Salamander

Chapter Thirteen - Things In Common

Chapter Thirteen

Long after the wooden portico had disappeared behind the forest wall, my stomach was rumbling from immense hunger. The undergrowth we were in was blanketed in moist, light green moss. Apples fell from the canopy up above, and when one of the shiny red fruits fell just at my feet, my stomach growled yet again. Mariam was lying down, and because she was facing away from me, I couldn’t tell whether or not she was asleep. I didn’t want to wake her up, and I also didn’t want to eat the apple without letting her have some, too. As if in answer, another apple clashed upon the wooden cart, rolling down the planks until it stopped at the far corner. I picked up the apple that was at my feet and took a big bite out of it, relishing in the tangy juice that coated my lips in a sticky mess.

            Inside the forest of apple trees, the sun was unable to cast its blazing rays upon our bodies. I was no longer sweating, though it’s stink still showed its presence around my armpits. In contrast, Mariam still smelled like the sweet scent of roses, and it made the pungent odor of my own self even more noticeable. I took another bite of the apple as I looked at the rows and rows of trees, overlapping until they faded off into the darker parts of the forest. They crowded around the dirt path that cut through the undergrowth, but they kept their distance, although they continued to drop their loads of fruit onto the Collectors and captured Children.

            I looked down at the bitten apple in my hands. How could I possibly eat after what had just happened? Not to mention what I had done to my parents. You don’t deserve to eat this, I thought bitterly, squeezing the fruit in my hand until the red skin began to break. Killers don’t get to eat something like an apple. I looked back up at the lush canopy, suddenly wishing that I could have been as innocent as one of those trees. But I wasn’t, and there was nothing I could have done that would have changed that. I threw the apple out of the cart. It rolled onto the dirt, sticking to the bitten part of the fruit like a magnet. I shouldn’t be eating something so innocent when I’m not even innocent myself.

“Can we please rest?” Jason complained.

            Madeline shook her head. “We can’t . . . not yet. Once the sun goes down. The last thing we want is to lose time and end up in a forest at night. We need to stop at reinforced areas.”

            Jason snorted. “What are the odds that we’ll actually run into Roadcallers?”

            I felt my head snap up at the sound of the robotic beasts that supposedly roamed the uninhabited parts of the kingdom. I had never seen one before, and I could only imagine how awful they must have appeared, and what type of weapons could have been built into them. Could they possibly be worse than the Policetrons? I shivered and looked around with unease, expecting a pack of them to come bursting out from behind a tree.

            “I don’t know,” Madeline admitted. “But I’d rather avoid the problem altogether.” She took out a piece of folded paper out of her trousers, and when she unfolded it I saw that it was a map, the towns they had already sieged crossed out with messy X’s. “We’re about half a day away from a reinforced area.”

            “It’s probably abandoned, like all others,” Jason muttered.

            “They weren’t meant to be inhabited.” Madeline folded up the map and stuck it back into the pocket of her trousers. “They were meant to be checkpoints for travelers, traders . . . and later on, Collectors.”

            Jason huffed. “Well, I hope we actually do make it there by sundown. My legs are killing me.”

             I thought I saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked into the undergrowth, expecting a Roadcaller to come out and attack us. But there was nothing there – no silhouette, no movement, no mechanical beast. I eased back and rested my head on the railing, thinking that it might’ve been my imagination running wild, deceiving me with its playful tricks.