she recognized Darren and the dark stranger from her dream.
She shut her eyes. She couldn’t possibly have dreamed this. That would be insane! She slid one eyelid open just a hair, and her stomach twisted. It was the same girl all right. A tiny, inert lump with a face covered in blood.
Thea sneaked a bit closer to the body, trying to keep herself hidden behind corners and walls, but Darren and the strange man were so absorbed in each other that they didn’t notice her creeping around from behind.
The girl was very small. Her features were delicate, beautiful in a childlike way. Thea pushed back the girl’s choppy bangs with the blunted end of her staff. Yep, there was the cut, just like in her dream. She let out the breath she’d been holding with a nervous whoosh. Blood was everywhere. Thea also noticed that girl’s left arm was bent beneath her at an angle that meant it was either broken or dislocated.
Suddenly, there was a loud thump, and Thea looked up to see that the stranger had wiggled his way out of Darren’s grasp and managed to flip the larger man onto his back. She tensed, ready to flee if he saw her. The dark-haired man pinned Darren to the ground with one forearm and with his other hand slipped something small and glinting into the back of his belt. While his opponent struggled beneath him, the stranger raised his head, and a pair of light-gray eyes locked onto Thea. Her heart stopped. There was something about his gaze that intimidated her. Something that spelled death.
They stayed that way for a moment, just staring at one another, until his eyes slid down to the girl. Thea saw the corner of the man’s mouth tilt upward into a smile. Quickly, the stranger hauled Darren onto his feet and wrapped a thin arm around his neck. He yanked hard on Darren’s throat until the large man slumped forward, his blockish head lolling to one side. Thea didn’t know if he was dead or not, but she wasn’t going to stick around and find out.
She stood and began to back away from the injured girl, flipping her staff around and pointing it in front of her. Dream or no dream, this mess was none of her business. The stranger kicked the limp form of Darren out of his way and narrowed his eyes at the two females. He started walking toward her and the girl.
That was it then. Thea turned and ran.
Behind her she could hear his footsteps accelerating, and her chest tightened with fear. Then—Oh thank god—Thea heard the sound of shouting. Some of the others had happened by and noticed Darren’s body.
She looked back over her shoulder and saw a group of men and women picking through Darren’s pockets. The dark-haired man was gone! Thea whipped her head right and left, searching for any sign of him, but the stranger had vanished. She wasn’t taking any chances, though, and picked up her pace, heading toward home.
“Keep the girl alive!” a voice thundered at her out of nowhere, almost shattering her eardrums.
Thea was so startled that she tripped over her own feet and fell flat on her face. What the hell was that! She quickly scrambled up, but there was no one close enough to have spoken so loudly. She took a tentative step forward, her fingers clamped around her staff, but the voice roared at her again, almost as if it was inside her head.
“Keep her alive!” The words reverberated through her skull.
Thea clutched her head. It was just like the dream. Except this time the voice wasn’t soft and whispering. It demanded she pay attention.
“I’m actually losing my mind,” she muttered and clenched her fists. This wasn’t happening. Dreams were not real! This voice was just some leftover chemicals her system was trying to flush out. She’d heard of it before—people having strange reactions to the toxins in the water or wild game they killed. Thea looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear her and whispered fiercely, “Leave me alone!” She paused and waited a moment, listening. When all was silent, she knew she was right.
Thea squared her shoulders. She cared about one thing and one thing alone. Herself. The only way to deal with these hallucinations was to ignore them; they’d go away soon enough. Her boots made crunching sounds in the gritty mud as she stalked toward her house and away from the tiny girl, lying broken and bleeding behind her.
Thea didn’t once turn to look back. And there weren’t any more voices as she walked away.
Chapter 3
That night a storm rolled over the Valley. Despite Thea’s best efforts at waterproofing, frigid droplets found their way through the plastic scraps that served as her roofing and plopped here and there around the small, dingy room that she called home.
The fire crackled as Thea stretched herself across the hard wooden planks of her bed. Her stomach was full of half-burned nutria, and she felt slightly nauseous. The trick was to cook the rodents slow, trying to keep as much of the juices in the meat as possible. But Thea wasn’t much good at cooking, so everything always came out dry and slightly singed. She hoped that the animal didn’t carry any pollutants like the two squirrels she’d eaten yesterday obviously had, but it was insanity to throw away meat these days. You either starved or ate what you could find and took the chance that it might kill you.
