Nameless, p.28
Nameless, page 28
‘Up a mountain?’ said Grandmother.
‘Yes.’
Crow swore. ‘If we stay here any longer it won’t matter what noble gestures any of us make. We’ll all be dead. So stop arguing and just keep going.’
She was right. In the five minutes we’d stopped to carry on a futile argument the plough had come closer.
Not only the plough. The Pack. For carried on the icy air were voices.
We were a long way from the road. Deep in a pine forest whose floor was snow. The most hostile of environments and not conducive to visitors.
But the Pack weren’t like most visitors. They were a swarm escaped from a shattered hornet’s nest that penetrated every nook and cranny though you tried to shut them out.
Penetrated every path. Every road. Every mountain. Every pine forest whose floor was snow.
The environment was hostile but so were they and more than a match.
‘They’ve sent out scouts,’ said Soldier, peering through the trees. ‘Shit. Go everyone, go, as fast as you can. Hide behind the hut. Run.’
They were striding through the trees, guns waving before them. We were far from the road but not far enough. The Pack was enormous. More than big enough to send scouts all over the mountains, into every forest, along every path. Soldier knew those paths, but so clearly did someone else.
Soldier grabbed Eldest and threw her over his shoulder like a fireman. Then he ran. Grandmother was beside him, Crow just behind. I took a few steps. Then paused.
It seemed long ago that I questioned my bravery on the day I met Soldier. You know, that previous life pasted beneath this one.
Well now a corner had peeled away and I studied it. Just for a second. My eyes on my family then turning towards the dark figures striding through the trees.
I was an imperfect mother, an imperfect person. I’ve never hidden that from you. I couldn’t act when my family died. I couldn’t save Daughter, though I’d vowed to keep her safe. And now…now I might fail again.
What would you give up to save the people you loved?
What would you give up?
You might call me stupid, foolhardy, seeking death. But there’s a difference between acting when you’ll be killed for no good reason and acting when you know for certain it will save someone else.
Eldest would never forgive me, but she’d be alive and in the end that was all that mattered. Life from death was always good, Crow had once said. Now wasn’t any different. For no matter how we ran we’d be dead soon.
Unless the Pack could be distracted.
I glanced at my family. Sent my love on the icy breeze that threaded through pine and over snow and hoped its touch reached them before it was blocked by the hut. It must have. For Eldest lifted her face from Soldier’s back and looked at me. Directly at me. Gaze sharpening to desperation. She opened her mouth and looked beyond me. And understood.
If she called to me, told me no, the Pack would kill us all. If she did not then only I would die.
I turned away from her face and sent a prayer on the same wind that carried my love. Let it work. Let them escape.
Let it be quick.
Then I walked towards the Pack. Their gazes sharpened and their guns lifted and I made a right turn and ran. There was a yell. A shot rang out and to one side of my feet snow took flight in a vivid white flurry of death.
But I didn’t stop. I veered away from their death projectiles and kept running. Down the mountain. Away from the others.
So they could be free.
I smiled.
Lifted my face to the wind and breathed it in and opened my eyes wide.
It was beautiful. So very beautiful.
I was alone but strangely I didn’t feel it. Instead I felt joined to the others of my country, to my family, to those who had trod the same path I now did. Before the Invader came we went about our lives separately, barely taking the time to see each other. Now we were one. In our fear. Our pain.
I’d known pain before, in both body and mind. Everyone has. Sometimes it was only an annoyance and sometimes it drove us to action and sometimes it killed us.
Sometimes it gave life. All mothers knew that.
This story isn’t a pleasant one. Haven’t I said that time and again?
But haven’t I said equally as often that it’s also about hope?
About courage and strength and lovers and husbands and children.
About love.
This is the story of the people whose faces and deeds have been lost to war. About the heroes whose struggle was simply to live.
To be free.
The nameless.
Amanda Creely, Nameless
