The MaddAddam Trilogy (91 page)

We’re sitting around the fire – Toby and Amanda and me. And Jimmy. And the two Gold Team Painballers, I have to include them. The light flickers on all of us and makes us look softer and more beautiful than we really are. But sometimes it makes us darker and scarier too, when the faces go into shadow and you can’t see the eyes, only the eye sockets. Deep pools of blackness welling out of our heads.

My body hurts all over, but at the same time I feel so joyful. We’re lucky, I think. To be here. All of us, even the Painballers.

After the mid-day heat and the thunderstorm I went back to the beach for our packsacks and brought them to the clearing, along with some wild mustard greens I’d found along the way. Toby took out her cooking
pot, and the cups, and her knife, and her big spoon. Then she made soup with the leftovers from the rakunk and the rest of Rebecca’s meat, some of her dried botanicals. When she put the bones of the rakunk into the water she spoke the words of apology and asked for its pardon.

“But you didn’t kill it,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said. “But I wouldn’t feel right unless somebody did this.”

The Painballers are tied to a nearby tree with the rope and also some braided strips torn from Toby’s once-pink top-to-toe. I did the braiding: if there’s one thing the Gardeners taught you, it was craft uses for recycled materials.

The Painballers aren’t saying much. They can’t be feeling great, not after being pounded by Amanda. They must also be feeling stupid. I would be if I were them. Dumb as a box of hair – as Zeb would say – for letting us creep up on them like that.

Amanda must be still in shock. She’s crying gently, off and on, and twisting the raggedy ends of her hair. The first thing Toby did – once the Painballers were safely roped up – was to give her a cup of warm water with honey, for dehydration, with some of her lamb’s-quarters powder stirred in.

“Don’t drink it all at once,” she said. “Just little sips.” Once Amanda’s electrolyte levels were back up, said Toby, she could start to deal with whatever else about Amanda needed fixing. The cuts and bruises, to begin with.

Jimmy’s in bad shape. He has a high fever, and a festering sore on his foot. Toby says that if only we can get him back to the cobb house, she can use maggots – those might work in the long run. But Jimmy may not have the long run.

Earlier she spread some honey on his foot, and fed him a spoonful of it, as well. She can’t give him any Willow or Poppy, because she left those back at the cobb house. We wrapped him up in Toby’s top-to-toe, but he keeps unwrapping himself. “We need to find him a bedsheet or something,” Toby says. “For tomorrow. And figure some way of keeping it on him or he’ll broil to death in the sun.”

Jimmy doesn’t recognize me at all, or Amanda either. He keeps talking to some other woman, who appears to be standing by the fire. “Owl music. Don’t fly away,” he says to her. There’s such longing in his voice. I feel jealous, but how can I be jealous of some woman who isn’t there?

“Who are you talking to?” I ask him.

“There’s an owl,” he says. “Calling. Right up there.” But I don’t hear any owl.

“Look at me, Jimmy,” I say.

“The music’s built in,” he says. “No matter what.” He’s gazing up into the trees.

Oh Jimmy, I think. Where have you gone?

The moon’s moved westward. Toby says the bone soup has boiled enough. She adds the mustard greens I collected, waits a minute, then ladles out. We’ve got only two cups – we’ll have to take turns, she says.

“Not them too?” said Amanda. She won’t look at the Painballers.

“Yes,” said Toby. “Them too. This is Saint Julian and All Souls.”

“What happens to them?” says Amanda. “Tomorrow?” At least she’s taking an interest in something.

“You can’t just let them loose,” I say. “They’ll kill us. They murdered Oates. And look what they did to Amanda!”

“I’ll consider that problem,” says Toby, “later. Tonight is a Feast night.” She dips the soup into the cups, then looks around the firelight circle. “Some feast,” she says in her dry-witch voice. She laughs a little. “But we’re not finished yet! Are we?” She says this last thing to Amanda.

“Kaputt,” says Amanda. Her voice is so small.

“Don’t think about it,” I say, but she begins to cry again, softly: she’s in a Fallow state. I put my arms around her. “I’m here, you’re here, it’s okay,” I whisper.

“What is the point?” says Amanda, not to me but to Toby.

“This is not the time,” says Toby in her old Eve voice, “for dwelling on ultimate purposes. I would like us all to forget the past, the worst parts
of it. Let us be grateful for this food that has been given to us. Amanda. Ren. Jimmy. You, too, if you can manage it.” This to the two Painballers.

One of them mutters something like
Fuck off
, but he doesn’t say it very loudly. He wants some of the soup.

Toby continues on as if she hasn’t heard. “And I would like us to remember those who are gone, throughout the world but most especially our absent friends. Dear Adams, dear Eves, dear Fellow Mammals and Fellow Creatures, all those now in Spirit – keep us in your view and lend us your strength, because we are surely going to need it.”

Then she takes a sip from the cup and passes it to Amanda. The other cup she gives to Jimmy, but he can’t hold it right and he spills half of the soup into the sand. I crouch down beside him to help him drink. Maybe he’s dying, I think. Maybe in the morning he’ll be dead.

“I knew you’d come back,” he says, this time to me. “I knew it. Don’t turn into an owl.”

“I’m not an owl,” I say. “You’re out of your mind. I’m Ren – remember? I just want you to know that you broke my heart; but anyway, I’m happy you’re still alive.” Now that I’ve said it, something heavy and smothering lifts away from me, and I truly do feel happy.

He smiles at me, or at whoever he thinks I am. A blistery little grin. “Here we go again,” he says to his sick foot. “Listen to the music.” He tilts his head to the side; his expression is rapturous. “You can’t kill the music,” he says. “You can’t!”

“What music?” I say, because I don’t hear anything.

“Quiet,” says Toby.

We listen. Jimmy’s right, there is music. It’s faint and far away, but moving closer. It’s the sound of many people singing. Now we can see the flickering of their torches, winding towards us through the darkness of the trees.