What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (19 page)

This offer surprises me. I
would
go with William. I would gladly go if I was sure we could get what I need and if Tetch—

But as I stare at Tetch as intently as she looks at me, I know that there is no way I could ever leave Aiden in her hands. What if he woke? What if he woke and was in horrible pain, thrashing the bed and moaning? If he started bleeding again? Or tried to get to his feet and collapsed on the floor? I know Tetch would panic, run away. Or stand over him helplessly, wringing her hands, yelling for someone more responsible to come to her aid.

But I can’t tell her that she isn’t fit to care for Aiden. I have to persuade her to go. I have to find a way to manipulate both of them into going.

So I say, “Let me think it over. Come back in a little while.” I let my eyes drift shut, feeling like I could sink to the ground, my back to the door and be asleep in seconds. “I have to think it over and it’s really hard to think.”

“Are you tired?” Tetch asks, oblivious as always to everyone around her.

“No, Tetch, I feel great. Go find William, mention Jendra to him. Mention that he might be able to see her again.”

I remember thinking very clearly the night before, after Tetch has stomped from the room saying, “I’ll do it when I damn well please,” that I can’t wait any longer. I have a basin of water I’ve taken from the rain barrel outside. I have some soap. After first laying Aiden on the cot, I made William wait while I got what I thought I might need. I knew it would be a long, long night.

I pull the blanket back and examine the wound in his side, his dirty tee shirt obscuring how deep it is, how ugly and infected it might be. There is an old letter opener on the floor beside the desk. I imagine the vice principal who occupied this room years ago, opening important letters, pouring over students’ attendance records and test scores.

Picking up the letter opener, I run my finger along its dull blade. I’m trying to guess if it will work for what I want it to do. I wash it carefully with the soap and cold water. Aiden’s shirt already has a tear near the collar and I start with this, using the opener to cut the shirt completely open. It tears apart more easily than I thought it would and soon I’ve sliced through the sleeves and have peeled the shirt almost completely off his body.

Almost completely off except for the part of the shirt that is sticking to the wound.

I wonder how I should do this, if I should rip the small strip of cloth right off like a bandage—get it over with—then watch anxiously to see if Aiden cries out, struggles against the pain. Perhaps he’s so insensible he can no longer feel any pain. But it seems better to peel it away slowly, very slowly after soaking the wound with water to loosen the congealed blood.

I soak it and wait as long as I can. Ten minutes maybe. Then, as gently as possible, I begin peeling back the remaining fabric of the shirt. When exposed, the wound reveals itself as a jagged smear of dark purple and red across Aiden’s stomach, like someone ripped into him with a shard of glass. The edges of the wound look hot and swollen. I have nothing to treat it with and try not to stare at it for too long. I can’t bear feeling helpless.

I wash his arms and chest and face the best I can. As I clean his body I talk to him, whispering the same words over and over, “What have they done to you? What have they done to you?”

Aiden’s eyes never flicker. With my index finger and my cupped hands I try to get a little water to pass his lips, try to moisten the inside of his mouth.

As softly as I can, I wash at the edges of the wound. There’s a lot of congealed blood and I continue to let the water soak into it, wiping it away bit by bit when it starts to dissolve.

Then I turn him. I feel like I have to turn him so he can breathe better, so that his body doesn’t harden, calcify into this fetal shape it’s been in for so long. I do it oh-so-slowly, easing him back inch by inch onto the cot’s thin mattress, the back of his head coming to rest on the cleanest pillow I could find.

He doesn’t resist. He doesn’t wince or moan.

But after I have him turned, his legs remain folded to one side, knees bent sharply, feet in muddy, bloodied socks pressed together like a pair of injured doves. I take each leg one by one, lifting them up and pressing them flat. It’s like manipulating a puppet with a rusted armature.

I cover him back up with the blanket. I grab another blanket I’ve brought with me and cover him with that as well. It might be wishful thinking but he seems to be breathing more easily. And I’m almost certain that the tension in his face has eased.

