Warpaint

“I’m going to die anyway. I’m sick.”

“You wish. You already look better than you did last night.” That was kind of a lie, but she needed to hear it.

“I don’t want to live,” she whispered, the tears coming faster now and her chin quivering.

I leaned over and looked right in her face, forcing her to look in my eyes. “If you can’t live for yourself, live for your people. They need you, Celia. Your mom wouldn’t have wanted you to abandon them like this.”

She threw her good arm over her eyes, sobbing now. “I miss my mom.”

I rubbed the shoulder of her injured arm, gently. “I know.” My voice had gone all wonky, so I had to clear it to keep talking. “A-hem. I miss my dad, too. We all miss someone. That’s why we have to stick together and not give up. We’re already too alone as it is.”

After a while, she nodded. “I know you’re right,” she said tiredly. “I just don’t want to deal with all this shit anymore, you know? It’s just … too much. It’s too much for me.”

“No, it’s not. You’re stronger than you think. Let me show you.”

She dropped the arm covering her eyes. “Now?” She had stopped crying and was giving me an incredulous look.

I smiled. “Well, not right this second. Get a little bit better, so you can at least stand on your feet, and then we’ll get started. I’ll work with you alone. Just you and me. Private lessons.”

“What am I going to learn?”

“A martial art called krav maga. I’ll turn you into a certified badass.”

She whispered, another tear making its way down her temple, “But I only have half an arm.”

“It won’t matter. I promise. We’ll adjust adapt. It’ll work to your advantage.”

She scoffed at that. “Yeah, right. Now I know you’re full of shit.”

“No, seriously. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Don’t tell any of the guys. I’m saving this for just the girls until we finish our guys-against-the-girls competition.” I waited for her head to nod in agreement before continuing. “Your biggest asset will be your ability to look weak. Any canner who sees you is going to see a victim, not the master of death I’m going to turn you into. You’ll totally be able to take them by surprise. And that’s all you need - one chance to catch them off guard.”

She smiled weakly. “Master of death. I like that.”

I smiled back. “I thought you might. So listen … can I ask you some questions? About the assholes who did this to you?” I gestured to her injured arm lying at her side, the stump ending at her elbow wrapped in white gauze.

“Sure,” she sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can remember about the people who took you and hurt you - where they live, who was in charge, what they did, who else was around, their habits. Everything.”

“Why? What are you planning to do?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to go kick some canner ass.” I leaned in closer, giving her my most serious look. “And I’m bringing friends.”

She smiled, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep, but not before she said, “I like that plan.”

***

I left Celia to her much-needed sleep and walked back to my hut with Coli at my side.

“What’d she say?” Coli asked when we were about halfway there.

“She’s ready to go on living, I think. I promised her I’d help her learn to fight.”

“How are you going to do that with her … you know … her arm?”

“We’ll just have to adjust somehow. Remember what I said today? One of your biggest advantages in a fight?”

“That guys will assume we’re weak?”

“Yeah. What do you think they’ll assume when they see Celia?”

“That she’s the weakest one of all of us.”

“Right. Easy to kill. But by the time I’m done with her, she’ll be the strongest. She’s more motivated than any of you to get tough. Plus, I think she started out tougher than all of you.”

I looked at Coli who had the hint of a smile on her face. As soon as she saw me looking at her, though, she stopped.

Baby steps. Today, a half-smile. Next year, a hug. Or maybe just a full smile. If I’m lucky.

“So what’s the deal with tonight?” I asked. “For dinner and the meeting … is it called a pow wow?”

“You can call it whatever you want. Someone will come get you when we’re ready. The plan is to work out some details concerning you and your friends and the issue of getting our tribes together.”

“You don’t sound like you’re that excited about it.”

“I’m not.”

I stopped walking. “How come? It seems silly that you wouldn’t want to be closer to your family and have them all together. I mean, your brother Jeremy is over there.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, when you do, come talk to me.”

I chuckled. “You can’t be serious, saying the reason you don’t want to combine tribes is because you hate your brother.”

“No. I’m just saying that they have their way of doing things and we have ours. It’s a difference of personalities. We don’t mix well.”

“I think you’re just too close-minded about the whole thing.”

“You’ll see,” was all she’d say.

I gave up trying to engage her in conversation. I’m not the most social person on a good day, and trying to get her to say more than a few words at a time was like pulling teeth, for both of us.

We arrived at the hut to find both Peter and Bodo there. Coli left without saying a word.

“She’s not very friendly, iss she?” asked Bodo.

“No, not really. But whatever. We have a meeting tonight at dinner to discuss what our roles will be and also about integrating the tribes, so we need to get our stories straight and figure out what exactly we want before we get there.”

