“Come on,” Mae said, gesturing them forward with bloody hands.
“I have food.”
Not waiting to see if they followed, she turned back toward the shack and plunged down the trail, vaguely aware of others following in her wake. Each step was harder than the last, but Mae refused to rest until she was back at the tree.
If I didn’t imagine it, she thought with a panic. In her current state, barely able to stand, with the world spinning, it was possible the entire thing had been a hallucination. But when she reached the ragged orchard, the thriving tree was still there. At least, she thought it was. She turned to look at the girls hurrying behind her, and their overjoyed faces told her that this was indeed a reality.
“Your dinner,” she declared grandly. And then she passed out.
She came to a couple hours later, as sunset was darkening the sky. She was lying in the grass beside the tree she’d revived, and someone had made a makeshift pillow out of a coat for her. She tried to sit up, and Clara hurried to her side with a jug of water.
“Drink this,” she said. “We got more from the well and boiled it inside while you slept. Probably it was fine, but—well, just in case.”
“Smart thinking,” Mae managed to say hoarsely. After a few sips of the water, she pulled herself upright and took in her surroundings. A crude ladder that must’ve belonged to the dead man was propped up against the tree, and Mae counted at least three girls up in the limbs, picking and throwing down apples.
“We can leave some for the owner,” said Monica, coming to sit down. “But we thought we should get as many down as we could. And, uh, we didn’t really ration them at first. We just kind of went on a binge.”
Mae smiled weakly. “That’s okay. Get your fill now. We’ll ration when we leave.” An apple descended from the tree and rolled toward her. She picked it up and bit into it, pleased that it was indeed a real apple and not something insubstantial. When she finished, she ate a second but turned down the third when Clara offered it to her.
“It seems like a lot right now, but these need to get us through at least two more days, and thirteen mouths is a lot to feed,” Mae explained.
The two girls exchanged uneasy looks. “Twelve,” said Monica. “Dawn ran off while we were waiting for you back there. We tried to stop her, and then we didn’t know if we should follow her or stay where you’d left us.”
“No, you did right,” said Mae. “She didn’t want to be here anyway.”
One less mouth to feed lightened Mae’s load, but Dawn was a witness to what had happened. It was a cruel thought, but with as inept as she was at living off the land, Dawn might not very well survive to find anyone to tell her tale to. Or, if she found someone like Mae had encountered, Dawn might find herself caught and forced to be some hermit’s wife. Again, not a pleasant thought, but one that would make Mae’s life easier. For now, there was no further point in worrying. Getting to the border was all that mattered.
They spent the night there, eating apples and drinking from the well unchecked. Everyone was in better spirits in the morning, and even if not all of them had come around to trusting Mae, they at least responded more favorably, now that she’d tended to their basic needs. Their final count gave them eighty-seven apples, which initially seemed like a bounty until Mae looked ahead to their next two days. They split the apples up between some supply sacks found in the shack and then, with newly filled water bottles, set out on the rest of their journey. Mae gave the apple tree one last, lingering look, etching its details into her memory, wondering if she’d ever create such a thing again. Wondering if she’d want to.
The orchard gave way to more deciduous forest, and by the end of the day, they were back in bedraggled open grassland. That made Mae nervous, but the failing light would help obscure them from aircraft, as would some of the taller vegetation. She’d regained a lot of her strength, something made easier by keeping to the girls’ lighter pace. They did a respectable job that day, due largely to the rest and nourishment. She hoped for the same progress tomorrow and finally called a rest by a cluster of scraggly trees near a dried up pond.
The girls curled up together on the ground, settling themselves for sleep, and Mae watched with fond protectiveness from her spot against a thin tree. To her surprise, Ava came and sat beside her, her fair hair gleaming in the moonlight.
“How come you never sleep?” asked the girl.
“I slept yesterday in the orchard,” Mae reminded her. “Yeah, but you don’t sleep when the rest of us do.”
Mae thought of how to explain it, not really sure the Arcadian- raised girl was ready to learn about Gemman military implants. “I’m a soldier. Part of my training was how to get by without sleep.”
Ava seemed to accept this and move on. “I didn’t know there were woman soldiers.”
“There are lots of them where I’m from. Where I’m taking you.”
”Why are you taking us there?”
“Because it’s where you belong,” said Mae fiercely. “You were taken from there when you were young. It’s your home.”
“Dawn says you’re a demon.”
Mae laughed at that. “Dawn’s gone. Do I look like a demon?” Ava shook her head. “Will we live with you in the new country?”
“I don’t know,” said Mae. Certainly the other girls wouldn’t, but Mae didn’t know how Ava’s custody would fall out. The Nordics wouldn’t take her, but there was a chance Ava’s plebeian father might want her, once she was identified. Mae had no clue what kind of man her sister had had her fling with but felt confident of one thing. “Wherever you end up, it’ll be better than where you came from. You’ll be safe. No one will hurt you, and you’ll have all the choices in the world. Now go get some rest.”
The next day was less upbeat. Strict rationing took its toll once more, as did the mental exhaustion of these long, arduous days. The landscape didn’t change, remaining open grasslands with scattered clusters of small trees. It left Mae on pins and needles, especially since the amount of aircraft increased—and she was almost certain they were military machines. The upside was that the more frequent aircraft and her calculations strongly supported the idea that they were nearing the border. Further confirmation came that night when the girls had made camp again near the best group of trees Mae could find, which wasn’t saying much. She hadn’t seen anything before the sun went down, but now, in darkness, she could make out lights on the horizon.
A chill ran through her. The border.
She gathered Monica and three of the oldest girls. They didn’t have the zeal of Clara and Cecile, but they’d warmed up to her, and Mae couldn’t trust this next task to anyone younger. She paired the foursome off and quickly explained a watch schedule, instructing the first pair to stay awake until the moon was at a designated point, then wake the other pair and switch.
“Where are you going?” asked Monica.
“To do some scouting. I’ll whistle when I come back. If anyone else comes by, make no noise, even if they call out to you. Stay hidden.”
Mae didn’t bother giving instructions on what to do if the girls were seized because really, there was no advice to give.
She set out at a light jog, the implant and hope working together to charge up her tired body. This was it. They were almost there. The lights grew bigger and brighter, and Mae soon had a sense of what she was looking at. There were two military outposts, one on each side of the border, Gemmans and Arcadians mirroring each other. It was what she’d expected—and feared. Each side wanted to watch the other, which made sense but meant she had to get through the enemy to get home. She knew the rest of the border was marked with some kind of nasty fencing, barbed wire or electrically charged, maybe both. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be the cakewalk she’d had at Carl’s or the salon. Both sides wanted that border up, and both would have sensors going off if anyone tried to cut or cross that fencing. There would also likely be random patrols on both sides. She sized up the situation and made her decision, then hurried back to the sleeping girls.