SNEAK PEEK
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CHAPTER ONE: LEAVING
Her husband’s body was already cold. She cradled him in her arms, repeated his name as if the sound of her voice might call him back—as though he were only in a deep sleep and not… “Calum. Calum, please…” Their straw-filled bed crinkled as she shifted with his head held loosely in her lap, wishing for his pale face to squirm with discomfort, for an idle susurration to slip from his parted mouth. But her movements only succeeded in drawing his eyelids partly open, so that his lifeless gaze peered into the dark above their heads where the candlelight didn’t reach. She folded herself over him in despair, her forehead to his parted, breathless mouth. He was truly gone, she realized—lost to the mysterious illness that had only taken hold two nights prior. “No,” she whispered upon his brow. “No, no, no, it cannot be…” |
This was something else. Illness swept frivolously through their city all the time, came and went like the change of seasons, and while it was true these bouts did claim the lives of their townsfolk on occasion, it was a fate reserved for the old and feeble, not the young and hardy like Calum. Not like this. This was something else, something unusual.
Nothing truly dies.
The words floated through Alma’s mind unbidden, unexpected. She stiffened as she remembered them. Strange words from an even stranger dream. Or dreams, rather. She’d been having them as of late. The past three nights, in fact, almost as soon as all of this had first started. How strange indeed, she thought. Perhaps her subconscious knew something she couldn’t admit on the surface—as if she’d predicted Calum’s impending fate all along. Except…
Nothing truly dies.
Even now as she remembered these words, it was not in her voice but another’s. A young woman’s voice, she remembered distinctly. Because these were no mere dreams.
“Messages,” she whispered, her lips brushing her husband’s skin, even cooler to the touch now than he’d been moments ago.
There was more to the message, more to the dreams. They’d been foggy before, forgotten in the frenzy of daily duties and caring for a sick husband. But now the claws of Alma’s anguish dredged them up again, stirred them to the surface of her thoughts like debris she might desperately hold onto lest she sink to the bottom of her despair.
Nothing truly dies.
No message could be timelier, more perfect. She glimpsed the young woman in her memory, through the distorted sheen of a remembered dream, and knew there had been more that followed.
A noise at the window. Alma held her breath. The candlelight waxed and waned, the darkness at the window solid, undisturbed. Something rustled just out of sight. Quietly, Alma slipped out from under Calum’s heavy head and crept to the open window of their modest dwelling. She pressed her face to the warm night. Just below the window another pale face peered back.
“Rose,” Alma said to the girl. “What are you doing out so late?”
The girl did not reply but blinked her big vacant eyes.
“Well, since you’re here, go and fetch your mother for me, would you?”
The ten-year-old girl offered no clear sign of understanding, but she did turn and wander into the dark and Alma trusted that her mother would be coming shortly. Rose was the daughter of Laurie and Neil next door, Laurie being Alma’s closest friend in all of Gloam. If there was anyone she could trust with the dangerous ideas circling her mind tonight, it was Laurie.
Alma quickly dressed in her tattered brown robes. She regarded Calum’s body on the bed, dressed only in his undergarments. She sat beside him, closed his green eyes back up, smoothed the palm of her hand over his handsomely angular face. His lips were the color of a dreary winter sky. She was tempted to kiss them but resisted the urge.
Nothing truly dies.
Come find me in the north.
Alma startled as there came a knock on her door. She briskly answered, and found her close friend standing in the dark just outside, her thin-but-unshakable form leaning into the doorway, eyes wide expectantly.
“Rose said you sent for me? What’s wrong?”
Confronted with her friend’s support, Alma’s composure buckled, and so she stood aside and let her husband’s form on the bed do the talking. Laurie stepped inside, a hand over her surprised mouth.
“Oh, Alma,” Laurie gasped, and proceeded to throw her arms around Alma’s shoulders. The whispery tone of her voice was soothing in Alma’s ear. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry…” When she released her, she said, “When did he pass?”
“Not long ago. I’m not sure what roused me, exactly, but… he was already gone when I woke.”
