Page 29 of The Quiet
Her back pressed firmly against the ROSE, she felt the subtlest movement in the arm that wrapped her waist, fingers snaking slowly across her hips for what she could only guess was another knife in his belt. Blood streamed down the wounded arm pinned to her side, her other hand clutching the ROSE’s arm around her neck. Her mind raced through a strategy. If that knife caught the air, Kay wouldn’t dodge it. She could tell by the state of his body everything on him was frozen but that anxious trigger finger which he might very well fire right into her chest.
“Put the gun down,” she instructed, feeling the tendons in the ROSE’s arm tense against her stomach as if he’d grabbed something.
Ella felt the ROSE’s arm shift and blindly threw down her palm, catching half of his fist with a couple of her fingers raking across the exposed blade, before spinning hard out of his grip. The rusted blade scraped over her throat as she turned into him, and she felt the ROSE release her as she stumbled back toward Kay and collapsed on the bank.
One hand clutched the cut across her throat, shallow and uneven, it was half by grace of the rust and that she’d hedged her bets correctly that he’d let her go. Kay’s frazzled mind was so distraught by the chaos that at the sight of her woundedness he seemed to forget the ROSE altogether.
He collapsed onto the bank next to her, frantically checking her neck as his gun slid down the sand and into the water. His backwas to the ROSE now, Ella looking over his shoulder as the ROSE put the knife away.
Relief flooded over her, momentarily replacing the pain that seared through her arm and throat. She’d never be able to tell Kay that he had been the truer threat in the moment. Panicked, he could focus on nothing more than her wounds, mind flooded with the kind of panic that erased all logical thought.
Ella still watched the ROSE, hand rubbing her throat and smearing the blood before she asked Kay for a tourniquet. He repeated the word back to her as if he’d forgotten what words meant, hands over her throat as if he might stop the invisible outpour of never-ending blood.
“It’s just the skin. I’m okay. Please go get the tourniquet for my arm,” she directed him firmly, needing her own space to breathe and take in everything that had happened in only the last hour.
Kay scrambled toward the bag lying several feet up along the beach’s white sand, and Ella watched the ROSE. In its mask, it was a creature, not a man, standing idle in the waters of the bloodied bank. They stared at each other, Ella wondering if the curse still remained.
One question echoed loudest in the wake of it all.
What had she done?
The ROSE walked toward the cleanest part of the beach, dropping down on his knees and removing his mask as he rubbed sand across his moss covered face and hair. The silence settled like a led blanket, but Ella was relieved to see what felt like very human behavior.
She was tempted to speak his name, but found nothing but a blank space on her tongue. If this truly was the man from the memories, she already knew so much about him, and at the end of it all had no idea what to call him.
Kay brought the tourniquet back, still breathing heavily as his fingers fumbled with it. Ella still eyed the ROSE as she instructed Kay quietly, directing him toward the right bandages, antiseptics, and wraps as she kept pressure on the wound.
The ROSE didn’t seem to pay them any mind as he cleaned the moss from his face and hair.
Feeling her adrenalin fade by the minute, Ella surveyed the damage of the fort. Kay followed her gaze, his bloodied hands resting in his lap. His body still shook, but he was no longer frantic. His intellect was returning to him, second by second until at last it had the conscience to ask the question she’d been asking herself.
“What have we done?” he asked hoarsely, and he looked at Ella with her wounded arm and all of the bloodshed. Pulling up the broken end of the noose she’d shot clean, he looked at it as if remembering the shock of another question, “How did you do this?”
She would have laughed at the question if it didn’t hurt so much. She and Crow had been evenly matched in more ways than one, though she certainly had luck to thank in this case. Based on the damage, she’d only hit the edge of the rope. Kay’s frantic struggling had likely done the rest, but it was a near miracle nonetheless.
“You broke the curse,” the ROSE spoke, Ella having only removed her eyes from him for a second.
He cupped a wave and pushed the water back through his hair, glancing over at them. “Unbelievable,” he added scornfully and removed his gloves, scrubbing them with sand and then moving the sand to his clothes next.
Ella felt lightheaded, as if the ROSE’s words somehow delivered final confirmation that it wasn’t the forest monster that was with them now and that danger had passed. The tightening of the tourniquet wrenched her to the present with intense pain. Kay seemed to have remembered her previous instructions and treated her wound.
After addressing the injury, Kay removed his fatigue, glancing between her and the ROSE as he began to tie a sling, grounding himself in one task after another as he continued winding down.
He looked over to the ROSE wrestling a vine out of his boot. Kay seemed to process the silence for himself. “What have we done?” He repeated on a breath, hoisting himself up to his feet before helping her stand. “What is happening?” He kept saying to himself.
“Is Peter still alive?” The ROSE asked, causing them to both turn and look at him. The ROSE seemed to read the vacancy on their faces. Without another word, he dunked his masked helmet into the water and ripped the vines and moss free from it. Folding it closed, he slipped it across the sword on his back and climbed up the bank.
Ella and Kay eased up farther on the beach as they watched him tear through one hut after another, coming out with differentsupplies. Ella walked Kay through the inspection and treatment of the bullet wound. It wasn’t as severe as it could have been, but it was certainly problematic. Kay shakily followed her directions, using supplies to rapidly disinfect, apply pressure, gauze and bandage.
“I need to know if Peter survived the war,” the ROSE said as he moved from one hut into the next. His movements were sharp and focused as if still in the heat of battle, the ROSE leaving every once and a while to toss a firearm into the water. Ella reminded herself that he’d just surfaced from the mire of battle in his memories but there seemed to be more to it than that. He had seemed completely serene in the field, and he was burning with energy now.
Kay finished wrapping the bandaging around her arm, his hands trembling in stark contrast to the ROSE’s easy focus. “They killed us without any questions,” Kay said shakily as if they were already dead. “The Imperia has been killing anyone that comes through? If they find out we’re the ones behind this, we’re going to jail for life. We’ll never be able to go home.”
He’d file through each crisis one by one. Next, Ella knew, he’d focus on the ROSE. She was dreading the implications as she didn’t want to ask many of the questions herself.
The ROSE moved from one more hut into the final one, several packs on his shoulders. He dropped the bags off near the entrance of the barricade before approaching them, pulling something from his belt. Ella confirmed her suspicion that in tearing through the beach, he’d also systematically disarmed them.
Now, she’d see why.
