Iris stirred. Her face was pressed against churned earth and her mouth tasted like warm metal.
She pushed herself up slowly, her helmet crooked on her head.
Soldiers were running past her. Smoke writhed in the golden light. There was an incessant popping that made her pulse constantly jump, her body wince. But she sat forward and she spit the dirt and blood from her mouth, rushing her hands over her legs, her torso, her arms. She had a few scrapes on her fingers and knees and one long cut on her chest, but she was largely unscathed, even as shards of metal glittered on the ground.
Kitt.
She had cleared the corner before the grenade had exploded, but she wasn’t sure if he had.
“Kitt!” she screamed. “Kitt!”
She wobbled to her feet, her eyes searching the haze. She found him sprawled a few paces away. He was on his back, and his eyes were open as if he could see through the smoke, up to the clouds.
Iris swallowed a sob, falling to her knees beside him. Was he dead? Her heart wrenched at the thought. She couldn’t bear it, she realized as her hands raced over his face, his chest. She couldn’t bear to live in a world without him.
“Kitt?” she called to him, resting her palm over his heart. He was breathing, and the relief nearly melted her bones. “Kitt, can you see me?”
“Iris,” he rasped. His voice sounded so far away, and she realized it was her ears, ringing. “Iris … in my bag…”
“Yes, Kitt,” she said, smiling when he blinked up at her. He was dazed, and she began to assess the rest of his body. Down his stomach, his sides, and then she saw it. His right leg had pieces of shrapnel lodged in it. The destruction looked mainly concentrated around the outside of his thigh and calf, and around his knee, but his wounds were steadily bleeding. It was impossible to tell how much blood he had already lost. The splatters on the ground could be his or spilled from others who had been hurt. Iris took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm.
“All right, Kitt,” she said, meeting his gaze again. “You’re injured. It looks like it’s primarily your right leg, but we need to get you to a doctor. Do you think—”
“Iris, my bag,” he said, his hands futilely searching for it. “I need you … need to get my bag. There’s something … I want you—”
“Yes, don’t worry about your bag, Kitt. I need to get you out of here first,” Iris said, squatting. “Here, if I help you, can you stand on your left foot?”
He nodded.
Iris worked to haul him up and balance him. But he was so much taller and far heavier than she expected. They took a few stilted steps before Roman slowly sank to the ground again.
“Iris,” he said, “I need to tell you something.”
She went rigid, dread crackling through her. “You can tell me later,” she insisted. But she began to worry he had lost far more blood than she realized. He looked so pale; the agony in his eyes stole her breath. “You can tell me when we’re back at Marisol’s, all right?”
“I don’t think…” he began, half a whisper, half a moan. “You should take my bag and go. Leave me here.”
“Like hell I am!” she shouted. Everything within her was fracturing under the weight of her fear. She had no idea how she was going to get Roman to safety, but in that split second of desperation, she clearly beheld what she wanted.
She and Roman would survive this war. They would have the chance to grow old together, year by year. They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?—and they would write on their typewriters and ruthlessly edit each other’s pieces and read books by candlelight at night.
She wanted him. Leaving him behind in the trenches wasn’t even a possibility.
“Here, let’s try again,” she said, softening her voice in the hopes it would encourage him to try. “Kitt?”
Roman was unresponsive, angling his head against the wall of the trench.
Iris touched his face. Her fingertips left a trail of blood on his jaw. “Look at me, Roman.”
He did so, his eyes wide and glazed.
“If you die in this trench,” Iris said, “then I die with you. Do you understand? If you choose to simply sit here, I’ll have no choice but to drag you until Dacre arrives. Now, come on.”
Roman struggled to rise with her help. He leaned against the wall, and they took a few laborious steps before he stopped.
“Did you get my bag … my bag, Iris?”
Why was he so worried about his bloody bag? She exhaled and looked for it, her body burning with the strain of bearing his weight. I can’t carry him alone, she thought just as her eyes fell on a soldier who was about to pass them, his rifle slung across his back.
“Hey!” Iris shouted, intercepting him. “Yes, you, Private. Help me carry this correspondent to Station Fourteen. Please, I need your help.”
The soldier didn’t even hesitate. He looped Roman’s other arm over his shoulders. “We need to hurry. They’ve taken the front trenches.”
His words sent a bolt of fear through Iris’s stomach, but she nodded and shifted beneath Roman’s other arm, so that he was between her and the soldier. They moved faster than Iris had anticipated, winding through the trenches. There were more wounded sprawled on the ground. She had no choice but to step around them, and her eyes were smarting, and her nose running, and her ears continued to ring but she was breathing and alive and she was going to get Roman out of here and to a doctor, and she—
The private turned a corner and abruptly stopped.
They were almost to the end of the trenches. They were almost to the woods and Station Fourteen and the road that would lead them to town, but Iris had no choice but to follow the private’s lead, Roman groaning between them at the jolt. She recognized the captain who had brought her and Roman to the front moving through the confusion. Blood was splattered across his face and his teeth gleamed in the light as he grimaced. Wounded soldiers lined the trenches around him; there was no way that Iris was going to be able to get past them, and she panicked as the private began to lower Roman down to the ground.
