The Sign of One
She reckons itching is good – a sign of healing.
But if so, why’s she so cranky? She bites Jude’s head off so many times that Jude storms off. She doesn’t come back either. Anyway, the day after, I finally do get some sleep. When I wake up, the itch is gone. The pain too. I can lift my right arm and move my head without whining. Rona gets some of my favourite grilled tubenose fish inside me and I even manage to chew. I feel tired and incredibly stiff, like Nash and his mates have kicked the crap out of me, but that’s about it.
If I moan, it’s about wanting to see Jude. Only Rona isn’t listening and Jude stays away the whole day. I stop worrying about dying and start worrying how bad my scars will be. No girl wants someone who looks like a monster.
The third day since they brought me in with half my face and shoulder blown off, I wake up feeling almost strong again. A bit fed up with Jude though, for not standing up to Rona and coming to visit me, but otherwise good.
‘When can I get up?’ I ask for the hundredth time.
‘When I say so. Don’t ask me again!’
Rona’s extra cross because she’s caught me out of bed once already. Okay, so maybe I should do what she says – she’s the healer after all. But my legs are twitching with all this lying about and I’m sick of pissing into bottles. Somehow I’m still alive. I want to see the sun and breathe fresh air again.
‘But I feel so much better,’ I say, yawning.
Crash! The sound of glass shattering pulls my head round. I see Rona has dropped one of her ingredients bottles. An oily pool at her feet bubbles and smokes on the wood floor, but she’s staring at me, wide-eyed.
My mouth goes dry. ‘What?’
She frowns, then purses her lips. I call this her decision face.
‘You really don’t know, do you, Kyle?’
‘Know what?’
She sighs, such a big sigh it’s like she shrinks letting that much breath go.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘This has gone on long enough.’
I watch, amazed, as she bolts the shack door and closes all the shutters. The glowtubes flicker on automatically.
‘Do you feel well enough to travel?’ she asks me.
Before Jude stopped coming to visit, she told me the gossip that’s going around. Freshwater is history – we’re going to have to hit the road and find someplace new. Folks are sweating that with so many killed we’re way too few now to bring in the harvest, look after all the animals and fight off Reaper attacks.
‘Think so,’ I say, not wanting us to be left behind.
I struggle up, but she shakes her head and gently pushes me back down. She fetches her curved bandage scissors and holds them up so I see.
‘Stay still,’ she says, grimacing. ‘This might hurt.’
I cringe as she slides the cold blade under the dressing on my neck and starts snipping through the layers of gauze, but it’s not so bad. When she peels it off, I hear a nasty sucking sound, but it doesn’t hurt. She hands me a mirror.
‘I’m so sorry, Kyle. I should have told you.’
Her face is whiter than the bleached bedsheets. I hesitate, but I have to see the damage some time, so I bite my lip and hold the mirror up, fingers trembling.
I tilt it back and forth, searching for the wound.
Only . . . there is no wound.
‘What’s going on?’
I take another look. All I see is the livid pink flesh of my nightmares, bits of crusty yellow scab hanging off and a smear of green painsucker. No scorched flesh, no pus-filled blisters. By some miracle, I’m almost completely healed.
Then I get it – this is no miracle.
No. This can’t be happening. Not to me! I’m no ident!
I leap out of the bed and rip my other dressings off, careless of any pain. Rona tries to stop me, but I lash out and send her flying. And my chest and shoulder are the same – pink and shiny, no sign of a scar even. My jaw still looks all ugly and raw, but there’s flesh over the bone now, which wasn’t there four days ago.
I tear at myself, but the healing is part of me.
‘Stop that!’ shouts Rona.
In the end, I just stand there, panting and sobbing, my head thumping. ‘What am I?’ I hear myself say.
Rona grabs me by my wrists, shakes me until I look at her.
‘You’re human, Kyle. As human as I am.’
‘How can I be? Look at me. Only a twist can heal so –’
‘Never say that word!’
She slaps me across the face. So hard it stings.
I’m so shocked, all I can do is stare at her. She’s never hit me before. In her bloodshot eyes, hiding behind all that anger, I see guilt now.
‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’ I say.
