The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (21 page)

Even Orry’s eyes lit up. He clapped and held his hands up like he wanted me to pick him up. Arms swooped in from behind
me, and I realized Orry wasn’t looking at me.

“Darling boy, miraculous grandson of mine
,” Pelo exclaimed as he lifted Orry over my head and into his arms. I hunched my shoulders, trying to not to get upset. It was my fault anyway. I’d allowed Pelo to spend time with Orry. They’d bonded or something. My mouth was a flat line, jealousy carving an unflattering wrinkle in my brow.

Rash’s head popped up
, just his eyes, like a toad above pond water, and then he scrambled over the ledge. He grabbed Essie by the waist and squeezed. She jumped and then smacked the side of his face. I liked her.

Pelo opened his mouth to speak, my ear inadvertently closing over as the air rushed over his lips.
Then Careen bashed into him from behind, clipping his shoulder. Essie stared her down like she was hoping she’d burst into flames. It was unnecessary. Careen was already on fire. Her face was red, and her eyes intense. She grabbed both my shoulders and shook me.

“I’m going to kill him!”
she shouted.

Pelo took a step back, Orry still in his arms, “Is it all right if I take Orry for a walk?”
he appealed, snatching at this opportunity. Careen’s fingers were still digging into my shoulders. She was ignoring everyone. I nodded to Pelo, who strode off quickly with my son on his bony hip.

“Did you hear me?” Careen
hissed. Her face was red and blotchy, like she’d been crying.

I put my hands on h
er hands and pulled them off me. “What’s he done now?” I asked, rolling my eyes. Pietre was still being as difficult as he possibly could. The only time he managed to be halfway decent was when I brought Orry to him. Other than that, he scowled, swore, and treated Careen like dirt. If he weren’t already injured, I’d punch him. In fact, I wasn’t sure I cared about his leg any more. He needed a good punch. I squeezed my hand into a fist.

“He’s just…
well… he’s just being Pietre,” Careen said as she flopped down next to Essie, who surreptitiously shuffled a few inches away from her. Careen’s nostrils flared as she glanced down at Essie, but she didn’t say anything to her. She focused her hurried talking in my direction.

Careen wasn’t easily
rattled, but she was at the end of her patience with him. She prattled on about every insulting thing he’d said to her in the last twenty-four hours, my face getting tighter, and my heart angrier with every venom-dipped sentence she recalled. “He kicked me out, Rosa. I don’t know what to do. I think I love him or at least, I used to. It’s like when they chopped off his leg, they took the good parts of him too,” she said sadly. I waited for the weirdness to come. The part where she flicked off her seriousness and said something strange. A few seconds later, she swung her head towards Rash and asked, “Did you cut your hair? It looks darker.” I clenched my teeth together, straining not to laugh. Rash took one look at Careen and chuckled whole-heartedly.

“Sure Red, I’m like the reverse Samson
. The more you cut off, the darker and more powerful I become!”

Careen looked at me confused,
and I just shook my head. There was no explaining Rash.

Once Rash had calmed
down, he draped his hand on Essie’s knee and leaned his head down to her rounded shoulder. “Soar?”

I was gazing distractedly down at the black water canal. It looked like oil, chopping and moving as the current carried it swiftly through
the underground town and out to somewhere else. I wondered where it went. Did it look black on the outside?

“Soar!” Rash yelled out, his hands to his mouth, the name bouncing of the walls, “oar…
oar… oar.”

“What?” I snapped.

He leaned back from me, but in a comical way. “Whoa. No need to get snarky. I just thought…”

Careen was staring at the ground with her head in her hands
. She was exhausted. Sometimes I wished Rash could be serious for just one second. Living like this amplified everyone’s characteristics. I hated that the things I loved about people were turning on me.

I sighed
. “You just thought what?”

He waggled those dark eyebrows of his and said, “Let’s make Pietre a leg.”

*****

As soon as he said
it, my mind started whirring. Complicated cogs ticked over as the design stretched and grew in my mind.

“Could you?” Careen
squealed, grabbing my head in her hands and squishing my face.

A monkey scampered past, clinging to the very edge of the stone ledge. A flash of yellow fur and a tail. I shuddered. Anything to get me out of here for a while.

“I think I probably can,” I said through squashed lips.

“What are you doing?” I asked, a little scared of the answer.

Joseph looked up at me from the corner of the room. He was crouching down, sweeping up a mess of broken plates. “Nothing. Just dropped some plates.”

“Joseph
, don’t do that,” I said, creeping up to him and putting my hand on his shoulder. He tensed for a second, but then he relaxed and put his head to my hipbone.

“I’m just frustrated
. How long are we expected to live like this? I miss Desh, and I’m worried about Apella. This just isn’t what I expected. It’s not what I want.”

I picked up the piece of wood I’d been carving. It was pretty close now. Unfortunately, I’d had to spend a lot of time staring at Pietre’s other leg to get it right. I even joked that I could glue some hair to it to make it just right, to which Pietre scowled at me nastily and spat on the floor. “It won’t work,” he’d said.

It w
ould work.

Rash brought me back a pile of leather belts the other
day, and now I had to work out how to make a harness.

