Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 15 of 33

The healing took her before she stood up. One moment Scarlett was pushing warmth into the bed. The next her arms went cold and her vision tunneled. She tipped sideways into the dirt. The key was still in her front pocket. The district was open behind her — the wall, the netting, the cellar door — and she could not lift her head to check any of it. John caught her under the arms before she hit the row. He said her name once. She heard it from far away. He got a hand under her knees and lifted. She weighed almost nothing to him. She felt the porch step, then the doorway, then the mattress. He pulled her boots off. He worked the key out of her pocket and set it on the crate by the bed where she could see it if she opened her eyes. "Sleep," he said. "I've got it." She tried to say the ridge. She tried to say the crows need water in their dish. Her mouth would not move. The dog jumped up and settled against her hip, heavy and warm, mismatched eyes fixed on the door. An image pushed into her head — the yard, seen from the porch, empty and quiet. Duke telling her he was watching. Then the dark took her. John did not sleep that night. Scarlett learned it later in pieces. He sat on the porch with a shovel across his knees and the cellar key on a nail he'd driven into the doorframe above his head, out of reach of a hand through the rail. He walked the rows every hour. He filled the crows' dish. He checked the netting on the fast bed. When the dog came out to piss, John waited on the step until Duke came back in and returned to her side. Once, near the middle of the night, the dog stiffened against her leg and shoved an image at her through the fog — two shapes on the ridge, low, watching. She could not wake. Duke got up and went to the door and scratched. John opened it. The dog showed him too, somehow, or John understood the scratching. He stepped out with the shovel. He stood in the yard where the ridge could see him and did not move for a long time. The shapes went away. Scarlett woke at gray light. The key was on the nail above the door. John was in the chair by the bed, awake, sleeves still rolled from yesterday. The dog was at her feet. "Anyone come?" she said. Her voice was dust. "Two. On the ridge. They left." She looked at the key. She looked at him. She had lost a night and lost nothing else. "Thank you," she said. He reached up, took the key off the nail, and put it back in her hand.