When we arrived at the railway line, Clara was already completely exhausted, and we’d only been walking for about twenty minutes. It had taken a lot out of her scrambling up the hill, and Joseph was unable to help her because he was carrying me. With my injured foot, I was struggling to do very much. I hated being dependent on anyone, let alone Joseph. I hoped once we were on the track, I would be able to walk on my own. After months underground, Clara and I were both quite unfit, despite the ‘exercise’. Joseph let me stand when we got to the top, and we watched as Alexei and Apella celebrated the finding of the line.
She took his pale face in her hands and kissed him. “We found it.”
He pulled her into his chest, his thin fingers pressing into her back. “I knew we would sweetheart.” Yuck! “We might just make it.”
She gazed up at him, her blue eyes hopeful.
She was pathetic. I honestly couldn’t understand what he saw in her. Alexei had proved useful so far. He had knowledge and survival skills. He was also strong, despite his slight appearance. But he loved her. The way he held her and looked into her eyes, that much was obvious.
“So which way do we go?” I asked. My sense of direction was never very good and I was so turned around, I really had no idea where we were.
“We head east.” Alexei pointed towards the track that snaked off into the distance, looking like it climbed, looking like it was carved into the side of the mountain.
“Fabulous!” I said, sarcastically. I looked at my group of travelers. Deshi looked as doubtful as I was. Joseph and Clara were smiling, although Clara looked a bit drained, her skin looking sweaty and green. At least the weather was warm and we had a track to follow. Thinking of the sun and the warmth, my mouth felt suddenly dry. Deshi vocalized what I was thinking before I could.
“Has everyone forgotten that we have no water?” he said, irritated. I wondered what he knew of last night. I felt bad that it may have hurt him.
Alexei took out his map from his back pocket. He was wearing sturdier clothes than the rest of us, who were in Class uniforms. He had thick, cotton pants on, dark green in color. He was studying it intensely. I hoped there was a line of blue somewhere on this map that would lead us to water. I didn’t notice that Joseph had come up behind me, until I could feel his breath on my neck. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t want to have this conversation, especially not in front of everybody else.
“I just want to tell you…” he hesitated, stepped back from me, and wiped his nose with his hand. His face was scrunched up—was he in pain? “Oh Rosa, you stink!” he laughed. I smelled the air. Something certainly smelled revolting. It was the same smell as back at the campsite and it was coming from me. My boot. Once we were standing still, it emanated the pungent stink of wolf urine. Joseph was doubled over laughing. Deshi slapped him on the back and was smiling too. Even the corners of Apella and Alexei’s mouths were turned up.
The only person who wasn’t amused was Clara. She came to my defense, smacking them both lightly on the head. “What’s the matter with you two? Hasn’t she been through enough?” The boys sucked in their laughter and looked at their feet like they were about to get detention. “We need to move. Now. Stop playing around and start walking,” she said sternly, but with a twinkle in her eye. I smiled. Sometimes, when she wasn’t talking about moons and rainbows, she took on this tone that sounded so much older than her years. Motherly almost. Deshi pulled Joseph to his feet and they strode off, laughing and talking. I stayed downwind, at the back of the group with Clara. We were the slowest anyway, with her waddling and my limping.
After a few minutes, Joseph and Deshi calmed themselves and took on the task of scouting for water. They would divert from the tracks every few kilometers and head into the forest. They always came back with their hands in the air. Nothing. They were way ahead of us. Apella and Alexei walked hand in hand in front. Joseph kept looking back at me, but thankfully, he was giving me the space I needed. He knew me well enough to know I didn’t want to talk to him just yet. Or maybe he was afraid of what I would say.
Clara took my hand. It felt tiny in my own. She swung our arms together like we were schoolgirls. She was like a tiny ray of light—always smiling, always a comfort. She looked to me and smiled, shiny white teeth gleaming, her springy, black hair bouncing up and down as she walked.
“I’m glad to have you to myself for once.” She gave my hand a squeeze.
“Me too,” I said. Distance from Joseph was a good thing at that moment.
“It is so beautiful here. In Palma we wrote about the Wilderness but only from our imagination. It’s so much more than I had expected,” she said, her face full of wonderment.
She was right. From where we stood, we could see a carpet of alternate greens. The sky was clear blue. The spring weather brought with it warmth but not heat. The grey, rocky mountains contrasted with the pines. There was life everywhere. She patted her belly.
“Yes, we could be at home here.” She was talking to her child, so dreamy. Sometimes I did wonder if she was ‘all there’. She was full of hope, which was not a bad thing, but I couldn’t understand from what source it originated. After everything she had been through, she seemed unaffected. It had to be the baby that kept her so buoyant, something I neither comprehended nor wanted.
