Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 101
101
The stone was heavy in Jonah's hands. He knew what he had to do with it, but... it wasn't that simple.
Yes it is, you bloody coward. You just have to put it down. So just do it and get it done. Time is ticking away.
Yeah. Just 'put it down'. Simple.
Except it wasn't.
The last corner of the third tarp blew up and down, wagging like a tongue. The sound it made was no different to the flapping of sheets on a washing line, a sound he was quite familiar with. But still. This was different.
This was horrible.
Three tarps down on the cold hard ground, the corners weighted down by stones and a dozen bodies beneath each one.
That's thirty-six... thirty-six Wolves who had died in the snow...
So far.
The last corner of the last tarp flapped in the wind, as if urging him to get a move on before even more of them showed up, their limbs frozen stiff and their fur covered in frost, their eyes open and staring...
The stone was heavy, very heavy. His shoulders were starting to ache and his fingers felt like they were about to be ripped off. But he couldn't set it down.
The first time he walked down this line, cradling this damn stone in his arms, he counted the pairs of feet sticking out from underneath the tarps. The number he came out with was thirty-two.
Thirty-two.
That was bad enough to make him want to sit down, right there in the middle of the pass, close his eyes and cover his ears and just pretend like everything was all right, that he was back home at the mill and that the sound of that one loose corner flapping in the wind really was just the washing that needed to be taken down, and that the voices echoing between the mountain walls was just the hustle and bustle of the market place over the hills, and that everything was perfectly fine.
But his eyes knew before his heart did that something was wrong. The compulsion to look back and count them over was so strong he simply couldn't resist, even though the implication of what he was seeing made everything so much worse than he could have imagined.
There were thirty-six bumps in the tarps made by muzzles pointed straight up, thirty-six noses attached to thirty-six faces. Not thirty-two, but thirty-six.
Why were there thirty-six bumps pushing against the tarps, but only thirty-two pairs of feet sticking out beneath them?
Because four of the bodies were too short.
Four of the bodies belonged to children.
Four of the bodies so far...
Jonah shook his head and told himself that he would not throw up. He would not. The wind blew snow into his face, making his eyes water, and made the tarp flap up and down, slapping the hard, unforgiving floor of the pass.
Just put the damn thing down and get out of here! he screamed at himself, but he was rooted to the spot, frozen in place, listening to that oddly rhythmic sound of the wind blowing along the tarps, sprinkling snow over the dark brown surface like a smidge of sugar onto porridge.
Jonah took a deep breath, taking that freezing cold air inside himself, took a quick step forward and slammed the stone down like he was trying to crush a venomous snake's head instead of just weighing down a tarp to keep it from blowing away.
Somehow, the absence of that slapping noise was even worse...
"Wake up, idjit!"
Jonah sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box. "Father?"
"Ain't no time to be sittin around, boy! Get yer ass in gear!" Father had an unconscious Wolf slung over his shoulder. There were clumps of snow still crumbling off his ears. Or at least, Jonah hoped that Wolf was merely unconscious.
Jon raised one bushy eyebrow and gave his son a second looking. "You doin' alright there?"
"I... I don't know. I mean, yes. Yes I am. Is... Is he...?"
"Just barely." Father checked to make sure the Wolf was still breathing, and that's when Jonah realized that, for his Father to be able to carry that one all by himself, he had to be quite young. He found it difficult to judge a Wolf's age because they were so much bigger than Foxes (and he didn't even know if Wolves and Foxes aged at the same rate or not), but if he had to take a guess, he'd wager the Wolf hanging over his Father's shoulder could be no more than eleven or twelve years.
What the hell were they thinking, bringing children to a battlefield?
"Dammit, Jonah, wake up!" Father said and snapped his fingers. "I know this is grim business, but it's far from over, and if you don't want it to get any grimmer than it already is, you'll get back there and help the other young'uns with the diggin'!"
"Yes, Father! Right away!" Jonah started forward, but he hadn't even taken two steps before that dark compulsion came over him again, forcing him to look back. The tarps were just as he had left them, rippling in the wind, but no longer flapping all over the place. Thirty-two pairs of feet still stuck out at the bottom, and thirty-six bumps still threw pale crescent shadows across the top.
"What will happen to them?" Jonah didn't even realize he had spoken out loud until his Father answered.
"That'll be up to their kin, I guess. Probably take 'em back home."
"But what about this blizzard?"
"What about it?"
"They can't - They can't make it through the pass like this!"
"Of course not. And they won't. They'll just have to wait until it blows over."
There was a cold logic to his Father's words that Jonah did not like at all. It was unmovable. Irrefutable. "Are you saying that... they'll just... they'll just lie there? Like this? Until the snow stops?"
"These are not our dead, Jonah. We have no right to put 'em to rest. That task falls to their brothers and sisters."
"But still! We -" Jonah had to take a moment to concentrate purely on not throwing up all over his shoes. He hated throwing up. It was nasty and smelly and got into everything. It wasn't disgust that made him feel so ill, but an overwhelming sense of wrongness. It was wrong to dig dead bodies out of the snow. It was wrong to line them up down here like a bunch of fish on a platter. It was wrong to throw dirty old tarps over them and weigh them down with rocks. And worst of all, it was wrong to just leave them here, lying on the cold, hard ground, with snow constantly drifting in, creating all sorts of curves and spirals inside the folds like disrespectful doodles. They were so far away from home, away from their families, away from everything they knew. They had died in the cold and the dark, and now they didn't even have a fire to -
Jonah pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears. He knew he was being stupid. He knew they were dead. They couldn't feel the sharp stones digging into their backs or the icy breath of the wind. They couldn't feel the cold and therefore had no use for warm beds or warm fires or warm cups of tea. They were dead. Dead and gone.
And we killed them.
"This isn't right, Father," he said, wiping his forearm across his face. "None of this is right."
"No. This is a whole lotta wrong all piled up together right there," he said, "but something you gotta remember is that it coulda been a whole lot wronger."
"But -"
Father gave his leg a hearty tap with the tip of his boot, which to him was the equivalent of putting a hand on his shoulder. "You got a good heart, boy. If you want to feel sad for these poor souls, you go ahead and feel sad. If you want to cry, you go ahead and cry. If you want to say a prayer for them, you go on and pray, just as long as you remember to say a prayer for us, as well."
"For us?"
"Pray that their friends don't take a mind to gettin' revenge once they thaw out."
Those words struck Jonah like a hammer in the gut. For a while, he couldn't even breathe. He simply stared at this grizzled old Fox with the greying fur, the Fox he had called 'Father' just about every day of his life since he could speak, the Fox that liked to sleep in late and chew on raw pipeweed whenever they ran out of tea and rusks, the Fox that just told him the nightmare might not be over after all.
Father nodded, as if his son's slack-jawed stare was answer enough. He readjusted the passenger on his shoulder with a hop and a grunt and said: "I gotta get this'un someplace warm 'fore he freezes to death. You get back there and help wherever you can, you got that?"
Jonah stared.
"You got that?"
That snapped him back into reality. "Y-Yes, Father. I'll do my best."
"And why's that?"
Jonah glanced at the tarps rippling in the wind, and the thirty-two pairs of feet sticking out the bottom. "Because this is wrong enough already, and I don't want it getting any wronger."
Father nodded. "Good enough. Now git."
Jonah ran into the darkness of the pass as fast as his legs could carry him and clambered up the side of the snowfall, knowing perfectly well that what they were doing was dangerous and stupid. But it wasn't wrong.
It wasn't wrong.
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