LIBERATING THE ARM

Each day Dale checked the tower as she had promised Merdigen she would, despite the tremors that assailed her whenever she passed through the wall. Every heartbeat she believed her last and that she’d be sealed in granite for all time, only to emerge breathless in the tower chamber and find it empty, its silence and stone walls oppressive. She did not linger, and the wall guardians did not hinder her passage, but she felt them observing her.

When she returned through the wall to the encampment, Alton awaited her as always. There he stood, watching her intently, hands clenched at his sides. He was looking better. It wasn’t just the polished boots, but his hair no longer stuck out at angles, and he took pains to neaten his uniform, shining the buttons and cleaning stains, mending tears and frays, and attempting to press out wrinkles.

Dale smiled, pleased by Alton’s overall appearance. It was an improvement, though he still fell into gloomy silences and remained intense about the wall. Some things, she reckoned, she could not influence. The place, with its forbidding wall and nightmarish forest beyond, had the tendency to suck the life out of one. What they needed was a party. A party would lift everyone’s mood, maybe even Alton’s.

“Merdigen?” he asked.

“Not back yet.”

“What was he thinking?” Alton demanded. “He can be of no help to us if he’s haring off to wherever—wherever illusions go!”

“He said he’d return,” Dale reminded him.

“How do we know?”

Dale sighed. “How do we know anything? Sometimes you have to accept a thing on faith.”

Alton opened his mouth as if to retort, but then closed it. “There’s something I’d like you to see,” he said.

He took her into the encampment where a servant stood waiting with a mule hitched up to a wagon.

“I know you can’t ride yet,” Alton began.

“Not allowed to ride,” Dale corrected.

Alton smiled. “Not allowed, so we’re using the wagon.”

He helped her up onto the bench, then climbed up himself and collected the reins. To her surprise, instead of heading toward the makeshift road that led to the main encampment at the breach, he slapped the mule with the reins and whistled it toward the wall, then turned so they headed west, in the direction of the breach. Alton’s uncle, who had been in charge of the encampment before his death, initiated clearing along the wall, the soldiers and laborers under his command chopping down trees and burning brush to a distance of several yards. When Alton came to the encampment, he ensured his uncle’s work continued.

It was in this clearing between wall and forest that Alton guided the wagon. It was bumpy and hard going over stumps, rocks, and uneven ground, and it jostled every single bone in Dale’s body. She would have had an easier time on horseback, but Leese wouldn’t allow her to ride. Alton remained silent throughout, not explaining what this little excursion was about. His hands seemed to shake, though it was hard to tell with the jarring ride. Something was eating at him, that was for sure.

The wagon pitched and swayed as roughly as any boat in an unrelenting sea storm, the wall always oppressive and cold at their left. Dale was never so relieved when, miles later, Alton reined the mule to a halt and set the brake. He came around to her side of the wagon and helped her down. Her old drover friend Clyde would approve.

She followed Alton to the wall. “What do you see?” he asked.

Dale withheld a sarcastic reply and examined the granite expanse before her. She did not know exactly how far they had come in the wagon, but there were cracks feathering the surface. She knew they were spreading all the time, no matter how minutely, evidence of the weakening of the wall.

“I see cracks,” she said.

Alton nodded. “Yes, cracks. Anything…odd about them?”

“No,” Dale replied.

Alton narrowed his brows and stared hard at the wall. “You sure?”

Dale glanced at the cracks again, seeing nothing different about them from others she’d observed closer to the breach. “I am sure. Why?”

“It’s just that—” Alton scratched his head. “It’s just that I think I see some sort of pattern in the cracks. Or at least this morning I thought I did.”

Dale glanced uneasily at him, and back at the wall. Sure, she could see patterns, like watching puffy clouds passing overhead that looked like birds, faces, ships, and any number of things, but she did not say this to him. She wondered just how deeply his obsession was affecting him.

He shrugged. “My imagination.” He helped her up into the wagon for another torturous ride back to their encampment, during which he fell back to brooding.

Dale scarcely touched ground in the encampment when the mender Leese approached with a wave.

“Rider Littlepage,” she said, “just the one I wanted to see.”

“Uh oh,” Dale said under her breath, but she smiled. Leese no doubt wanted to check the progress of her healing wound, which meant painful prodding of still tender flesh and having to demonstrate the flexibility of her arm and shoulder. She’d lost so much strength that her visits with Leese often left her exhausted and in tears. Leese was most sympathetic and patient, but in equal measures thorough.

“Time to check on my wound?” Dale asked, hoping maybe the mender had something else on her mind for once, like an invitation to tea or the recommendation of a book for Dale to read.

“The usual,” Leese replied. “Today, though, I want to take special care and time. If you could join me in my tent in a couple minutes?”