The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) Read online

  LAUREN NICOLLE TAYLOR

  Clean Teen Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Wounded

  Copyright © 2014 by: Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address:

  Clean Teen Publishing

  PO Box 561326

  The Colony, TX 75056

  www.cleanteenpublishing.com

  For my children, Lennox, Rosalie and Emaline.

  This is your story.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  I’m collapsing into a dream. Folding in on myself over and over until I’m nothing but a pinch of paper.

  I know I’m not where I’m supposed to be.

  The arms holding me are the wrong arms—wiry and warm. But it is unwelcome warmth.

  The slosh of mud lapping around boots was my first reminder. I screwed my eyes tightly shut, trying to keep it out as it rapped loudly on my aching head. My boots swung limply back and forth past the trees. My trees. I let the smell of wet fronds and bent pine needles swirl around me, grateful I was at least back in the forest. I imagined myself cradled in a bough: Leaves swept across my face, branches held their slender limbs across the tree’s mouth-like hollows and whispered, ‘shh’.

  “Shh! She’s waking up.”

  Movement ceased, ejecting me from my dream. Smooth fingers grazed my face. The wrong fingers. I opened my eyes warily. It was unfamiliar, yet not, like half of me wanted to nestle into his chest and the other half knew not to.

  As I let the light in, the exposure cleaning up and drawing the fuzzy shadows into sharper images, the first thing I saw was my own eyes staring back at me. I closed mine slowly, hoping the view would change like a slide clicking over. But when I reopened them, I still saw my eyes in a man’s face. A worn face, which once you rubbed back the lines and pulled up the skin, was a face that looked just as I remembered. A ghost. I shouted out and sprung from his arms, landing in the mud and splattering everyone’s concerned faces.

  “You,” was all my feeble head could come up with as I stumbled woozily for several seconds, pointing my shaky finger accusingly at the tall, dark man in front of me. As I connected the random pathways that brought me here, threads of sense drifted in front of my eyes, but I couldn’t quite pull them together. The daughter in me was stubbornly fighting against the truth.

  I ran my hands through my hair and grasped at the strands, pulling them together into a thick rope in my fist. I shivered, the air wet and sludgy around me. My aching head took in the darkness creeping away as morning peeled back, slow and heavy like the night didn’t want to give in.

  He approached me gently, hands held out in front of him like he expected me to climb back into them. I shook my head, feeling nauseous and upended. When he made a sudden move towards me, I startled like a deer. He pulled back, looking hurt. He would never harm me, but I was afraid of what he might say. I leaned airily, putting my hand out to steady myself, but connected with nothing. Rash was quickly at my side, and I held onto his arm to stabilize myself physically and mentally.

  Rash. I had Rash. My heart pumped faster, and my blood warmed as I felt the real fleshiness of him.

  I looked down at my feet, twisting my ankles and burying them in the mud. “How long?” I asked the ground, little bubbles popping around my sinking boots. I felt childish, like I was eight years old again.

  “You’ve been out for a few hours…” Careen said, her face creased with relief.

  “No,” I said, my index finger up in her misunderstanding face. My mouth quivered with held back sobs. I raised my eyes to meet this stranger and half-yelled, half blubbered, “How long?”

  His eyes drooped in the corners, his mouth building up to what was going to come out. “Since before you were born,” he said, his smooth voice grating, like someone was raking sandpaper across my ears. So, always. He had been a Spider, always.

  I nodded, resignedly. Some part of me, some tiny shard that had been sitting in my chest for years, slowly loosened and came out of my mouth with a huge sigh. “Yeah, I thought so,” I said, as my shoulders pulled in around me. If I could curl into a ball, maybe I could shut this out. Roll away.

  He tentatively approached me, stalking me like I was a wounded bird with a small plea in his eyes, “I tried… I’m sorry…” Then it sounded like… Something, something, something. I couldn’t listen.

  I put one hand up to stop him, the other cradling my aching head. “I just… I can’t…” I shook my head slowly like it was caught in a thick web and walked away from him, leaning heavily on Rash. Careen stood there, blinking her big, blue eyes, the light starting to curl around her feet.

  A morning like any other, except this morning I would like to have clamped down and shoved back in the ground.

  *****

  My father was alive. He stood in front me, unwavering like a solid ghost. I should have been happy to see him. But after everything I had been through, all I could think was, you deserted me. And what do you want from me?

  The world slanted. I walked almost sideways, and Rash leaned me rather roughly against a tree before I tipped to completely horizontal.

  I put my hand to his face, his skin so cool, so ready to pull into a grin. He traced under my eye with his thumb and said, “You know, that shiner makes you look dangerous and sexy.”

