FERN

Little moments built me. Cultivated me like rain drops on soil or sun rays on leaves. Every lesson, every skill, every tool. Every hunting trip, hike, or day on the farm. Every conversation.

Little moments snowballed when lives rolled downhill. I stood in the midst of my biggest moment, and I'd never been calmer. More focused. More ready. Because I knew what to do.

As the masses dwindled, and the shadows fled, and the fire died, and Tex's voice echoed a failure not yet cemented, I slid my last arrow from the quiver. "Daddy," I said as I handed it to him, then ripped a strip from my t-shirt.

Tex was bloody and blackened with soot from head to toe. A jolt of awareness lit my skin the minute his attention found me. He didn't run forward, or shout, or light a cigar. He slackened, then straightened, and a hundred conversations echoed in the space between us. He'd gone. He'd left me. But he could sense it. That this was what was meant to happen. This was why I'd found him in the woods all those moments ago. This was why I'd had to wander. This was why I'd suffered. This was why I'd followed.

Daddy didn't need to ask to know what I wanted him to do. They'd seen Tex set the bags, trail the powder, get shot and push onward anyway. We'd all watched the prisoner ruin the work he'd done. We'd been standing there like spectators at a ball game, quietly rooting Tex on, praying our team would win. Daddy wrapped the cloth around the arrowhead.

"I need your rum," I said to Sergio. My voice was odd, not different or strained, but too steady. Too assured. As if I'd already been here before. I'd already lived this moment. In a way, I supposed I had. On that day. The day people had sprinted for freedom and never made it. The day my family had fallen. The day I'd become alone and broken and lost.

Snowflakes mingled with the ash, gently swaying to the Earth, signaling an end to the fall. A new season, and a chance to do things different. Sergio poured the rum, saturating the cloth. Then he lit it, and the flames danced in front of me, warmth in the cold, painting pictures of days long gone but not forgotten. Mama knitting by the fire. Mama hanging ornaments on a tree. Mama tending the garden. The way the beetle had crawled across her hair as she lay there, bleeding out in her blue cotton dress. The woman and her daughter, who'd just wanted to be clean. Julia, working her fingers to the bone to fill bellies, dead and cradled by the fruits of her labor. And all the other people who'd gone: in the cities, by the sea. In small towns and in slums. Across oceans. So many. Too many.

They stood with me. They surrounded me. Ghosts that'd always been there. Their hands were on my shoulders, my back. They supported my elbows and steadied my hands. They whispered their stories and begged for endings. For purpose. For reason.

The packs were far and hard to see, but I'd never had better aim. I took a slow breath, filling my lungs, the air like angry hornets with stingers extended. It didn't throw me. Nothing could have thrown me. I was the shot, and the shot was me, and it was the most natural thing left in the world.

"Nice and easy," Daddy's voice echoed. Not a dream. Not a memory. Not a wishful thought.

My breath released with the bowstring, and a world that had been so hectic and horrific, slowed, quieted. I heard my breath, soft, steady. I watched the arrow zip across the space, carried by every moment from the beginning of time to this one.

The boom destroyed the calm, and I was yanked back to reality by Sergio's grip on my jacket. He all but dragged me as we sprinted between the buildings, back through the hole where we'd entered, across the darkness, and toward a dead city. A chorus of screams rang up as crowds frantically tumbled down the hill. They were way ahead of us. We were too far behind. Two more explosions rumbled the air. The world narrowed. Black sky. My boots pounding against the ground. Alarms going off in the distance. Men's shouts.

Then Tex's hand around mine, like it'd been so many times before, offering me life. "This way!" He moved so fast my feet barely touched the ground. Daddy, John, and Sergio fell behind. I opened my mouth to tell him to slow down, but only managed a squeak as the ground disappeared, and we fell, landing in a heap behind an embankment.

Tex gripped my face on either side, searing me with wide, desperate eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I love you." I hadn't said it back the night before, and suddenly, in the aftermath of all that had happened, all that was happening, it was all that mattered. Him knowing. Him hearing it. And if those were the last words I ever spoke, they were perfect.

Sergio dropped down, then John, then Daddy. Then light. Too bright to be real. The light of Savannah returned in the death of the darkness that had stolen her. It burst into existence as if created by God, then blinked out as if he'd changed his mind, leaving a wave of neon green northern lights cascading across the sky. A chime rang inside my head, too big, expanding my skull until I thought it would pop.

