The Divide by Jeremy Robinson

Author:Jeremy Robinson [Robinson, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Breakneck Media
Published: 2018-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

30

“We’ve waited long enough.” I feel horrible saying it, but someone has to. After three days of waiting for new arrivals, not one more member of Plistim’s family has followed Salem’s path to our doorstep. Shua, Dyer, and I have kept watch topside, from the trees. There have been no signs of life. No rising smoke, no shouts…or screams…no lingering scents, and no Golyats. The large beast moved on, perhaps sensing easier prey nearby, or just waiting patiently for the moles to leave their den as a group.

“I don’t think I can say that to him.” Shua sits across from me, hands clasped on the branch he’s straddling. We’re fifty feet up in a pine tree, wrapped in a blanket that’s been coated in sap and covered with pine needles. According to Salem, we look and smell more like a pine tree than a pine tree does. If a Golyat shows up, we’ll find out just how astute they are.

“We’ve been ready to leave since yesterday,” I say. “Every day we wait brings winter closer. There is no way to guess how long the journey, the crossing, or the search for Mount Fletcher will take.”

“It could be days,” he says, feigning hope. “Weeks at the most.”

“Years at the most,” I correct. “Months if we’re lucky. Weeks if a Golyat decides to toss us across.”

“Have I told you how pessimistic you are?” His question nearly triggers an aggressive response, but then I see his smile and know he’s teasing.

“Better to be a successful pessimist, than a shat-out, steaming pile of positive thinking.”

I’m expecting a broader smile, so I’m caught off guard when he frowns. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out why. I’ve just callously described the fate of several family members, people we witnessed being slain in the most horrible way, people whose slippery, gray remains have been slowly drying out in the summer sun. I glance down at the field where the dead Golyat remains, laying in a dried out pool of its insides. “Sorry.”

“You meant no disrespect,” he says. I find his forgiving nature unfamiliar, unexpected, and at times, unwelcome. He should hate me. Not long ago I would have killed him for his beliefs.

A part of me doubts that. I try to put myself back in time, imagine what I would have done if I’d known what Shua had planned. I would have tried to kill him. I doubt I would have succeeded. But if I’d known who he really was, if I had known he was Bear?

I replay the story in my head. I can’t even imagine killing him now.

I would have betrayed the Prime Law to spare Bear’s life. And now that he’s a good father to my son… I think, for the first time, I understand Plistim. Growing up as the youngest in a large family, in a culture that didn’t value me, I was never very close to anyone aside from my father. But Plistim feels that way toward everyone in his family, and they return that affection.

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