Luke only stared down at him without speaking, but his next comment made Luke’s hands clench: “Lazy idiots. We’re poor, but you’re worse than we are.”
_________________
“Luke, please, stop,” Kamrin pleaded, near tears again. It had been a while since they had resumed their night walk, but Luke was in the grip of the stormiest anger he’d ever felt. Something about that malicious comment from a beaten man, combined with the suddenly ignited string of nasty comments beginning to sting again, angered him until he could not restrain him from muttering furious words to himself.
“City folks,” Luke snapped, ignoring Kamrin, “they don’t know what real life is like.”
He’d been scorned and insulted by not only the respectable folks of the city, but also by a homeless beggar who’d tried to rob them. The fact that such a man would consider Luke beneath him simply because of his place of origin sickened him with the injustice.
“Do they know what it’s like to lose your family to a storm? Do they know what it’s like to live in a street where people are too poor even to feed themselves? Coddled brats, in the bodies of adults!”
Kamrin remained still, but then Luke said bitterly, “I don’t even know why I came here anymore. I want to go back.”
Kamrin stopped immediately and said sharply, “Go back, then!”
“Oh, no, Kamrin. Not you, not now.”
“You think I want to listen to you insulting my home any more than you want to listen to people talking about the Purlieus?”
Luke knew, deep inside, that they both were tired, panicked, and worn out emotionally and physically. They’d just had a terrifying encounter that had made their nerves brittle.
“Let’s stop. Let’s just get out of this forest,” he said, changing course, trying desperately to control himself.
“Not if you’re going to act so much like the people who you were cursing.”
“Oh, you’re telling me—”
“I don’t want to listen to you say these things anymore!” Kamrin’s eyes were shining angrily.
“You think you can find your way home alone?”
“Yeah, probably!”
Luke knew the eleven-year-old stubbornness, its ridiculous whims. Kamrin’s exhaustion was likely goading her into this irrational behavior, as was his own anger. They stood in the middle of the dark forest road for a few moments, glaring at each other.
“That’s enough,” Luke said at last, hoping to quench himself. “Come on.”
Kamrin shook her head. “No.”
“Kamrin Dalhaven!” Luke finally shouted, “We’ve come here, our sole purpose being getting you home that you were foolish enough to leave in the first place. Now please stop acting like a baby and let’s go.”
“I said I’m not coming with you, Luke!”
“You truly want me to leave you?” Luke said, his voice quiet as his hands began to shake. Another trigger had been pulled inside his mind.
“You’re taking me home, but you’re being just as insufferable as the man who attacked us!”
It did not matter that he knew a child could say contrary things in her anger. Luke felt himself growing pale. He turned away from her blankly.
“Why are you ignoring me now? I—”
“Because I can’t leave you here if it kills me!” Luke screamed, whirling around to face Kamrin, who shrank back at his burning eyes in the dark. “The things the Graceway people said have nothing to do with it! I was you once—I yelled at my own brother to leave! Do you know what it was like, seeing him really turn his back, eight years older than me, my only source of protection and guidance? I swear I’ll never be a deserter like he was. I’d rather be abandoned again. Rage at me all you want, Kamrin. I won’t leave you here, and it’s not because of responsibility.”
Unable to hide his tears, Luke turned abruptly away, contradicting himself by walking away from her and the tracks into the forest, where he blindly stumbled over tree roots until he found a tree large enough to cry on. Far above him, the dark, moonlit night sky began to pale; the darkest hour had passed and the next day was dawning.
_________________
Kamrin found him sitting against that tree an hour later. Whether it was because she was really so incapable of finding her way through a small section of the forest, or because she had the exceptional maturity to grant him time and space alone, Luke would never know. Either way, when Kamrin walked toward him hesitantly, the sky was becoming brighter, the evil darkness had passed, and Luke had managed to get himself under control.
Kamrin knelt down next to him. “I’m sorry, Luke.”
When Luke was silent, she handed him a small flower, the bunches of tiny white blossoms quivering.
With a tired little scoff, Luke took it and put it in his pocket. Then he turned his head to look into Kamrin’s face. He was about to apologize back, in a gentler manner, when Kamrin said first, earnestly and shakily, “I didn’t really want you to leave. I don’t know why I said that. I was lying the whole time.”
“I knew that,” Luke said, nodding, “Knew it all along.”
Kamrin smiled. “Do you think you can take me the rest of the way? I can’t even find my way around my own town. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Luke said, rising. On his feet, he looked around at the forest slowly coming back to life, and breathing in the fresh air deeply, he said, “I think this might be the beginning of our seventh day journeying.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Kamrin said remorsefully, “I can’t believe I said those things to you, when you travelled seven days with me just to take me home.”