Something occurred to me that hadn’t before. Spring weather.
“What month is it?” I yelled to Alexei.
“It’s just turned to April today,” he replied. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” I said unconvincingly.
Alexei shrugged his shoulders and returned to his conversation with Apella.
Clara was looking at me curiously. Her eyes asked me, what that was about?
“I turned seventeen two days ago,” I said with a sigh.
“Happy birthday!” Clara said, clasping her hands around my shoulders and pulling me to her. I had never heard that phrase before. A change of age was not marked by anything in Pau, except access to a new ring. She was giving me a big squeeze when she jumped suddenly, like someone had kicked her.
“Ouch!” she exclaimed. Then in the sickly sweet voice she reserved for her baby, she said, “Naughty child, you shouldn’t hurt your mother so,” with her finger raised in mock disdain.
“Are you ok?” I asked. She looked weary. We needed to rest. I flagged the others and we let her sit for a while.
“I’m all right, really. I’m just hungry, and thirsty, but so is everyone else,” she said, waving her hand, shooing us away like bothersome flies. We had to find something soon. We were all getting hungry and weak after our night in the trees. I scanned the area. I felt like there was a memory pinching me, something to do with Rash. He was making fun of me in the Arboretum. I was saying something was surprising, interesting. I remembered him telling me I was confusing boring with interesting.
“Rash,” I whispered, smiling to myself. Forgetting where I was for a moment. Joseph looked at me. Eyes searching but I was replaying a memory in my head, looking right through him. I was reading about the pines. Rash was teasing me about having no life. I punched him in the arm. What I was reading was interesting because the plaque described the spring needles as being edible and that the male pollen cones were sweet. We needed sugar. I limped down the side of the hill, and picked a few of the small, yellow cones. I put one in my mouth. It was sweet, chewy. I filled my pockets and dragged myself back up the hill. I handed them out.
“Try it,” I urged. Joseph chucked one straight in his mouth, always the trusting one. Clara did the same. The others waited until they were sure I wasn’t planning a murder-suicide, but eventually they tried them. It wasn’t going to satisfy for long, but it was something until we found water. When we got up and started walking again, I tried to remember anything else about the plants I had read about, opening my eyes and really observing our environment. I was hoping it would come back to me. We split up again, the boys still searching for water. Clara and I, arm in arm, headed up the back.
“What’s rash?” she asked innocently.
I laughed, but it came out stiffly. “Rash was the name of my friend at the Classes. I mean is—Rasheed is his name.” These memories were painful, dredging up feelings my conscious had not had time to deal with. Although it had been months since I had seen them, for me it felt like only a couple of weeks. I had had no time to grieve, or even decide whether I should grieve.
“You hurt him,” she said plainly. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“I guess so, I mean, no not really.” I was confused. I didn’t hurt Rash, well, not directly anyway.
“Joseph doesn’t understand your feelings for this Rash; you need to explain it to him.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She thought I had hurt Joseph.
“I can’t talk to him. I don’t know what to say,” I explained, upset. She could cut right through me. She saw things I couldn’t see, or didn’t want to.
“Do you love him?” she asked, stopping us mid-stride, turning to face me. Her face was imploring, kind but urgent in its need for an answer.
Without question, I knew the answer, “Yes.”
She looked baffled, “Then why? Why don’t you go to him, tell him?” For her it was simple.
“I don’t love this thing inside me, and I think he does or he will.” I knew he did.
“Oh, is that all?” She waved her hand in dismissal. I stared at her in disbelief. “Rosa, it’s obvious to everyone here, except you, that he will choose you, every time, he will choose you.” I didn’t need to hear that.
“He shouldn’t have to make that choice,” I uttered, mostly to myself. I didn’t believe her anyway. I knew she thought I would change my mind, that when it was born, somehow something would kick in and I would be a mother. Then we could be a family. But the idea made me feel ill. It wouldn’t be real. None of this felt real. It was all backwards.
I was staring out at the trees, scanning the foliage, looking for a point of difference, when I saw it. In from the tree line and standing out like a splash of paint was a patch of purple.
“Siberian Irises love water!” I cried.
“What?” she called after me, but I was already stumbling, halfway down the gravelly hill.
Joseph caught up to me as I was entering the thicker part of the wood, the group disappearing from sight. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“Wait, where are you going?” he sounded out of breath and worried.
“I’m not running away. I think I can find water.” I panted, feeling light-headed from the lack of water and the sprint down the hill.
Surprising me, he held out his hand, indicating for me to pass him and said, “Lead the way.”