I placed the wooden leg down and grabbed Joseph’s hand to pull him up. I
tugged, but he was so damn heavy. I fell back against the wall. “Geez, it’s like you’re made of lead.”

Joseph stood and moved to where I
was, with my back against the wall. He placed his hands on either side of me, blocking me in.

“I’m sorry, about Deshi. I wish there was something I could do
,” I whispered. My breath quickened, my chest rising and falling unevenly, like the breaths of a willing, dying animal.

He smiled sadly
. “You’re doing it. You and Orry lift me out of my sadness just by being here.”

I reached up on my tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth. He moved his head and our lips collided, then opened, then devoured. I hoped he knew
… he was doing the exact same thing to me.

*****

My shirt was lifted up to my chin, and half of Joseph’s buttons were undone. But that was where it had to stop. With only a blanket separating us from everyone else, that was as far as I was willing to go. But it was torture. I got the sense that Joseph didn’t care as much as I did about who heard us, but he respected my wishes, drew back, and composed himself.

I pulled my shirt down and heard Joseph audibly groan. I flicked him a grin.

“Man, this is getting difficult,” he said, re-buttoning his shirt. “Maybe we should get another pass to the surface, find that building again…”

I blushed
. “Shhh! Someone will hear you.”

He grinned at me from the bed, that beautiful grey tooth seeking me
and glowing. He reached out and grabbed my hips, dragging me towards him. I made a pathetic attempt to struggle because really, I was quite happy to be dragged. He lifted up my shirt and kissed my belly button. It frowned back at him. I giggled loudly.

“
Shhh! Someone will hear you,” he said mockingly.

I grabbed both his hands and threw them off. “Right. No more. I’m going for a walk.” He started to stand
. “Oh no. You stay right here. And clean up that mess,” I said with a wink.

He smiled at me. At least for now. His mind was on lighter things. “Don’t be long
,” he called out to me.

I stuck my head back through the entrance and said, “I’ll be as long as I want
.” He chuckled as he turned back towards the broken ceramics, kittens with their faces slashed in half.

*****

I stayed on the upper level, walking past several lit entries. The occupants tipped their heads but didn’t offer any other greeting. The line of dwellings ended, and several tunnels presented themselves. I picked one. Two steps in, I walked passed a monkey sitting like an old man, leaning against the slime-covered pillars that rose to the ceiling of the tunnel in dark, tarry arches. It shrieked at me. My foot shot out to the side, and I kicked it before I could stop myself. The kick made a hollow sound against its ribcage that echoed down the piled stone arch. The monkey gave me this chilling, knowing look and smiled at me, its white fangs just begging to sink into my calf. It leaned back on its haunches, readying to attack, when it heard, “Teck, teck, teck.” It looked up, and I swear it grumbled before it scampered away.

I sighed in relief.

“That is no way to treat your hosts,” a carefully accented voice uttered behind me. I jumped.

“Well, shrieking at me and crapping near where I sleep is not the nicest way to treat a guest either
,” I replied as I turned to face Salim.

He nodded but didn’t respond. We’d been here
for months now, and this was the first time I’d crossed paths with him. I’d seen him talking to Gus, walking gracefully past the others like a surveyor, a conqueror. It was so dark in this corner that all I could really see was his white coat and his teeth when he opened his mouth. Right now, he was smiling at me.

“May I see something?” he
asked as he came towards me, coasting over the stones like he was barely touching them.

I squinted
as his form moved closer. He was so All Kind apart from that voice. That voice was like fabric tearing and glasses clinking together. It was altogether foreign and totally fascinating. “I guess,” I said as he snatched up my wrist, running a rough thumb over my pulse line. I wanted to pull back, but something told me not to.

A shaft of light ran over my skin
from his torch. “Hmm, interesting.” I tugged back, but he gripped me tightly. “You’re a Coder.”

“A what?” I snapped as I withdrew my hand sharply.

“Come with me,” he said excitedly, ignoring my question.

I shrugged and followed his disappearing form down another tunnel as five monkeys fell into line behind him, padding noiselessly like trained soldiers.

*****

I put my hand to the
wall, and it came back green and slimy. I shuddered. I really shouldn’t have been following this strange man down a dark tunnel, but something told me he wasn’t a threat.

“Excuse
me, but what did you mean by Coder?” I shouted at him.

He was shuffling through the
shady cavern, shoulders hunched and focused. My voice seemed to frighten him, and he turned to me, startled.

“Hush. We’re nearly there. Come, come
,” he beckoned.

We came to a door, which he opened quickly and without ceremony,
ushering me to go in first.

I stepped in and he followed
, snapping the door closed, lighting candles and turning on solar lanterns as he went. Each section of wall in this small, grey room was plastered with pictures, scraps of paper, and barcodes. My eyes rolled over each crazed depiction, and I took a step backwards. One of the monkeys hissed at me, and I glared back.

“What is this?” I asked, although I could tell. This was an obsession.

“This is my life’s work,” Salim said absently, patting one of the monkey’s heads a little too hard. I forced myself not to shake my head in pity. This room was the inside of an insane man’s mind. “I’ve been studying the codes. I’m close, so close now.”