Each brush of leaves raises my skin. Each crumble of bark beneath my fingertips brings me closer. I’m climbing to the sky, yet I feel closer to home than ever.
The air cooled as I ascended. The old tree’s branches were so thick and sturdy it was an easy climb. Soon, I was in the canopy watching Joseph pace anxiously below.
Breathing in the frosted air, I let it woo me. I let it rescue me from the disasters, the wounding memories, and let my mind empty. The breeze crackled through my head and blew out the musty corners. They were huddled stubbornly and not easily moved.
Carefully, I unfolded the panels and nestled them in a branch that caught the sun, even in this late afternoon. I plugged the wire in and let it drop to the forest floor.
I straddled a branch and waited. Waited for the wind to pick me up and take me away, waited for the unease in me to blister and pop. I waited until someone yelled for me to get down.
Climbing down was harder. I was descending into a darker world and my eyes took time to adapt. That, and my feet were reaching out blindly, searching for branches, scraping the air sometimes and slipping.
Joseph swore as I reached the last few branches.
“You’re nearly there,” he said nervously, his hands out in front, ready to catch me. Taking the last branch slowly, my feet slipped on the slimy moss. I let go of the branch above to grab the next one when Rosa-May screamed. My limbs jerked in surprise, and I fell.
It was only a few meters but those seconds felt unending. My arms flailed up, still reaching for something to hold onto. My mouth clamped shut, my eyes scrunched tight, and I landed with a thump. Strong hands gripped my bare back.
I opened my eyes, my lips forming the words thank you, but rendered mute. Joseph’s face was white, his freckles standing out strongly against his horrified expression. His thumb brushed the ropey scar across my stomach like a kiss. A terrifying kiss. And then he dropped me to my feet, my shirt falling back into place. I gripped the material in my fist, tears scraping at my eyes like thorns. I didn’t understand his reaction.
He stared, his eyes wide but looking right through me. As he backed away, his head sweeping back and forth, he muttered, “I can’t,” before he turned and stormed into the forest.
Maybe I should have left him, but I couldn’t stand the look on his face. I couldn’t leave it like that and not try to change it. I chased after him, leaving Deshi attempting to calm Rosa-May and Denis standing still as a statue, so out of place in this world that he might have been one of Grant’s garden sculptures.
ROSA
Deshi shouted at me as I reached the tree line. “Rosa, take this.” He threw me a pack. When I shot him a confused look, he added, “Just in case.” I didn’t like the expression on his face. It was unfamiliar, frightening, because it was mix of disappointment and regret. It hit me like a plank peppered with nails because it wasn’t directed at me. His disappointment was in Joseph.
Joseph’s blond head bobbed through the trees, the distance between us stretching long as a highway. I called out to him, which spurred him on. Was he running away from me? It was a terrifying thought, which I shoved down as I picked my way over the dense vegetation. Shadows wrapped around every plant, trapping them in the dirt. The sun split its way between the trunks of the great trees as I used them to support me, warning me night was coming.
While I was staring at the sky, I lost him. Suddenly alone, with the dark, dank forest pressing around me, I shivered for fear of finding him. Because I felt there was a slimy, threatening truth waiting for me when I did.
My hands scraped along the slick trunks, the bark so large I could sink my whole hand between the gaps of the trees skin. Wrinkled like an old woman. Like Addy. God, I missed her advice. Her humor.
My breath formed mist that hung in the air too long. My sighs were heavy clouds floating to the sky. I paused at a tree, bracing my arm against it as my eyes ran in vast semicircles, sweeping the terrain in front.
Tree, tree, bush, tree split down the middle, Joseph, tree.
He sat restlessly, head down, leaning against the trunk of a stout tree plucked clean of leaves like a bird for the oven. It was dwarfed by the giants around us and by his own size. It reminded me of when I’d found him at the Classes, just before my assessment, talking to himself, huddled awkwardly under a Pau Brazil tree. It was a conversation he later explained as him choosing to tell me how he really felt.
It was too late then. It was not like that now.
He heard my foot suck out of the mud with a slurping sound. He looked up, and his face was a battering ram pushing me back. His eyes, the color of the bright green moss that crept up every trunk, were washed with a deep sadness. He was truly unhappy to see me. My heart tore like paper. Just a small edge at the bottom, which if he didn’t explain himself, would rip all the way up.
His head dropped down again and I stopped, midstride, several meters from where he sat, afraid to approach and equally afraid to walk away.
I brought my legs together and took one more timid step towards him. My eyes never left his hidden face, hair curtaining his eyes as he hung his head between his knees like it was just too heavy to hold up. A strand of blackberry dragged across my face as I said, “Joseph, why are you running away from me? Ouch!” I lifted my hand to my cheek, a small stain of red coloring my fingers. The branch stuck in my hair. I tried to move forward and couldn’t. Putting my hands up to my head, I attempted to pull it out, only to tangle it further.
Joseph stood up and sighed in exasperation. Was he sick of me?
“It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m always hurting you.” His voice plummeted like a stone dropped down an endless abyss. There was more regret than I could understand in there. He came closer and helped me pull the thorns from my hair.
As we stood chest to chest, I gazed up into his face. “That’s not true.” My own voice wavered like a feather tossed down the same abyss. Falling, but slower, hoping the wind might still pick me up and save me.
“Look,” he said, running a finger under my eye and holding it in front of my face like proof. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing,” I whispered, knocking his hand away and forcing a smile.
He exhaled through his nose in frustration. “Yeah, it’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I have done, to what I’m going to do.” His sarcasm was pointed and tipped in bitterness.
My ribs clamored and braced my heart, tightening a protective cage around me. He went to put his hands on my waist but stopped himself, his hands hovering there, hopelessly.
I don’t want to ask. I have to ask.
“What are you talking about? If it’s about what you did after… after I died, I know it’s hard, especially for someone like you, but it wasn’t your fault. You would have died if you hadn’t defended yourself.” I hated the sound of my voice because it was pitched with fear, uncertainty, and panic.
He glanced up from the ground, the cool dawn of realization rising on his face. Words had slipped out. It was too late to collect them. “Wait, how do you know what I did after? How could you? You were, were…” He stumbled over his words like boulders in the road.
I placed a hand on his chest and felt his heart galloping. “I was dead.”
He shook once, all over, like the memory still shocked him. “So how?”
I swallowed, carefully picking out what I would tell him and what I would save for that nonexistent time—later.
“They made me watch the surveillance video.” Over and over, until it was scratched into my brain with their perfect, clean fingernails. “I saw it all happen. They attacked you, and you fought back. You need to know, I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone could blame you for what happened. It hasn’t changed the way I feel about you.”