The Turtle must’ve been watching out for us because everything was going smoothly. I won’t stoop to the cliché, but let’s say that I would’ve been a little more comfortable if we’d had more trouble. No one questioned the presence of a nine year old girl traveling with us, no one hassled Carrie or Eden, even though women were scarce, and we were generally just left alone. It made me feel like something worse was coming.
We’d done well so far, making our way along with the Grissom’s men, and we made it through the Thinny, though it was a stomach-churning sight. It devoured hundreds… I don’t think any of slept very well that night.
Even if it weren’t for the Thinny, I had a lot on my mind that evening. Carrie and Penny walked off to talk. Maybe I could have picked up on what they were saying, especially from Penny…but I didn’t want to pry. Whatever it was, it upset Penny. Ashleigh went and talked to her, which is good. He makes her laugh, and when she came back she was smiling even if her eyes were a little red.
Carrie and Eden had both already talked to me about blood and Penny was urging me to just bite someone just about every day. I know she was just worried about me, but how do I explain to her that it makes me hate myself?
That night I invited her into my tent. I asked her to get out my blood and hand it to me. I thought that maybe if I let her help me…feed… that it would help her. Make her feel like she was taking care of me, you know? I drank the cold blood more slowly than I usually do, not wanting to spill any. It was hard enough letting the person I love more than anything watch me drink human blood…I didn’t want it running down my face like a monster.
I guess it was what upset Penny before. Carrie told her not to get on my case about drinking, tried to explain how it makes me feel. It made me think back to my conversation with Eden.
“I want to watch her grow up,” I told Eden. “I want to see her graduate high school. I want to see her get married, be there to give her away…” I could even see her all grown up, taller than Carrie, but still short. I could see her face, the childish lines smoothed by age into startling beauty. “…But I don’t think I’m going to.”
I wish I could’ve promised Penny, but I knew that I wasn’t going to get to do those things. I didn’t need Carrie’s visions to tell me that, either. It was my own nature and there was only one escape from it.
Holding Penny as she cried on me I let myself hope for a second. How many times had I put a gun to my head and not pulled the trigger? Penny had already saved my life a hundred times over. Maybe…
Well…Ka….
It was enough that Penny loved me, that she’d seen me drink blood and not turned her face away from me. After all, there was more to my life now than blood. Penny probably thought she was being coy. Sometimes she can be amazingly cunning and full of guile, but there are times when that mischievous glint in her eyes shines through. And she giggles.
She asked me about Carrie of course. I’d been a bit worried about that actually. Penny’s always giggled and teased me about the women who stare at me, or who approach me while I’m out with Penny. I’m not sure if she thinks it’s cute, or if maybe she’s sorta looking for a mother-figure as well. But what she expects and the realities of a relationship are two different things. I wasn’t sure how she’d react to sharing me with someone else. I had to admit, it’d been part of what was keeping me and Carrie apart.
I asked her if she would be okay if me and Carrie got together and I put as much of the reality of that into my words and thoughts as I could. I wanted her to really understand what it might mean…if it happened.
When she gave us her blessing, I was more frightened than relived. Since Penny approved, there was nothing really standing in our way… And I might not have much time with her. Of course… that was the rest of why we hadn’t at least given it a chance yet. We both knew that I was going to die and that it was going to be sooner rather than later. Did I want to get involved with her only to leave her on her own again? Did she?
We’d set up our tents as far from the rest of Grissom’s men as we could. Maybe we were risking discovery in staying a little ways away, but no one tried to bring us in for security reasons or anything. I think that the Thinny robbed the band of a lot of their professionalism. But we were keeping watch just the same, we didn’t trust these soldiers. And Penny was looking for an excuse to get me together with Carrie.
I didn’t think it was worth it to try to tell Penny that you can’t push love any more than you can push Ka, but I’m not sure she would’ve understood. Besides, it made her happy…and it made me happy. When Ashleigh woke us up and he and Alistair and Eden were crawling into their tents, we stayed up and talked and played cards and I showed Penny magic tricks. I tried not to think about it, but the idea was seductive. Me and Carrie and Penny… like a family. Not a ka-tet, but just a family. Would this be what it was like?
The night wore on and we settled down into more silent watchfulness than conversation. Penny said she was going to go to bed. I know it’s harder to stay awake when you’re bored and the poor kid hadn’t had anything to do but talk to grownups while riding along with the army for almost two weeks. She couldn’t even really let herself teleport and that was something she was as used to doing as walking. She gave me a hug goodnight and what might’ve been a wink.
I sat down next to Carrie by the fire and after a while I asked if she wanted to learn my coin trick. It was a good way to build manual dexterity and all my little magic tricks had come from this one little parlor trick. It was something that Lex first showed me to get my fingers faster to help with my reloading speed.
She moved closer next to me so she could watch as I took out the silver coin that came from Gilead. I held it between my thumb and first finger and rolled it to the second slowly. Then the third, explaining how to raise and lower the knuckles and catch the edge of the coin to make it dance.
I was enjoying her nearness, her arm pressed against mine on my left, touching the rose inked into my bicep. When I finally noticed her head beginning to droop I stopped the coin and chuckled. I nudged her with my shoulder.
“Carrie, wake up.” She looked at me and blinked. “You were about to go under.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “I didn’t even think of that. I guess I forgot. Tell you what, let’s practice with cards.”
I fished my deck out of my pocket and slipped the cards out of the worn box. I leaned in close to her and held the deck in one hand. My fingers moved surely, twisting the top half of the deck and slipping it under the other half. Again, twisting the cards and slipping them under. Again and again, slowly, explaining what my fingers were doing.
“Okay, now you try it,” I said. The cards settled in my palm and I held the deck out to her. She reached up and closed her hand over the cards, her fingers brushing mine… I turned to look at her and our faces were only an inch apart… or was it half an inch… a quarter inch…?
And then our lips touched and we kissed. She tasted like roses.
My head felt light and the stiffness between my legs was sudden. I think we would have ended up in my tent except for the sudden flames. The fire roared up, doubling in size with a quiet whoosh of heat. We pulled back, startled, and the cards in our hands were smoking. They crackled, then burst into flames. We flung them away from us and they were lifted on the hot air from our fire, whirling above us like fireflies until they burned down to drifting ashes.
The fire burned in a six foot pillar of bright light for another second, and then the flames collapsed in on themselves, just tiny tongues licking up from the embers.
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