“You’re so brave,” I said, patting her head. Her gaze did something strange to me. Her eyelashes stuck together with salt water, her brown eyes, my mother’s brown eyes, blinking up at me like I was the one. The only one she trusted. It filled me with hope.
I took a deep breath and crossed my arms over my chest. Something pulled at my body, elastic getting tighter and tighter. I found him. He was here. I was broken, but I could still run. My feet hit the frozen grass and my body surged towards him, my hand still wrapped around Rosa-May’s as I dragged them with me. I wasn’t in control anymore. He was here, here, right here in front of me. My heart. My hands ached for him; everything I wanted was wrapped in a green shirt and a dark jacket.
“Joseph,” I whispered, as if it were my last breath. My first breath.
JOSEPH
If she knew of my crimes, she didn’t seem to care. And I wasn’t sure I cared either. She was here. Impossibly. She ran towards me as fast as a heartbeat. As strong as warrior. My Rosa.
My brain couldn’t take in anything other than her tiny form streaking across the muddy land with Gwen and the child behind her. Nothing could slow us. She was five feet away from me, her face dirty, her hair wrong, her mouth open and panting. “Jose…” she started, letting go of the child’s hand for a moment.
I reached out and grabbed her, pinning her to me. Squashing our bodies together and hoping they would never part. I wanted to feel her heart against my own.
“I found you,” I said.
She gasped as I squeezed her tighter, her face buried in my chest. Forcing her face upwards, she blinked up at me.
“I think I found you,” she said stubbornly, her voice like ringing bells in my ears. I had wanted to hear her voice forever.
ROSA
Joseph’s chest rattled with a chuckle. It felt old and new at the same time, like he hadn’t used it in a while. I let the vibration fill me, let the cymbals crash against us both, the sparks fly. I felt his lips press down on the top of my head, felt him breathe me in. Every brush of his skin was killing me. We were ending and beginning. There was so much more to do but right then, the force of what we had wanted, the stretching sound and the feel of our hearts being sewn back together, was as painful and pleasurable as any emotion I’d ever felt, would probably ever feel. It was all I could feel.
“Say it,” I said, my teeth glistening whiter than the ice, my smile too big for my face.
He grinned. “All right, all right, you found me.” Talk forever, never stop.
I was done being apart from him.
JOSEPH
“Jooosssephh!” A woman’s scream managed to fight its way through the crowd. I lifted my head from where I was staring at the part in Rosa’s hair like it was the map to my heart. Rosa leaned back from my embrace and turned in the direction of the screams. She waved her hand, calling someone over to us.
“Oh yeah, and I found your parents too,” she said, her eyes crinkling in the corners in the most perfect way.
“You’re my hero,” I said softly, my smile cracking me open.
You save me over and over again.
ROSA
I knew conversations had to happen. Big, serious conversations. But right then, all I wanted to do was make myself flat as a piece of paper, slide under his shirt, and live against his chest.
Joseph flapped a clean sheet in front of my face. It pushed scents of clean skin and smokiness that never washed out of your hair sailing towards me. I inhaled deeply.
A knock on the door disrupted my roaming thoughts. I moved through this stranger’s house we’d commandeered, scared to touch possessions that didn’t belong to me and had their own lost history.
A ratty hall runner rug gritted under my bare feet. I opened the door, and a gust of rust and smoke met my nose.
“Here.” Gwen pushed an armful of children’s clothes towards me gently. “A woman had these in her bag for her… but she doesn’t need them anymore.” She sniffed, and I knew the rest. “Anyway, you might as well take ’em for the kid.”
“Thank you.” I grasped the clothes from her cold hands. “How’s it going out there? And how are you?” I asked, motioning to the gaping hole and the glow of hundreds of campfires outside the wall. Sad murmurs echoed into the blank sky.
I’d wanted to sleep under the trees too, but it was crowded out there. Most of the citizens were too afraid to step back inside, despite our assurances the rest of the town was not going to sink into the ground. Weirder still was the fact that they were looking to us for answers.
Gwen grimaced. “It’s settling down, I guess…” She hesitated and then said, “I’m good. I’m back with my people. Best feeling ever!” She put her thumbs up, though her eyebrow arched sarcastically. We both knew it would take time for both of us to be ‘good’. “The news of the Superiors’ deaths has caused a lot of mixed emotions. Superiors…” she scoffed. “More like inferiors, idiots, imbeciles… uh… Matthew said I have to stop calling them names in front of the newbies,” Gwen said, winking, her cheeks flushed and pinched with new freedom as she rolled her eyes at the word ‘newbies’. She amazed me.
“You can call them anything you like in front of me,” I said warmly.
“I know,” she replied, gazing at her feet, still wearing my mother’s shoes.
Whispers of Este and Grant’s deaths had grown quickly to loud truths, rolling over the huddles of people like galloping clouds. It caused relief, fear, and displacement. I felt little relief. My own hand shivered from the cold of being dipped in Grant’s blood. I stared down at it, and Gwen dipped her head lower to make eye contact.
“Anyway…the soldiers, Gus and the others disarmed have corroborated our story of the video the Superiors wanted to make and the purpose of it. Man. I think I kept hoping it wasn’t going to happen, that they wouldn’t go through with it, and then… boom.” She made an exploding gesture with her hands, and I flinched. “There were other ways, you know?” she muttered, her voice cracking under the weight of it all.
“I know,” was all I could say.
“Matthew says this kind of grief, this massive loss of life, will not be easy to overcome. It’s going to take time and help. I’ll help.” Sadly, thousands of displaced, scared, and grieving citizens was a familiar situation for us.
“Do you want to come in and rest for a minute?” I asked as I yawned a hole in my body.
“Nah, I’m good. I have accommodation. You two deserve and need some time alone,” she said, a slight edge of concern underlining the word ‘need’.
“Oh okay,” I replied doubtfully. “Thanks for the clothes.”
“S’ok. Rosa. I’m sorry about your mother,” she said as she walked backwards down the path.
A thread of ice worked its way through my heart, and I shuddered. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She frowned, her cheeks dimpling, her eyebrows working. “It’s just what you say, when there’s nothing else you can say,” she said, giving me a sad smile.
I choked on a weird laugh that wanted to escape. “Thanks.”
I waved as she strolled quickly down the street like she owned it. My eyes tracked her down the road and up the path of another home, a few doors down. The world was inverted, Survivors on the inside and Woodlands’ citizens on the outside.