That wasn’t entirely the truth. She remembered now what had roused her—another dream like the rest, the woman’s voice and her beckoning message. The shock of finding Calum had temporarily disturbed it from her memory, but now it all seemed so clear. So deliberate.
“I don’t know what to say,” Laurie said. “It’s just so awful.”
She took Alma into her arms a second time, squeezing her as words failed her. And while her friend was certainly a comfort, Alma’s thoughts were already racing in too many other directions to appreciate the gesture.
“I have no intention of handing him over to the Elders.”
Laurie’s hold on Alma slackened. She held Alma at arm’s length instead, looking her over like she might be ill.
“What do you mean?”
Alma paced to the edge of the bed where she looked solemnly upon her husband’s corpse, surer by the moment of her intentions. While it was customary in Gloam to transfer their dead to the church, in order to receive their Elders’ final blessing before burial, Alma knew such a destiny was not meant for Calum. Something greater was at play.
Alma took a seat beside Calum’s body, a hand upon his hard shoulder.
“Laurie,” she said. “You will not like what I am about to tell you, and that is reasonable and expected, but… I must impart these honest feelings so that I might ask for your help, whether you agree with them or not.”
Laurie clasped her hands, eyes darting between Alma and the dead. “Tell me.”
Alma met her gaze and knew in an instant that she could tell her—that Laurie was already bracing herself for Alma’s blasphemy and wasn’t altogether frightened of it. This was true friendship.
And so Alma told Laurie of the dreams, of the woman and her cryptic message, as well as her own indelible certainty that she was meant to follow this path against their learned traditions. “
Alma…” Laurie bit her tongue, carefully choosing her words. “It is a shocking thing you’ve just experienced—that you are still in the midst of experiencing. It is understandable that you might resist the possibility—”
“I am not in denial of Calum’s death,” Alma said, the weight of his corpse resting just beside her.
“But you hold out hope that this mysterious woman from your dreams will… do what, exactly? Bring him back? Is that what I am to gather? I do not see any other way to interpret this message from your dreams. Do you not think this in and of itself some form of denial?”
“I understand it might seem that way, but…” Alma took a deep breath. “I cannot properly express how real this feels, Laurie. That these dreams are not just dreams, that this woman and her message…”
“But you also admit these dreams made no impression on you until tonight. You can understand how this might all sound a bit hopeful? Impulsive?”
“I understand how it sounds, I do, I promise you. It is difficult to explain. It is not so much that I’ve simply found a convenient interpretation of these dreams in light of my loss, as it is that their meaning has only just solidified thanks to it.”
“Thanks to it?” Laurie repeated, noting the morbidly positive connotation.
“You know what I mean.”
Alma regarded her dead husband, felt a pang in her heart which, for a moment, made her doubt her own feelings. Could Laurie be right? Was she in the throes of some grief-induced delusion? Would the feeling pass come morning, her rational mind coming to take its place?
Nothing truly dies.
Come find me in the north.
The woman’s words reverberated in her memory louder each time she remembered them, as though she was there in her mind now, communicating telepathically.
“It is the strangest thing,” Alma murmured. “The memory is only growing stronger. I can’t explain it. Now it is like I was actually there. I see the room, and I see her as though she is obscured through smoke and firelight, and there is something about her, Laurie. Something I’ve never felt before in my life. Not within this city’s walls. It is powerful…”
When Alma looked at Laurie again, she was startled to discover fear in her friend’s eyes.
“Say this is real,” Laurie said. “What if this… presence, means to mislead you? Or means you harm?”
“She does not,” Alma said so matter-of-factly that even she was mildly embarrassed, knowing how she must sound. “This energy I feel is good. I don’t know how, but I know it. This woman, she is… she is pure of soul.”
“Pure of soul?”
“Yes. I sense only goodness in her intentions.”
“And what is there to say of eagerness to believe whatever gives you hope in this matter?”
“What is there to say of intuition? Or faith? What if this is a sign from Oleth? What if she is Oleth’s messenger? Who am I to question it?”
“Prophet Tobias is Oleth’s messenger,” Laurie corrected, her voice hardening with the first real sign of disapproval. “To suggest anything else is blasphemy and you know that.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right, but…” Alma penetrated her friend’s gaze with utter earnestness. “What if I am right?”
