In a Handful of Dust

She didn’t stop until Nora pulled her off Lynn, her hands and forearms slick with the blood of the woman who had devoted her life to protecting her. “I hate you,” she screamed, her hysterical voice breaking on every word. “I hate you and your fucking gun!”

The last thing she saw as Nora dragged her from the room was Lynn curled into a bloody ball on the floor, eyes as blank as they had been when Lucy had left her behind in the desert.

Nora wiped Lynn’s blood from Lucy’s hands while tears and truth flowed from Lucy in an unbridled wave. She talked about Carter and how his smile was one of her first memories, how years of building tree houses together in the woods had evolved into thoughts of something more permanent for both of them. How broken she had been when Maddy died, the pain of leaving home knowing Carter was damned, and that she would never see her grandmother or Stebbs again. She talked about Joss left to die on the road and of the mother who had put a gun to her temple. She told Nora that Lynn was not her mother, and now she was glad of it.

Nora drew a warm washcloth across Lucy’s face, and the last trails of pink from Lynn’s blood were blotted away. “You’ve exhausted yourself,” Nora said, pressing gently on the swollen skin around Lucy’s eyes.

Lucy held her hands to her chest to feel the emptiness there, the place where so much love had been.

Nora leaned Lucy back on her own bed and tucked a blanket around her shoulders. “It sounds like Lynn’s had a hard life.”

Lucy nodded, unable to deny it even in the empty aftershock of her wrath. “She’s had to do horrible things to survive.”

“I understand,” Nora said softly as she wrung the washcloth out over a pan. “But when people have to do things like that, it changes them. I can’t say what kind of person she would’ve been in a different situation, but I can say what she is now. And it’s not the kind of person I think you want to be.”

Years of emotion tangled up with Lynn revolted in Lucy, and she had the sudden urge to throw the blood-tinged water in Nora’s face. But then the thought of Carter’s life evaporating from his spilled blood made her shake her head. “No,” she agreed. “I don’t think I ever could be.”

“We don’t live like that here, not anymore,” Nora said. “We are strong and healthy, with good food and—now you’re here—plenty of water in our future.”

“And soft pillows,” Lucy mumbled, as what remained of her energy slipped away.

Nora smiled and squeezed Lucy’s hand. “And soft pillows, as many as you’d like.”

Nora wasted no time surrounding Lucy with books, elated to finally have someone with a quick mind who wanted to learn her craft. Bailey was acceptable as an assistant, Nora explained, but her calloused hands and abrupt manner made her a less than desirable caregiver. Nora sat on the floor across from Lucy for days, showing her how to navigate the huge books and pull the streams of information from them. They were piled all around the two of them like a paper fort, the words protecting them from the many-faced specter of illnesses, the pages muffling the sounds of Lander moving Lynn from her room. Lander and Nora had both thought it best if Lucy and Lynn were kept separate for a while. Nothing should strain Lucy’s nerves as she searched the desert for water.

As the days crept by, Lucy felt as if her emptiness was growing to fill all her corners, leaving room for nothing else. Worry and fear slipped away, anger and happiness following shortly thereafter. Even Ben’s ill attempts at humor could not grate on nerves that didn’t exist anymore, and Lucy floated in a cloud of nothing as the cooler breezes of fall played with the short ends of her hair once Lander set her to the witching again.

The big man’s patience was stretched. Two of the wells she had marked earlier had run dry only days after being struck, and his hands fell on her shoulders more heavily than when she had first arrived. Lucy tried to ignore the increasing pressure of his fingers on her arm as they walked the flags together and she tried to discern which veins ran deeper than others. She’d been able to make out the wild maelstrom of Lynn’s hair in the wind on top of the hotel where her rifle still rang from, and while she could ignore Lynn’s presence, she couldn’t rid her mind of Lynn’s words that had warned of danger.

“So you staying?” Ben asked as they roamed the desert to the east of the city, his arms loaded with flags dirty from reuse after marking failed wells.

“You don’t sound too happy about it,” Lucy said.

“I don’t care either way what you do,” Ben said airily, striking a flag into the ground even though she hadn’t told him to. “But I know who does.”

“I’m not talking to you about Lynn.”

“Didn’t mean her,” Ben said. “It’s my dad. Every well you’ve marked has been as useful as a stream of piss.”

“Know a lot about those, do you?”