“Let’s do it now. I’m bored out of my mind,” said Peter.

“I’m not sure if I have another training session today or not, but I can hang out here and talk to you guys until then, if I do.” I looked over at the shelves. “Is there any food around? I’m starving.”

“I saved you some. Go sit downwind, and I’ll bring it,” said Peter.

I rolled my eyes, ignoring his comment about my stench. I couldn’t help it if I sweated when I worked out. I’d long since run out of deodorant. I didn’t know whether to be happy or disgusted by the fact that I’d become kind of immune to body smells. They used to be offensive to me, even though I smelled a lot of stinky guys at the places I worked out, but they weren’t so much anymore. Apparently, it wasn’t the same for Peter.

“You can sit next to me, Smellykind.”

I sat down. “What is that smellykind thing? Is that a real word?”

“Well, kind is a wordt. It means childt. You use it in English. You know da place, kindergarten. Dat’s a garden where you grow da little childrens. Kinder is more dan one kid. Kind is chust one kid. See dat? Our language is not dat different.”

“Okay. Say something in German. Let me see.”

“Ich bin Deutscher, und ich liebe dich, auch wenn du mich manchmal verrückt machst.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right. I have no idea what you just said, and it sure didn’t sound like any English I know.”

He shrugged. “Dare are many parallels. Maybe I will tich you. Den we can talk about Peter and he won’t know what we are saying.”

“Like I even listen to you when you’re speaking English,” scoffed Peter, handing me a platter of food and sitting down next to me.

“You just listened to dat, didn’t you?” challenged Bodo.

“Did you hear something, Bryn? No? Me neither. Maybe it was the wind,” said Peter, deliberately not looking at Bodo.

I joined in, smiling. “I think it was Buster. He has gas.”

“Ha! What does dat mean?” said Bodo in mock offense. “Are you saying dat my wordts are like da fartings of dogs? Because dat is chust mean, Bryn. And after I said dose nice things to you.”

“What nice things?”

“Oh, sure, yeah, now you want to talk to Bodo. Okay. I see how things are going to be.” He shook his head. “No, sorry. But you can’t know. It’s a big secret now. Too badt you don’t speak Cherman. You would like dis very much, I am sure.”

“Tell me,” I said, shoving him lightly.

“No. Leaf me alone, smellykind.”

“He’ll tell you later,” said Peter. “He can’t keep a secret.”

“Oh, yes. I can. I can keep lots of secrets.”

The way he said it made me think of the things he could be keeping from us. It suddenly made me uneasy.

“Secrets shouldn’t be kept from family members,” I said, all traces of humor gone from my voice.

“I don’t agree,” said Bodo, also very serious.

Peter looked back and forth, from Bodo to me. “What’s going on here, guys? Do we have a problem?”

“We only have a problem if Bodo is keeping secrets. And I’m not talking about his little German sentence, either. What aren’t you telling us, Bodo?”

He shrugged. “Nothing you needt to worry about.”

“Where were you earlier?” I asked, now more suspicious than ever. It made me sick to think about how quickly he’d gone from joking and companionable to cold and obstinate like this. I questioned how much I really knew him. I felt like I couldn’t trust the read I was getting on him - like maybe it was the German thing or the cultural differences that were throwing my radar off.

“I was aroundt.”

“Around where? You weren’t here at the huts. You weren’t at the training session with the guys.”

“Just around. Around da swamp. Why do you care so much? What do you think I’m gonna do? Run away?”

“Well, you do, Bodo, don’t you?” I was getting cranky now. “You do runaway. You disappear and we have no idea where you go.”

“I wasn’t aware dat I had to ask you for permission to make a doodle.”

“Oh, don’t give me that crap. You know you weren’t out going to the bathroom.”

“How do you know dat?”

It was a stupid question but it went along with the whole stupid conversation. I was sick of it. “Whatever, Bodo. Keep playing like it’s me and not you. See how far that gets you.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Bryn. But dat doesn’t mean you are going to be da boss of me all da time. I’m a bigk boy. I don’t need a mudder.” He sat up straighter.

I just ignored him, talking to Peter instead. “So what do you think we should say to them about our roles here?”

Peter looked worriedly at Bodo, but answered me anyway. “Well, I’d like to offer myself to help with the chores, whatever they are. I guess they have someone cooking, someone cleaning clothes, someone raising food. Probably other things, too. I could help with any of that.”

I smiled. “I know you could probably clean the hell out of this swamp if they let you.”

“No, thanks. I’m not really into the whole snakes and spiders thing. I was thinking more like cleaning huts.”

“What about toilets?”

“Uh … no.”

“Okay, so you’re going to tell them that you’ll clean huts but not toilets.”

“Yeah.”