Laurie cast a worried glance over her shoulder at the door, at the dark window, as if someone could be listening.
“Will you stop me?” It was a painful thing to ask, to pit their friendship against their faith, but it had to be done. When Laurie shook her head ‘no’ Alma took it one step further. “Will you help me?”
Laurie faltered. She drew her conflicted gaze over Calum’s body once more, then over Alma’s breath-held expression, and all at once Alma witnessed the total deflation of Laurie’s reservations.
“What do you need from me?”
“Oh!” Alma exclaimed, and took her friend’s hands in her own. “Thank you, Laurie, thank you. I knew I could count on your kindness.”
“I will surely regret it.” She studied Calum again, her face darkening with sadness and perhaps pity, for Alma’s sake. “But if I were in your shoes, and it were my Neil, I cannot say I could ignore such a message myself.”
“Do you believe me, then?”
Laurie sighed, exasperated. “I believe that you believe it, and that is enough for me.”
* * *
Unfortunately, what Alma needed most required more than what Laurie herself could provide, though she did possess the necessary connections.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Neil sat upright in bed, blinking wearily in Alma’s candlelight as Laurie tried to explain everything. Neil rubbed sleep from his eyes, leaving only incredulity in its place.
“Calum is…”
“Yes,” Laurie answered.
Neil fell silent as the weight of this settled over him. Though not as close as Alma and Laurie, Neil and Calum had been on friendly terms. Alma studied the mound of scrap cloth on the floor beside their bed where their baby boy slept soundly. Then she glanced at the second small bed in the opposite corner of their dwelling where little Rose sat cross-legged in the shadows, listening intently to their every word.
“I saw him only a day ago,” Neil muttered, reflecting. “He did not seem so terribly sick then.”
“It happened sometime while I was asleep beside him,” Alma said. “That is all I know for certain.”
“And you’re wanting to… I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard the rest. I was too distracted by the news that he’d…”
Died was the word Neil failed to say. But Alma understood. She didn’t want to think it herself, let alone voice it. If not for the burgeoning hope of her new mission, she would undoubtedly be beside herself as a result. Some part of her did suspect she latched onto this hope to stop herself from unraveling, but she didn’t care. Not at this point.
And perhaps there was a danger in that.
“Alma has had a dream,” Laurie started to say, before Alma quickly interrupted, for fear that Laurie’s retelling would make her story sound all the crazier.
“I have been visited,” Alma corrected. She stepped forward, placing herself between Laurie and her husband, letting him see her as she was. “A woman has come to me in my dreams. I believe she can help me. I must take Calum to her by any means necessary.”
“Help you?” Neil said. “But if Calum is already dead…”
“Nothing truly dies.” Alma liked the sound of it more each time she repeated it. “Come find me in the north. That is what she said.”
“In your dream,” Neil said.
“Yes, but it was not just a dream. I am certain of that. I’ve had it three nights in a row now. The very same.”
“And yet Calum has only been lost tonight. So what is this woman supposed to be, a fortune teller? Or worse, a witch?” Neil said this with a particular note of severity. Talk of witches was not uncommon in Gloam, when speaking of the dangers beyond their city’s walls. “That is, if these dreams are anything more than just that.”
“Neil,” Laurie said reproachfully. “Alma is my friend and she needs our help.”
“If she is truly your friend, do you not have an obligation to talk her out of this nonsense?”
“I know how it sounds,” Alma interjected, “but it is not nonsense.”
Neil sighed. “You are understandably devastated. I do not even wish to imagine what you must be feeling, Alma, but you must acknowledge the shock has clouded your better judgement.”
“I am of sound mind.” Alma wasn’t entirely sure she believed it even as she said it. “I intend to embark on this journey with or without anyone’s help.”
“Well, then, it sounds like you don’t need us after all.”
“Of course she needs our help,” Laurie snapped, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the baby.
“You wish to be an accomplice to this? She means to venture beyond our city’s walls, Laurie. If we help in this matter, her death will be on our hands.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Alma said. “As I said before, I intend to do this regardless. But obviously your help would be appreciated.”
