We Walk As Wolves

Chapter 9

Redd

The tree stump looked sick. 

It was dead, of course, as it had always been, but Redd had never seen a dead thing look so ill. She had never seen a dead thing look anything other than dead.

The trees and brightly colored undergrowth around the stump pulsed with a mirthful energy, a familiar light that made the Forest of Make Believe one of Redd's most beloved hidden treasures on the island. 

But the stump stuck out now, a painful sight. It was unsettling, and sent a bad taste down her throat. It looked faded, out of place, unhealthy. Redd was positive dead things didn't get sick. 

Images of the broken trees that had littered her pathway to the stump clawed at the space behind her eyes. Something was wrong with the island, and she didn't understand it. Everything felt out of place, the sewing that held the land together ripping at the seams. She felt the beginnings of something tearing inside of her, too. 

Redd wasn't naïve; there had always been evils that lurked between the breaks of the island's heartbeat: hurricanes, droughts, plagues. But the island always seemed to be able to put itself back together, because the damage had never been aimed directly at the world itself. The island could be selfish, she knew that, and the only one it truly cared for was itself. The inhabitants were the ones who suffered. 

But the hundreds of lifeless trees that had littered the ground after the quake screamed something different. Part of the island had been hurt, part of it had died. For decades, Redd had been taught that wasn't possible. 

Her body felt wrong, a feeling she'd never had before as she stared at the sick stump: her once nimble feet glued to the floor like she'd stepped in sap, a spike beneath her ribs, over and over, a brush of ice against the back of her neck, spiraling down to the hairs on her arms and legs. 

She didn't like the feeling, tried to shake it away. It stuck to her, like a lodged arrow. 

She tilted her face upward. Other than the red moon, the world around her was empty. Granted, it was hard to see through the heavy darkness, but she didn't sense a harrowing stare watching her, couldn't feel the angry beatings of black clouds against black clouds beneath her skin. 

The world just felt sick.

And if something was wrong with the island, it meant something was wrong with him. She'd learned that this too was impractical, unreasonable. It just didn't happen that way. 

With a steady breath, always steady, she picked her way through the thicket, toward the trunk. She circled it, then hovered a hand over one of the entrances. The stump had over twenty, and double the number of exits. A sharp smile pricked at her lips. Always one step ahead of everyone else - the world included. 

But her fingers hesitated, reluctant to brush against the frail bark of the stump, unwilling to touch something suddenly so fragile. She didn't know this. She knew closed fists. She knew arrow heads. She knew sharp grins and the sound of blood splattering. Redd didn't know soft. 

She backed away from the stump, slipping her fingers into her other hand. She ran her thumb over the small ridges bordering the tops of her knuckles. She thought of Cass, of his small fingers and pale, delicate skin that had been so easily tarnished by an old rope. She rotated her own fingers, watched as the lumpy string of red tissue danced under the moon's light. 

She'd split her knuckles open during a bloody fight with a stoneback chimera that had been sneaking too close to the Lost Ones' village. Again, she thought of Cass. Wondered, for a moment, if skin was meant to be soft. Maybe the world where Cass came from didn't have chimeras.