  I snorted, the unfamiliar rumbling of laughter working its way through my body. I smacked his head to the side with the force of a feather. “Shut up!”

 
He grinned, and my heart swelled like sunlight was trying to push out of it, painfully. “Seriously. It makes your wrong eye stand out less,” he said with a wink. I rolled my eyes, wondering which eye he thought was the wrong one.

  I slid down and rested in the mud, the water seeping into my trousers. Rash squatted beside me. “So, that’s your dad, huh?”

  I put my head in my hands, trying to wish away some of the complicated feelings I was having. “Yep, wrong eyes and all.”

  We waited as long as we could but with time pressing down on us, Pietre to find, and the constant threat of wolves, I could only let the trees cradle me for so long. I had to roughly staple myself back together so we could get home.

  Still clutching Rash like I was scared he would disappear, I let him drag me back to the others.

  The light filtered through the trees, heavy with mist, making the air dance with every disturbance. It was close to morning but the clouds hugged the ground, refusing to untwist their grip and return to the sky. Pelos, Lenos, my father, or whoever he was, stood with Careen, mist swirling around their knees like grasping spirits, both their faces lit up by the glow of the reader. I cocked my brow at him. I swear he used to be taller.

  He turned, took a step towards me, and paused. “Are you hungry, Rosa?” My name sounded bizarre coming from his dark lips. But my stomach reminded me we hadn’t eaten in over a day by clenching and gurgling. I nodded. He smiled at me, dipping his hand into his backpack.

  “Careen said you left your supplies with the other Survivor, er, Pietre? Here, take some of these.” He held out a zip lock bag, the muffins inside popping with canned raspberries. It was an old specialty of his, and the memory struck me like I was being twanged like a rubber band. I accepted the food. It was delicious and just how I remembered. I played with the wrapper, folding it into a tiny triangle. He was watching me, watching my old habits resurface, making himself recall things, too. I shoved the paper in my pocket.

  He offered a canteen of water and I grabbed it, washing down the sad muffin stuck in my throat. “Careen tells me you escaped from the breeding program,” he said, his words staccato-clipped, his face animated. “What was it like? Did you meet Este?”

  I gulped and glared at Careen. She recoiled, confused.

  “It was a nightmare,” I said, trying to match his clipped tone. “And, no. I didn’t meet Este.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh. No matter. Such a brilliant woman. Just imagine what she could accomplish if she used her skills for good,” he said, tapping the air. Then, as if twisting to reveal another side of his personality, his tone changed to smooth and lulling. “Was there a child?”

  Rash took a step back from me, giving us a small amount of privacy, which I didn’t want, scratching his leg nervously. Careen also hung back, both of them observing this odd reunion. Watching the two of us interact in this awkward manner was like watching two strangers who had met maybe once, someplace, but couldn’t quite remember where or when.

  Something pulled at me from inside. Cage bars shot up in front of my eyes. I hugged my arms around my chest. “There was a child. I mean, there is,” I said.

  Rash’s eyes widened as he started to comprehend what I’d just said.

  Pelo’s face relaxed into an easy smile. “I’m a grandfather,” he said proudly, mostly to himself.

  I hugged myself tighter, trying to hold myself back from launching at him. Grandfather. The word infuriated me. He had no claim over my child, no right to a relationship with him. I put my hand to my head, feeling a radiating headache from where I’d clipped it on my mother’s table. She had much more right to claim grand-parentage than he did. I stared at him, willing him to change into her, wishing it so hard I thought I might collapse in a soaking mess of tears in front of everyone. My failure squashed me under its weight, robbing me of energy and breath.

  I took a step towards him, not sure what I wanted to do.

  He leaned back, tapped his chin, and spread his arms wide. “Well, this is wonderful! It has begun. The breakdown of the system. And you’re part of it, Rosa. We are part of it!” he said excitedly. He didn’t say, oh you poor thing, that must have been hard for you. Or even how did you manage to escape? My impressions of him started to form around the thin frame I’d already constructed from the day he left me. His priority was the cause, the rebellion. I was a side project, which failed.

  As if reading my mind, he threw in as an aside, “Well done. It must be difficult, raising a child on your own.” I cringed at the odd congratulation. I didn’t deserve it.

  I heard Careen suck in a breath ready to blurt, “Oh, she’s not…”

  I cut her off and stared at her lips, pinning them together with my mind. “I’m not doing too badly, am I, Careen?” I nodded my head, begging her to keep quiet and nod along with me. I couldn’t deal with the questions that would come from bringing Joseph into the conversation.

