The Woodlands

“Good.”

I started to think that Joseph, Deshi, and I needed to make a plan—one that didn’t involve Apella or Alexei.

Lying with Joseph by the fire, it was hard to concentrate. I needed to ask him a question, but I kept forgetting my words. His lips on my neck, his hand ru

“I want to talk to you and Deshi.” My eyes looked to Deshi and Hessa, sleeping peacefully, light snuffly snoring coming from the beautiful baby.

“Uhuh…” he managed, as he ran the tip of his nose along my earlobe, I shivered. “Stop it!” I whispered harshly, squeezing his wrist. He stopped.

“What is it?” he asked, unapologetic.

I looked over to make sure Apella and Alexei were asleep and whispered, “I think we should leave them.”

I could feel him shaking his head behind me. “No, we can’t. I know you don’t like to think about it, but that baby is coming. We will need Apella’s help when the day comes.”

I thought about it. “But she pretty much left Clara to die. What makes you think she wouldn’t let me die too?” If it came to that. I felt my body tensing.

Joseph loosened his hold on me and whispered, “You’re not remembering things clearly. You were in shock. Think back to that morning.” His voice was steady.

I didn’t want to.

“I can’t,” I said, feeling my breathing getting quicker. It was a strangling feeling. The idea of remembering that day squeezed the air out of me.

He pulled me closer, warm arms encircling me, lulling me into a false sense of security. “I think you need to.”

I closed my eyes. Memories of the darkness, the fire, the noise, filtered in. I remembered voices. They came back to me in snippets, pieces of time cut out and brought back to me, frayed and dirty.

“Come on, breathe.”

Muffled thuds, compressions.

“What can I do?” A calm voice, strong. Joseph.

“Put your hand there,” she said.

“Where?”

“Yes, there, push down. Hard. Harder than that. We need to slow the bleeding. Rub while you compress. There may be a clot.”

“Thump, thump, thump.”

The memory floated away, as did the voices, flying out the tu

“Oh!” I gasped. After I had given up and clung to the rails, disco

Joseph was quiet for a while. He was stroking my arm. My eyes were heavy. I could feel myself drifting off. Then he stopped.

“You know, we had to pull her off Clara. She never gave up.”

Sleep was yanked away from me, like losing a tug-o-war, burning the palms of my hands. “And you didn’t either. But I did.” I could feel the blade turning in on myself. I sat there and let it happen. I was useless.

“You can’t do that. You can’t blame yourself. You were in shock. You need to realize that maybe, no one was to blame,” he said earnestly. It was so easy for him to see the best in people. I wasn’t like that.

“You loved her too. You didn’t go into shock.” I sounded like I was accusing him, but that’s not how I meant it to come out.

“I did. But, you…you loved her more. She was your sister.”

I sighed. To me, that wasn’t really good enough. And without Apella to blame, where could it go?

I felt this nasty, gulping feeling, like air going down the wrong hole. Acid rising. Thinking about Clara was too painful. I turned my head, and whispered angrily, “Will you…just, please. Shut up!”

I was a

“All right, easy,” he said, “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

I was silent. I knew he was right. I supposed being together also meant I should probably listen to him, at least some of the time. I didn’t like the idea and I hardly slept thinking of ways around it, coming to no solution.

After days of walking though long grass and bendy saplings, the terrain changed. The line we were following sunk down like all of a sudden it was too heavy for the earth to shoulder it. We were between two raised platforms, ru

I shook it out. Just keep moving, I thought, don’t be a coward now. Be stronger.

We were approaching the ruins of a city.

The greenery still dominated, cascading up and over everything. But in between there was evidence of crumbling stone buildings. Rotted holes where the doors once were. Painted, metal window frames in yellow and peeling, aqua-painted walls. It was ghostly and dead.

The comforting sounds of the forest existed in the city, in a strange collision of what should and shouldn’t be. So this was how our ancestors had lived. It was a confusing sprawl. There was no order to the layout of buildings. It was like people had built them wherever they pleased.

I was carrying Hessa on my back. He was gurgling, making little squeaking noises as we walked. Apella a

We worked our way into the disintegrating city, the buildings getting higher as we went. After about half an hour of walking, we had pushed our way into several buildings, finding them all to be unsound, too dangerous to sleep in. I rolled my eyes as Alexei ran his hand over a doorframe, knocking in various places like he thought it would welcome him, tell him a secret and say you’re safe here. I turned away. None of these building were safe. They were held together by the fact that no one had touched them in years. One sharp shove and they would collapse.

I sca

“Look over there,” I whispered.

We both stared at it for a long time. The man never moved, never made a sound. He kept the same pose, one hand across his chest, the other outstretched as if asking for something. When we approached it slowly, we noticed there were plants growing up and around his legs. It was a statue.

I approached, sweeping back the vegetation from the iron man’s feet to reveal a plaque. Vladimir Lenin. I guess he must have been an important man many years ago. Now, he was one of the only reminders that people had ever lived here, barely maintaining himself against the rule of nature.

The area around the statue was flat and sheltered by surrounding trees. Apella seemed anxious and readily agreed to making this the meeting place, before she and Alexei hurriedly disappeared between buildings.

With Hessa on my back and the two boys leading the way, we ventured forth. It was an eerie atmosphere and the stillness solicited silence. It felt like we were walking in a graveyard. Black windows stared at us like empty eyes, doorways opened like screaming mouths. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to all the people. Did they leave in a mass exodus, or did they suffer the fate of most of the ones left outside the Rings? Bombed to bits.