Her eyes felt heavy as the rain thrummed overhead. She wrapped a couple of threadbare blankets around her shoulders, and when another drop plopped onto her hair, Thea reflexively shifted her body out of its way. She was used to the leaks.
Tucking the blankets in closer around her, she stared at the flickering flames and tried to forget everything that had happened today. Slowly, she fell into the blissful oblivion of sleep.
* * * *
Boom! A loud clap of thunder startled Thea awake, and she looked around her in a panic, her chest heaving and her body covered in sweat. It was still dark outside, the storm raging overhead. She took a deep breath. She was safe, alone in her own house, in her own bed.
Thea ran a trembling hand through her tangled curls and wiped the cold sweat off her forehead.
She had dreamed about the girl again. It had been almost exactly the same as before, except this time the disembodied voice that was now haunting both her waking and sleeping moments had been much more insistent.
“Keep her alive!” it had screamed at her out of nowhere as Thea stood next to the bleeding girl.
“Why?” Thea shrieked back into the black, gaping void. “Why should I care what happens to her?”
And this one time, the voice had answered her.
“Save the girl, save yourself,” it bellowed enigmatically.
“What? I don’t understand!” Thea demanded angrily, but the voice had been silent then. And her questions went unanswered.
Then the clap of thunder woke her up.
She tucked the damp, tangled strands of her hair behind her ears and slumped forward into the thin blankets, her forehead resting on her kneecaps. The rain pounded steadily outside. If she went out now, it’d take days to dry. Thea’s skin felt prune-ish just thinking about it.
Not to mention, the girl was probably dead by now, if she wasn’t some pollution-induced fantasy conjured from the depths of Thea’s chemically addled brain. She’d been lying outside all day, unprotected and seriously injured. Thea stared into the covers.
“Crap,” she muttered. “Crap, crap, crap.”
You just didn’t go around helping people. Even people who might only be a figment of your imagination. You left them to their own messes. Or their messes became your messes. And then everything went to hell.
However, this whole dream-slash-reality thing was really starting to freak her out. Maybe if she just did what the creepy voice told her to do, it would all go away.
Thea punched her pillow, groaning loudly, then peeled herself out of bed and grabbed a handful of clothes off the floor.
She was going to regret this.
* * * *
The rain soaked through Thea’s thick leather pants and shirt in seconds, chilling her to the bone. Her teeth chattered, and her boots kept sticking in the now-inch-deep mud as she stalked through the darkness from her tiny shack to the main group of houses.
Tonight Thea cursed the distance.
Even though it was pitch-black outside, Thea could see well enough to make her way. When the canopy had become permanent, the human eye had adapted, pupils expanding and irises fading to light-sensitive pale browns and blues and grays. Thea’s seafoam-green eyes were rare and more responsive than most. She used them now to catch the tiny flickers of firelight winking out from between the roughly constructed walls of the nearing shelters. They were built high on stilts because of the constant flooding in the Valley, but the dim pinpricks of light above her were more than sufficient to guide her to the girl.
She was lying on the ground where Thea had left her, unmoving as the rain battered her small mud-covered body. Thunder crashed overhead, and a fierce wind tugged at Thea’s heavy clothes. She hadn’t realized before, but the girl lay only a couple of feet in front of a dwelling. Whoever lived there must have stepped right over her in order to climb up onto his or her rickety deck. Thea bent down, icy droplets pouring down the back of her shirt, and put two fingers on the base of the girl’s thin, waxen neck.
Well, she was real all right. Real and, by some miracle, still alive. Her pulse was faint, but it was there. Just my luck, thought Thea. She sighed and bent over, scooping the girl off the ground and tossing her over her shoulders.
“For someone so small, you certainly weigh a ton,” Thea grunted and began trudging back through the night. “I’m gonna get blood on my shirt,” she complained loudly to no one in particular.
* * * *
Thea rolled the girl off her shoulders and onto the bed. The girl’s head hit wooden planks with a muffled thump. The brat was heavy!
