Running With the Wave

Chapter 38

Era:

The men come and take Keara's body. I look away as they do it and close my eyes. I don't want the memory of Keara dead stuck in my head, when I remember her she should be alive and smiling. The door clangs behind them, and some women usher me out of the blood so that they can clean it up. I get up and walk to the window ledge, hefting myself up onto it. I bend my knees close to body and wrap my arms around them, staring out at the field. I'd been on that field only a day ago, running through the tall grass. That first night when I escaped, Hunter had found me on the field. I had thought I was dead. He had showed me Moa's mom's grave tha he had dug and buried her in the day before.

"Era, you need to get cleaned up." Fearn tugs me down gently.

The woman is thirty, around the age my mother would be if she had been alive. It's nice to be the one being taken care of for once instead of the one caring for others. I hug my arms around my body and shake my head. Hunter's sweatshirt folds up in my hands and I hold it tight.

"Yes, sweetie." Fearn repeats.

"I'm not a child." I whisper, staring up into her eyes.

Fearn shakes her head sadly.

"No, you're not. But you should be."

She takes my hand and leads me to the bucket next to the tap in the corner. I stand there, feeling lost and not really there as she undresses me and fills the bucket up with water and dumps it on me again and again, cleaning the blood and grime off.

"Where's your night outfit?" she asks.

"Not here. I left it in the City when I escaped."

Somehow I don't think the women would take nicely to me having kissed a boy and slept at his house. They don't understand yet that Hunter can be trusted. Fearn nods, and reaches into the wall pocket next to her sleeping mat and pulls out her own. I look up at her in surprise.

"I'm going to be Disposed soon, there's no point. Besides, you need it." I tell her.

"Put it on."

I take it from her and shuffle into my corner, slipping it on then I come back to her.

"Moa's with the child?"

"Yes." She smiles at me.

I pull myself back onto the window ledge and she comes and sits on it beside me. For a while we sit there in silence, me picking at a loose thread. I feel so small, so helpless. I used to act like a mother to Keara and Moa, but am I doing what's best for them now? Especially with Keara gone...

"You remind me of my mother, Fearn." I whisper, surprising myself.

She looks sideways at me.

"What happened to your mother?"

"She got very sick, and the men could have saved her, but she had already given them many boys and one girl, me, so they decided not to waste their medical supplies on her."

"I'm sorry. She must have been an amazing, sweet woman." Fearn says gently.

"Not really." I whisper, "She was just my mother, but that's enough for me."

Fearn sighs.

"I need to go feed the baby now, I'm sorry. We'll talk more later, 'kay?"

"Yeah."

The motherly figure walks towards the corner where she's hiding with Moa and I begin to wonder if, for me, there will even be a later.