Chapter 130

Wait, maybe… Kieli went back and crouched on the stoop next to him, still cradling the bottles in her arms. Faint morning sunlight shone on his left cheek. His gaze was pointed toward the southern sky. Now that Kieli thought about it, he’d been looking south for a few days straight now. “Oh…Yeah, it’s gotten warmer and everything. We have to go pretty soon, huh?” She smiled as his profile. “Hey, want to do it today?” I’ll just water the plants, and then I’ll take a day off from cleaning house and getting the shop ready. I’ll have a sandwich for breakfast, and put milk tea in the canteen, and pack a bag for an overnight trip, and then I’ll get him to actually wear some shoes…Where did I put those old worn-out work boots, again? Lately he just walks around in his bare feet if I take my eyes off him for a second. Today they’d go on a journey together, even if it wasn’t a very long one. It had been a while. Let’s go deliver the Corporal today. The gently sloping rock fault came into view up ahead, sprawling beyond the rusty abandoned track. They headed straight along the track toward it and asked the truck to stop for them near the dark mouth of the tunnel that opened into the center of the rock fault. “Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate it,” Kieli told the driver politely, opening the door of the passenger seat. Thankfully, the truck driver they’d hitched a ride with at the transfer station was a very kind man, and he’d detoured out of his way to bring them to the entrance of this abandoned tunnel. Now he was leaning toward the passenger seat and asking amiably, “Are you sure you only need me to take you this far? Your friend here is sick, right?” “It’ll be all right. We’ll walk slowly,” Kieli answered with a smile. Then she turned to the young man sleeping against her and lightly shook his shoulder. “Harvey, we’re here,” she said into his ear. “Can you get up?” He stirred enough to crack his eye open a little and blink. Kieli gave him her hand, and they got down from the truck together. He still seemed half-asleep. As soon as his feet hit the ground, his left foot dragged and he tottered a little, so Kieli hastily got her arms around him to hold him up. “Are you okay? Do you think you can walk?” No voice answered her question. The young man kept on gazing at nothing, his expression vague. During the short week or so they’d spent as guests of the far-northern tribe, Harvey’s condition had gotten worse. He’d gradually stopped responding to her when she talked to him, until at this point the most he ever did was raise his eyes reflexively, and he didn’t even do that very often. He never spoke, either. He usually either spent the whole day staring in some direction or other and spacing out, or slept the whole day away. But still, even with his left foot dragging a little on every step, he walked with Kieli when she tugged his hand. Right now, that was enough. Kieli figured his mind and heart had worked hard for a very long time, and now they were taking a little while to sleep. She didn’t know if he’d recover someday or if he’d just stay this way, and she didn’t know how much longer he had left to live, either…but whatever the answers were, all Kieli could do was slowly and patiently tug him along by the hand. It didn’t matter how long this would take. She intended to keep on tugging his hand for as long as he was living and breathing beside her. “I’ll be coming back this way tomorrow, so I’ll pick you up if you want.” “Really? That would be wonderful.” Kieli decided she’d take the driver up on his kind offer without making a fuss about it. It was kind of a long way back to the transfer station if they had to walk the whole way. She shouldered the bag she’d left on the passenger seat and then hung the silent radio around her neck. “Take these. It still gets pretty cold at night.” And with that, he started offering her blankets, flashlights, canteens, and all kinds of things. Kieli already had everything they needed, and if they tried to carry too much more it would be hard to even make it to the winch tower on foot at all, so as grateful as she was, she politely declined. “Harvey?” By the time she had thanked the driver again and told him good-bye, Harvey was no longer next to her anymore, or even nearby. When she looked around, a little panicked, she found him wandering away down the train track. He was making silly childish gestures with his hand, reaching out to the empty air and trying to grab something invisible. He looked exactly like a little boy chasing a bug. And then he tripped on one of the railroad ties and fell right over. Flat on his face. “Ack! Harvey!” Kieli had let her bag slip from her shoulder; she hiked it back up as she sprinted over to him. “Are you okay?” Dropping to her knees and peering at his face, Kieli blinked. Harvey had his eyes closed and he was pressing one ear to the rail, scraping his cheek like a child in the process. It was as though he was listening to the land. To the planet’s heartbeat. “Harvey…?” Kieli didn’t know whether he’d responded to his name or if it had nothing to do with her at all, but after a few moments, Harvey’s lids lifted a little, and he looked up at her and gave a faint, just a very faint, smile. Something warm and sad soaked into her heart like tears. His responses were as muted as ever, but she was certain he could hear everything. Kieli believed that. The sound of her voice and the clamoring songs of the cities—the rowdy voices of the sellers in the marketplace, the noisy belching of the exhaust pipes on the three-wheeled bikes, the boilers sending up smog from all the houses—and also the sound of the land here in the wilderness, and the sound of the dry wind with its faint white noise, and the endless push and pull of the sand in the Sand Ocean. He heard all the songs of all the people and all the life on this planet, every moment. Kieli knew it. She took his hand and helped him stand up, and then she waved good-bye to the truck and the two of them began walking south down the abandoned track, hand in hand. The radio swayed from side to side at her chest in time with their footfalls. Thin shadows of mismatched lengths fell softly on the track as they walked toward the mine-yard graves, where the fallen soldiers slept eternally, to keep their final promise. …Kieli, I’m glad I met you. Harvey’s last words had worked their way so deeply into Kieli’s heart that they were still echoing there all this time later. Words for this planet, this withered planet with only sand and wilderness and smog and barren mines and all the other scars of an old war left to it, from the man who loved it anyway. Kieli, I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I lived in this age. And for this planet that let me meet you, let me live long enough to meet you. Everybody who ever protected you. This whole planet. I’m grateful for it all now.