“How do you suppose you’d manage it without my help? The gates are locked. I assume that’s what you’ve come to me about?”
It was true. Laurie’s husband served as a wall sentry on a rotating basis with several other men who worked the fields alongside him, which granted them access to the keys allowing them in and out of the city’s main gate.
“Locks can be broken,” Alma said. “Though I would rather not cause trouble for anyone in my wake.”
“You’re already causing trouble,” Neil said, as he rubbed his temples to soothe the apparent headache taking hold.
“It is not only Alma asking,” Laurie said. “I am asking, too, Neil.”
Luckily for Alma, for better or worse, this was enough for him.
* * *
Under the pale shine of the moon, they stole through the city’s narrow streets on their way to the gardens, where Alma procured a small wooden handcart and a small brown tarp, along with a few provisions for the journey whose distance still eluded her.
“Hopefully you’ll not need this, but better to have it just in case,” Neil said as he slid a long silver machete into the handcart. Alma’s stomach lurched at the sight of it nestled among the rest of the supplies. “And you must take these as well,” Neil said, holding a bundle of black cylindrical tubes in his hands. “You pull on this here, and you have to pull it fast, or else you won’t generate the friction needed to light it.”
Neil tucked the flares into her little wagon amongst the food and other supplies, her gut rolling with guilt and uncertainty.
“I don’t know if I should take them,” she said. “I’d hate to leave the city underprepared—”
“It is fine,” Neil said. “We haven’t had need of these in… I don’t even know how long. Before our time. There is a much greater chance of needing them out there, where you’re more liable to cross paths with things in the dark…”
“What else might you need?” Laurie said, wishing to cease talk of such things. “Have you enough food? And what of water? The water outside is poisoned, you know, you mustn’t drink it.”
“I will fill three containers from the well before I go,” Alma said.
“You’re sure that will be enough?” Laurie said. “You do not even know how far you will go… how long you might be gone. Oh, Alma, I am afraid for you…”
“I will be all right.” Alma smiled for Laurie’s benefit. Glancing at Neil beside her, it was clear he kept his own worries to himself at this point, knowing there was nothing to be said to persuade her.
“Oh…” He reached into one of his pockets, digging for something. “I almost forgot. You should take this as well. Another tool we have little use for inside the city. It’s not like we send expeditions these days, so you might as well have it. Be careful not to damage the needle. There used to be a kind of glass barrier over top of it all, but it broke long ago. Someone else’s mistake.”
Placed in Alma’s palm, the silver compass’s needle bobbed slightly in place as it repositioned itself northward. Alma had never used a compass before. She had planned to rely only on the rise and fall of the sun to guide her, but this would surely be of even greater help.
With her supplies gathered, there was only one last thing to add to her burden.
They parked the handcart just beside the door, where Neil helped Alma to carry Calum’s body from the bed, careful to arrange him just so. With her husband loaded in with the rest, Alma covered the wagon with the brown tarp and tied it taut, so that no breeze or wind would uncover it.
With that, she followed Laurie and Neil to the city’s gate. Neil unlocked it with his iron key. The gate squealed as it opened, the gateway not much bigger than the double doors of their church. Through its opening, a dark and unknown landscape awaited Alma. She paused momentarily, the air of the outer world somehow different as it carried across the threshold.
She turned to the others, both their expressions carved with unease under the moon’s harsh hammer and chisel.
“Thank you, both of you. For all your help. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
“Please be safe,” Laurie said, and promptly enclosed Alma in her embrace. “I will pray each and every day, each and every night.”
“I will return before you know it,” Alma said, though she could be certain of no such thing.
Upon their separating, Neil forced a smile as he opened his arms to Alma, a gesture which she accepted with immense relief and gratitude. He whispered into her ear.
“Please don’t let my wife grieve her only friend.” His words spurred a gentle ache in Alma’s heart, a seed of guilt planted there painfully. He gave her a comforting squeeze. As they pulled apart, he could scarcely conceal his grimace. “Be safe.”
