Autumn
I ran and ran, splashing easily through the water and moving quickly over the patches of rough, rocky terrain. Muscle memory kicked in, helping me instinctively anticipate every small dip in the earth, every grouping of rocks. I didn’t look back once, and I didn’t think of anything but getting home, back to my cave.
“Home,” I chanted under my breath in time to the slosh of the water beneath my feet. “Home, home, home.”
I ran until I reached another curve in the rocks, and just behind it, raised several feet off the ground, was a small slit of an entrance, barely big enough for me to slip through. Grabbing hold of an overhanging rock, I pulled my body up and hooked my foot inside. Inch by inch, I slid through the opening until I was fully engulfed. Pressing my back against the wall, sucking my stomach in, I shimmied for several more feet until all at once it opened up.
I was home.
The first thing I noticed was the smell, how horrible it was. I’d never noticed it before, but now it was potent enough to cause me to cough and gag. Ignoring it, I moved deeper inside, the shadows opening up to me like the familiar arms of my father, pulling me into his warm and protective embrace.
Tears stung my eyes. Home, I was home. Despite everything, I had made it back.
Finding the mound of dirt and leaves in the darkness I’d once called my bed, I sat down and sank to my side, curling up amongst the filth, letting my heartbeat slow down and my ragged breathing calm.
But my bed didn’t feel quite the same; in fact, it smelled different and felt strange and uncomfortable. Suddenly I missed my green blanket, the one Eagle had given me that first night, and the way its cool softness encapsulated my body.
I sat up, suddenly recognizing other things. The darkness, it was so very, very dark here. So dark I could barely make out my fingers in front of my face. And the cave itself, it felt oddly quiet. I had always embraced the silence, the quiet of this place, with only the slow trickle of water from the stream and the echo of my own footsteps. Only now there were no heavy snores coming from another room, no muttered curses, nothump-thumpof fists against leather, no angry stomping of booted feet. Now there was only silence, a silence that I had craved once, and yet now this silence frightened me.
Overwhelmed with the quiet, I reached across my bedding and back behind a large rock. I’d kept my meager belongings inside an old aluminum lunchbox there, but when I pawed at its normal resting place, it was missing.
Panicking, I rolled over onto my hands and knees to search through the darkness, desperate for one thing—a photo of my father and mother taken on their wedding day, the only photo I had of either of them. Over and over again, my fingertips grazed over dirt and rocks and found nothing. Sharp edges of rocks dug small scratches into my skin, bringing a sharp tug of pain and a dampness on my fingertips as drops of blood welled up and dripped onto the dusty ground.
Frantic now, I gasped as tears formed at the thought of having lost the only thing of value to me. I crawled deeper inside the cave, patting the ground all around me. It had to be here somewhere; it had to be. Not long ago I’d been accustomed to this, to the darkness and the smells, to the texture of the cave’s surfaces, but now it all felt wrong somehow. It felt foreign to me, as if I had never belonged here at all. The darkness that had once made me feel safe had become a frustrating barrier.
Collapsing into the dirt and gripping my chest, I let out a sobbing wail. I hated Eagle now. It was all his fault; he’d made me lose this place. And now I was lost in my own home, and lost to him too. I didn’t belong here or there. I belonged nowhere, and had no home. I had nothing now, and it was down to him and that ... kiss. Even my father’s voice had vanished from my head, making me truly alone in every sense of the word.
Frustrated, I sat up and wiped my dirty hands across my face, attempting to wipe away the tears that wouldn’t stop. Eagle had taken everything from me, and his kiss last night only cemented that loss for me. Touching a finger to my mouth, I traced my bottom lip, remembering how he’d sucked it into his mouth and how hard he had kissed me, how eager he’d been.
A strangled cry lodged in my throat as the tears fell faster. I was so confused. So torn. So lost.
I’d loved this cave, and now I hated it.
I’d hated Eagle, and now I ...
I slumped forward, lowering myself onto the ground, needing to feel the unforgiving earth against my bare cheek. This earth and I, we were connected—we’d gone through so much together. She’d seen me through the hardest times in my life, and I her. The earth was my mother and I was her child, but now ...
It was time for me to leave her, and I ached at that loss. Because this was all I knew, all I remembered. But I couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t be here.
Dust blew up as my ragged breaths evened out. Soft particles of dirt rained against my skin as I mumbled my tearful good-byes, apologizing to her and to my home because I already knew I’d never be coming back here again.
Eventually I stood, straightened out my filthy clothing, and wiped the last of the tears from my cheeks as I felt my way back toward the entrance. Almost there, my foot knocked against something solid, making a muffled clanging sound.
Gasping, I dropped to my knees and found my lunch box. I hugged it tightly to my chest as happiness surged through me. I fumbled to open it, the latch rusted and old, but inside there it was, amid the pretty colored rocks and dried flowers I’d collected over the years was the photograph of my parents. Clutching it against my heart, I started for the entrance again, the slivers of sunlight streaming in and beckoning me back to the outside world. To a world I wanted to belong to again.
After slipping through the entrance, I jumped to the ground and stared down at the photo in my hand. My mother, looking so beautiful in her wedding gown. And my father, so handsome, and looking at his wife with his eyes wide but his expression soft, both in love and in awe of her. Her hands covered her belly, the beginning of a roundness there starting to show. The beginning of me.
Every time I’d ever looked at this picture, I wished that someday a man would look at me that way, that someday I’d have the sort of love my parents had. Now, as I stared down at it, I realized a man had looked at me like that, just this morning in fact, with wide, soft eyes.
Pressing my lips together and tasting the dirt on them, I breathed in a shuddering breath through my nose. Then I bent down and tucked the photo of my parents back inside the opening of the cave and covered it with rocks, burying them together, burying the girl I’d once been, giving us all the final resting place that we’d been deprived of.
Then I said a quick, poorly worded prayer and turned around to head back the way I’d come. Back to Jonah and the guards. Back to Purgatory.
And back to Eagle.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eagle