She lets go and crumples into the chair by my bed. In the dim spill of glowtube light, her face looks old and exhausted. ‘Yes. No. I mean, there was always a chance it was you.’ She dries her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I suspected it last year, when you recovered so fast from that swamp pox. Look, I know you don’t understand. How could you? There’s so much I need to tell –’
She stops. Footsteps crunch across the dry grass outside our shack.
A second later somebody hammers on our door. The latch lifts and rattles; the door shudders in its frame as whoever’s outside tries to open it. We both hear a man’s loud grunt of surprise at finding the door bolted.
‘Hello-o-o! Is anybody there?’
It’s Fod’s gravelly voice, our self-appointed preacher, the very man who’ll put the rope around my neck if he finds out I’m a twist.
‘One minute!’ shouts my mother. ‘I’m changing Kyle’s dressings!’
The next few seconds are frantic. I dive back into bed. Rona scuttles around, picking up the dressings I ripped off. She tapes them all roughly back into place. When she’s done, she pulls the sheet up so only my eyes show.
‘Remember when you were bad with the swamp pox?’ she whispers.
I get it. Look like I’m out of it.
Rona gives me one last urgent check to make sure no healed skin is showing, then opens the door. Through half-closed eyes I see Fod bustle inside. With his stoop, long-nosed, wrinkly face and straggly hair, he looks like one of those giant wader birds as he twitches his narrow-eyed, suspicious gaze around the room.
He looks at me. I do some moaning and squirming.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he demands.
‘This?’ says Rona, all raised eyebrows and innocence.
‘Your door was bolted, your shutters closed.’
‘And is there a law against that? Can’t you see I’m busy here?’
He stiffens – even with my eyes half closed, I can see he’s not best pleased. He’s more used to people bowing and scraping to him than talking back. Rona will get into trouble if she keeps on like this. I fake a louder groan, to distract him.
‘I’m simply doing my rounds,’ he growls through gritted teeth. ‘Checking on my flock at this difficult time, to offer my prayers and support.’
Rona scowls. ‘And I thank you, Preacher. But I was changing my son’s dressings and didn’t want to be disturbed. Can’t you understand that?’
They face off against each other.
Even with his stoop, he towers over her, but Rona bristles right back at him.
‘Of course,’ he says at last, in that stiff way people have of saying things they don’t mean. And now he stalks over to my bedside, twitches the sheet away from my face and stares down at me. ‘Kyle, will you join me in prayer?’
I squeeze my eyes shut and groan. I can only hope my scared face looks sick enough, and that Fod is every bit the idiot people whisper he is. Rona’s only slapped my old dressings back on. How won’t he see that they are far from fresh?
‘He can’t hear you,’ Rona says. ‘I’ve done all I can for him, but –’
The sheet lands back on me. I risk a peek and Fod is staring at Rona, who’s got this mournful-but-trying-to-be-brave look on her face. Her chin trembles.
She’s good. I worry for a second that I am dying.
‘You can’t save him?’ says Fod.
‘Not with a few herbs, I can’t. All I can do is ease his passing.’
I moan again, extra loud and pitiful.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll pray for you both.’
‘It’d be more useful if you helped me bathe him,’ says Rona. ‘He’s fouled himself again – he can’t help it, the state he’s in. Perhaps you could spare us a minute or three of your valuable time?’
I groan for real this time, but Rona knows what she’s doing.
‘Any other time, I‘d be glad to help,’ Fod says quickly. ‘But I’m in a rush. Many more people to visit; the day’s getting shorter. I’d better be leaving now.’
‘Of course.’ Rona’s voice could curdle milk.
I wait until I hear the door slam and bolts going home before I open my eyes. Rona glares at me, her back against the door, a finger pressed to her lips. We listen to Fod’s crunching footsteps as they almost run from the shack.
Rona puts her hands to her mouth. Me, I feel like laughing and crying.
‘What d’you want to tell Fod that for?’ I ask Rona as she peers through the shutters, making sure he’s gone. I sit up and start gingerly pulling the dressings off.
‘Tell him what?’ she says, obviously only half listening.
‘That I’m dying.’
‘I had to, to get him to bugger off.’
‘But now he’ll go and tell everybody I’m dying. And I’m not.’
Rona eases the shutter closed and comes over to sit by me on the bed.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘we got lucky just now, but sooner or later someone will get a good look at you. Like your Jude. Especially if we have to up sticks and trek someplace else. They’ll realise your healing is . . . unusual.’
