Wings of the Walker - CoraLee June Page 0,222

Huxley in a low voice as crickets chirped around us. The canopy of glowing trees overhead shielded our view of the stars.

Huxley sighed before replying, "I don't understand why you help her." Serving Linda was a habit of mine. I'd spent years tending to her every need. Even with my new found freedom, I couldn't crack my instinct to care for her. I couldn't help but feel like I owed the widowed woman, somehow. Josiah, the only family she had left, died saving me. So if I had to bring her buckets of water to cope with the guilt I felt, then I'd gladly take the penance.

"She's grieving," I told Huxley, not quite sure why I was defending her. I’ve comforted myself with the idea that grief is just love with no place to go—Linda Stonewell had no one alive to pour herself into. Since Josiah’s death, she has bottled up all the affection she never showed her son, and twisted it into a toxic rage she unleashed on me daily. She hated me because I didn’t have words left unsaid. I got closure. Dark, painful closure—but closure nevertheless. He died, and she never got to say sorry for her hand in his suffering. For all my talk of hating pity, I pitied her. Therefore, I was content to be her emotional punching bag. Just because I helped her didn't mean she made it easy on me, though. She called me every name in the book, spitting at my feet as I brought her food.

"You're grieving t—"

"Please, don't finish that sentence."

We continued to walk in silence as I thought of my strained relationship with Linda. She was struggling to acclimate to Scavenger life, and I understood her anger now. She spent a lifetime in posh comfort, then lost everything and everyone she'd ever known. Linda Stonewell had a loveless marriage and a loveless affair. The only person that actually loved her back was her son, and he was dead.

They all were dead.

"Payne was asking about you yesterday," I told him.

Payne was the one bright spot in our lives. His naive innocence was infectious. He made even Huxley smile and thawed Linda's icy heart. It wasn't self-preservation keeping her here, it was Payne. Payne also lived in the small tent next to ours with Mistress Stonewell. Their dynamic was odd at best, but it worked. She spent so much time fussing over him that sometimes she'd go an entire day without complaining.

"What did he ask?"

"He wants you to take him fishing again. He enjoyed that."

I wasn't sure what it was about Payne that made me less reluctant to share my feelings. He wanted to know about the brother he never met. And since I'd known Josiah the best, I found myself offering him little pieces of information when I could handle it. I'd even caught Linda leaning forward to hear my stories of her son. I wondered if she knew how truly close we were. Payne was a sweet child. Genuine. Kind. But terrifyingly smart.

Exactly like Josiah.

We were almost at our tents. I couldn't wait to wash off in the water basin and go to sleep. Today, I’d pushed so hard that I was certain I’d have a dreamless night. I was about to descend the path to our home when the drums started.

The thudding beat had no repetitive cadence or method. It was madness, thumping and filling the deadlands with its warning. One of the first things Aarav taught us when he agreed to let us seek refuge in his camp was if you hear the drums—run.

It was a warning repeated many times, chanted at dinner and whispered at night. "Is Patrick on patrol?" I asked Huxley, whose eyes were on alert as he scouted the woods around us. White, glowing trees cast shadows in the dark, and towered overhead. The drums made it impossible to hear anything else.

Looking to the sky, I saw the dim, green embers of a fire in the distance. We were only a few minutes away if we sprinted. "We have to go to him," I said as adrenaline flooded me. I started to turn towards the flames when a calloused hand wrapped around my elbow, pulling me back.

"You’re not going—"

"Sorry, were you just about to tell me not to go? Because it sounded like you were about to make another decision for me," I said with a growl, yanking out of his hold. I looked over Huxley's shoulder and saw the bushes shifting. I