Thea rubbed her frozen fingers together, considering what to do next. Creepy dream voice hadn’t been very specific about exactly how she was supposed to keep this half-drowned kid alive. Her gaze traveled over the nasty looking cut that stretched across the girl’s forehead. The edges of the wound were green and swollen.
“Ugh,” Thea muttered and decided to leave the cut alone for the moment. She reached over and felt around the shoulder of the girl’s injured arm. “And that’s out of its socket, too.” Both would keep till the morning, she decided. The best thing to do for the pathetic creature was to get her warm and dry and let her sleep.
Thea began tugging on the girl’s clothes. Even though they were little more than rags, the wet fabric clung stubbornly to her tiny limbs like a second skin. After a couple minutes of struggle and a good deal of cursing, she’d managed to wrench off the tight pants and was about to rip the girl’s tunic over her head when her fingers snagged on something odd.
Curious, Thea peeled back the shirt over the girl’s stomach and discovered that a band of thick cloth wound around her upper torso, covering it completely.
“What the heck is that for?” Thea wondered aloud. She narrowed her eyes and looked closely at the girl’s face. No, Thea thought, you’re not old enough to be binding yet. “So what are we hiding under there?” She hooked a finger under the edge of one of the tight rags, pulling it away from the girl’s body, and immediately jumped back, catching her fingers to her chest as if they’d been burned. It just wasn’t possible. Thea shook her head, took a deep breath, and looked again.
The skin directly over the girl’s breastbone was glowing.
It was glowing.
A small patch of yellowish-white light shone up at Thea from underneath the wrappings. Like someone had lit a fire inside of the girl’s heart.
Thea’s lungs felt tight. She couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. She darted away from the girl and stood by the fire on the other side of the room. What was she going to do now? The flames crackled merrily behind her. They, at least, were undisturbed by the evening’s strange events. Thea took a moment and steadied herself. She watched the rise and fall of the girl’s shallow breathing and tried to make sense of it all. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t explain how someone’s skin could glow like that.
Saving the girl had been a terrible mistake. One that she was going to remedy as fast as humanly possible. Let the nightmares come. Let strange, floating voices shout at her all they wanted. This was not what she’d signed up for. Whatever the little freak was, come morning, she wouldn’t be Thea’s problem anymore. Alive, dead, conscious or not, Glowing Girl was gone.
Thea decided to just leave the girl semiundressed and threw a couple of worn blankets over the top half of her body so she didn’t have to stare at the crazy, gleaming swath of skin on her chest. If she couldn’t see it, then it didn’t exist.
She yanked the remaining blankets off the end of the bed and stomped over to the hearth, stripping down out of her own sopping-wet clothes and leaving them in a muddy puddle by the door. Thea tugged the threadbare covers tight around her shoulders and tried to stop shivering. She stared angrily at the strange girl in her bed. There was a knotted, worried feeling in the pit of her stomach, and Thea disliked it immensely. In fact, she disliked feelings altogether. Her mind was made up. Tomorrow she would get rid of the girl, and things would go back to normal.
Chapter
Thick, white mist clung to the bottom of the Valley, and dark clouds overhead pressed on the earth below, a constant, watchful presence. Slowly, the night edged into a silver-gray sort of twilight, and the small, emaciated creatures that lived in the empty hollows of the forest began to rustle, waking to greet another hopeless day.
People stumbled down out of their ramshackle houses, blearily trudging around in the muck as they did every morning when the sun rose behind the clouds but did not shine. Their worn, gray clothes hung off thin, undernourished bodies. They dragged their twiglike limbs down to the river, hauling beaten containers of murky-looking water back to boil and boil and boil again. Others clutched homemade weapons and stalked off into the woods, hoping for a stringy squirrel or two to get them through the day.
Skirting the borders of the small group of stilted shacks were clusters of young teenagers sullenly poking at the coals of last night’s fire or curled up on the ground in tattered scraps of cloth. They always tried living together at first, the young ones, after their mothers booted them out. But it never lasted long. Fights would break out over this piece of food or that bit of clothing. Sometimes the boys would tussle over the attentions of a particular girl. So they’d move apart, building their own shelters and adjusting to their inevitably dark, solitary lives.