“Well, let’s not take another seven,” Luke said briskly, and they set off once more. Locating the tracks, they resumed their journey along it.
“As for what you said earlier,” Luke said after a few minutes of walking, “You don’t need to worry about it. It’s been incredible for me as well—and forget what I said about wishing I hadn’t come. I’m so grateful I was able to walk through a part of Graceway with a little teacher.”
Kamrin laughed. “I’m glad!”
“I’m also glad that I had a chance to…redeem myself, somehow,” Luke added after a short silence, carefully avoiding Kamrin’s face for fear he’d get emotional again, “by staying with you. I was on the verge of leaving, to be very honest. I was fifteen when my brother, who was twenty-three, became problematic. When he was telling me he wanted to run away to live in the mountains alone, angrily I told him to do that. And…he never looked back.”
Kamrin gazed at him in shock. “You’ve never heard of him since?”
Luke shook his head. “No, never. We’re an impulsive and immature pair of brothers, the two of us,” he laughed tiredly. “Well, Kam, now you know everything there is to know about me: my hatred of rivers and of those who desert others in the face of challenge. Although,” he added reflectively, “I almost did earlier. The fact that I didn’t, I’d like to consider my redemption.”
“Truly? You almost left?”
“Yes. I was tired physically, and it was hard emotionally, as well. I thought it would be a simple journey walking through a city—was I ever wrong! My hatred of what my brother did was really what kept me from leaving you then and there.”
The sun was rising through the trees. The boughs that had seemed so dark, sharp, and eerie during the night were now green-laden, rustling, light-filtering things that waved at them.
Luke had not told Kamrin, a Graceway child, of how all his brother’s behavioral problems had begun after he’d returned home to their aunt and uncle in the Purlieus, rejected from getting a job at Graceway—which was how Luke’s own negative impression of Graceway had been created. He had not told her how he had confronted his depressed brother not unlike the way Kamrin had confronted him: accusing him of being selfish and hypocritical.
“I want to give up! What’s the point of living here? Graceway doesn’t need me and I hate the Purlieus. Living in the mountains by myself would be better!” his brother had shouted against his younger brother’s accusations.
“Go do that, then, instead of being a nuisance to all of us here!” Fifteen-year-old Luke had had his aging, concerned aunt and uncle to think about. He’d assumed that his brother had as well. But immediately his brother had turned and left. He had never returned.
Luke’s eyes grew darker and his face no longer looked like a child’s after that day. His aunt and uncle never knew the full story. It was strange that Kamrin, an eleven-year-old from Graceway, now did. But all of them knew that whoever ran into the mountains was a lost cause, it being pointless to go after them, pointless to the point of being forbidden.
“Luke,” yawned Kamrin as the sun fully rose, “I’m so tired.”
“So am I,” Luke admitted. “I suppose we should rest before continuing.”
Kamrin needed no more urging: she stumbled away the tracks into the understory, dropped under a tree, and fell asleep after a few minutes. Luke lay down a little further away, and they both slept exhaustedly as the morning sun shone over the full, luscious canopy of the forest bridging Kamrin and Savannah borough.
_________________
Luke hadn’t set a specific time limit for their much-needed sleep, but startling awake and realizing that the sun was setting was jarring. Shaking a still-tired Kamrin awake, he persuaded her that her home was quite near; their journey was nearly complete.
It was strange having slept away a nearly whole day. Luke made Kamrin agree that she’d from then on stick to a healthy sleep schedule as children her age should. Many times, he also had to prevent her from rubbing her eyes with her dirt-covered sleeves.
The sun was melting against the horizon when, exhausted, scratched, and covered in grime, Luke and Kamrin emerged from the forest into the gate of Savannah borough.
“It’s beautiful, Kam,” Luke said, delighted at the homely, peaceful atmosphere of the small borough. Trees with golden-green leaves glistened in the dusk light, and the houses were built with pale bricks of stone with silver streaks.
“Let’s not walk through another night,” Kamrin mumbled, “I don’t think we can reach home tonight, anyway. Which house should we ask to sleep in? Savannah people are kind, believe me,” she added as she noticed Luke hesitate.
“All right,” Luke agreed instantly. He knew how much they needed food and rest. The first house they knocked on was empty, but the second received them warmly, allowing them to clean themselves before they ate—like beggars, Luke thought sheepishly—and were put in beds. The seventh day had been cleaved in half by their sleep, but neither of them had any trouble falling asleep once more. Savannah did not have frogs outside, but Luke thought he heard crickets chirping sweetly outside his window as the moon rose.
