Survivors

Chapter 40: Jada

Chapter 40: Jada

          I can’t believe she’s dead. Tanziona James is dead. I find myself trying to deny it. It’s all a dream. A nightmare. It has to be. Tanzi was only my age or maybe just a tad bit older than me. Maybe I will wake up and she’ll be sitting at the foot of my bed. Maybe she’ll just be in an infirmary. But no, she is dead.

          We take her body to Commander Marcs and lay it before her. When she sees Tanzi’s dead body, she barely makes a face of concern or remorse as her own baby daughter lies before her. She just has her prepared to be buried next to her father. No one says anything as she’s layed in the ground.

          Three days go by with no one talking. We just barely do the things that should be basic for us. We don’t even leave the cabin at all. We just sit in a stupor of depression. I think back to that day in the woods, the last time we were together. We were talking, and then Izzy came, and then Tanzi protected me from an arrow. She protected me, and I should have protected her. I should have stuck by her, but instead, I had to dance around with these stupid sais. I should have been the one to get hit by the arrows, not her. It’s all my fault that she died.

          I throw my sais against my wall—one sticking in the wall, and one in the door—and bury my head into my pillow. I just scream and cry into my pillow as if will help. It doesn’t. I just get light-headed, but I don’t want to take my face from the pillow. I don’t care, I deserve to be dead right now, and I would probably have passed out if someone hadn’t taken the pillow from under me. I look over to see Izzy standing beside me with my pillow in her hands. She drops the pillow and just sits on the bed. As soon as she does, I slide onto her lap and cry some more.

          Izzy just rocks me gently as she strokes my hair. I hate that she can’t talk, but still talk anyway.

          “It’s all my fault,” I sob out. “She’s dead because of me.”

          Izzy loosens her grip on me as she looks me in the eyes with a confused look.

          “She saved me from an arrow and I left her alone. I should have been beside her at all times, that way I could have at least protected her from the second arrow. If I had, she would be alive right now, but I just had to lose myself in those stupid sais!”

          Izzy pulls a note pad from her pocket and writes something down. She flips it over so that I can read her message: “You are not the cause of her death. Everyone is blaming themselves for Tanzi’s death, but anyone could have been hit. If anything I’m guiltier than you because I didn’t pick up that the carnagions were but mere weak distractions for Kane to kill all or one of us.”

          “But I volunteered us to go into the woods,” I admit as I start up more tears.

          Izzy writes something else on the paper: “She went on her own. Plus, you didn’t know that something more than critters would be in the woods.”

          “I still should have saved her,” I say as I turn away from her. I put my hands over my face and try to wipe my tears in them, but it’s no use.

          “It was out of our hands what happened, Jada.”

          I slowly slide my hands from my face and turn around to see Izzy staring blankly at the wall. Did I imagine something, or did she just talk? I stare at her astonished as she looks at the wall, and then the ground, then me.

          “I thought you couldn’t speak,” I say as I wipe my eyes.

          “Technically, I’ve had my speech back for a week,” Izzy sighs softly, “I’m just supposed to be careful with it.”