Shamar

Chapter 3-2

‘What do I do about him, Bane? I can’t have him treating me like some kind of superhero. People will notice.’ I checked the bandage on his forearm. It needed changing again, but I wasn’t confident I could do it well enough for Tim’s approval.

‘Lainie, you are a superhero. The things you and Noah can do seem limitless, and it always comes so naturally and easily to you. I think that’s what freaks us all out the most. It would be easier to deal with if it looked like you were putting in some effort, at least.’

I thought it over, picking at his bandage. ‘So your suggestion for putting Tim at ease is to look constipated as I speak the sacred language?’

Laughing, he pulled me down and wrapped me in his warm arms, deposing of the cranky cat in the process. The chickens were going to be hungry for a while longer.

Tim tied off the bandage. ‘I’ve only tidied up the outer dressing for now because I don’t want to disturb the steri-strips again. It should be fine for a while longer so long as you stop picking at it and keep it dry,’ he commanded. He sounded scarily like Bane’s mum Beth, and she was a music teacher.

‘Lainie fiddled with it, not me,’ Bane dobbed, and Tim’s face went from stern to sheepish in a heartbeat. I shook my head at Bane in silent admonition. He ignored me, reaching over to serve up some of the hot breakfast I’d prepared. He took a tiny bite of scrambled egg, chickpeas, and soggy cooked tomato before sliding the same plate over to me.

‘Do you always eat off other people’s plates?’ I objected, sliding it back to his side of the table.

‘I do now,’ he said with a shrug, taking a bite of my toast then pushing it back to me again. ‘Don’t worry. If you catch any germs from me I’ll heal you. And I’ll leave you plenty.’ He was completely unapologetic.

‘I cooked this myself,’ I argued. ‘I promise I didn’t poison it.’

‘The ingredients could have been compromised.’

‘Compromised? You make it sound like the wild rabbits have been blackmailing the chickens to lay poisonous eggs. Are you seriously going to do this with everything I eat?’

‘And drink.’

‘Can’t you just heal me if I’m poisoned?’

‘Apparently not.’

I winced at my thoughtless lack of tact.

He set his jaw. ‘Some poisons are fast-acting. I’d rather not risk it,’ he said.

‘So you’d rather be killed yourself and leave me unprotected?’ I countered, feeling smug.

He pondered that for a moment and then pushed my plate over to Tim. ‘Fine. Tim can do it.’

Shocked beyond words, I stared at them both as Tim happily took a second bite of my toast before sliding the plate back to me with a flourish of his hands.

‘I can’t believe you did that! How can you be so prepared to risk Tim’s life without even talking to him about it?’

He shrugged. ‘We have talked about it. Two years ago, when we were in the same fireteam. We have each other’s backs. End of story,’ he explained. Tim nodded in confirmation.

‘I’m not part of your fireteam. He never agreed to risk his life for me,’ I argued.

‘You’re basically family. Same thing.’

I had thought farmers were good at looking out for one another. This took the meaning of loyalty to a whole new level.

‘Would you do the same thing for Tim’s partner?’ I challenged again, wondering if such a creature existed.

‘Of course,’ he declared, looking at his friend. ‘Except maybe Fiona. She was annoying.’

Tim opened his mouth to protest, thought for a second, and then nodded again.

I took a deep breath. ‘Bane. Seriously. Testing my food doesn’t make any sense. You told me only the apple cores were poisoned anyway, so how would tasting it first have helped?’ Surely he could see how ridiculous he was being.

‘All right, just until we leave here, then,’ he conceded, tucking into his own breakfast.

‘Speaking of which,’ I said as I pushed around my violated scrambled eggs, ‘can you please do whatever it is you need to do to track down Dallmin’s phone? He could be anywhere by now, and I’d like to bring him back as soon as possible so I know he’s safe here before we go after Jake.’

A chickpea fell off his fork as he stared at me.

I glanced at Tim for a clue as to what I’d missed. He was biting his lip and watching Bane warily.

‘Tell me you can track him, Bane, please.’ We didn’t have time to go searching each nearby town like when he’d first arrived.

‘Of course I can. It’s easy. But why would we want to?’

Horrified, I took a moment to read his body language, to check he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t.

‘Because he’s basically family,’ I threw back at him. ‘We have each other’s backs.’

He slammed his fork down onto the table. ‘He threw a knife at Noah’s back. At his back. He chose not to be a part of this family, Lainie, when he let you die!’

‘He didn’t understand what he was doing! It wasn’t his fault. You have no idea what he’s going through, being exiled from his home.’

Noah peered around the corner, drawn by the sound of an argument. ‘What’s going on in here? We just got Nathaniel to sleep and Tessa’s gone back to bed. Are you two actually arguing? I thought you both ran out of insults after high school.’

‘Sorry, Noah. Bane doesn’t think we should go after Dallmin. I won’t leave him to fend for himself!’

‘What? Of course not. Should we try the youth centre again?’

‘Bane could track his phone if he stopped being such an arse,’ I growled, realising I probably had run out of good insults.

Without pausing, Noah snatched Bane’s phone from the bench behind us and typed in the passcode. Swapping phones around so often in the last few weeks did have some advantages.

‘I’ve found the app. Which one of these codes is Dallmin’s phone? Can’t you use names like normal people do?’

Bane let out a gravelly sigh. ‘Give it here, I’ll find him,’ he conceded.

A few minutes later we were studying a map on Tessa’s laptop, trying to work out how far away Dallmin was. We’d tried to call Dallmin’s phone a few times too, but there was no answer.