Over three generations ago,the generators had died because no one had cared enough to keep them going. People just stopped showing up for work, stopped spending time together, stopped living. They became lost in their fake worlds and fake lives, humankind burrowing deeper into the electronic haze of their own making, fueled only by blatant self-interest.
And then the power flickered. And then it died.
A planet-wide blackout, forcing men and women back out into the world they had neglected, only to discover that it had become a gray, withered husk. So much pollution had been pumped into the air, without thought or regulation, that it had formed the canopy, a dense layer of clouds that covered the sky and blotted out the sun, suffocating the earth below.
After the blackout, people had tried banding together for survival, at first. But the damage had already been done. Their precious technology had driven them apart. Stolen their souls. They lost the ability to love, to see the worth in each other. And once starvation set in, even spouses and children became enemies. Families were torn apart by greed and mistrust.
So they moved away from each other, living only close enough to fend off hungry predators and slowly becoming more and more like the wounded terrain that surrounded them. Dark and twisted.
Living, but only just.
* * * *
She woke suddenly, the sharp pain in her back jolting her to consciousness. Thea rolled over, and her spine screamed in protest. She stretched her arms over her head and felt each vertebrae crack, one by one. Why was she on the floor? Thea sat up and rubbed her eyes, pulling the blankets close about her bare legs, and tried to think.
In a flash, it all came back to her.
Her gaze darted across the room, hoping against all hope that she was confused, that her sleepy brain had fabricated the whole ordeal. But there was the girl, half-naked and tangled in Thea’s now-soaking-wet bed covers. She was breathing, Thea noticed, though her body trembled from the cold and damp. Her eyes were closed, and her pale face seemed even more drawn in the dingy morning gloom.
Thea sighed and forced her aching muscles to move.
* * * *
Thoughtfully chewing on a gristly bit of last night’s nutria, Thea stared at the girl and contemplated her options. Now that she’d gotten a fire going and into dry clothes, she felt much more herself. More in control. Her mind had yet to acknowledge the bandages that she’d rewrapped around the girl’s chest, or what strange things lay beneath.
She could dump the girl somewhere in woods; no one would care or fault her for it if they knew. Or she could try to sell her. Though who’d be willing to pay for an injured, half-drowned preteen, Thea didn’t know. She could feel the beginnings of a headache forming at the back of her skull.
Suddenly, the girl woke up and lifted her head off the bed. Pale-blue eyes turned toward Thea with a look of horror, and she emitted a faint squeak of surprise and pain. The girl looked down at her limp arm and, before Thea could stop her, tried to lift it off the bed.
She gasped, her eyes rolling up into her head, and fainted dead away.
Thea jumped over to the bed just as the girl fell back down on the planks with a muffled thud, but it was too late.
“Well, that was stupid,” Thea muttered and picked up the limp appendage. The arm would have to be set. It was one thing to carry a pliant, unconscious body through the settlement; it was quite another take a screaming, thrashing mess. She’d draw all kinds of unwanted attention. And maybe if she did her best to fix up the girl before dumping her in the woods, Mr. Creepy Dream Voice would be satisfied and leave her alone. It was the closest she’d come to admitting that something strange was happening to her. The girl was here, the dream had happened, and if her mind was playing tricks on her, then the most logical way to make it all disappear was to patch up the kid and get rid of her.
It had to be done quickly. Thea had some old strips of shredded rubber coiled on one of the shelves in the corner of the room, and she grabbed them, picking out the stretchier bits to tie the girl’s good arm and her legs firmly to the bed. She braced one hand on the dislocated shoulder and took the girl’s delicate wrist in the other. Leaning away from the bed, Thea took a deep breath. Using her body’s weight as leverage, she gave a swift thrust in toward the girl’s torso, and with a crunching jolt, the bone popped back into place.
The girl’s eyes burst open again, and she screamed bloody murder. And then fainted. Yet again.
“Good grief!” Thea exclaimed and dropped the arm in disgust. “You’ve got to stop doing that!”
* * * *
Caden had been having a fairly good day, all things considered. This morning he’d stolen a good-sized fur from a middle-aged woman named Leisel. Or was it Leslie? He couldn't remember. And after a regrettably meager lunch of lichens and tree grubs, he’d decided hunting was in order and managed to bag both a nutria and a muskrat. He shivered, glad to be out of the forest. The place made his skin crawl. Well, it was more the spider trees that creeped him out than anything else. The things were horrible.
