Taimin tried to crawl closer, but every time his legs moved a jolt of agony pulsed through his body. He wanted to call out but was forced to grit his teeth against the pain.
“The rovers have gone,” Abi said. Taimin involuntarily turned his head to scan the area; he knew he would never forget the two cold-faced brothers. He focused once more on Abi as she crouched beside Gareth. “You fool. You should have run as soon as you saw them.”
Gareth coughed and blood spluttered from his mouth. He tried to speak. Taimin could only just hear him. “Taimin?”
Abi looked over at Taimin and then back at Gareth. Taimin’s father saw something in her eyes.
“No . . .” Gareth croaked.
“His foot’s ruined. He’ll never walk again. A cripple can’t survive the wasteland.”
“Please . . .”
Taimin realized they were discussing his life. Abi took a few moments to reply. “I can’t promise anything except that I’ll do what’s right for the boy.”
Gareth gave a sharp groan. Taimin couldn’t bear how much pain his father was in. Gareth’s face screwed up as his entire body shuddered.
Abi lifted her head. “Look away, Taimin.” Her bone knife was in her hand. She leaned over Gareth. “Are you ready?”
Gareth gave a slight nod and turned his head so that he was looking at Taimin. He struggled to raise his voice. “Taimin. Be strong!”
“Father!” Taimin cried out. He pushed at the ground to raise his head; his eyes were fixed firmly on his father.
Abi’s arm thrust forward as she plunged her bone knife deep into Gareth’s chest. The breath left Gareth’s body. Taimin’s heart gave strong, savage thumps inside his chest.
Abi looked up and saw him staring. “I’m sorry, but he was suffering.” She rose from her crouch and glanced at her brother and his wife. She shook her head. “You heard what we were discussing?”
“Yes,” Taimin whispered.
“The wasteland is too dangerous for a cripple. It might have been better if you’d fallen to your death down the face of that cliff. It all depends on your determination, and how you heal. But you can only control one of those things. Do you understand me, Taimin?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll take you home first, and then I’ll fetch the bodies of your mother and father before the scavengers come.”
Aunt Abi was a fighter, stronger and tougher than Gareth and Tess put together, but as she admitted herself she was no healer. She massaged the bones in Taimin’s foot and then wrapped a cloth tightly around the whole thing.
For the next three days, Taimin writhed in agony. Abi fed him water but he couldn’t keep food down and she didn’t force the issue. Meanwhile, she went about her usual routine: checking the homestead’s defenses, looking to her snares, tending to her garden. She also prepared the bodies of Taimin’s parents for their final journey.
Abi seemed angry as she moved about the homestead and Taimin wondered if she was mad at him for not helping his parents fight the rovers. She cursed and muttered to herself as she made a litter for Taimin’s father and cast frowns in Taimin’s direction. Taimin did his best to stifle his groans.
At the end of the three days, Abi disappeared for a time, and when he could think clearly, Taimin saw that his father’s body had vanished with her. While he was sleeping, she took Tess’s body too, and when Taimin woke he saw Abi looking down at him.
“You’re coming with me,” she said. “I’m going to carry you, but this is the last time. Do you understand me, Taimin? For good or ill, this is the last time I will do it.”
Taimin nodded, uncertain what to say.
Abi grunted as she picked him up, carrying his slight frame easily in her arms. She took him out into the open and Taimin blinked as he saw the two suns glaring down at him. Abi disarmed the traps around the gate in the fence and then reactivated them behind her.
She walked in a direction they didn’t usually travel in, and he realized she was taking him to the firewall.
She stepped over rocks and climbed down hills before making her way up more rises in the land. Taimin was jolted time and time again, but he choked down any cries. His foot was in agony, but Abi’s bold strides and tosses of her fiery hair told him she was in no mood to talk. He had always been a little afraid of her, and he wasn’t sure if she wanted him to live or die.
The firewall was ahead, a place where the sky became steadily pink and then deepened to red, and the air became hotter and hotter until it reached a point where it was unbearable. Abi kept walking.
Then, when they reached a knoll looking down at the landscape beyond, Taimin saw the blackened land where it was impossible for anything to survive.
He knew that some quirk of the twin suns scorched most of the world, leaving just one portion inhabitable—the wasteland. The boundary, where Taimin now found himself, was called the firewall. Gareth once said that the firewall would one day close in and extinguish all life, while Tess disagreed, and said she had heard that long ago there was no firewall, and all the world was filled with forests of trees and oceans of water. Aunt Abi had never weighed in, and Taimin didn’t know what she believed. What he could see with his own eyes was that the sky was red and hazy, and the air above the rocks shimmered. He wanted nothing more than to be gone from this terrible place, but instead Abi sat Taimin down next to the bodies of his mother and father.
“Say goodbye, Taimin,” she said.
Taimin looked at his father, now wrapped from neck to toe in white cloth. “Goodbye, Father,” he said. He knew that his life had changed forever. Abi’s watching eyes made him conscious that he had to show her he could be strong.
“Goodbye, Mother,” he said to his mother’s body. Her eyes were closed and her face looked calm. The cares of her life were now washed away in death. He bit his lip and glanced at Abi, who scratched at the wide scar that ran from her forehead to her neck. “What about you?” he asked.
“I’ve said my goodbyes.” She let out a breath. “This isn’t easy on either of us.”
Without another word, Abi picked up Taimin’s father and grunted with effort as she hefted him over her shoulder; her frame was wiry but she was stronger than she looked. Abi walked down from the knoll. In moments she had plunged through the firewall and into the heat beyond.
She walked a surprising distance before setting down Gareth’s body. Taimin wondered how she could stand it. When she returned, her face was red, making her blue-grey eyes look wild and manic. She then took Taimin’s mother’s body and laid it beside his father’s. Abi was panting when she rejoined him; he could tell that even she was exhausted by her battle with the oven-like conditions.
“We should always give our dead some kind of farewell,” Aunt Abi said. “Watch.”
She sat down next to him. Time passed, and then smoke began to rise from both bodies. Taimin was glad he couldn’t see them up close anymore. Slowly, gradually, they blackened, and the white cloth charred to gray and flittered away. A while longer and the smoke stopped rising. The bodies were now just two piles of ash on the ground.
Abi stood up. “There we have it. Their spirits have gone to Earth, if you believe in that sort of thing. No reason why not to, if it makes you feel better.” She scratched again at the scar on her face. “Now, Taimin, it’s time for you to make your choice.” She met his eyes. “You’re crippled. You know what that means, don’t you? You’re going to be a burden to yourself and to anyone you depend on. You likely won’t be able to pull your weight, and I won’t be around forever. You don’t have a good life ahead of you.”