Dirt and debris kicked up on either side of us, whooshing past as if a twister touched down over our heads. Tex morphed around me; a second skin tighter than the first. Daddy did the same with John, the two of them huddled together against the wall of dirt and exposed root.

Those hornets swarmed, stinging me all at once. I gasped for breath, but my lungs wouldn't fill. I couldn't scream. Couldn't whimper. Tex groaned in agony, and my hands moved to his ribs, offering a comfort I didn't have to give.

Then Sergio roared in Russian, and as if he'd commanded it, everything stopped. The whoosh became a gust that fizzled to a breeze. The lights dwindled, slowed, like waves barely lapping at the shore. The chime rang louder, then retreated as Tex's voice demanded control over my ears. "Are you alright?"

"I'm okay," I rasped.

Daddy and John were slumped together, heaving air into broken bodies. Sergio leaned against the bank and muttered curses beneath his breath.

Tex ran his hand over my hair then struggled to his feet. "We need to move."

And we did, slowly, painfully. We made our way down the hill, into a city less dead yet more decomposed. The trash was scattered even more than before. Papers and plastic bags and old bottles and broken electronics littered the ground all the way to the tree line. We met up with the people on the streets of a once great city, and as if it had been waiting to do so, the sun rose. Red-orange filtered through a green haze.

The screaming had ceased. The masses calmed, staring at the crater that had once been the pit. Quiet sobs gave way to hysterical relief. A woman close-by curled around a girl, shaking like a leaf still clinging to its branch, having persevered past the fall. They were sick. They were filthy. But they were beautiful. The moment. Their massive moment. Moments surrounded me. A man on his knees, arms slack and neck craned as he sobbed at the sky. Sergio's nephews breaking through the crowd, and the three of them colliding. Tex's men beat their chests, rooting their victory, and someone shouted, "Yeah, mother fuckers!"

Tex gave a strained laugh, then in a tone that made me flinch, roared back, "We are a goddamn army!"

The men erupted in a celebration so infectious even the prisoners began to smile, laugh, coming back to life the same way I had. This was why. This was worth the risk, and I couldn't believe I'd ever considered turning my back on all these people. I couldn't believe I'd faulted Daddy.

Pastor said purgatory wasn't real. He said that when we died, we were judged. Bad or good. No in between. But the more time I'd spent alone, the more I'd believed in purgatory. Too many times to count, I'd thought I'd died that day. I'd wondered: would I really know? Did people know when they were dead? If it were sudden enough, how would they? Was I adrift, paying for every sin I'd ever committed?

My purgatory had been knotty pines and an empty belly. It had been memories that ate me in small pieces, hollowing me out and filling the spaces with loneliness. These people had had it so much worse. Daddy and John had had it so much worse, and I'd just been wandering, doing nothing to save them. Then Tex had arrived like Saint Peter come to tell me I'd paid my penance, and I was finally allowed to travel past the line. Now, these people were here, too, because I'd followed him.

Tex slumped against a wall, breathing hard and watching the scene with wide, red eyes.

I touched his shoulder, inspected the dirt-caked bullet wound in his bicep, then the leg he favored. "How do you feel?" I asked. My own body had been tainted. My skin, eyes, nose, and throat burned. My insides boiled. But he had been injured before the blast even hit, and I couldn't lose him. Not now.

He reached out, taking the tips of my fingers in his and tugging me closer.

I stared up at him.

He heaved a shaky breath. "I feel good, Darlin'."

"Good?" I laughed, though I may have cried. It was hard to tell. The adrenaline left me empty yet clean. I was filthy, but I was pure. We were good people, and we'd done something truly miraculous.

"Yeah." His voice was soft. He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and slid it into my hand. "Good enough." He palmed my face, fingertips in my hair, eyes searing. "Better." With each word, he drifted closer, until his lips met mine, soft, then fervent as I responded. He placed a hand on my back and pressed me close.

Someone cleared their throat, and I broke away, knowing instantly it was Daddy, and he was addressing me. I looked over. He and John wore similar expressions, and neither one of them was all that great. "Tex, this is my Daddy, and my brother, John."

Tex's brows furrowed, then lifted. He looked from Daddy and John, then back to me, opened his mouth, then closed it.

Sergio laughed.