Page 63 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

His grip on me relented, and he embraced me anew, stroking my back slowly.

“Aye. I could.”

He sat on the ground and pulled me onto his lap. I curled against him like a cat, grabbing tightly onto the fabric of his shirt with the effort to suppress sobs.

A few minutes had passed when the dying man’s mortal throes ceased at last. Meanwhile, Monika progressed from her own reserved weeping to wailing like a siren, and we both rushed to her to try and pacify her. Having succeeded somewhat, we hoisted her up between us—very awkwardly and unevenly—and, leaving the corpses and our laundry behind, we led her back to the settlement. Out of the trees, across the plain, and through the wooden gates that creaked complainingly upon opening.

Albert stood right behind, pacing and puffing agitatedly at a cigarette, a part of our most recent loot from a fury-infested lodge.

He stopped as the guard shut the gates behind us, and threw the cigarette to the ground, stomping on it. He had a hard look on his red face.

“What the hell happened!?”

Gulping visibly, Monika took a shaky step forward and told him in a trembling voice, broken by sobs.

Albert’s facial colour progressed from agitated, bright red to white with fear and then purple with rage. I grew increasingly uneasy just watching him. Einar put his arm around my waist and held me firmly, wordlessly telling me to stay out of it.

“How dare you risk the life of our child like this, woman?!” Albert spat out in his rounded-vowel accent, spoken hard from deep within the throat.

He marched closer to Monika and stood mere inches away from her, his eyes level with hers, spittle flying from the tight, uneven gash of his mouth and landing on her face.

“You don’t go anywhere without asking me first! Do I mean nothing to you? Does our child mean nothing to you?!”

My ears registered the sound before my eyes comprehended the movement of his hand, colliding flat with her face. Monika stumbled, but she didn’t say anything and didn’t seem surprised.

My blood turned to lava, bubbling with indignation out of my mouth in the form of the filthiest expletives I could think of in any language I knew. I made to lunge forward, but Einar held me fast, not letting me do so.

“Is that really necessary, Albert?” His steely voice interrupted my outburst. “It’s hardly the gals’ fault they had been ambushed.”

“None of your business, my lad,” Albert retorted. “And you shut up too!” He turned to me. “Shut up or I’ll make her pay for choosing such a foul-mouthed friend to associate with. We’re going.”

Holding Monika’s arm, he dragged her away.

“Thatswine,” I sputtered angrily like a faulty engine. “And you! Why thehelldidn’t you intervene?”

Einar wasn’t looking at me when he replied. Instead, he seemed wholly transfixed by the gate guard, who was stretching his muscles in a slow, bored manner on the makeshift raised wooden platform that allowed him to see over the fence.

“Well, my own reaction wasn’t all that admirable either, when I first found you by the stream,” he replied vaguely. “I’m not sure I’m the one to criticise.”

His eyes were still fixed on the guard, who now stood on one leg while holding the other extended behind him. I was quickly losing what patience I had left.

“That’s different, you didn’t hit me! How can you be so blasé about this?”

In an effort to force him to meet my eye, I attempted to push him, ramming into him with both my arms extended.Frustratingly, he didn’t move even an inch, but he finally looked at me, his expression at once grave and amused.

“Because I knew,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. “I’ve seen him slap her before.”

The words were like a bucket of icy water thrown into my face.

“What? You knew? And did nothing?”

His eyes once again evaded mine, but at least they didn’t turn back to the guard and his yoga.

“Albert believes that granting women equal rights was the biggest modern mistake. That it was the turning point and all that went wrong afterwards was its direct result ... It is his view that we now have the opportunity to set the world right by returning to traditional family values and radical patriarchy. According to him, men are supposed to be women’s superiors, as is natural due to their physical advantage. They are to expect obedience and to punish the lack of it in any way they see fit. And now, free from any laws telling him otherwise, there’s nothing stopping him from living out his beliefs.”

I covered my face with my hands, breathing hard through my nose.

“See, love, the one thing that gives people hope right now is imagining that the society that emerges from the ashes will be closer to what they want. I think we all wish for things to be different from what they used to be, in one way or another.”