Finn Ashworth's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Finn walked into open sand at dawn. The splint had loosened in the night. Each step on the bad ankle sent a white spike up his leg. He cried as he walked. He did not try to stop. He had seen the tracks at first light, three sets, dragging a fourth, and he knew it was her. He could see a shape ahead of him on the flats now, small and bent. Blonde hair, pink at the ends. Glasses catching the sun. Marta. He opened his mouth to call out. A rifle cracked to his left. His ankle came apart. He went down screaming, hands clamped around the wet boot. When he looked up she was running toward him across the sand, her watch swinging from her wrist. A second crack. Something stung his neck. He pulled the dart out and saw the feathered end and then the sky tipped sideways and went black. He woke under a stone ledge with her head on his shoulder. The light was low and orange. His ankle was wrapped tight in strips of her shirt. She felt him move and sat up. "You were out six hours," she said. "I dragged you here. They're coming." He heard them then, voices out past the rocks, and the high whining call of a quillwing circling. Finn counted his weapons by touch. Crossbow gone. Knife at his hip. Three grenades in the inside pocket his father had never checked. He gave Marta the knife and the pistol from his boot. "Stay low till I throw," he said. She nodded once. They crawled to the lip of the ledge. He pulled the first pin with his teeth and lobbed it underhand into the sand below the scavengers' line. The blast threw two of them flat. Marta shot the one who stood up. Finn threw the second grenade short and the third long and the quillwing came apart in the air above them. A man ran at the ledge with a machete. Marta put two rounds in his chest. The last one turned to run and Finn shot him in the back with the pistol she passed him. Then it was only the wind and the ringing in their ears and the smell of burnt feathers. They climbed. His ankle would not hold, so she took his arm over her shoulder and they went up the slope together, one slow step at a time. At the top the ground ended. A cliff dropped away to a basin full of red light. The sun sat on the far edge of the world. Marta let him down easy onto the rock and sat beside him. She pulled the old man's watch off her wrist and held it in her lap. "He came south," she said. "I'm going to keep going south. I want you with me." Finn looked at her face in the orange light. The tired he had seen the first time was still there, but something underneath it had hardened. "I'm with you," he said. She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. It was short and dry and certain. When she pulled back she put her forehead against his and they sat like that while the sun went down. His father was dead. Her old man was somewhere ahead. The desert was wide and they were two. Tomorrow they would walk. Tonight they had done what they came to do. She was safe. He was with her. That was enough, and it was the end of the running.