It was cooler down here, with only small snatches of light shining through the gaps in the trees. I kept a straight line, hoping that I hadn’t led us off course. We walked for about half an hour, the dense foliage closing in around us as we moved deeper into the forest. It was mossy and damp with spatters of small, white flowers tucked in the tree roots. I was sure we should have hit it by now and I was beginning to doubt that I had seen it at all, when I heard something. Joseph must have heard it too because he stopped dead in his tracks and pulled me backwards into his arms. Quietly, we crouched down, watching a large form shuffling through the undergrowth. All I could see was small patches of brown fur catching the light every now and then. The plants were higher than my eye line. I wanted to get closer but Joseph had his hands clamped around my arms. I put my hands over his and gently pulled his fingers off me one by one. I stood. Joseph stood behind me, so close I could feel the heat from his body. Having him close was distracting and I needed to think clearly.
It must have been at least four times the size of a man. It turned in our direction and sniffed. A fuzzy face presented itself, with a squashed muzzle and a big, black nose. I became as still as a statue, not daring to breathe. Slowly but deliberately, Joseph moved his body between me and the great beast. Still unmoving, I hissed at him, “You’re not wrestling a bear for me, you idiot!” He let out a stifled laugh, swallowing the noise as it escaped his lips. We both backed away slowly. It wasn’t interested in us. It turned its attention to something else and lumbered through the brush.
Leaving a good distance between himself and the bear, Joseph followed. He told me to stay, so of course, I followed them both.
We followed for about fifty meters and were rewarded for our bravery, or stupidity. The bear had stopped and was taking a drink from a wide stream. Dotted along both banks were the purple flowers of the Siberian Iris. Their long green stems extending from the bank, looking like beckoning arms. The soft purple and yellow petals reminded me of a woman’s mouth parted and ready to speak.
We sat and waited, giving the huge creature a wide berth. Joseph was distracted, tracing patterns in the dirt with his finger. I kept my eye on the bear. It finished drinking and padded off in a different direction to where we had come from.
“You know, if I’m part wolf, I think you might be part bear,” I said cheekily.
“Why’s that? Are you saying I’m big and hairy?” Joseph said, looking up from his dirt tracing, his eyes sparkling. An old feeling resurfaced.
I roughed up his hair. “Ha! Maybe. Well, big anyway.” I swayed from side to side, grumbling. “It’s the way you move; you’re not the quietest person in the world.”
He grinned at me. I found that broken tooth. Chipped and grey. My little beacon of imperfection.
After a while, we decided to venture towards the stream. Thirst ran hot sandpaper across our tongues. I ran to the water and plunged my head in. I took off my stinky boot and threw it into the water downstream. Joseph drank and then scooped the water up in his hands, washing his face and running them along the back of his neck, smoothing his blonde curls from his face, water dripping down his neck and onto his chest. I didn’t want to look but he was hard to ignore. What had Rash said? He was an impossibly beautiful man. Unaware of it too. I blushed, realizing my own hair was crusty and unkempt. I undid my plait and dipped my head in the water again, trying to wash out some of the dirt it had accumulated out here in the Wilderness. It had grown quite long over the time I was underground and now lay midway down my back. When I flipped my hair back, he was giving me that look again. I guess I was the only girl in the world, right at that minute. Apart from me, there were only the birds and bugs.
Before he could speak, I said, “We’d better fetch the others.” He shook his head and got up. I suspect he found my behavior frustrating. I did too.
We didn’t need to get up. We could hear them crashing through the trees, not even trying to be quiet. Deshi burst through first, looking at us like he had caught us doing something inappropriate. I gave him a scowl for his insinuation.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They all looked panicked and breathless. Clara stumbled up behind them, lagging. I was annoyed by the fact that they let her fall behind. Once they all stopped talking at once, I could hear what had sent them barreling through the forest. The familiar sound of chopper blades cutting through the air sounded unnatural under the canopy of the trees. It started quite far away but slowly the noise increased, until all we could hear was the brrrrr of the aircraft. The trees were swaying. The birds had stopped singing. We all dove down and hid under bushes, rocks, or whatever we could find. I grabbed Clara and shoved her under a sage bush. Searching for a place to hide, I could see Joseph calling me over to him. He was squashed under a rock ledge near the water’s edge. I saw a fallen branch, between them both, and pulled it on top of myself. Being small, it covered my whole body quite well, my grey uniform blending into the rocks around us. I curled up. From the air, I would have looked like a rock that a branch had fallen on. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see Joseph rolling his eyes at me. It was catching.
The craft hovered temporarily, sitting in the air like a giant dragonfly, but after a few minutes, it veered northeast. I breathed a sigh of relief—we all did. At least it was heading away from where we were going.
That was the first day we saw the choppers. From then on, they were our constant companions.