He has a strong face, high cheekbones, a wide brow. I brush the hair back from his eyes. I feel better. Exhausted but better. The washing and shifting of his body are the first really satisfying things I’ve been able to do since bringing him to this room.

But why is he still sleeping? Did someone hit him on the
—

I reach for the top of his head, the back of his head, my nervous fingers sifting through tangled, greasy hair. And I find it, a knot of swollen flesh, thick and tender, still a little blood-slick at its center. I pull my fingers away and each tip is touched with a small scarlet smudge.

Maybe a sound or a sudden movement causes me to jerk awake in the chair, the uncomfortable chair that is supposed to prevent me from falling asleep. I see a thin twig of a girl with two badly braided red pigtails standing between me and the cot. Her back is to me. She’s bending down low over Aiden.

“Stace?”

She flinches, looks back at me from over her shoulder. “Hey, Gillian. I brought you more water. You’d been gone so long, we were worried. You didn’t sleep upstairs.”

She turns to me and points to a cracked ceramic pitcher she must have uncovered in the kitchen. “It’s not all that dirty. I think you can drink from it. And I can bring you some food if you want. You haven’t eaten for a long time, have you?” She’s at my side now, looking me over, all concerned and full of energy, happy to have a chance to mother me a little. Probably happy to be doing anything other than sitting like a lump in the dorm.

I ease my aching body up from the chair and stretch, rubbing a rear end that’s gone numb. “Should you be down here? What about Tetch and William?”

She shrugs. “I’ve seen them walking around. One time Tetch did tell me to get back in the dorm but mostly I don’t think they really notice me.”

“One time? Have you been out of the dorm a lot?”

She smiles sheepishly. “I keep checking on you. And him. When they’re not here talking to you.”

“You do? Have I really been sleeping so much?”

She stares at the floor, like she’s done something wrong. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“No, no. It’s all right. Don’t worry.” I give her shoulder a squeeze, then scoot past her to look at Aiden. “How is he?” I whisper, like I might accidentally wake him.

“I don’t know. Do you remember when you told us about—”

I quickly interrupt her. “Larkin, yes. But this is different, Stace. He’s wounded. And somebody did this to him deliberately.”

We stand side by side for a long time, peering at Aiden, not saying a word. I finally say, talking more to myself than to Stace, “I’ve got to get medicine for him.”

“Medicine from where?” she says.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head, not wanting to tell her any more but she is looking at me so intently, is trying so hard to be helpful, to be supportive, that I can’t disappoint her. “From one of the Black Riders. They’ve told me he has all the drugs they’ve found in the city and William and Tetch know where to find him. I’m trying to make the two of them understand that we
have
to find him tonight.”

“Will they go?”

I throw up my hands, frustrated to be reminded again of how little control I have over the situation, over anything. “Not unless I…. But they have to.” Then I start to say, “If I could only—” but stop myself.

“Could what?” I don’t respond and Stace pokes me lightly in the ribs.

“Never mind.”

“You want to go, too.”

“Well, I think I need to go. But he…” I point at Aiden.

“They’re scared of you,” she says. “I know you can make them do what you want but you need to be there to make them.”

I give her a sharp look, surprised at how much she’s been able to figure out about the balance of power in the Orphanage, this so-called Orphanage all but abandoned by the Elders. Only the weakest of them left in charge.

I don’t know what to say. Finally I get out a few words that sound weak, lame. “Yes, you’re right.”

Stace suddenly gets the most intense expression on her face, an adult look, like she wants to be taken as seriously as if she
were
my mother. Her hazel-green eyes bore into mine and she presses her thin, cracked lips tightly together. Her cheeks and forehead become enflamed like she has a sudden fever, like she’s swelling up with the heat of her determination to say something so important I won’t be able to brush it aside, won’t be able to contradict her.

“I can stay,” she says, her voice low but fierce.