She sighs and shakes her head.
I stare down at my new skin again. Impossibly smooth and pink, glowing with health where only days ago I saw sickening wounds. Unnatural healing. The manifestation of evil.
My head is spinning, like I’ve stood up too fast.
‘But can’t we say you healed me?’
‘Won’t work. Those men who carried you back here, they all saw how bad your injuries were. Even if they could maybe believe I pulled you through, they’d expect you to be badly scarred. They’d soon figure it out. And then –’
I suck my teeth. Rona doesn’t have to paint me a picture. A real live twist found hiding in their midst – that would explain Freshwater’s run of evil luck. We’d both be dragged to the nearest tree and hung. The whole settlement would gather to watch us swing. I kind of doubt Fod would call the Slayers in to deal with us. When it comes to idents and twists, blame has a way of sticking too widely.
My flesh, new and old, tries to crawl off my bones.
‘We have to get out of here,’ I moan.
‘We will, but you’ll have to die first,’ says Rona. When she sees my stunned look, she dredges up a sad smile. ‘Not really die. We fake it. If everybody thinks you’re dead, they don’t miss you and they don’t come looking. See?’
‘Everybody?’ I say, thinking of Jude.
‘Everybody.’
I grimace. ‘But won’t they expect to see my dead body?’
My mother’s eyes go narrow and cunning. ‘Oh, these old wooden shacks with their home-made log burners – accidents waiting to happen. What with the Reaper attack and everything else, I can’t see anyone poking through the ashes.’
‘We burn this place down?’ I say, shocked.
A ghost of a smile haunts her lips. ‘Got a better idea?’
7
A BAD DECISION
‘Don’t just sit there. Get dressed and give me a hand moving this,’ says Rona. She pulls at our cast-iron log burner, but can’t move it on her own.
The enormity of what’s happened to me, and what will happen if anyone finds out, is sinking in. I hear the air roaring in my ears with every breath I take. I reckon we should be hitting the road, not shifting stoves around.
‘What for?’ I say. ‘I don’t understand.’
Rona puts her hard face on and grits her teeth.
‘Kyle, every second counts. I need you to help me. Now.’
I still feel like screaming, but the desperation in her voice gets me moving. I throw my clothes on. Working together, we walk the stove back and lever up its hearthstone. Hidden in a hollow beneath this, smothered in bugwebs, is something wrapped in an oil-stained rag and a small electronic device.
More secrets Rona has kept from me.
‘What’s all this?’ I ask.
She picks the device up, blows the worst of the dust off and powers it up.
‘My old comm. Hoped I’d never have to use this.’
Amazingly – because it looks like it’s been down there for ages – the communicator beeps and boots up. Looking satisfied, Rona powers it down, then buries it in her healer basket. The other rag-wrapped thing, she pockets. The shape of it and the weight dragging her jacket down all say blaster to me.
‘Where’d you get tech like that?’ I say.
Either she doesn’t hear me or pretends not to.
‘See if you can put the burner back the way it was,’ she says. ‘I have to go out now. You bolt the door behind me and let nobody in. Okay?’
I shrug. ‘Where are you going?’
Rona frowns. ‘I’ll check my other patients, then call some old friends of mine from a lifetime ago. With luck, they’ll be able to help us.’
‘But if they find out I’m a –’
I stop myself from saying ‘twist’ just in time, as Rona glares at me. ‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back quick as I can.’
Last thing she does is stick some fresh dressings on me. I whine, saying I don’t need them now, but she insists, telling me it’s a precaution. She heads off then, her healer basket on its strap over her shoulder. I bolt the door behind her, like she said, open the shutters a crack and watch her trudge away, head down and back bent, along the track towards the other farmsteads.
She glances back once, but doesn’t wave.
I get that, but only later. Why wave to someone who’s supposedly dying?
Now I’m on my own, my thoughts run riot. I mean, how do you handle finding out that you’re evil and a monster? The bane of Wrath. A foul caricature of humanity, like that High Slayer Morana woman said at the Peace Fair.
Don’t ask me – I haven’t got any answers. All I’ve got is a fever of questions and a lump of dread in my stomach.
