Page 72 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Why are you being so kind to me if you’re angry? It’s almost worse than if you yelled at me.”

He sighed, eyes downcast, and the tension from his fingers disappeared as he hugged me closer to him.

“I know to pick my battles,” he spoke softly, his voice a purr above my ear. “You feel responsible for Monika. I know you, Ren. I could yell at you till my voice was hoarse, and yes, I could whip you till both my arms would tire, and it would still achieve nothing.”

I wound my arms around him, my head resting on his shoulder.

“You’re not wrong,” I said, the crashing adrenaline a dropping sensation somewhere in the pit of my stomach. “But I’m still sorry.”

“I know you are.”

I raised my face to his and we kissed. When I pulled away, a little breathless, his face was wet with my tears.

“I’ll only ask one thing of you, don’t do anything rash again. Talk to me first. So that at least I am there to protect you against Albert’s clan if it comes to it. And so that I’m prepared with others to drive them out if it becomes unavoidable. Though I dread to think. You can imagine what the dispute over weapons would probably be like ...”

He said something else that I didn’t quite hear for the internal explosion that had occurred in my heart.

“You’d split the colony? For me?” I interrupted him incredulously.

He froze mid-sentence, then revealed his straight rows of teeth in a smile that seemed to say “What do you think?”

Noting my sincere astonishment, the muscles in his jaw slackened and the firm lines of his face smoothened out. His lips parted and softened. He looked younger all of a sudden, boyish and tender. For a while, I couldn’t decipher the meaning of its transformation until I understood that I saw him be afraid for the first time. Vulnerable. A mere half an hour ago, I had expected to have to plead with him not to hurt me too much. It would not have occurred to me that it could go the other way around.

“Yes, I would,” he admitted with quiet sincerity. “Ren, I’d do a lot worse for you than that.”

24

A PYRRHIC VICTORY

Three days later in the morning, thick fog covered the road in front of us, showing and concealing dark shapes of trees and buildings. Swirling inertly, it enveloped the world like a blanket, muting all sound, making me conscious of every little crunch of pebbles under my feet, of every inconspicuous cough or whisper behind me. Einar, Finlay, and I were at the front of our platoon, if it could be so called, leading it towards Vizzavona.

“I don’t like this,” I whispered for the hundredth time that morning. “We cannot take on a town in this visibility.”

“A village, lass,” Finlay corrected me, also for the hundredth time, though not unkindly. “Population of a hundred and fifty, Jean-Luc said. We’ll dae just fine, dinna fash yersel.”

“Yes, but Jean-Luc also said it can be twice as many during the hiking season. So fash I shall—as I should. Einar?”

Our leader’s face was forlorn, as he strode next to me mostly in silence and with a deep frown. His face was covered in a three-day stubble, concealing the tightness of his jaw, but his tension was obvious nonetheless.

“The fog will lift. It’s still early,” he said in disgruntled tones.

“And if it doesn’t?”

He shot a darkly annoyed look in my direction.

“We’ll go back. But it will lift. It has to.”

“Right,” I replied, none too reassured and thinking something less than polite about the pig-headedness of men.

Descending into the valley, with the imposing Mount Oro then hidden in the mist from our sight, we walked on a comfortably wide path in the thick forest that surrounded Vizzavona. After about an hour, we came across a signpost indicating that we had found ourselves precisely at the midpoint of the GR20 route, separating its more challenging northern part from the more manageable southern section. We turned north, walking the asphalt road that intersected the path perpendicularly.

We were getting close, and still the fog wouldn’t lift. If anything, it seemed to get thicker the lower we got, dulling all senses. The air felt wet and solid in my nostrils, and the scent of it was fresh but bland. It was like breathing through damp cotton.

“Let’s take a break,” Einar decided reluctantly, passing the order down the line.

As soon as we stopped, I detected someone’s presence close to me and turned my head. Albert, his face only inches higher above my own, the high forehead covered with perspiration. He took a sip from his water bottle and then offered it to me with something akin to a smile in his ferret eyes. A peace offering. I accepted with a smile of my own, or as close as I could get to it, and shared with him some of my meat jerky in return.

We all loitered about nervously, some standing, others sitting down on the cold asphalt. Einar paced around, hand running through his hair.