The silent man didn’t acknowledge the order, simply stood, took his gun, and disappeared around the side of the crumbled building.
Robbie sighed and looked over at what Tea had taken for a pile of rags. “We’ll come back for you, lads.”
Bodies. There had been bodies right by her. Tea’s gorge rose, and she had to pull hard on the water song to keep her flesh intact and her voice inside her body.
As vulnerable as the bombed-out building had been, at least it had provided corners, shadows, shelter. Against the promise of day, Tea’s composure shattered into something much more acute. Though it was dangerous to remove her attention from what little water she could touch in the ground, the blood soaking into the fine grains was too much to take. She needed all her energy to guide her brother and his friends to safety, not be concerned with her wretched retching.
At least the light was low. Spinning the water song into a shroud to encompass the other men made Tea’s flesh and bones grind harder, so she had to trust the silent point man and his mask of bloody camouflage. Izzy stayed only a pace ahead of Grant. The sand shifted beneath their feet, but Grant held himself strong and sure.
“Did you hurt your arm at one point?” Tea whispered, disturbing Robbie from murmuring into Grant’s woolly neck.
Robbie gave her an all-too-familiar expression: hard to read, calculating. “I thought I could control it without Grant around,” he said. “But it got harder. Every time I had to … use my gun, my hand would shake, like something was trying to break out of me …”
Grant grunted as an explosion hit too close on the other side of a dune. He stopped in place, and the group hunched down for a moment. Tea lost herself by diving for the comfort of the water song in the ground. The water deep below emboldened her shroud, though it grated along her edges, unfamiliar with her touch.
A thump. Too light for an explosion, too round for a bullet. Another.
Tea’s whaiwhaiā burned with the nearness of something salty and hot.
“Move, move,” she whispered.
Trip turned a rude stare on her.
“Someone’s coming.” Her voice took on an urgency and authority she hadn’t thought she could possess against a man. “Those trees beyond the dune. If we make them, we might be alright.”
“That’s some pretty fancy eyesight you got there, missy,” Anderson whispered. His grim stare swiped a layer of filth over her perception.
The attack came swift, from above, a dark body flung down the dune.
A low shout covered by the rat-a-tat of bullets further off. A thump of bodies. Grant froze; there was nowhere for him to go. Robbie reached for a gun, but his fingers shook so much he could not grasp it.
A dark uniform. Eyes glittering midnight blue below light hair. Fingers hooked.
Why didn’t he shoot?
Fingers dug hard into Tea’s shoulders.
Stars against stars, a bursting flurry of the Milky Way rotating about the Earth, about the war, thrusting their millennia of existence together in one impossible moment.
Stars. Against the black night of fur. Stars. A glint of fang. Stars. A burst of surprise, the white of the eye. Stars. An explosion of hot matter, a growl, a tear in the fabric of skin.
Dark stars, singing their ugly splatter across Tea’s flesh.
Silence, as one patch of the world could be amongst the insanity of falling shells, bursting gunfire, and dying men.
The song, the scene, realigned itself into a reality that made sense but no sense at all. Izzy standing over the fallen man, four paws caging him, teeth bared, muzzle dark and wet, growling so low her canine-being vibrated nose to tail.
The man’s – the German’s – head was thrown back, throat exposed to the bone by a long gash. He did not move. Blood trickled weakly from the gaping wound, not the great pumping spurt that would suggest a heart in motion.
Tea retched.
“Jee-zus,” whispered Anderson.
Trip glanced between the corpse and Izzy, face grim. “He must’ve been cut off, too. Probably caught him off guard.” His voice shook only a little. “Let’s go.”
Izzy shook out her head and left the corpse sprawled in the sand.
Grant plodded forward, ever stalwart.
Tea didn’t remember the steps between the body and the trees. A few bullets whizzed by, but not close enough to trouble Anderson and Trip unduly. Robbie kept his face buried in Grant’s neck the whole time, whispering.
A challenge call. Tea almost flinched into taniwha shape – No, Izzy, please don’t do that again – but the voice called to them in New Zealand-accented English.
They had made it. They’d found some of Robbie’s Second Battalion mates.
“… local girl caught in the crossfire …”
“… got wounded, pinned down …”
“… helped us with her donkey …”
“… get her out of here quick …”
When Tea could make sense of things again, she was huddled inside a lean-to against a truck, a coat around her shoulders, a nurse looking in her eyes, testing her limbs.
“Not me, him.” She gestured at Robbie huddled up against a now-kneeling Grant-donkey, already attended by a female nurse. A woman, out here, near the front line? That was a thing that could happen?
Her nurse finished his inspection anyway, frowning in confusion. He passed her a canteen, then left. Her tongue thick, her flesh creaking with overuse of the water song, Tea gratefully swallowed the tepid water. It stayed down, though it roiled in her stomach.
Izzy wriggled in beside her. “Tea, we have to go,” she whispered. “Some muckety-muck will be all over us in a moment, demanding answers.”
“But Robbie. We can’t leave him here.”
“And we can’t take him back with us. That would give everything away. And I doubt you have the energy to do it.”
Tea sighed. “Wait. Please. I want to say goodbye.”
Izzy growled low, an assent.
The nurse finished her triage of Robbie leg. He struggled over with Grant’s assistance. Tea leapt up to hug her brother, afraid to let him go. Izzy twined between their legs, shivering agitation.
“Thank you for coming for me,” Robbie murmured. Pain etched his face into puzzle pieces Tea might not be able to put together again, but at least those edges were softer. “I wouldn’t have made it without you or Izz. Without Grant.”
Grant squeezed behind the truck pulled hard up against a stand of rock. A pop of bones, then he sighed. Making a barricade with her body again, Tea peered around the hood taller than her head. In the pre-dawn light Grant’s flesh was very pale, his eyes jaundiced.