“Wait, wait!” she cried, but the captain caught sight of her. He called out a few more orders before he approached, and Iris watched as the wounded were carried away on stretchers, up and out of the trenches.
“Miss Winnow,” the captain said, glancing down at Roman. “Is he breathing?”
“Yes, only wounded. Shrapnel, right leg. Captain, can we—”
“I’ll have him carried out on a stretcher and loaded into the lorry for transport. Are you wounded?”
“No, Captain.”
“Then I need you. I’m short of hands, and we need to get as many wounded to this point as possible before Dacre takes them. Here, go with Private Stanley and use this stretcher to bring back as many as possible. You only have as long as the guns fire. Now go!”
Iris was stunned as the captain turned and began calling out more orders. She was a correspondent, not a soldier, but Private Stanley was now staring at her, holding one end of a bloodied and vomit-stained stretcher, and time suddenly felt heavy on her skin.
Did it matter what she was?
Iris knelt before Roman. “Kitt? Can you look at me?”
His eyes cracked open. “Iris.”
“I’m needed elsewhere, but I’ll find you, Kitt. When this is over, I’ll find you, all right?”
“Don’t leave,” he whispered, and his hand flailed, reaching for her. “You and I … we need to stay together. We’re better this way.”
A lump lodged in her throat when she saw the panic in his eyes. She laced their fingers together, holding him steady. “You have to stay strong for me. Once you’re healed, I need you to write an article about all of this. I need you to steal the front page from me like you normally do, all right?” She smiled, but her eyes were burning. It was all the smoke, drifting closer from the barrage. “I’ll find you,” she whispered and kissed his knuckles. He tasted like salt and blood.
The pain in her chest swelled when she had to shake his hand away, taking the other end of the stretcher. When she had no choice but to turn and leave him, following the steady trot of Private Stanley.
They picked up one wounded soldier, carrying her back to the place Iris had left Roman. As she helped Stanley carefully slide the private off the stretcher, Iris’s eyes skimmed the others and saw Roman was still waiting, but closer in line to be carried up to the lorry.
They left again, scurrying just like the rats did through the trenches. They carried another soldier with a mangled leg back to Station Fourteen. This time, Roman was gone, and Iris was both relieved and anxious. He must have been loaded and be currently in transit to an infirmary. But that meant she wasn’t there to curse at him, to insist he keep his eyes open, to hold his hand and ensure he was all right.
She swallowed, her mouth dry and full of ash. She blinked away her tears.
It was just smoke in her eyes. Smoke in her eyes, burning her up from within.
“I think we can retrieve one more,” Stanley said. “As long as there’s gunfire, we have time. Can you do that?”
Iris nodded, listening to the pop of the guns in the distance. But her shoulders were sore, her breaths were uneven. Her heart pounded a painful song in her chest as she ran behind Stanley, the stretcher banging against her sore thighs.
They went deeper into the trenches this time. Iris’s legs were trembling as she realized the gunfire was beginning to ease. Did that mean Dacre’s soldiers had killed everyone at the front? Did that mean they would soon press closer? Would they kill her if they found her, stranded in the thick of the trenches? Did they take prisoners?
Before Dacre takes them. The captain’s words echoed through her, making her shiver.
Distracted, Iris tripped over something.
It brought her to her knees, and she felt stray pieces of shrapnel bite into her skin.
Stanley paused, glancing over his shoulder to look at her. “Get up,” he said, and he suddenly sounded afraid, because the gunfire was waning.
But Iris was scarcely listening to him, or the way the world was becoming eerily silent again. Because there on the ground was a leather bag that looked just like the one she was carrying. Scuffed and freckled with blood and trampled by countless boots.
Roman’s bag.
Iris slipped it onto her shoulder. It rested beside her own bag, and she felt the weight settle on her back as she rose to her feet once more.
“What are you still doing here, correspondent?” Captain Speer shouted at Iris. “Get in the lorry! You should have evacuated an hour ago!”
Iris startled. She was standing in Station Fourteen, uncertain what she should be doing. All she knew was there was blood dried on her hands and jumpsuit, and the scrape on her chest was burning, and her pulse was frantic, wondering where Roman was.
“Go!” the captain screamed when Iris remained standing blankly.
Iris nodded and stumbled through the dusky light to the back of the lorry. Soldiers were being loaded, and she waited, not wanting to push her way through. Eventually, one of the privates saw her and hefted her up into the crowded bed without a word.
She sprawled on top of someone groaning in pain.
Iris shifted her weight, unbalanced by the two bags on her back. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Miss Winnow?”
She studied the bloodied soldier beneath her. “Lieutenant Lark? Oh my gods, are you all right?”
It was a ridiculous thing for her to ask. Of course, he wasn’t all right—none of them were all right—but she suddenly didn’t know what to do, what to say. She gently moved to sit beside him, wedged between his body and another soldier. The lorry jerked and rumbled forward, jostling everyone in the back.
Lark grimaced. In the faint light she could see the dirt and blood on his face, the shock haunting his eyes.