Alma thanked them both once more and took up the handle of the handcart. She pulled it through the gate, wheels crunching over stones into the shadows of their city’s walls on the other side.
The world beyond greeted her with much mystery, fearsome and intriguing both. She looked back only once to see Laurie’s and Neil’s simple silhouettes in the gateway. She waved and they waved back. She faced the wilderness ahead, and shortly thereafter the gate closed behind her, the clunk of its iron heft startling her.
In the distance, the Deadlands quaked with the promise of a coming storm.
END OF SNEAK PEEK
Nothing truly dies.
The words floated through Alma’s mind unbidden, unexpected. She stiffened as she remembered them. Strange words from an even stranger dream. Or dreams, rather. She’d been having them as of late. The past three nights, in fact, almost as soon as all of this had first started. How strange indeed, she thought. Perhaps her subconscious knew something she couldn’t admit on the surface—as if she’d predicted Calum’s impending fate all along. Except…
Nothing truly dies.
Even now as she remembered these words, it was not in her voice but another’s. A young woman’s voice, she remembered distinctly. Because these were no mere dreams.
“Messages,” she whispered, her lips brushing her husband’s skin, even cooler to the touch now than he’d been moments ago.
There was more to the message, more to the dreams. They’d been foggy before, forgotten in the frenzy of daily duties and caring for a sick husband. But now the claws of Alma’s anguish dredged them up again, stirred them to the surface of her thoughts like debris she might desperately hold onto lest she sink to the bottom of her despair.
Nothing truly dies.
No message could be timelier, more perfect. She glimpsed the young woman in her memory, through the distorted sheen of a remembered dream, and knew there had been more that followed.
A noise at the window. Alma held her breath. The candlelight waxed and waned, the darkness at the window solid, undisturbed. Something rustled just out of sight. Quietly, Alma slipped out from under Calum’s heavy head and crept to the open window of their modest dwelling. She pressed her face to the warm night. Just below the window another pale face peered back.
“Rose,” Alma said to the girl. “What are you doing out so late?”
The girl did not reply but blinked her big vacant eyes.
“Well, since you’re here, go and fetch your mother for me, would you?”
The ten-year-old girl offered no clear sign of understanding, but she did turn and wander into the dark and Alma trusted that her mother would be coming shortly. Rose was the daughter of Laurie and Neil next door, Laurie being Alma’s closest friend in all of Gloam. If there was anyone she could trust with the dangerous ideas circling her mind tonight, it was Laurie.
Alma quickly dressed in her tattered brown robes. She regarded Calum’s body on the bed, dressed only in his undergarments. She sat beside him, closed his green eyes back up, smoothed the palm of her hand over his handsomely angular face. His lips were the color of a dreary winter sky. She was tempted to kiss them but resisted the urge.
Nothing truly dies.
Come find me in the north.
Alma startled as there came a knock on her door. She briskly answered, and found her close friend standing in the dark just outside, her thin-but-unshakable form leaning into the doorway, eyes wide expectantly.
“Rose said you sent for me? What’s wrong?”
Confronted with her friend’s support, Alma’s composure buckled, and so she stood aside and let her husband’s form on the bed do the talking. Laurie stepped inside, a hand over her surprised mouth.
“Oh, Alma,” Laurie gasped, and proceeded to throw her arms around Alma’s shoulders. The whispery tone of her voice was soothing in Alma’s ear. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry…” When she released her, she said, “When did he pass?”
“Not long ago. I’m not sure what roused me, exactly, but… he was already gone when I woke.”
That wasn’t entirely the truth. She remembered now what had roused her—another dream like the rest, the woman’s voice and her beckoning message. The shock of finding Calum had temporarily disturbed it from her memory, but now it all seemed so clear. So deliberate.
“I don’t know what to say,” Laurie said. “It’s just so awful.”
She took Alma into her arms a second time, squeezing her as words failed her. And while her friend was certainly a comfort, Alma’s thoughts were already racing in too many other directions to appreciate the gesture.
“I have no intention of handing him over to the Elders.”
Laurie’s hold on Alma slackened. She held Alma at arm’s length instead, looking her over like she might be ill.
