Page 31 of The Quiet
From there they departed.
It took them several minutes to catch up with the ROSE who was determined toward a specific path.
“Where are you going?” Ella asked as they neared him, and he nodded to a white steeple visible above the trees in the fardistance. It was the only visible sign of civilization and Ella understood his logic. She wondered if the ROSE actually knew where they were, but either way he didn’t seem interested in asking them anything. He scanned them as if doing a quick assessment of their usefulness.
“Jackson. That’s my name,” he said back to them.
“Ella,” she replied, nodding back to Kay, “and this is Kay.”
The ROSE didn’t reply, and Ella left it as is, following farther behind with Kay as they continued to keep their distance. Ella could only imagine the furious dialogue burning through Kay’s mind, but her eyes remained focused on the ROSE’s mask strapped across his back. It was an anchor point as their walk turned into a hike through the jungle shrubbery. She felt the effects of her blood loss, with an onset of fatigue and labored breathing. She hadn’t given her wound a thorough examination, stubbornly plowing forward with a single-minded determination until they broke past the last veil of leaves and vines to an overlook of The Quiet.
Ella and Kay both stared as they looked out over the world. It was a vast, colorful landscape, with the evening sun spanning beyond a sequence of mountains, oceans and geographical formations. Strange buildings of all shapes and sizes marked points on the horizon.
“The Spirits,” Kay breathed, and proceeded to point them out. One large castle looking structure that seemed to be made of blue stone was apparently where the spirit of Hope resided. Another bright green mountain was apparently where one could find the spirit of Courage. His countenance lifted as he captured the landscape, removing a pen and notepad tactfully protectedin a waterproof bag. He began sketching it, the ROSE apparently content to spend a minute here as he inspected the view.
Kay pointed to the tower they were traveling toward, “I think that’s the spirit of Life,” he explained.
No one seemed intent on talking after that, and Ella hardly minded, because she couldn’t help but stare at this new world, resisting the urge to sit. The colors bounced across a blended mixture of snowy tundra, red desert, and vast valleys of green land.
It made no logical sense, free from the laws of geology and every other scientific study, and though she knew Madness had distorted its laws, it was still beautiful.
Jackson searched through his things, opening and exploring the bag he’d brought with him as it hung over his shoulder. Kay remained several feet away, sketching studiously while glancing periodically at the ROSE in an alert and suspicious way.
Jackson drew out a cigarette, one toppling off the side of the bag and landing in the grass beside him. Ella thought little of it, and despite the state of herself, she didn’t hesitate to bend down and pick it up, offering it back to him.
His eyes remained trained on hers in a focused and intentional way as he drew the cigarette out of her fingers. Just as he’d risen from the water, he performed this act so slowly that it seemed to slow the rest of the world down. She felt the cigarette move through her hand, noticing the textures of it, textures she would not have noticed had he just taken it outright.
She noticed other things too, tattoos, through a window of his shirt, seeing a row of broken arrows marked along his collarbone. There were enough, maybe seven, to start a second row.
Ella’s mind paused on this, as if their meaning were on the tip of her tongue, some figment of retained knowledge from his memories, perhaps. There had been a kind of transference she couldn’t explain, but now she felt like she knew things about him, things she didn’t know how to vocalize.
Scents of the water and woods permeated the air between them, along with the lingering residue of gunpowder and smoke.
Her mind jolted as if gasping for air–gasping for some sense of time again. Realizing she’d been staring, her eyes flickered back up to his and time started anew. In any normal interaction, people would shrug off the discomfort of such a moment, urging time onward as if it were unnatural to sit and pause like she had. She was surprised to see he’d been watching her gaze, and she wondered how long she’d been staring.
“Thanks,” he said, and it were as if his eyes were asking her to come closer while his tone made it sound as if he wanted to push her offthe cliff.
He turned and walked off.
Ella looked over at Kay who seemed to have watched the entire interaction, a scientist studiously observing an experiment.
“What was that?” he asked with an edge of suspicion.
Ella lowered her hand, having no words to explain the mixture of uncomfortable feelings. She wasn’t sure how to name all of them.
What was that?
"I don’t know,” she said, still somewhat dazed.
She was sure it was a mixture of blood loss and lingering effects of the memories. She’d felt things in the past week she could never explain. Something had urged her to pursue Crow with an uncontrollable passion. She’d navigated Jackson’s curse and freed him from it almost on impulse. Her brain still hadn’t sorted through the events of the embolism. Why had she reached for Jackson in the first place? Why hadn’t she let him go?
Every decision she made seemed to entrench them deeper into an impossible situation.
“I do,” Kay said back, folding up his notebook with a clap as if she’d offended him.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, feeling both puzzled and flustered by Kay’s nested accusation.
“Nothing,” he replied as the implications of his statement hit her in a mixture of shock and hurt.