“Lieutenant Lark?” Iris glanced down at his hand. His fingers were splayed over his stomach, coated in bright blood. As if he were holding himself together.
“Miss Winnow, I told you to retreat. Why are you still here? Why are you in this last lorry with me?”
The last lorry? Iris swallowed the acid that rose in her throat. There had been so many other wounded soldiers at Station Fourteen. She shouldn’t have taken a seat. She shouldn’t be here.
“I wanted to help,” she said. Her voice sounded rough and strange. Like it belonged to someone else, and not her. “Here, what can I do to make you more comfortable, Lieutenant?”
“Just sit here with me, Miss Winnow. Everyone … they’re gone. All of them.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. That “everyone” was his platoon. The Sycamores.
She closed her eyes for a moment, to center herself. To tamp down her rising panic and tears. She was sitting in the covered back of a lorry, surrounded by wounded soldiers. They were driving east, to where Avalon Bluff lay, kilometers away. They were safe; they would reach the infirmary in time.
The cut on her chest flared.
Iris lifted her hand and pressed her palm over it. That was when she realized something was missing. Her mother’s golden locket.
She swore under her breath, searching around her. But she knew the necklace was long gone. The chain must have broken when the grenade’s blast hurled her forward along the ground. The remnant of her mother was most likely still there, in the place that had blown her and Roman apart. She could see it in her mind’s eye—the locket now trampled into the mud of the trench. A small glimmer, a faint trace of gold among shrapnel and blood.
Iris sighed, lowering her hand.
“Are you well, Miss Winnow?” Lark asked, bringing her back to the present.
“Yes, Lieutenant. Just thinking of something.”
“Where is Mr. Kitt?”
“He was wounded earlier. He’s already in transport.”
“Good,” Lark said, nodding. He clenched his eyes shut. Iris watched the blood continue to pool through his fingers. She could feel it slowly seep into the leg of her jumpsuit. “Good. I’m glad … I’m glad he’s safe.”
“Would you like to hear a story, Lieutenant Lark?” Iris asked quietly, not sure where the question came from. “Would you like to hear how Enva played Dacre for a fool with her harp beneath the earth?”
“Yes. I would like that, Miss Winnow.”
Her mouth was so dry. Her throat felt splintered and her head was throbbing, but she began to spin the myth. She had read it so many times in Carver’s letters; she had his words memorized.
When the soldiers in the lorry around her fell quiet, listening, she wondered if perhaps she should have chosen a different myth. Here she was, talking about Dacre, the author of their wounds and pain and losses and heartaches. But then she realized that there was power in this story; it proved that Dacre could be tamed and bested, that Dacre was not nearly as strong and shrewd as he liked to be perceived.
“I owe you a story in return,” Lark said after Iris had finished. “You once asked me about the Sycamore Platoon. Where our name came from.”
“Yes,” Iris whispered.
“I want to tell you now. We all grew up in the same town, you see,” Lark began. His voice was low and raspy. Iris had to bend closer to catch his words. “It’s a place north of here, hard to find on a map. We’re farmers; we toil under rain and sun, we know everything about the loam, and we count our lives by seasons more than years. When the war broke out … we decided we should join the fight. There was a group of us that could form our own platoon. And we thought that if we joined, the conflict would end sooner.” He snorted. “How wrong we were.”
Lark quieted, his eyes closing. The lorry hit a pothole, and Iris watched as his face grooved in pain.
“Before we left home,” he continued, even fainter now, “we decided to carve our initials into the great sycamore tree that overlooked one of the fields. The tree was on a hill, like a sentry. It had been struck by lightning twice but had yet to split and fall. And so we believed there was magic in that tree, that its roots gave nutrients to the soil we tilled and planted and harvested. That its boughs watched over our valley.
“We carved our initials into its bark. It was a prayer for the magic of home to watch over us, even as the kilometers came between us. A prayer and a promise that we would all return someday.”
“That’s beautiful, Lieutenant,” Iris said, touching his arm.
He smiled, opening his eyes to look upward. Blood bubbled between his teeth.
“I didn’t even want to be lieutenant,” he confessed. “I didn’t want to lead us. But that’s how the cards fell, and I carried that weight. Carried the worry that some of us might not return home. That I would have to go to these mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and wives and husbands. People I had known all my life. People who were like family. And say … I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to protect them.”
Iris was silent. She wondered if he was about to slip into unconsciousness. If the pain of his wounds was too great. She wondered if she should keep him talking, keep him awake.
She reached for his hand.
Lark said, “I’ll have to say it over and over and over, now. If I live, I’ll be full of nothing but regrets and apologies, because I’m the last one. The Sycamore Platoon is gone, Miss Winnow. We woke up this morning to one world, and now the sun is setting on another.”
When he closed his eyes again, Iris remained quiet. She held his hand, and the last of the light waned. Eventide was giving way to the night, and once she would have been terrified of Dacre’s hounds and the possibility of their attack. But now there was nothing to fear. There was only grief, raw and sharp.
She was still holding Lieutenant Lark’s hand an hour later when he died.
There was smoke in her hair, smoke in her lungs, smoke in her eyes, burning her up from within.
And Iris covered her face and wept.