When storms rolled in over the mountains, they dumped massive amounts of rain onto the Valley. Without vegetation to soak up the extra moisture, the barren soil would swell, and the entire plain would flood with water. The floods drove most of the land insects up into the mountains, but not the spiders.
The spiders had adapted to the floods by climbing the wasted, twisting trees. Hundreds of thousands of nasty, crawly things in a mass exodus upward. They spun their silken webs around and around the bare branches, cloaking the treetops in shrouds of milky, half-translucent white.
Caden shivered again and continued to make his way back home. Maybe he’d make a hat out of the fur he’d stolen. Or something for his neck. Try to keep some of this relentless chill out of his bones.
Then, out of nowhere, Caden heard a long, high-pitched scream. And then another. He cocked his head. The screams were coming from the small scattering of houses by the river.
“Intriguing,” he said to himself and chuckled.
The new hat could wait. He’d found something much more interesting to investigate first.
* * * *
“Stop! Please!” the girl begged as she struggled against the restraints. Thea ignored her wails and grabbed the girl’s injured arm, rotating it in a circle.
The girl gasped in pain, and tears streaked down her dirty face. Completing one full arc, Thea nodded in satisfaction and released her grip. The arm fell to the bed with a soft whumping sound, and the girl quickly clutched it close to her body with her good hand.
“Why are you hurting me?” she cried.
“Hurting you?” Thea snorted. “I’m not hurting you. You dislocated your arm, so I ‘relocated’ it.” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the door. “Furthermore, I’m the one who saved your bony butt last night. You should be grateful.”
The girl stared at Thea for a moment, then tentatively moved her injured arm, testing it. Her light-blue eyes filled with tears.
“It hurts,” she sniffed.
“Probably will for a little while,” Thea agreed and crossed her arms.
The girl stared at her and then looked around, taking in the small, dimly lit room. “How’d I get here?” she asked tremulously.
“I carried you,” Thea answered shortly. She sighed when the girl’s eyes grew wide. “Look, I’m going to untie you, kid, but you gotta promise not scream. I’m not going to do anything else to you now. I swear.” She held up her hands and then crossed one finger over her heart, hoping the kid would believe her.
“OK,” the girl said in a small voice. She watched silently as Thea reached down and untied the restraints holding her to the bed, then scooted into a sitting position, the threadbare blankets tangled beneath her skinny legs.
They stared at each other, neither one quite knowing what to do or say.
Thea scratched her head and tucked a stray auburn curl back into the knot at the base of her neck. The girl wasn’t much to look at, that was for sure. She was pale and thin; her skin was caked with dried mud and what looked like a mixture of pus and blood from the wound on her head. Her dark-blond hair had been roughly hacked into a short pixie cut that the mud had congealed into one solid lump. She was, in short, an utter mess.
“How old are you?” Thea asked.
The girl stiffened. “Sixteen,” she said, a defiant note in her voice.
Thea burst out laughing. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I am,” the girl said firmly. “I’m just small for my age.” She clenched her fingers into tiny fists on the bed.
“Yeah, and I’m the queen of the world,” Thea said, looking the frail thing up and down. She was obviously lying. Nobody really cared when kids took off from their mothers early, but it made sense to add a couple of years to your age, just in case anyone tried to pick a fight. The older you were, the less people bothered you.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Thea as the girl regarded her suspiciously. “What’s your name?”
It was the girl’s turn to fold her arms, wincing as the movement pinched her sore shoulder. She pressed her lips shut.
“What’s your problem?” Thea asked, irritated. “You in trouble with anybody?”
The girl’s brow furrowed. She considered for a moment.
“No,” she answered finally. “I guess it won’t hurt to say. My name is Viviana.”
“Viviana!” Thea snorted. “That’s a fancy name all right. Your mother somebody important or something?”
“No, she wasn’t,” the girl said softly. “And she called me Viv.”
Thea nodded. “Yeah, Viv is definitely better.”
“Well, isn’t this a charming little scene?” a deep voice suddenly boomed through the doorway, followed by the large head of a very imposing young man.
