Fran looks surprised to hear from her. Diana stands up, and with a sleeping bag draped over her shoulders, she looks like royalty, or maybe some benevolent deity. Her face glows from the bottom up.
“Okay…,” says Fran.
Diana walks around the fire until she gets to where Fran is sitting. Then she looks her in the eye, and says:
“Thank you.”
It’s clear that Fran doesn’t know what to say, so she just smiles. Diana doesn’t move. Something has happened, though you can’t say what it is at first. Even Will looks somewhat chastened and contemplative.
“Yeah, thanks,” says Troy, the fire glowing in his smudged glasses.
Someone has been vulnerable.
Maybe it’s as simple as that. For a moment, you feel like you could say something if you had to. Maybe not about Sean yet, but just about your anxiety. About how hard it has been, and the shame spiral that won’t stop tugging at you every morning when you wake up. You wonder if other people are feeling this small moment of relief. It’s a kind of lightness. Which makes it all the more strange when Silas empties that hat, puts it back on his head, and says:
“I think that’s enough for tonight.”
It’s an odd reaction, particularly given that he’s been talkingabout how you all have to risk intimacy, how he wants everyone to be honest with one another. It doesn’t make sense that he would cut things off right now.
“Why?” says Troy. “We didn’t get to my fear yet.”
“We have a long day tomorrow,” he says.
You only see Silas’s face once more before he puts out the fire, and you see it in the brightest light of the glow. There’s a sheen of sweat where there wasn’t before. He closes his eyes, and a drop slides off his right eyebrow and into the flames. And before anyone else asks a question, he tips a canteen upside down and pours cold water onto the blaze. The hissing sound is deafening as the water hits the coals, and the smoke is white as a cloud. You watch for him once it has faded a bit, but he’s already walking to his tent, and the world has gone dark.
TWELVE
You wake up once in the night because you think it’s morning. There’s a bright, pearly glow outside the tent that you’re sure is dawn. But when you unzip the flap and peer through the opening, you realize it’s just the fire. Someone has brought it back to life, and it glows in the pitch dark like a beacon. There’s a single body, just visible through the top of the flames on the other side. You hope it’s Diana, but when you walk close enough to see the night keeper of the fire, you see Silas, huddled under a blanket.
He’s half in shadow, half in light, but even with your limited visibility, you see his face and it looks calm, though his teeth are chattering a bit. You’re about to say his name, but the cool night air seems to steal the words when you open your mouth. You realize then just how chilly it is, even with the fire nearby. The breeze goes right through your sweat-soaked pajamas, and you feel the cold travel through your whole body. You’re about to turn around and go back when you hear his voice.
“Are you ready?” he says.
When you glance at him again, he’s just looking into the fire—nowhere else, and it’s hard to tell, actually, if he’s even speaking to you.
“Um. Ready for what?” you say.
There’s a long pause, during which you hear only the wind and the crackle of the fire. Then he looks up, just for a moment, but there’s a smile on his face.
“The devil’s loot,” he says.
At least that’s what you think he says. It’s hard to hear him over the wind.
“What was that?” you ask.
He’s looking at the fire again, and he waves you away with a single hand. You just stand there for a moment, waiting to see if there’s more. But there’s not more and you’re officially freezing now, so you take one last look at his glowing face and then you walk back to your tent. It’s an odd moment, to be sure. But you’re barely awake by the time you crawl back into your sleeping bag, and you don’t remember closing your eyes again.
And you don’t remember any dreams.
You only know that when you wake again, dry-mouthed in the actual morning, to the sound of light rainfall on the top of the tent, it takes you a second to realize the panicked voice you’re hearing outside is real.
“Guys! Wake up. Guys!”
Everyone is up in seconds, and while your tentmates scramble for the flap and emerge into the clearing, you hang back and sit completely still in the empty tent. There is some murmuring that you can’t make out, then a clearer question.
“… Well, then, where is he?”
You know who they’re talking about immediately, but you’re trying to delay the moment when it becomes real. Because as soon as it becomes real, your brain will start up the old familiarmachinery, and your nervous system will explode. You don’t get much time, though, before you hear a familiar voice.
