The Wild's Call by Smith-Ready Jeri

Author:Smith-Ready, Jeri [Smith-Ready, Jeri]
Format: epub
Publisher: Luna
Published: 2010-01-23T02:38:52+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Elysia stopped and turned a suspicious gaze on Darien. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Sit down and let me finish.”

She sat at the far end of his bench, hunching her shoulders as if bracing for a blow. He wanted to shift closer so he wouldn’t have to shout above the wind, but sensed she’d only move away.

“We’ll stop and camp at the state park,” he said. “It’s too rocky to sail any farther, anyway.”

“And then what?”

“Then we wait.” He took a deep breath. “Wait for the Spirits to guide us.”

“You mean, wait for the voices in your head to start talking again.”

“It’s not just my head. You told me—”

“I was drunk that night. I didn’t know what I was saying.” She tugged her cap down so he couldn’t see her eyes. “It’s your boat, your fantasy. I’ll go along since I have no choice. But I won’t believe.”

“Lyse, why are you so hopeless? Can’t you feel it? The world’s on the edge of a new beginning.”

She shook her head. “All I feel is the end, so despair seems like the only rational response.” She tore off her cap and crumpled it in her hands. Her eyes were so full of pain that he wanted to wrap his arms around her, if he thought she wouldn’t throw him overboard for trying. “Things won’t ever get better, Darien. People can’t fix it. They can only ruin it.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Then you’re an—” She cut herself off and turned her gaze to the water. “You’re a better person than I am.”

“Listen. The Bear says if we go to this place, the Spirits will show us what to do. He says they need us.” He touched her knee, and she flinched. “Doesn’t the Fox tell you the same thing?”

Her jaw clenched. “The wind just shifted.”

She was right. He gave her the tiller pole so she could steer, then adjusted the mainsheet line to trim the angle of the sail. From the corner of his eye, he watched Elysia’s face grow stony. Like an intruder in the night, he’d set off her alarms, and now her doors were locked.

“Hope” was a four-letter-word to her. Her few shots at happiness—college, her writing career—had been snatched away by the Collapse.

Unlike Elysia, Darien hadn’t always been poor. His family had lived the American dream until he was ten, when his parents’ real estate business went under; skyrocketing interest rates and insurance premiums had demolished the housing industry. Little by little, their savings for retirement and their sons’ college education were turned into food for their table.

Maybe he would have been better off without the lacrosse scholarship to Johns Hopkins. Then he would have spent those three years learning a useful trade instead of studying ancient history. But then he wouldn’t have met Elysia.

She was with him when he discovered his younger brother, Peter, dead from an overdose. Only someone like her could have helped him survive that, could have comforted him without judgment, without asking what he could have done to stop it, the question he’d asked himself a thousand times.

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