After a while, I start thinking that bolting the door behind Rona wasn’t such a slick idea after all. What if Fod comes back? Or somebody else pops round looking for Rona? Won’t it look suspicious if the door’s bolted and Rona doesn’t answer? It’s not like I can let them in; I’m supposed to be dying. Maybe it’d be better if I unbolted the damn thing, hunkered down under my sheets and took my chances.
Yeah right. And hope if I get a visitor they’re not too curious.
In the end I chicken out and leave the door bolted.
The day limps by. The sun goes down and still there’s no sign of Rona coming back. I’m on my bed, hugging my knees, moaning and trying not to puke. I stare at where my wounds were and more questions hammer inside my head.
What am I? Who am I? How can this be?
Thing is – I don’t feel evil. Okay, I look at my skin and I see twist, but I’m still me, Kyle. Unless the becoming evil thing happens later? When I was little, I once stuffed my face with some mushrooms I found. Their purple was all over my face when Rona caught me. She went mental, terrified I’d eaten poisonous ones. I sat there, cringing and crying, wondering when the poison would kill me.
That’s what this feels like now. An evil within, waiting to possess me.
You’re human, Rona said. But she would, wouldn’t she?
I’m so busy feeling sorry for myself, I don’t hear the footsteps. The knock at the door is only a tap, but I nearly die of fright. I cower, wondering if it’s Jude at last, or Fod again, before I hear Rona’s whisper telling me it’s only her. I draw the bolts back and open the door. She slips inside past me. In the glow from the tubes, I glimpse some colour back in her face. She looks tired but satisfied.
‘You got hold of your friends?’ I ask her.
She nods and smiles at me. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
‘How come?’
‘We need to be ready tomorrow,’ is all she’ll say.
I throw more questions at her – like who are these friends of hers and how come I’ve never heard of them before? – but she’s not in a talking mood. And when I wake the next morning, after a long night of tossing and turning and dreams I can’t remember, I find her gone again. There’s a note waiting on the kitchen table. In her loopy scrawl, it tells me she’ll be back very late, that there’s food in the cool store, and to put together a day pack with my trail gear and be ready to go. Bolt the door, the note says, and don’t let anyone in, no matter what they say.
That means Judith too is double underlined.
A second day of waiting stretches out into forever. A thousand times I shrink inside, sure I hear footsteps again on the path. I endlessly pack and repack my rucksack. In the end, I lie on my bed, Rona’s rusty old hunting blade beside me.
What’s Rona up to?
Where will we be going?
I stare at my little fingers. How can I be a twist?
Questions, questions. No bogging answers. It’s doing my head in.
The room gets darker and darker and so does my mood. Through the cracks in the shutters I see the sun set again, but still no sign of Rona. I’m going out of my mind with being lonely and frightened and not having anybody to talk to.
As the glowtubes flicker on, I think of Jude.
I miss her. And that’s when the thought strays into my head . . .
I just have to say goodbye to Jude. I know it’s mad, but I can’t clear off forever and leave her lonely and thinking I’m burnt to a black, charred crisp. Rona will kill me, but Jude’s not just my girl, she’s my only real friend.
The Flint farmstead is ten klicks away. It’s cloudy, so neither the little dogmoon or the bigmoon to shed any light, but I find my way easy enough. Should do – I’ve worn a groove in this trail these past few months. A rain shower rattles through, but that’s good. Less chance of anyone else being out. It feels great to be outside, breathing fresh air deep into my lungs. My skin tingles with the damp and the moving. With every step I take, I start to feel stronger.
Only . . . what’s causing that? I shiver.
To cheer myself up, I think about how Jude and I got together last winter. I was over at her father’s place, fixing his threshing machine. This curly-haired girl, about my age, was chopping firewood – I couldn’t take my eyes off her. When I asked her name, she gave me this lopsided smile, said it was Jude, and asked me mine. I teased her, told her she was proper handy with an axe for a girl. She teased me right back, said I’d fix her dad’s thresher a lot quicker if I quit staring.
We’ve been together ever since.
I don’t know if I love Jude or if she loves me. All I know is, Jude’s the only person, other than Rona, who smiles when she sees me. And I need to hold her one last time.