  *****

  The next few hours went by in a blur of Pelo peppering Careen with probing questions about the Survivors. I’d decided on Pelo because he didn’t feel like my father, but calling him by his new name seemed wrong as well. He knew more than me about the coming plans, but he wanted specifics: the colors, the shapes, the tastes. He seemed to demand full sensory explanation, and it was amusing watching Careen try and beat him back with her short answers.

  “We’re not likely to be pursued,” Pelo said, his smile cartoonish, “Most of the soldiers, save a skeleton force, have been sent to search of your settlement. They left a week ago. So they have a bit of a head start on us.” I wondered why he smiled at this. The idea that Woodland soldiers were on their way to my home still filled me with absolute terror, but I had to hope that, as with everything, the Survivors were prepared for this outcome.

  Careen flipped her hair and a thin lipped almost-smile spread across her face. “They don’t have Spinners though.” Her voice was distant as her eyes searching the terrain in front of her. “We’ll catch up.” She was barely listening to the animated stick insect beside her. Her thoughts were with Pietre.

  Pelo clasped his hands together in eagerness, hungry for information. “Spinners?”

  I laughed as Careen tried to explain what a Spinner looked and felt like.

  Their voices faded out as I stared at Rash like he might be an apparition. I could almost see his shape wobbling and wavering in front of me.

  Every now and then, he’d crack a joke, he would smile, and he would support me as much as he could as I tried to overcome my concussion, but I could tell this was overwhelming for him.

  My struggles came from deeper inside. I was trying to put two men together in my head. The man I’d looked up at, whose every move, every word, had been mesmerizing to me. Back then, everything he’d said had to be The Truth. His voice was brimming with promises, his enthusiasm, catching. Looking at him now, through older eyes, he was exactly the same… but completely different. Because I was different. He was like an excitable toddler in a grown man’s body, his reactions to everything naïve and over the top.

  *****

  We pulled through the woods, mud splattered up to our knees, our boots twice as heavy with all the caked-on dirt. We scanned back and forth, looking for signs of wolves or soldiers. It was unnervingly quiet. We had only the food Pelo had scraped off his kitchen counter, muffins and a few oranges. The forest only offered dried remnants of berries left by other animals. As we dragged on, every branch and slippery log started to look the same. Had we turned around? Was that the damned red arrow leading us back to Pau?

  I was filthy and miserable. The loss of my mother and my new sister bobbed in and out of my head like a tainted tea bag. I’d blown it. At least I knew they would be safe from Paulo. My only consolation was Rash, trudging along, keeping up easily, dragging me by my jacket sleeve.

  “So, a kid?” he asked, his dark eyebrows rising in surprise.

  I nodded. “His name’s Orry.”

  I let my mind wander from Orry to Joseph, wonde
ring what they were doing right now. Was he missing me? I missed him so much I couldn’t breathe. When I closed my eyes, his memory wrapped around me like golden tethers. I thought of our night together, and I thought I might crack open right there. I put my arm across my chest, feeling the pain physically wound me.

  A hand patted my shoulder awkwardly. “That bad, huh? What? Does the little terror scream all night and crap all day?”

  I pressed my fingers to my lips, letting the memory of Joseph’s kiss lag there. “Rosa?”

  “What? No. Well, sometimes, but mostly he’s perfect.” My beautiful boy, how did I leave without saying goodbye?

  Rash lowered his head, shaking it minutely. “Who would’ve thought it? Miss I’m never having a kid, happy with a bouncing baby boy.”

  I smiled sadly. “It wasn’t that simple. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. Joseph helped,” I whispered.

  We pushed through low-lying branches, some showing signs of life, persistent, hardened buds that would soon sprout blossoms. I let one spring back and slap Rash in the chest. He coughed dramatically. “Ahem. Joseph?”

  I wasn’t sure how to say it, how to make Rash understand the tunnels I had pushed through to get here, the darkness Joseph dragged me out of, and what was on the other side. Love.

  I jerked Rash to me and whispered close to his ear, my voice breaking a little as I said, “I fell in love, ok? It’s complicated. He’s Orry’s father. Umm, not that we had… umm, not then anyway.” I was confessing way too much here, my words jumping over one another in a jumble. “You know him. He was at the Classes; he came from Pau like me. He rescued me,” from so many things.

  Recognition followed by amusement flickered over Rash’s face. “You and beautiful blond man had a baby?” Rash laughed. “Nice one, Soar.” He knocked my shoulder and I flew forward, scratching my arm on some barbed, black rocks. I glared up at him, but when I saw his true and somewhat congratulatory smile, my face softened. I didn’t have to manufacture words for Rash. I didn’t have to give him part of the truth and hide the rest. He was my friend, and he accepted every part of me.