The World Without Flags

“What’re you doing?” I ask him, smiling.

His jaw clenches and his dark tongue laps at his lips. “Unh,” he says, and begins to walk forward on his tip toes. I put a hand on his chest gently to keep him from falling. I can’t help but laugh a little.

“You’re silly this morning,” I tell him. Eric doesn’t say anything. He just shuts his jaw with a wet clapping sound. He turns his head away from me and then back to me. The white Worms are receded this morning, but his eyes are almost completely black. His dark gaze eradicates any feeling of humor in me. When he looks at me like that, with those eyes, I feel a knot of emptiness in my stomach. That black gaze is the Worm, studying me. I shiver and prod him slightly backwards. He comes down from his tippy toes and then looks away from me.

In the quiet of the forest, I hear the birds sing, and I begin to think. We’re alone. No food. No supplies. If I’m not dying of the Worm, then I have to find food or we’ll die of hunger. When I look at Eric, I see now the sharpness of his features, his skin thin and tight over his cheekbones. I see the loose way his clothes hang from him. There isn’t much left of him. The Worms are eating him alive.

I can’t do this by myself.

I grab Eric’s hand and tug him forward.

I need to find the Good Prince.

94

Not long later I have to stop. I notice that Eric’s feet are bleeding. I forgot that he lost his boots in the river. I stop and struggle to get him to sit down. He is stiffer than usual today and stronger somehow. I try to push the back of his knees to get him to fold, but he won’t budge. I have to swing him off balance and then push him to the ground as gently as I can. When he falls, he rolls on his stomach and pushes his face into the dirt. “Unh,” he says, muffled in the leaves.

“Roll over,” I tell him. I don’t want him to breathe in leaves or dirt. I tug at him, but his body is like a wooden plank.

“Unh,” he says, and I swear I could hear some kind of defiance in his grunt.

“Damn it,” I hiss pulling at him, “damn it!”

Finally I get him on his back again. His black eyes stare blankly past the naked branches into the clear blue sky.

His feet are worse than I thought. Most of the day he stomped over rocks and branches and whatever was in his path. I’m disgusted that one of his toes is completely turned around, the bone shattered and mangled. Both of his feet are red and wet with dark blood. As I look closer, I see a long piece of wood sticking from the bottom of one foot. I take hold of it and pull. It slides out of his foot about an inch, followed by a gout of dark, stinking blood. I throw the wood shard into the forest with disgust.

“Damn it, Eric,” I tell him. “You really messed yourself up.”

Eric continues to stare darkly upwards.

“I guess you don’t feel a thing, do you?” I watch him quietly for a second. I wonder what he sees, what he knows, what he understands about any of this. Is he in there? Is the Worm in charge and he’s just along for the ride? Or is he there at all? Or what if he is in there? What if he sees everything? Understands everything? He just can’t do anything. All he can do is stare out as if through a dirty window. I shiver at the thought and shake it off. For his sake, I hope he’s not aware of any of this. I can’t sit here and stare at him. We have to move. I’ll just have to be careful where I lead him.

I tug him to his feet and then continue more carefully south and west.

95

I wake up and see that all the branches above me are strung with green buds. Winter is fully gone, and spring is here. Finally. But I find no happiness in me at the thought. Somehow spring is making me sad. Worse than sad. I’m so hungry. I walk all day thinking about it and feeling miserable.

I wish I were a tree. I wish I could just sink my feet into the earth and my toes would thin and elongate and become long, wispy roots that would dig far, far down into the fertile earth. From there I could drink. And then my body would stretch and my arms would spread out and my fingers would sprout leaves and my hair would become a canopy of leaves, and when the bright sun shined on me, I would be energized. A life without pain and hunger. Only wind and rain and glorious sun.

I stop to close my eyes for a second to imagine it.

Then the darkness comes down.

96

I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming, and I struggle to stop dreaming. I say to myself, wake up, get up, you can’t sleep all day. I say this again and again, even as the darkness grows and the horizon starts to burn.

Then the silky feel of hair in my hand. I look up and she’s looking down at me. I see her lips smile and she says to me, “You’re going to be fine.” And she keeps smiling and rocking me and I feel like I’m made of clay, like she could mold me into whatever shape she wanted. I keep looking at her teeth and feeling her hair, and then I realize I’m crying, great sticky drops of tears. They burn down my cheek.

That’s when the screaming starts.

97