“Take care.”
Grant plodded off into the shadows behind a cluster of houses, his pace at odds with the fear and anger that gripped the darkness with talons too sharp.
Tea removed her robe and balled it up under one arm. Calling on the moisture embedded in the shadows to help trick the light around her, she found a dappling that would allow her to dodge from shadows to trees effectively.
After only a few steps, the enormity of the situation gripped her hard, and she had to steady herself against broken mud brick. She didn’t know how to fight! She was just a girl from the bottom of the world in a land meant for no man at all. She was supposed to be marrying a good boy, not creeping around with her skin on display.
But the water song. On the tip of her tongue and her fingertips. Yesss thiss iss your place your time. It emanated off everything: rocks and sand, allowing Tea to taste and move smoothly amongst their shape and rise; the night sky punctured by the great exhalations from explosions and screams; the rustle of the nearby ocean and deep water table; the pizz-tang of metal; the sting of fear on skin.
Under different circumstances she could have spent forever exploring the whaiwhaiā of the place, all it could tell her about what was and what could be, but not in this now.
“Focus, Tea,” she muttered, shaking her head to clear the disharmony of the night.
Further down the road giant vehicles with caterpillar treads ground along, their great arms reaching like angry monsters. Panzers, she remembered from the news reels. They belonged to the enemy. And the enemy looked like they held the line at a pass.
Between them and her, the ropes on her muscles pulled.
Give me something, please, she begged of the water song that didn’t agree at all well with her southern senses.
The night parted, grudgingly. Movement amongst the dunes and trees, green as eel eyes.
There. A fling of ochre buildings, their sides caved in. A handful of troops huddled in what little cover the buildings and fallen palms could offer. Heads popping up from time to time, but bullets made them scurry. Others didn’t move at all.
Tea pulled on the iron sting that rose like a clotted mist from the men. She could be hearing the water song all wrong. The blood of one man was no different to another, they could be Jerries.
But there; she couldn’t mistake her brother. The pull she had only assumed as brotherly love, and now knew as their shared whaiwhaiā, was distressingly weak.
Tea crept as close as she dared, dragging the shadows with her.
What to do? She couldn’t waltz up in her altogether. They would shoot her on the spot. And the borrowed robe, it could mark her as a foe. Darn, botheration, and … and … shit! She put her hand over her mouth to stop the terrible giggle from exploding out.
Tea bided a moment, rubbing dirt into the robe. If she was going to be caught, she decided, she wanted to do it clothed. Come on, Izzy, she thought as hard as she could, wondering again if she had imagined her friend reading her mind before. Where are you? Here I am. Help!
She squinted, the corners of her eyes itching with a crust of sand and salt, and emanated her water song in all directions.
The fear-blood-salt-scent was upon her before she realised she’d let her focus drift too far away.
“What in the bloody blazes!”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
“What is it?”
“It’s a girl. And she’s a bloody darkie! You one of them Jerry whores? Don’t you move, girlie, or you’ll be breathing out new holes!”
8.
The water song off the gun aimed between Tea’s eyes sizzled rotten. It trembled like a branch in a breeze.
“What you smiling about, girlie?” the soldier demanded. She couldn’t see him well in the dark with his face all smudged with dirt and grease, but his accent was instantly recognisable as New Zealand. He rolled the Rs and rounded out the vowels. He was from deeper south, probably Gore way.
“N-n-nothing. I d-didn’t … didn’t realise I was, I was smiling.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Well, bugger me.”
“What you doing, Anderson?” came the other voice, closer now. “Who you got?”
“She looks like one of them local darkies, but she sounds like a Kiwi,” Anderson mouthed off over his shoulder.
Still in a crouch, Tea’s thighs took up a trembling ache. The battle raged on despite the conversation between gun and flesh.
The other man melted out of the shadows, blue eyes brittle within a crust of dirt. “Shut up, will ya. Gray’s a darkie too. Geez, you’re right. That is a girl.”
“He is not,” huffed Anderson. “Anyone can get a good tan in this godforsaken place.”
“What you doing here, girl? All the locals were evacuated.” Underneath the dirt the other man was all angles, blue eyes, and blond hair. Her type, according to Mum. Everyone had all made out the troops were too tough to be frightened, but the stench off this man – No, he’s barely stopped being a boy – told her otherwise.
“I-I’m h-here to help, yes help.” Tea swallowed. “You say Gray? Sapper Robbie Gray?”
All three ducked as a shell whizzed overhead, but Anderson went right back to staring her down, though the gun still wobbled.
“How the hell—?” His hard blue eyes dismissing her with one knife-cut glance, the blond turned to Anderson. “She’s a spy. Shoot her.”
“Wait!” Tea flinched as her voice caught on the cold air. “Robbie’s my brother! I’m Tea! Dorothy Gray! Ask him!”
“All the way from New Zealand to visit her brother in a war zone,” Blue Eyes sneered. “How sweet.”
“It’s true. I’m here to help. Please, take me to him, and I can prove it.” Tea’s whole body shook now, and her stomach went loose, like all her waters and the moon were about to rush out of her. How ignominious.
“She does look a bit like him, Trip,” Anderson said, the gun wavering down an inch. “He said his sister was his twin. Maybe she’s one of the girls, you know, from a forces club. Got worried. Came searching for him.”
“All the way out here? The clubs are in Cairo, man!” Trip’s jaw worked like he was chewing a tough piece of gristle. “How in the hells do you think you can help, girlie?”
Before Tea could muster a reply that might make sense, Anderson cursed at a flash in the dark. “Bugger me, there’s a dog here.”
Trip’s eyes narrowed, and the water of his thoughts sent prickles down Tea’s spine. “Must’ve got left behind.”
“I think … I think I can get you to safety,” Tea whispered.