‘It’s the middle of nowhere. How on Earth did he get there?’ Tim asked.

‘By avoiding using roads wherever possible, by the looks of it. As if he wants to stay away from people. He probably walked straight through people’s paddocks not realising he shouldn’t,’ Noah replied around a mouthful of my scrambled eggs. I gave up. Why not let him have it? Everyone else had eaten from my plate except me.

‘My guess is he’s following the river, more or less,’ I pointed out. ‘He must have walked all night to get that far. He’ll be exhausted and freezing. We need to go now.’ I grabbed Tim’s hand and pulled him up, picking up Bane’s car keys at the same time. Tim threw an apologetic glance Bane’s way but didn’t resist. If he was going to hero-worship me, I might as well make use of it while it lasted.

‘Bring the first-aid kit,’ I instructed my Guardian.

Bane leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. ‘You’re overreacting. He can take care of himself. Have you forgotten how old he is?’

Instead of replying, I grabbed the kit and led Tim toward the front door, silently daring Bane to try to stay behind. Of course I won.

It took ages to get anywhere near the coordinates we had pinpointed. Too many unmarked roads changed direction on us. In the end, the closest we could get by car was the overgrown end of a fire access track that led from a corrugated dirt road down to a river choked by willow trees. There wasn’t a discernible path to follow downstream and we had to fight our way through some swampy terrain. We lost phone reception when the river cut past a steep hill covered in red gums and blackberries, and it didn’t come back again on the other side. Somehow I wasn’t at all surprised that three years hadn’t fixed all the problems around getting reception in rural areas. We could only hope that if Dallmin had moved, Tim’s tracking skills would be able to take over where the phones had let us down.

After nearly an hour of swamp-hopping, the river coursed back into open pasture and Tim finally plucked up the courage to ask me to stop for a while. I’d forgotten Bane was supposed to take it easy, and he would probably have rather passed out than complained. I made him rest under a tree while I went to refill the drink bottle from the river. Thankfully he let me go on my own without comment, because I’d been beginning to worry that I’d tipped him over the edge from Guardian to snarling guard dog. I understood why, and I kept reminding myself that any risks I took had unfair consequences for him. Problem was, three years of recklessness in Eden was a hard habit to break. I missed racing the leaping mirror fish down the river.

Precariously balanced on a slippery rock so I could reach the freshest flowing water, I had to discipline myself not to think too much about how dingy the water was here compared to the silver river back home. Startled, I realised I was still thinking of Eden as home. But how could I not? It was everyone’s home, or at least it was supposed to be. Eden was like a safe nurturing nest built for beloved children and I had no doubt that every human would feel immediately at home there in a far more profound way than anywhere else. I wasn’t human. Each time I’d died had brought me a slightly better understanding of what that meant as I’d glimpsed half-remembered snippets of my eternal future. That didn’t change the fact that Eden was part of who I was, and it always would be no matter where I chose to live.

Murky river water churned about the rocks the same way my untrustworthy thoughts swirled around my brain. My Eden mindset warred with the mundane, making my perspectives on life feel all wrong. Or perhaps they were right, for the first time ever. Dallmin was now irreversibly severed from the Garden. The appalling reality of what that meant shocked me like a slap in the face. Never seeing home again? Ever? No more crystal caves with their hidden thermal pools. No hanging swing-nets laden with playful tiptoe monkeys. No honey-juice cocktails or spiral ice cascades. No more friendly faces laughing and running to catch him as he fell from a sleeping tree with his foot caught in a vine. Friends lost, never knowing where he’d gone, severed from family and loved ones who had known him and cherished him for hundreds of years …

The overwhelming truth of how much Dallmin had lost hit me so hard I literally threw up. Even my body rejected the concept—like poison. To know Eden and then be barred from it would be intolerable. How had I not seen it before? Part of his soul had been ripped away while I’d been busy pondering how nice it was that he’d learned to use a mobile phone. He would not be fine here. Not even a little bit. The trauma of exile would be more than enough to drive him insane, or worse. No wonder he’d done whatever he could think of to return. Without hesitation, I would have torn down the rockfall pebble by pebble if it was the only way for me to get back. Would I have tried to kill someone? Perhaps, if I’d expected death to not be permanent. Both Noah and I were Cherubim, with access to the Living Fruit, and Dallmin was all too aware of that. Dying would only have been a minor inconvenience for us as far as he was concerned. From his point of view, he hadn’t betrayed us at all. He had hurt Bane, though, and revealed Noah’s identity to Jake. Those things were serious. Did he comprehend what he’d done? Up until the last few days he’d been incapable of harming another person, or lying, and never in his long life had he ever been deceived. How could he possibly have understood what it all meant?

Fighting down grief-tremors, I cleaned myself up in the river and then spent a full minute trying to compose myself. The human heart was never designed to go through what Dallmin was going through. Neither was mine.

My shaky path back to the riverbank felt treacherous and cruel, each slippery rock like a deliberate attempt to make me stumble and fall. This river was vindictive …

No. It was just a river. It wasn’t out to get me. That wasn’t how either world worked. If I fell, it would be my own fault. With deliberate movements, I made my way back across the wobbly stepping stones and then hauled myself up the embankment using fistfuls of tangled weeds. Somehow I had to pull myself together. I breathed in deeply, as if I could suck the sadness right out of the world, and then clutched the drink bottle to my chest and headed back to where Tim and Bane were waiting. No more time for resting; I had to know if Dallmin was even still alive.