Page 66 of Blue Arrow Island
We share a look, her surprise genuine.
“They don’t have anything like this?”
I shake my head. “They have nothing. We were eating algae and grubs.”
She pinches her brows together, looking pained. “And there are kids?”
“They’re kept separate, so I don’t know if they were eating more than everyone else.”
“Hey, keep it moving,” Vance calls from behind us. “I’ve got other things to do.”
“Is he an asshole?” I ask Amira softly, not moving my lips.
“I don’t know. Haven’t heard anything about him.”
We go back the way we came, Vance staying closer to us now. Sweat rolls down my spine, not a cloud in the sky to impede the scorching orb that is the sun. The heat here is oppressive all day, every day.
“Want your hair up?” Amira offers.
“That would be great.”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small strip of fabric, then says, “Turn around.”
I feel her gathering my hair into a bunch at the crown of my head and then braiding it into a thick rope.
“Give me your hand,” she says.
I do, and she has me hold the braid she wound into a bun in place while she uses both hands to secure it with the strip of fabric.
A light breeze washes over the back of my neck, and even though the temperature is in the triple digits, it feels amazing.
“That’s so much better, thank you.”
We resume our tour, stopping at one of several wells around camp. She loans me her canteen and we both get drinks. When I’m drinking, a man and a woman walk past, both waving to Amira.
Unlike Rising Tide, there are trees in this camp that provide much-needed relief from the sun. In the shade of one, a woman is sitting on a stump, her face animated as she reads a book to several children.
A book. I haven’t seen one of those in too long. It looks homemade, the neat letters of the story handwritten and pictures drawn and colored with pencils.
“I didn’t order flies in my stew!” The woman imitates a deep, outraged voice, her face contorted dramatically.
One of the girls laughs and a boy covers his mouth with his hand, his eyes giving away his grin. Their happy expressions give me a light, warm feeling that brings tears to my eyes.
“You didn’t see much of that back in the mainland, either?” Amira asks.
That’s an understatement. I was pretty much a prisoner at Lochlan’s compound. I never saw children. About once a month, I was allowed out to shop under heavy guard.
We go to a big concrete building with lots of windows next. A beautifully painted sign hangs over the door. It’s made of wood and has the words “The Grub Hub” in neat, blocky black letters. Colorful tropical flowers and vines swirl around the words and over the rest of the sign.
Inside, there are large fans mounted in the corners and along the walls of the large space. All of them are running, making the space considerably cooler than the outside. Round tables, some metal and some wood, are scattered around the space, each one surrounded by about eight chairs.
When I see a painting hanging on one wall, I walk over to it, drawn in. It’s big, maybe twenty inches by thirty inches, and it’s magnificent. It’s a soft watercolor painting of a simple cabin in the woods, the northern lights swirling together in shades of green and purple in the background.
My clothes are soaked through with sweat in several spots, but I can almost feel the flakes of falling snow in this painting. More snow is piled in banks around the cabin and it’s accumulating at the base of the windows in uneven rows.
The room opens upward into the angles of the roof itself, two big ceiling fans hanging down slightly and spinning. The rest of the walls have more paintings, some showing more skill than others, but all making this place feel comfortable. Some of the art looks like it was done by children, the colors bright and the lines bold. One, a painting of a blue dog with a tongue that rolls out like a carpet, makes me smile.
“We eat here, but it’s also where people come to hang out when?—”
