Chapter 9: Big Tree

Crow's Nest

Viola knelt on the floor, helping De'afi redo hir twists. Sadie Crane read out loud.

All three smelled like rose hip shampoo, fresh from the shower.

Black Sparrow's eyebrows ambled up her forehead.

"You sound like a dead walking corpse," she said to Sadie Crane.

"Instead of an alive walking corpse?" they fired back.

"Still a smartass," Black Sparrow laughed.

The three of them went to see the goats.

The goat house owned a fence-blocked sector in the rear. Two additional blocks, each sequestered by fencing, contained a chicken coop and a large shelter for the burgeoning rabbit colony.

"Goats don't eat people, do they?" De'afi asked.

"Get it hungry enough, I think anything eats people," Viola reasoned.

Many people emerged from the treeline and De'afi tensed, but it was just the search party.

Their numbers reduced from twenty to fourteen, they used alcohol to disinfect wounds. The water in the washtub turned an alarming shade of murky red.

Sadie Crane and Viola helped Black Sparrow attend to the wounded, while De'afi and White Doe carried in water from the well out back.

"What happened?" White Doe demanded.

One of the hunters, called A Ship Without a Sea, spoke from where she knelt wringing out bandages into the metal washtub.

"Big Tree," she replied. "But I don't think it was really him. His eyes were--they were--not the way eyes should be."

Black Sparrow could feel them looking at her, waiting for her to speak.

"He's not Big Tree anymore," she said. "He's a red walker."

White Doe picked up her bow and quiver.

"Damn it, we have to--," she began.

The Ship Without a Sea stood to her feet. A head shorter than De'afi and built like three dark brown snowballs stacked on top of each other, wearing an eyepatch.

"I wouldn't," she cautioned. "You didn't see him. He is twice--no, five times maybe? Five times the strength of you or me or anyone in this room. Use your brain."

"Don't matter," White Doe replied.

She made quick for the front door.

"Stay here, don't stay here, makes no damn difference to me," she said. "I'm gonna find this man, I'm gonna kill this man if I have to--"

She stopped abruptly as she'd started.

"Adel," she said. "He's--oh gods, he's--shit, he's--"

She covered her mouth with her hand, tears welling up in her eyes. She'd forgotten about Adel and about Runner, Big Tree's kid.

Sadie Crane ambled for the front door.

"I'll go," they said.

Viola sprang up from the floor.

"You think I followed you out here so you can up and die on me too?" she demanded.

"What are we supposed to do, nothing?" Sadie Crane fired back.

"Anything that's not you dying!" Viola replied.

De'afi stood up, prepared to wrestle Sadie Crane to the ground if ze had to.

A Ship Without a Sea cast her eyes at the three, amused.

"You finished?" she asked.

She addressed the room.

"What we do is we wait until it's light out," she said.

It was decided nobody would leave the house until morning.