Francesca Haig - The Map of Bones

He settled on a fallen log. ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If you’re travelling at night, you’re avoiding the Council patrols. But you don’t move like Omegas.’

‘One of them’s not an Omega,’ said the woman, shooting another look at Zoe.

‘She’s with us,’ said Piper quickly.

‘It’s not just her.’ The blind man turned to face Piper. ‘It’s you, too.’

‘I’m an Omega,’ Piper said. ‘Our companion here is, too – your friend will tell you that. The other lady may not be an Omega, but she’s with us, and isn’t looking for any trouble.’

‘What did you mean, they don’t move like Omegas?’ I asked the man.

He swung his head to face me. ‘Without eyes, you get good at listening. I’m not talking about hearing the sound of a limp, or crutches. That’s the obvious stuff. But it’s more than that. It’s the way Omegas walk. Most of us sound a little slumped. We’ve all copped enough blows, missed enough meals, to keep our heads low. Most of us, you can hear it in our steps: we don’t step high, or wide. We drag our feet: a little bit of shuffling. A little bit of flinching. The two of them,’ he gestured towards Piper and Zoe, ‘they don’t sound like that.’

I was amazed that he could tell so much just from the sound of their movements, but I knew what he meant. I’d noted the same thing when I met Piper for the first time on the island: the unabashed way that he held himself. Most people on the island had begun to shed the diffidence that the mainland stamped on Omegas, but Piper wore none of it. Even now, thin and with the knees of his trousers blackened and fraying, he moved with the same loose-limbed confidence as he always had.

The man turned back to Piper. ‘You don’t move like an Omega, any more than the Alpha lady does. But if you’re on the road with an Alpha, I’m guessing your story’s not an ordinary one.’

‘You heard what they said: their story’s not our business,’ said the woman, pulling his arm. ‘We should go.’

‘Surely we’ve covered enough miles for a rest?’ he said, planting his staff in front of him.

‘Why are you so keen to stick around?’ Zoe asked him. ‘Most Omegas keep well clear of us. Of me, anyway.’

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I’m a bard. I collect stories, the way some people collect coins, or trinkets. It’s my trade. And even a blind man can see that there’s a story here.’

‘It’s a story we can’t share with just anybody,’ said Piper. ‘It’d mean trouble for us, as you well know.’

‘I’m not one to talk to Council patrols, if that’s what you mean,’ said the man. ‘Even a bard gets a hard time from the Council these days. They’re no friends of mine.’

‘There’s talk that the Council wants to stop Omegas from being bards at all,’ the woman added. ‘It’s all the travelling around that they don’t like. They like to keep tabs on us.’

‘I’d challenge the best of the Alpha bards to play as well as me,’ said the man, flourishing his extra fingers.

‘The soldiers would have your fingers off if they heard you say that,’ said the woman.

‘We’re not about to tell them,’ said Piper. ‘And if you can keep quiet about having seen us here, I don’t see why we can’t camp together for the day.’

The woman and Zoe still looked wary, but the blind man smiled.

‘Then let’s make camp. I could use a rest. I’m Leonard, by the way. And this is Eva.’

‘I won’t tell you our names,’ said Piper. ‘But I won’t lie to you, at least, and give false names.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Leonard said. Eva sat next to him and began pulling their things from her rucksack. She had some nuggets of coal wrapped in waxed paper and still dry.

‘Fine,’ said Zoe. ‘But we need to cook quickly – we’re still too close to the road to risk a fire once this fog’s cleared.’

While Piper stoked the fire and Zoe sat sharpening her knives, I joined Leonard on the log.

‘You said the others didn’t move like Omegas.’ I tried to keep my voice low enough that the others wouldn’t hear. ‘What about me?’

‘You neither,’ he said.

‘But I don’t feel like them. They’ve always been so –’ I paused. ‘So sure. So certain about everything.’

‘I didn’t say you were like them. I just said you didn’t walk like other Omegas.’ He shrugged. ‘Girl, you’re hardly here.’

‘What do you mean?’

He paused, and gave a laugh. ‘You walk like you think the earth begrudges you a space to plant your feet.’

I thought of the moment after Kip’s death, when Zach had found me slumped on the platform at the top of the silo. The air had been so heavy. If Zach hadn’t begged me to run, to save his own skin, I doubted I’d have managed to drag myself upright and leave. All these weeks and all these miles later, I hadn’t realised that I was still hauling the weight of the sky with each step.

We ate the rabbits, as well as some foraged mushrooms and greens that Eva pulled from her bag.

‘Are you a seer as well?’ I asked her while we ate.

She snorted. ‘Hardly.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. Nobody wanted to be mistaken for a seer. ‘I just couldn’t see your mutation.’

Leonard’s face had turned serious.

‘She has the most feared mutation of all,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t spotted it already.’

There was a long pause. I scanned Eva again but could see nothing unusual. What could be more feared than being a seer, with its promise of madness?

Leonard leaned forward, and gave a stage whisper. ‘Red hair.’

Our laughter startled two blackbirds, that took off, screeching.

‘Look more closely,’ Eva said. She turned her head to the side and lifted her thick braid. There, nestled into the back of her neck, was a second mouth. She opened it briefly, baring two crooked teeth.

‘Only shame is that I can’t sing out of it,’ she said, letting her braid drop. ‘Then I wouldn’t need Leonard for the harmonies, and I wouldn’t have to put up with his grumbling.’

When the fire was extinguished and the sun risen, Leonard cleaned his hands carefully before he took up his guitar.

‘Can’t get rabbit grease on the strings,’ he said, weaving his handkerchief between his clustered fingers.

‘If you’re going to be making a racket, I’d better keep watch,’ said Zoe. ‘If anything comes along the road, we’ll need to see them before they hear us.’ She looked up at the tree above her. Piper dropped to kneel on one knee and she climbed, without speaking, on to his bent leg, balanced for a moment with a hand on his shoulder, and then jumped up to grasp the branch. She swung herself upwards, feet pointed and body tucked. I could see what Leonard had meant, when he’d talked about the way she and Piper moved. The ease with which they inhabited their bodies.

When I envied Zoe, though, it wasn’t her unbranded face I coveted, or her confidence. Not even her freedom from the visions that shredded my mind. It was the way that she and Piper moved together, without even speaking. The closeness that didn’t require words. There’d been a time when Zach and I had been like that, long before we were split, and before he’d turned against me. But after all that had happened since, the intimacy of that shared childhood seemed as distant as the island. It was a place to which we could never return.

Eva took up her drum, and Leonard’s right hand plucked at the strings, tickling the music out of the instrument, while the fingers of his left hand moved more slowly.

He’d been right, I knew, when he’d told me that he’d heard my hesitant footsteps. I’d been taunting my body with cold and hunger. Avoiding every consolation, because there would be no consolation for the dead I’d left in my wake. But this music was a pleasure that I couldn’t dodge. Like the ash that had plagued us in the east, the music would not be denied. I leaned back against a tree and allowed myself to listen.