Page 83 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

It was all the talking I had breath for. And, I suppose, all the conversation I had stomach for too.

She took out my knife and held it out. I rested the arrow on the trunk and chopped the knife down, severing the feathers. I felt the impact as a sharp shock that spasmed my hand. All the breath I’d been furiously getting back inside me punched back out into the air in a gasp of pain.

Mouse, she said.

I yanked the arrow through the hole in my hand in one fast move. It was already hurting so bad I thought I might as well do it fast as it couldn’t be worse.

I was wrong about that too. I grunted again and bent double over my hand.

Mouse, she said again, sounding close to tears. Are you—

I stood and looked at my hand. I couldn’t see much. It felt smashed. But I could make a fist.

It didn’t break anything serious, I said through gritted teeth. Let’s go.

You must be bleeding, she said. We should…

I held out the cut arrow,

Keep this, I said. We’ll need the arrowhead.

But you’re bleeding, she said, we should—

I could feel the wetness in my hand. It was just wetness, not anything spurting. No artery bleeding me out like that deer in the quarry.

Next time we stop, I said. Bleeding’s fine. It’ll wash out the dirt until we can get a clean dressing on it.

That wasn’t a sensible thing to do, but it wasn’t a sensible kind of night. We ran on.

At some point we found the canal again and stopped, once more sobbing for breath.

I’m going to wrap your hand, she said.

I let her. And that was the first time I realised how hurt I was.

Chapter 27

Subtraction

Mouse – Year 201 AG

Although it hurt all the long way home, seeming to get worse by the hour and sometimes even just from step to step, for the next day and a half – as we retraced our steps home to the Bunker – I wasn’t as worried about my hand and the hole in it as I was about Cat. More specifically, her reaction when she saw it, bandaged up and swollen like a pumpkin someone had stuffed haphazardly on the end of my wrist.

I knew she was going be so angry that I’d injured myself the moment I’d left the limit of her care. She’d be worried about infection and worse, and she’d be doubly blaming herself for letting me go north without her. And the bit of her brain that never slept, the itchy-twitchy worry-worm of imagination that always bored down into the darkest places the future might go would bunch her up in a fist of controlled fury. And then she’d get even more and more furious and twitchy trying to figure out how to make everything better instead of worse than it already was.

That’s what I expected, her face ticking with irritation and worry as she built up a head of steam. I knew she’d blame Storm for shooting me, and she’d blame me for putting my hand in the way of the arrow, and though I thought it’d be unfair to blame Storm, I know I’d been stupid, even if it had been unconscious stupidity, moving my body on reflex like I had.

How many times have I told you to think before doing something? she’d spit, itching mad with a frustration that would of course be the cover-up for her deep fear for me.

I could hear her words every step of the way home. I knew that’s what she would say. And I knew her anger would be a kind of love, because of course a hole in the hand is not a trivial thing. It can kill you. Infection was the most likely result, and if it got bad, she’d be the one having to cut it off. Like someone had had to do for her mother.

Losing my hand was a horrible thought that made my guts watery every time I thought about it. So I tried not to, because when I felt like that I began to wonder if it was just my fear getting to me or the first stages in an actual infection. We’d done what we could to stop the bleeding by packing the wound with clean cotton out of my medical kit, and we’d smeared it with the honey and vinegar mix we carried as an antiseptic.

So that was what I was expecting. What we got was something entirely different. And worse, in lots of ways.

Digger must have smelled us coming because we were upwind but still hidden on the wrong side of the slope above the airfield when she must have started running. She met us as we crested the rise, bounding through the long grass, tail wagging, making the strangled noise that was usually the closest she got to barking. She jumped up at me and tried to lick my face and my ears, almost beside herself with excitement.

It was as if the simple act of returning was a miracle, and she couldn’t believe it had actually happened to her. Dogs are like that. Simple. Joy-bringers when you least expect it, when you most need it, and often when you didn’t even know you did. Maybe I never had a dog until I needed one. And this was a day when we needed some joy, because the face that met us was not the one I’d spent the long walk home imagining.