Collateral

Panic claws up Jenna’s spine and erupts out of her body as a piercing cry. Spinning in a desperate circle inside of her windowless confinement, Jenna claws her fingertips along the inside of the hut’s rough mud wall. Her hoarse screams leak from the crevices around the door as she bangs her forehead against the curved dirt wall. 

“What did he say?” The question flickers like electricity through her body. Fragments of memories swirl around her. 

Lana’s piercing scream. The taste of bile and blood. Rex erupts towards the forest. Trent watching him go. 

Flashes of Lana’s door cascade throughout Jenna’s body. Vague shadows of Jenna’s hands clawing at the door of the hut that confines Lana. Strong arms ripping Jenna away before she can breakthrough as screams tear from her soul.

Stumbling backwards, Jenna spins in a wobbly circle, her hand clutching her bloody forehead. Jenna holds her hand in front of her face, the sticky red blood smears across her palm and fingertips, dripping down her wrist.

Flashes of Rex’s body carried from the woods; blood drips from his lifeless body. The villagers surround Jago and Lana, locking them into separate huts. Lana’s wails fade to wracking sobs as Trent's arms hold her back from reaching her. Jago’s averted gaze as he walks past her.

“What did he say?” The question came out as a feeble moan. 

Jenna reaches for the door and falls face first to the hut’s dirt floor. The hole in the center of the roof pours light through the room as a flock of pterosaurs erupt from the trees overhead.

The pulsing floor embraces her; the valley hums underneath her motionless body. Jenna stares at the grey coals in the cooling hearth, her cheek pressed against the vibrating dirt floor, her lips caked with flaking mud. Blood rolls in a slow heavy drip along the side of her face, sliding behind her ear and down her neck. 

“Get up, Jenna.” She did not hear Rex’s words but felt them in her shivering bones. 

“No.” She replies in a feeble exhale of breath. The beam of light lights a flake of dust in front of her eyes, swirling in a tiny circle, before plummeting back to the dirt floor. 

Closing her eyes, Jenna feels Rex against her back, his lips behind her ear, his strong arm around her waist, his palm on her stomach. Minutes or hours pass, her lips smiling into a contented, familiar smile as she melts into his heartbeat. Her heartbeat slows to a faint echo as she settles deeper into the dirt floor. Jenna places her hand over his against her belly, her breath a trickle, “I want to come with you.”

“You have to get up, Jenna.” Rex’s voice is now loud, filling every corner of the empty hut.

“I’ve never been without you.” Jenna whispers, her voice mostly a sob. “They wouldn’t let me touch you, in the woods, after…” 

Turning her face into the cold floor, Jenna wails as a fresh wave of grief flows through her body. The memory of his warmth against her spine twists into a wave of frigid emptiness, Jenna collapses completely. 

Flashes of Rex’s smile come and go as her eyelashes flutter against the hut floor. Jenna clings to the darkness while Rex’s grin fades. 

Lana calls her name, “Jenna! Tell them to behave.” Rex and Jago arguing, faces inches apart. Trent and Mason watching. 

“You are my favorite three people, the two of you need to stop acting like children,” echoes through her brain as the memory of laughter from the previous night takes shape. The stars above are just starting to shine. Jago and Rex standing shoulder to shoulder, heads dropped in shame at Jenna’s gentle scolding. Lana’s gleeful smile. Rex’s playful wink towards Jenna as he watches Jago lace his fingers with Lana’s.

Trent’s intent stare; Mason’s delighted declaration, “Jenna, I thought I was your favorite!” 

Flashes of dancing with Rex at the New Moon ceremony the night before twist through Jenna’s body, his hands on her hips. A flash of Lana’s face, her smile filled with devoted love, looking up at Jago and Rex. 

Trent carrying Lana from the woods.

Jenna sinks deeper into the dirt, refusing to move. Images and scraps of words float past her, swirling around her like a hurricane. 

The memory of running through the woods just hours before fills her body, as the floor beneath her rumbles. The village exploding with fear and prophecy, Jenna sees herself stumbling over rocks and dead branches, “The forest wails,” slithering along the valley floor around her.

Rex’s voice calls from across the hut, louder, jolting her from the memory. “Jenna, we all need you to get up.”

A faint echo deep inside of Jenna pulses, as a faint whisper grows. The earth beneath her pulses as the sound of Lana’s cries flood back into Jenna’s body. “Lana,” escapes as barely a sound from Jenna’s mouth.

Fear electrifies Jenna, forcing her into a sitting position. Gasping, she claws the taste of ash and mud from her mouth. The cold ashes in the hearth scatter as a gust of wind from the hole in the roof sweeps through the little room. Jenna stares at her bloody feet, gashes beginning to scab over. 

“That’s my girl.” Rex whispers, his voice just out of reach behind her ear in the empty hut, his breath cold.

Jenna props her body up, palms to the ground, elbows locked. Under her palms, the ground vibrates deep into the earth’s core, resonating up her arms and her heart matches the pulsing ground’s pace. Lana’s face floats into Jenna’s mind.

“The first story has failed.” Rex whispers, his cold breath on her neck as his voice fades. 

Blinking her eyes open, Jenna reaches her hand to her neck, where his voice had been. Her fingers feel the blood drying into a clump of hair and mud behind her ear. She studies the small sun lit room. Trying to remember Rex’s steady presence, now a cold shadow like the grey ash in the hearth. Tilting her face to the sky, Jenna closes her eyes once more, the light rushing through the hole in the roof glowing orange through her eye lids, a cascade of electricity, tingling through her entire body. 

When she opens her eyes, the room is even clearer. Opposite the door is a bed with soft furs. Jenna twists her body away from the sight and stares at the bucket of water against the wall. She breathes in time with the ground that pulses up and down her spine, in rhythm with the valley. Rex’s aching absence throbs inside of Jenna’s chest, her heartbeat and his intertwine into one slow drum inside her body as she fills back into her arms and legs. 

Jenna squeezes her hands and relaxes them flat, then lays them on the ground once more as she settles her breath in time with the valley. The hut floor shudders as Jenna feels the villagers’ approaching Jago’s door before she can hear their footsteps and quiet demands. When the wind delivers Jago’s quiet, “I would walk to the Seven Sisters of my own accord.” Jenna jerks her hands from the ground and rises to her unsteady feet. 

Pressing her body to the door for balance, Jenna closes her eyes and searches for the steady rhythm of Jago’s passionate soul, breathing with him as he passes by. Beneath her feet the earth connects her to each of Jago’s measured steps, the ground pulsing with their shared breath as she imagines walking beside him.

Jenna feels a shiver race up her spine, flashing back to earlier that morning. Trent's hand wrapped around Rex’s arm, pulling into the darkness of the forest, whispering in the shadows. 

With a deep, steadying inhale, Jenna releases a low moan, her shoulders dropping into place once more. Tilting her face to the blue-sky shimmering beyond the hole in the roof, Jenna feels her voice return to her body, and her mind sharpens.

“What did he say to you?” Jenna’s words bounce around the walls of the empty hut before they drop unanswered to the packed mud floor and fill in the imprint of where her body had sunk.

A cloud drifts in front of the sun, casting the small hut into shadows as Rex’s cold breath slides down her spine. “And the Second Story will prevail.” Jenna whispers to the silent room, shivering, as she wraps her arms around her stomach.