Page 22 of The Last One
Jadon meets my eyes in the mirror, and my breath catches at his intense stare and rigid posture.
Olivia strides into the barn carrying a pot, looking from me to Jadon and back again. “What?”
“Kai,” Jadon says, shoulders relaxing. He smiles. “That’s pretty.”
Olivia grins and places the pot on Jadon’s worktable. “You remembered your name?”
I nod, still studying my reflection.
She runs over and hugs me. “That’s wonderful! Aren’t you happy?”
Near tears and shaking, I let out a long breath and fan my face. “I am.” Knees weak, I sink onto the bale of hay and clutch my elbows. Remembering something as simple as my name has sapped all my energy.
“Kai: that’s a little strange for this part of the world,” Olivia says to Jadon. “Don’t you think?”
Jadon nods. “What about your family’s surname? Kai…what?”
I level my shoulders and force myself to will the shakes away. “My surname?” I start to speak—the answer is right there, on the edge of my memory, and I can almost touch it, but there’s blank space there and thick quiet. I shake my head. “Kaihave-no-idea.”
Olivia snorts.
Jadon says, “Ha.”
“Would that name come from Chesterby?” I ask.
Jadon frowns. “Chesterby?”
Olivia nods. “We think maybe that’s where she’s from.” Then she offers her theory about the destroyed town, the eagle, the symbols on my clothing. And now, my name.
Jadon says, “Hmm. They kept to themselves in Chesterby. Didn’t want outsiders coming in. They had a lot of old customs, I hear, and a different belief system. Now we just need to find someone who knows more about all that.”
“But first,” Olivia says, “we’ll celebrate over bowls of soup!”
We aren’t eating dinner in the house. Instead, Olivia and I sit on the cleanest of the smelly bales of hay in the barn’s doorway, balancing bowls of soup on our knees while Jadon huddles over his bowl at the workbench.
The food looks rank and the surroundings ranker.
The wood of the barn creaks and groans. Not a pleasant sound. A slight breeze brings with it the stench of a dying river and ailing horses. From the farm next door, a woman coughs. She sounds really sick, and her coughs are deep and wet, like she can’t breathe. A man from the same farm joins her with his own cough. His cough doesn’t sound as dangerous as hers, though he’s not too far behind. Annoyed with the newest sounds and smells of Maford, I shift my gaze from the colure above the door to the soot-covered ground and then down to my bowl, filled with a pasty white substance that I’m supposed to eat.Oh, sacred paddle-circle thing. Protect me from this place and from this meal.
The coughing next door starts up again and makes this goopy soup look even nastier.
“Why are we eating out here?” I ask. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you, Olivia, if we ate inside? That way, you wouldn’t have to go back and forth, carrying a heavy soup pot and bowls.”
The siblings exchange a look before their gazes lower. There’s silence until Olivia clears her throat. “It’s just more refreshing outdoors.”
“And there’s a sickness going around town,” Jadon says. “Something called Miasma. That’s what you’re hearing next door at the Gerys’ farm.”
“I’m not sick,” I say.
“But we may be.” Olivia doesn’t look up from her bowl of soup. “We just may not be in the ‘hacking up a lung’ phase yet.”
“It’sverycontagious,” Jadon adds.
Olivia offers a sad sigh. “Very contagious.”
“You don’t want to risk it,” Jadon continues, “especially if you plan to leave Maford after paying your fine. You don’t know how your body would react to it.”
“If Miasma’s so bad,” I ask, my eyebrow cocked, “then why haven’t you left?”