“What do you mean?”
Alma paced to the edge of the bed where she looked solemnly upon her husband’s corpse, surer by the moment of her intentions. While it was customary in Gloam to transfer their dead to the church, in order to receive their Elders’ final blessing before burial, Alma knew such a destiny was not meant for Calum. Something greater was at play.
Alma took a seat beside Calum’s body, a hand upon his hard shoulder.
“Laurie,” she said. “You will not like what I am about to tell you, and that is reasonable and expected, but… I must impart these honest feelings so that I might ask for your help, whether you agree with them or not.”
Laurie clasped her hands, eyes darting between Alma and the dead. “Tell me.”
Alma met her gaze and knew in an instant that she could tell her—that Laurie was already bracing herself for Alma’s blasphemy and wasn’t altogether frightened of it. This was true friendship.
And so Alma told Laurie of the dreams, of the woman and her cryptic message, as well as her own indelible certainty that she was meant to follow this path against their learned traditions. “
Alma…” Laurie bit her tongue, carefully choosing her words. “It is a shocking thing you’ve just experienced—that you are still in the midst of experiencing. It is understandable that you might resist the possibility—”
“I am not in denial of Calum’s death,” Alma said, the weight of his corpse resting just beside her.
“But you hold out hope that this mysterious woman from your dreams will… do what, exactly? Bring him back? Is that what I am to gather? I do not see any other way to interpret this message from your dreams. Do you not think this in and of itself some form of denial?”
“I understand it might seem that way, but…” Alma took a deep breath. “I cannot properly express how real this feels, Laurie. That these dreams are not just dreams, that this woman and her message…”
“But you also admit these dreams made no impression on you until tonight. You can understand how this might all sound a bit hopeful? Impulsive?”
“I understand how it sounds, I do, I promise you. It is difficult to explain. It is not so much that I’ve simply found a convenient interpretation of these dreams in light of my loss, as it is that their meaning has only just solidified thanks to it.”
“Thanks to it?” Laurie repeated, noting the morbidly positive connotation.
“You know what I mean.”
Alma regarded her dead husband, felt a pang in her heart which, for a moment, made her doubt her own feelings. Could Laurie be right? Was she in the throes of some grief-induced delusion? Would the feeling pass come morning, her rational mind coming to take its place?
Nothing truly dies.
Come find me in the north.
The woman’s words reverberated in her memory louder each time she remembered them, as though she was there in her mind now, communicating telepathically.
“It is the strangest thing,” Alma murmured. “The memory is only growing stronger. I can’t explain it. Now it is like I was actually there. I see the room, and I see her as though she is obscured through smoke and firelight, and there is something about her, Laurie. Something I’ve never felt before in my life. Not within this city’s walls. It is powerful…”
When Alma looked at Laurie again, she was startled to discover fear in her friend’s eyes.
“Say this is real,” Laurie said. “What if this… presence, means to mislead you? Or means you harm?”
“She does not,” Alma said so matter-of-factly that even she was mildly embarrassed, knowing how she must sound. “This energy I feel is good. I don’t know how, but I know it. This woman, she is… she is pure of soul.”
“Pure of soul?”
“Yes. I sense only goodness in her intentions.”
“And what is there to say of eagerness to believe whatever gives you hope in this matter?”
“What is there to say of intuition? Or faith? What if this is a sign from Oleth? What if she is Oleth’s messenger? Who am I to question it?”
“Prophet Tobias is Oleth’s messenger,” Laurie corrected, her voice hardening with the first real sign of disapproval. “To suggest anything else is blasphemy and you know that.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right, but…” Alma penetrated her friend’s gaze with utter earnestness. “What if I am right?”
Laurie cast a worried glance over her shoulder at the door, at the dark window, as if someone could be listening.
“Will you stop me?” It was a painful thing to ask, to pit their friendship against their faith, but it had to be done. When Laurie shook her head ‘no’ Alma took it one step further. “Will you help me?”
Laurie faltered. She drew her conflicted gaze over Calum’s body once more, then over Alma’s breath-held expression, and all at once Alma witnessed the total deflation of Laurie’s reservations.
