Finn Ashworth's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Finn sat up on the patched couch and looked at his father in the shed doorway. His ankle throbbed under the splint. "Dad," he said, "are you the ones who took Marta?" His father shook his head. "That was a different group. Scavengers sell up the line." Finn swung his good leg down. "You can't go after her alone. Not with the storm coming." His father started to argue. Finn cut him off. "I'm coming. Promise me you won't hurt her." His father looked at the floor a long moment. "I won't," he said. Finn slung the wooden crossbow across his back and they left at first light. They walked four days into the Kalaharireach. Finn limped on a crutch his father cut from a fence post. On the second day they passed a slumped lean-to of burlap sacks and empty water bottles half buried in sand, the canvas still warm from someone's cookfire. His father knelt and touched the ash. "Hours," he said. "Maybe less." The men who held Marta had stopped here and moved on. Finn pushed harder after that, even when his ankle swelled against the splint and his crutch sank to the wrist in soft ground. On the fourth day the wind turned. Sand came across the flats in a brown wall that swallowed the sun. They roped themselves together at the waist. His father went first. They came to a boulder the size of a truck and his father braced his hands and pushed Finn up over the top. Finn landed on the far side and turned to give him a hand. A gust hit the ridge and knocked his father flat. Sand poured over him like water from a broken jug. Finn dropped the crossbow and dug. He scooped with both hands until he found a sleeve, then a shoulder, then the face. His father was not breathing. Finn pinched the nose and breathed into his mouth and pressed on his chest the way he had been taught. Sand came up out of his father's lips. Finn kept pressing. "Don't leave me," he said. "Don't leave me, don't leave me." The lungs were full. Nothing he did would empty them. He bent his forehead to his father's chest and cried until he could not see his own hand in front of his face. A hard gust shoved him sideways down the slope. The rope had snapped somewhere. He crawled until he hit a wall of stone and felt along it to a low arched doorway cut into the rock. He dragged himself inside the small shelter and lay against the cold wall, crossbow across his lap. When the wind eased, he wiped his face on his sleeve and looked north into the dark. His father was gone. Marta was still out there. He stood up on the bad ankle and started walking.