Caden stepped into the tiny room, his substantial height making it seem even more tight and cramped. Oh no. Not him, not now, Thea groaned inwardly.
Caden’s black hair gleamed with dewdrops, and his pale-gray eyes glinted with curiosity. His mouth twisted upward into a cocky grin, and Thea noticed that a purposefully cultivated five o’clock shadow covered his square jaw. He was popular with many of the girls in the Valley, but like all males, he never stuck around any of them for very long. He was a user, just like all the rest of them.
Thea hated the guy. He meddled. In a world full of people who kept to themselves, Caden seemed bent on intruding into her life whenever possible. It had been that way since they were early into their double digits, when mothers only too happy to get rid of the dependent brats kicked out their teenage offspring. Thea knew Caden tormented her because she’d never showed any interest in him like all the other girls did. It tweaked his gigantic ego, and so he took special joy in driving her insane.
“Get out of here, Caden,” she snapped and stepped out from behind the bed. She grabbed her staff from where it leaned against the wall beside her and pointed the weapon at his admittedly well-muscled chest.
Caden arched a dark eyebrow. “Really, Thaaaay-ya? You’re trying to threaten me?”
Thea hated the way he drew out her name. Just like Mirrim. She ground her teeth in frustration.
“It’s not a threat, and you know it,” she snarled, pushing slightly on Caden’s chest with the fragment of rusted metal she’d sharpened and attached to the end of the staff with a bit of old wire. “I can beat you any day, anytime. Or don’t you remember where that crick in your nose came from?” Thea recalled the incident fondly. Caden on the ground, his nose gushing warm blood, was one of the high points in her dull, dreary life.
Caden chuckled. He tapped the imperfection thoughtfully. “I do remember, as a matter of fact. And I happen to think the slight irregularity in my otherwise arresting features only adds to my charm, don’t you?” His eyes smoldered at Thea in a way that made her feel hot and irritated. The guy was disgusting.
Caden took a half a step forward and peered around Thea and her weapon.
“Aren’t you usually a bit of a lone wolf?” he asked, taking in the bedraggled form of Viviana. “What are you doing with the little pup? Torturing her? I heard screaming.”
Thea shoved her staff harder into Caden’s torso, trying to push him toward the door.
“What I do with her is none of your concern,” she said. “Now leave, before I smash another charming irregularity into your face.”
Viviana spoke up from behind Thea’s back in a soft and hesitant voice. “She’s not torturing me, so you’ve nothing to watch.” Viv held out her arm for Caden to see. “She’s fixed my arm.”
Caden’s eyes went wide at this declaration, and then he smirked. “Nurse Thea,” he said. “Never would have guessed you had such a tender heart.”
Thea scowled, but she felt a tug on the back of her shirt. Keeping the staff trained on Caden, she turned her head slightly toward the wounded girl.
“What?” she asked in an exasperated voice.
“You never told me your name,” Viviana said softly. “Thank you, Thea, for helping me.
Both Thea and Caden stared at the girl, their mouths hanging open. After a moment Caden shut his with a loud pop and burst into laughter.
“Is she for real?” he gasped.
Thea threw up her free hand in disgust. “What could you possibly find funny about this?” she demanded.
“You…” Caden wheezed. “You and her.” He pointed first at Thea and then at Viviana. “It’s too much.” He held onto his stomach as if in pain.
Thea had had enough.
“Out. Now!” she growled and swung her staff at the interfering twerp. The tarnished metal tip caught his shirt and slashed the dingy-gray fabric open with a satisfying rip.
“Hey!” Caden exclaimed, clutching the torn garment. “Why’d you do that?”
Thea clenched her jaw. “If you don’t get out of my house this instant, next time it’ll be that handsome skin of yours that’s ripped open.”
“Fine,” Caden snarled back, his mirth evaporating into irritation. He backed slowly toward the door. “But I’m not going to forget how you just treated me. I’m going to make your life a living hell.”
“You already do!” Thea yelled and lunged again, tossing her mahogany head like an attacking lion.
Caden whirled and strode out of the doorway, his heavy boots thumping loudly on the rough wooden planks. Thea lowered her staff and with her free hand rubbed her forefinger and thumb in little circular motions on either side of her temple. Behind her the girl whimpered. It was going to be a long day.
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