Susan Kim - Wanderers

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. “You?”

“As long as you’re there.”

“Me, too.”

They were about to kiss but were interrupted by a voice across the street.

“We about ready to go?” Rafe called. Esther could feel Caleb wince at the word “we”; Rafe had barely lifted a finger over the past few days. Still, her partner managed to keep his tone steady.

“Just about!” he called back. Then he turned to Esther. “I got to help the others load their wagons. Where will you be?”

She thought for a moment. She still had to salvage what usable supplies and household goods she could find in what had been their home. “We need more water. But first, I’ll make a last check of our place.”

It wasn’t easy.

The building was unrecognizable. Esther had to rely on all of her senses as she picked her way across the precarious wreckage, trying to extract anything of value without bringing the rest of the structure crashing down. It was like a deadly version of the game she remembered from her childhood, the one in which you had to pick a thin plastic stick out of a pile without disturbing the others. You had to move very slowly, and above all you had to concentrate.

Even so, Esther paused every few minutes to glance up at the sky.

She had built a strong fire on the highest surface she could find, a towering pile of rubble down the street that had once been a looted clothing store. Once the flames were hot enough, she had fed them with damp newspaper and a wet log, which caused black smoke to rise high into the sky.

This was how she and Skar communicated—or at least, how they used to communicate when they still saw each other nearly every day. Esther needed to see her friend one last time, to tell her of their plans, and to say good-bye. As she balanced on the remains of their home, she repeatedly checked the sky, gazing with growing frustration toward the horizon where the variant camp lay.

So far, there was nothing, and Esther was forced to return to the task at hand.

As agile and light as she was, she very nearly killed herself when she tried to work free a fire bowl, and when she attempted to pull a stack of dusty rain ponchos from beneath a ceiling beam. The mountain she was standing on began to shift; she only managed to leap off, clutching the valuable raingear, before it collapsed with a roar and settled anew.

Her job was nearly done. Although it wasn’t much, she had managed to extract a few essentials, white with plaster dust. Clothing. Cooking supplies. Food like flour and honey. A few knives. A precious firestarter, bright purple, small as a thumb, and halfway filled with fuel. For the first time, she took a moment to study the wreckage of the building that used to be called STARBUCKS COFFEE.

It was a disorienting sensation.

Much of it had been reduced by the earthquake to an alien landscape of broken beams, brick, glass, and mounds of plaster. Yet although the roof had collapsed, there were entire sections of their old apartment that had been left nearly intact and were now exposed, incongruously, to the open air.

It gave Esther an odd feeling to see pieces of her life on display like that, under the yellow winter sky. A part of the living room wall was still decorated with a colorful poster for something called SKYY vodka. The kitchen table was half crushed by a wooden beam; yet it was set with a flowered tablecloth, and a bowl and spoon, as if the user had just stepped away. The bookshelf, her late sister’s prize possession, tipped backward against a pile of bricks. While covered with broken glass and a heavy dusting of dirt and plaster, most of its contents were in place.

It took Esther a moment to identify what she was feeling, and when she did, it surprised her.

She was homesick.

Prin was the only world she had ever known, and many of her memories were not happy ones. She had fought with Sarah for years, only reconciling when her sister was ill. She had been Shunned by the town and sent away to die. Yet the thought that she would never see Prin again—as ruined and messed up as it was—made Esther tremble. She saw herself running down its streets, hiding in its fields, playing in its hot sun. There probably wasn’t an inch of town she hadn’t walked in, smelled, touched.

Now she found herself gazing at the books.

Caleb had told the townspeople that there was no room for frivolities or anything but the barest of necessities; and certainly, a book seemed the very definition of useless. Furthermore, neither she nor Caleb read much and, in truth, could barely spell.

Even so, Esther found herself clambering over the wreckage one last time, this time to grab a book at random from a shelf. The title of the one she chose, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, meant nothing to her. Yet knowing it had once belonged to Sarah comforted her somehow and she slipped the slim volume into the back pocket of her jeans.

She turned to scramble her way onto the street. As she did, her heart leaped to see someone standing there, waiting.

It was Skar.

She sat motionless astride her black bicycle, still wearing the strange daubs of red clay on her neck and arms. Like all variants, she wore no sunglasses or head covering to protect her from the sun, so Esther could see her expression. Aloof, she was frowning with confusion.

“I came as soon as I was able,” she said. Then she abruptly gestured at the wreckage. “Is this all because of the earthquake? Are you and your people all right?”

Esther balanced on a pile of rubble and jumped off, landing by her friend.

“It messed up the town real bad,” she said. “So many were killed, maybe half. We’re okay, though. How bad were you hit?”

Skar shrugged, as if the subject was of little interest. “Three of our people were lost. And several of our houses and much of our supplies. But it could have been much worse.”

Skar paused. Then her reserve faltered as she noticed the wagons parked along the main street.

Other townspeople were moving in and out of their destroyed homes, carrying supplies which they handed to others, who then loaded them in waiting wagons. As Skar took it all in, her expression changed to one of worry, and that made her appear oddly childlike.

“What’s going on?” she asked. For the moment, she sounded like her old self again.

“We’re leaving Prin today,” Esther said. Then she swallowed, hard. Saying the words made them real in a way they hadn’t been before. “There’s nothing left for us here.”

“But your signal. I thought you were only—”

“I know. I… I just wanted to say good-bye.”

There was silence. And then Skar, distant and cold for so many weeks, recoiled. For an instant, her face crumpled as tears, the first Esther could ever remember seeing her shed, filled her eyes.

Then with a brusque movement, she recovered, rubbing her face dry with a forearm.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said. She spoke stiffly, although her voice caught.

Esther seized her by the elbow. “Come with us.” She had no idea where the words came from; yet as soon as she spoke them, Esther realized they were a mistake.

Skar jerked her arm back, as if offended.

“I’m sorry,” Esther stammered. “It’s just… I’m really going to miss you. I can’t believe I’m never going to see you again.”

Skar’s expression softened. Then she extended her hand, placing it lightly over Esther’s.

“Me, too,” she said.

Then she pushed aside the nylon pouch across her chest. Skar fiddled with something at the base of her neck. Then undoing it, she presented to her friend.

It was the braided-leather choker she always wore.

“I’ve had this since I was little,” she said. “And perhaps it will help you remember me.”