As I creep into the farmstead, their dog Bram woofs off a few half-hearted barks and rattles his chain, but he knows my Kyle stink and soon shuts up. Across the yard, the loaf-like outline of the thatched house appears out of the darkness. No lights are on. They’re all in bed already. As the only daughter, Jude has a sleeping place to herself in the lean-to at the far end. I tiptoe round there and do the soft tap-tappety-tap-tap at her window that tells her it’s me. Soon as I hear the telltale creak of her floorboards, I scuttle off to wait in the hay barn.
Jude takes her time.
Long enough for me to worry she’s not coming. Or telling her father.
Finally, she slips inside the barn to join me. I flick on the solitary glowtube and see she’s alone, a threadbare work jacket thrown on over her night stuff.
She scrunches her face up against the light.
‘Is that really you, Kyle?’
‘In the flesh, or what’s left of it.’
I open my arms out to her and hold my breath.
‘It is you!’ she says. She comes running, throws her arms round me and buries her face into my bandaged neck. I’m so relieved, I hoist her up off her feet and spin her around. When I put her down again, she smiles up at me.
But as I go to kiss her, she pulls away.
‘I don’t get it,’ she says, looking confused. Her chin wobbles. ‘The last thing Rona told us was that you were close to –’
‘I’m tougher than I look.’
Jude gives me her slow-nod sceptical look. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you later, but first things first.’ I pull her closer, slip my hands under her jacket and feel how she’s still lovely and warm from her bed.
‘Ew! You’re all cold and wet,’ she laughs.
I kiss her and she kisses me back, pressing herself against me. Her hands are at the back of my neck now, pulling my head down so she can reach me. How it happens I’ll never know, but she knocks one dressing off. It’s only loosely taped on, more for show than anything, and comes away with a slight sucking sound.
‘Oh my Saviour, I’m sorry.’ Jude pulls back, her eyes big with concern. We both glance down at the bandage lying in the straw. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No, I’m fine.’ I try to turn away, to stop her seeing, but I’m too slow.
I feel her go rigid. ‘Kyle!’
With the toe of my boot, I scuff uncertainly at the straw. When I look up, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t just say goodbye. It’s mad, but all the horror, the fear and loneliness, I can’t keep it inside – I need to tell her. Maybe if I can make Jude understand that I’m still me, everything will be all right again.
I sit her down on a hay bale. ‘I can trust you, can’t I?’
She nods stiffly, but I see her wondering.
‘Don’t be scared,’ I say.
I unbutton my shirt. One by one, I peel off the rest of Rona’s dressings and show Jude how my wounds have almost completely healed. I hold her tight when her eyes flood with panic. I shush her and stroke her curly hair.
She’s petrified, trembling like a newborn lamb.
‘It’s not what you think,’ I say.
Thank the Saviour she doesn’t scream, but when I relax my grip, anxious not to hurt her, she makes a break for it and I have to grab her again.
‘Jude, stop. I’m not going to hurt you.’
A long time goes by like this. I do everything I can to calm her. I whisper she has no reason to fear me. Her mouth opens and closes, but no words come out, only a low moan. It’s an ugly feeling, me making her skin crawl. Not that I can blame her. She sees my unnatural healing and that means only one thing – human on the outside, inside a monster. No wonder she’s terrified.
‘Let – go – of – me,’ she says.
This time when I release her she cringes, but doesn’t run. She won’t let me touch her again, but she looks able to listen. Quickly, I make up some crap about Rona finding an ancient wonder drug in her medchest.
Jude stares as I babble on, her chest heaving, until I run out of words. She knows I’m lying, I can tell.
‘If anybody sees you like this,’ she says shakily, ‘you are dead. They won’t listen; they’ll kill you. And Rona too. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say. What else is there to say?
We sit there, in the circle of light, the darkness crushing in on us. I try to read her face, but there are too many shadows. On the way here, I had so much I wanted to say to her. Now, it all seems so pointless. My impossible healing shouts more loudly than any words can.
‘What will you do?’ she says.
I hesitate, wondering what I should tell her.
‘We’re going away, to someplace nobody knows us. We’ll be okay.’
‘Going away? Where?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s why I came, to say goodbye.’
Tears shine in Jude’s eyes now.
‘It’s too late for that,’ she says, very quietly.
‘What’s that mean?’ I say.
But she won’t look at me and I get it now – she thinks I’m gone already.