“Oh, I don’t know…” I find myself actually starting to dismiss what she’s just said but I can see her face start to fall. She quickly looks away toward a corner of the room. It’s easy to see how badly I will disappoint her if I don’t choose my words very carefully.

Then she turns back to me. “I
can
do it, Gil,” she says with such conviction, so much mature assurance in her voice that I start to believe her. I try to imagine what she would do if Aiden woke up, if he was in pain and calling for help. And I’m sure she would do exactly what I would do.

We’ve been together such a long time. We’ve had to trust each other, protect each other, find ways together to survive. I realize she would do all she was capable of, maybe exactly what I am capable of, and that would be much more than Tetch or William could ever do.

“I know you can do it,” I tell her, taking her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’ll go with them. Tonight.”

The Far Side of the River

The cage.

Craggy wood floor. Corroded iron bars. Locked inside.

I’ve halted abruptly in the middle of the bridge, at the exact spot where the cage was lowered, where an old, frayed rope tied to the railings held me dangling far above the surface of the water.

Swinging in an icy breeze.

Where I came to my senses battered and bloodied and disoriented.

Tetch, William and I have spent a day’s worth of long, dull hours waiting at the Orphanage until we felt it was the right time to go. Watching anxiously as dusk finally settled, thickening into deeper darkness.

We have nearly reached the other side of the city, the downtown district with office towers and retail plazas rising up toward the hills beyond.

But I’ve interrupted our progress, coming to a complete stop without intending to. Rooted halfway across and high above the river that divides Raintree, stunned by a blast of memories that stagger my mind.

The cage an animal is kept in at the zoo. The cage an animal is brought out in to thrill an audience gathered under the circus tent.

Wood that splinters into my fingers as I’m rocked from side to side. Rusted bars on the verge of giving way, loosening, flaking apart in my hands as I tumble one way and then another, knocking against them.

Swaying over the frigid waters of the river. Taunted by the Elders. Hauled up at last to be trucked off to a bonfire, to be the centerpiece of that psycho ceremony with the Black Riders officiating.

“And I have a stone, a large round stone,” I hear Jendra saying. “What if I drop that stone? Gillian, what do you think will happen?”

My fingernails rake against the cold steel of the bridge’s railing. I’m not sure how long it lasts but I feel more like I’m back
in
the cage than out of it, like I’m having an intensely vivid flashback, the mental replay a trauma survivor experiences over and over. I can’t move. I’m not really seeing what’s right in front of me—the river, the open sky—but only what’s inside.

“Oh, no,” Jendra cries out, laughing. “The stone slipped out of my hand.”

I squeeze my eyes shut so tight I see indigo streamers zigzag across the pitch-black backdrop of my closed eyelids. I tell myself,
You can’t do this. Can’t let yourself slip into despair, vanish into some mental abyss where you end up unable to function.

Willpower. Bring yourself back to the here and now. Focus on what you have to accomplish.

I force my eyes open.

The moon is out, its glow silvering the tiny waves that pluck at the surface of the river. There’s a chill wind but the sky is clear. The stars pulse brightly, animating every inch of the vast expanse above me. I look up, breathe deeply, let my head clear. Staring at the immensity of the sky, I feel like I could be anywhere, out in the country again, far away from Raintree.

Then a bracelet Tetch wears clatters against the hollow metal railing.

The sound brings me back to an awareness of the city, of cold steel girders and concrete. “What are you thinking about, Gillian?” I hear her ask softly. I’ve failed to notice that she has moved right in close, next to me. Her tone of voice, the way she says my name, makes her sound like a good friend of mine, a friend who’s worried she might have done something insensitive without intending to.

“What do you think I’m thinking about, Tetch?”

Her face gleams in the milky light of the moon, like a globe lit from within. She looks better than she does in the daytime, her pasty skin more natural, the makeup she wears less absurd. Night becomes her. I wonder how long it will be before she goes through the change. Right now she looks like she’s already halfway there.

“I don’t know.” Her answer is nearly inaudible. But I know she understands
exactly
what I’m thinking about.
Swinging in an icy breeze.