“What do you need from me?”
“Oh!” Alma exclaimed, and took her friend’s hands in her own. “Thank you, Laurie, thank you. I knew I could count on your kindness.”
“I will surely regret it.” She studied Calum again, her face darkening with sadness and perhaps pity, for Alma’s sake. “But if I were in your shoes, and it were my Neil, I cannot say I could ignore such a message myself.”
“Do you believe me, then?”
Laurie sighed, exasperated. “I believe that you believe it, and that is enough for me.”
* * *
Unfortunately, what Alma needed most required more than what Laurie herself could provide, though she did possess the necessary connections.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Neil sat upright in bed, blinking wearily in Alma’s candlelight as Laurie tried to explain everything. Neil rubbed sleep from his eyes, leaving only incredulity in its place.
“Calum is…”
“Yes,” Laurie answered.
Neil fell silent as the weight of this settled over him. Though not as close as Alma and Laurie, Neil and Calum had been on friendly terms. Alma studied the mound of scrap cloth on the floor beside their bed where their baby boy slept soundly. Then she glanced at the second small bed in the opposite corner of their dwelling where little Rose sat cross-legged in the shadows, listening intently to their every word.
“I saw him only a day ago,” Neil muttered, reflecting. “He did not seem so terribly sick then.”
“It happened sometime while I was asleep beside him,” Alma said. “That is all I know for certain.”
“And you’re wanting to… I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard the rest. I was too distracted by the news that he’d…”
Died was the word Neil failed to say. But Alma understood. She didn’t want to think it herself, let alone voice it. If not for the burgeoning hope of her new mission, she would undoubtedly be beside herself as a result. Some part of her did suspect she latched onto this hope to stop herself from unraveling, but she didn’t care. Not at this point.
And perhaps there was a danger in that.
“Alma has had a dream,” Laurie started to say, before Alma quickly interrupted, for fear that Laurie’s retelling would make her story sound all the crazier.
“I have been visited,” Alma corrected. She stepped forward, placing herself between Laurie and her husband, letting him see her as she was. “A woman has come to me in my dreams. I believe she can help me. I must take Calum to her by any means necessary.”
“Help you?” Neil said. “But if Calum is already dead…”
“Nothing truly dies.” Alma liked the sound of it more each time she repeated it. “Come find me in the north. That is what she said.”
“In your dream,” Neil said.
“Yes, but it was not just a dream. I am certain of that. I’ve had it three nights in a row now. The very same.”
“And yet Calum has only been lost tonight. So what is this woman supposed to be, a fortune teller? Or worse, a witch?” Neil said this with a particular note of severity. Talk of witches was not uncommon in Gloam, when speaking of the dangers beyond their city’s walls. “That is, if these dreams are anything more than just that.”
“Neil,” Laurie said reproachfully. “Alma is my friend and she needs our help.”
“If she is truly your friend, do you not have an obligation to talk her out of this nonsense?”
“I know how it sounds,” Alma interjected, “but it is not nonsense.”
Neil sighed. “You are understandably devastated. I do not even wish to imagine what you must be feeling, Alma, but you must acknowledge the shock has clouded your better judgement.”
“I am of sound mind.” Alma wasn’t entirely sure she believed it even as she said it. “I intend to embark on this journey with or without anyone’s help.”
“Well, then, it sounds like you don’t need us after all.”
“Of course she needs our help,” Laurie snapped, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the baby.
“You wish to be an accomplice to this? She means to venture beyond our city’s walls, Laurie. If we help in this matter, her death will be on our hands.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Alma said. “As I said before, I intend to do this regardless. But obviously your help would be appreciated.”
“How do you suppose you’d manage it without my help? The gates are locked. I assume that’s what you’ve come to me about?”
It was true. Laurie’s husband served as a wall sentry on a rotating basis with several other men who worked the fields alongside him, which granted them access to the keys allowing them in and out of the city’s main gate.
“Locks can be broken,” Alma said. “Though I would rather not cause trouble for anyone in my wake.”
