Mire

Chapter 5

The villagers found me two days later. They stood around me in silence. Their empty eyes accused me. I clung to the sodden bark of my tree and buried my face in its whorls. It had protected me from the flood; it would not protect me from the villagers.

"River." one said, and held out his arms. "Come on down, girl."

I slid down and fell straight into Landen's embrace. He hugged me and then cleared his throat. The other survivors did not make a sound. While Landen turned around and carried me to safety, they kept trudging forwards.

The village had not just died, it had been erased. The word 'missing' was no different to 'dead'. Children, parents, brothers and sisters had been torn out of each other's hands by the roaring flood. The river had claimed its sacrifice after all.

The survivors had hidden in another cave above the tide-line. The sight of the narrow entrance made me struggle, but Landen pressed his warm hand to my forehead and shushed me like a baby. The cave had no natural chimney, and it stank of smoke and the fatty, rancid smell of unwashed bodies. There were several fires, and people had layered blankets and pine branches to make a soft floor. It was warm and dry, but the smoke made the air thick and toxic.

Landen carried me to one of the fires and stripped off my soaking clothes. They had been wet for so long that the seams flaked away from each other. Lumps of dirt fell out of the mouldy folds, and we both gagged at the stench. Landen dumped soap into a bucket of water and scrubbed my skin and my hair. I heard him apologising for how cold it was, but compared to the rain I had been shivering in for days it felt blissfully warm. He rubbed my feet and hands with a blanket, and I sobbed when they tingled and ached. When they started to throb in red-hot agony I shrieked and tried to fight Landen off.

"I'm sorry." he said, grabbing my flailing hands, "But if you ever want to walk again, we have to do this."

I screamed until my exhausted voice gave out, and then I curled up in my blanket and shuddered at each jab of icy pain. Landen spooned crude trail-soup into my mouth like a baby. My hands and feet hurt so much that the pain blinded me. I could not walk for three days.

Landen did not let any of the other villagers near me. Most of them were so grief-stricken that they did not care about anyone else, but some of them spat at us as they walked past, kicked dirt into our fire and, once, we woke up to find Landen's supplies soaked in urine. One afternoon a gaunt woman came up to the fire. Landen broke our long silence to tell me that she was Jonas's mother. Her eyes were dead as they looked at me. I shook my head. She turned away.

"Is he really dead?" Landen asked that night. I met his eyes, and he smiled a little crookedly. "Did you see him?"

"No," I whispered. "The angry people tried to make the river kill me. The river ran away. Then you found me."

The villagers knew that they were in as much danger now as they had been during the flood. Their homes and supplies had been destroyed. The storm had ravaged the fertile soil. When the cold weather came they would starve. Many of them left, disappearing in groups of three or four without looking back. Some went to the plague-stricken city, knowing that at least there would be food there. Others went downstream to see if any other villages needed hands to help them rebuild.

Landen told me he was going upstream to find the people who had diverted the river.

"I want to ask them why they did it." he admitted. He looked at my anxious face and tweaked my nose, "I wonder how many fish get stuck at their dam. I bet I could catch one every day for a hundred years! You need to come with me to make sure I don't eat myself to death."