“You’re already causing trouble,” Neil said, as he rubbed his temples to soothe the apparent headache taking hold.
“It is not only Alma asking,” Laurie said. “I am asking, too, Neil.”
Luckily for Alma, for better or worse, this was enough for him.
* * *
Under the pale shine of the moon, they stole through the city’s narrow streets on their way to the gardens, where Alma procured a small wooden handcart and a small brown tarp, along with a few provisions for the journey whose distance still eluded her.
“Hopefully you’ll not need this, but better to have it just in case,” Neil said as he slid a long silver machete into the handcart. Alma’s stomach lurched at the sight of it nestled among the rest of the supplies. “And you must take these as well,” Neil said, holding a bundle of black cylindrical tubes in his hands. “You pull on this here, and you have to pull it fast, or else you won’t generate the friction needed to light it.”
Neil tucked the flares into her little wagon amongst the food and other supplies, her gut rolling with guilt and uncertainty.
“I don’t know if I should take them,” she said. “I’d hate to leave the city underprepared—”
“It is fine,” Neil said. “We haven’t had need of these in… I don’t even know how long. Before our time. There is a much greater chance of needing them out there, where you’re more liable to cross paths with things in the dark…”
“What else might you need?” Laurie said, wishing to cease talk of such things. “Have you enough food? And what of water? The water outside is poisoned, you know, you mustn’t drink it.”
“I will fill three containers from the well before I go,” Alma said.
“You’re sure that will be enough?” Laurie said. “You do not even know how far you will go… how long you might be gone. Oh, Alma, I am afraid for you…”
“I will be all right.” Alma smiled for Laurie’s benefit. Glancing at Neil beside her, it was clear he kept his own worries to himself at this point, knowing there was nothing to be said to persuade her.
“Oh…” He reached into one of his pockets, digging for something. “I almost forgot. You should take this as well. Another tool we have little use for inside the city. It’s not like we send expeditions these days, so you might as well have it. Be careful not to damage the needle. There used to be a kind of glass barrier over top of it all, but it broke long ago. Someone else’s mistake.”
Placed in Alma’s palm, the silver compass’s needle bobbed slightly in place as it repositioned itself northward. Alma had never used a compass before. She had planned to rely only on the rise and fall of the sun to guide her, but this would surely be of even greater help.
With her supplies gathered, there was only one last thing to add to her burden.
They parked the handcart just beside the door, where Neil helped Alma to carry Calum’s body from the bed, careful to arrange him just so. With her husband loaded in with the rest, Alma covered the wagon with the brown tarp and tied it taut, so that no breeze or wind would uncover it.
With that, she followed Laurie and Neil to the city’s gate. Neil unlocked it with his iron key. The gate squealed as it opened, the gateway not much bigger than the double doors of their church. Through its opening, a dark and unknown landscape awaited Alma. She paused momentarily, the air of the outer world somehow different as it carried across the threshold.
She turned to the others, both their expressions carved with unease under the moon’s harsh hammer and chisel.
“Thank you, both of you. For all your help. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
“Please be safe,” Laurie said, and promptly enclosed Alma in her embrace. “I will pray each and every day, each and every night.”
“I will return before you know it,” Alma said, though she could be certain of no such thing.
Upon their separating, Neil forced a smile as he opened his arms to Alma, a gesture which she accepted with immense relief and gratitude. He whispered into her ear.
“Please don’t let my wife grieve her only friend.” His words spurred a gentle ache in Alma’s heart, a seed of guilt planted there painfully. He gave her a comforting squeeze. As they pulled apart, he could scarcely conceal his grimace. “Be safe.”
Alma thanked them both once more and took up the handle of the handcart. She pulled it through the gate, wheels crunching over stones into the shadows of their city’s walls on the other side.
The world beyond greeted her with much mystery, fearsome and intriguing both. She looked back only once to see Laurie’s and Neil’s simple silhouettes in the gateway. She waved and they waved back. She faced the wilderness ahead, and shortly thereafter the gate closed behind her, the clunk of its iron heft startling her.
In the distance, the Deadlands quaked with the promise of a coming storm.
END OF SNEAK PEEK