Around midday I see the first of the birds. It is high up, almost out of sight in the glare of the callous sun. It is circling in a way that induces a vague feeling of disquiet; drifting, around and around, wings steady.
“Look up there,” I say. Jade stops and follows my gaze.
“Nearly there,” she says.
I feel a jolt which seems to trigger a rush of blood from my chest. I slump on the saddle, slip sideways onto the hot dust of the road. A groan escapes me as the light-headedness dulls my vision.
“String?” I manage to whisper through the haze of pain.
“Just over that brow,” Jade replies. I try to hear pity in her voice, but even my own yearnings cannot paint indifference a different shade. “Come on.”
She grabs under my armpits and heaves me back into the trike’s saddle. I have no strength to pedal, so she has to push me the final stretch to the top of the small hill. As we reach the summit and look down into the shallow valley beyond, I am dazzled by something in the distance. At first I think it is the sun reflecting from a body of water, and my heart leaps into my chest. Water! A wash! A bath, even! Then, while my eyes adjust to the glare and detail rushes in, I realise how wrong I am.
What I do see is far more fantastic than a deep lake in an area stricken with drought.
There is a small village in the valley. The collection of tents and ramshackle huts seems discordant with my preconceived image of String and his people, but the closer I look the more I can detect a design in the apparent chaos of the scene. The whole layout of the place is pleasing to the eye — not only providing colour in a bland land blasted by winds and heat, but also offering a geometry that seems to comfort with its very order.
Around the village is a moat. The sun reflects from something bright, hard edged, many angled. Jade turns to me and truly smiles for just about the first time that day.
“String’s lake of glass,” she says. I want to ask more, but suddenly feel the urge to find out for myself.
We start down the hillside and are soon approached by two guards. They are carrying guns, ugly squat black cylinders that could spit hundreds of rounds per second. They are both tall, muscular, fit-looking, their skin a healthy tan, clothes neat and presentable. They seem to be wearing what approaches a uniform: thin cotton trousers; khaki shirts buttoned at the wrists and neck to protect from the sun; peaked caps to keep the glare out of their eyes. They are cautious but confident as they stop a dozen steps in front of us and casually place hands on their guns. They regard us with what I can only describe as pity, and I am jolted from the grey haze that pain still holds across my senses.
Pity is the last thing I expect.
“You’re Tiarnan, right?” Jade says. The guard on the right tenses, then nods. He steps forward, swinging his gun to bear evenly upon us.
A sense of unease itches at me, tensing my muscles and stiffening my neck. No one knows we’re here, I think. No one will miss us. There are a thousand bodies back down the road, what would two more be added to it? More food for the dogs? More human detritus to leak slowly back into the soil, replacing the goodness we’ve bled from the planet for centuries? I wonder if Della will miss me. I wonder if she ever expected to see me again, once I left that final time. I had the suspicion then — and it still niggles now, even though I’ve come so far — that she sent me here to give me hope in my final days. She never really believed in what she told me; she did not have any real faith in her words of comfort.
“Jade Kowski?” The guard’s expression does not change but there is familiarity in his voice. His gun swings slightly until it’s pointing directly at me.
“Hi, Tiarnan. Who’s your buddy?”
Tiarnan waves a hand at the other guard. “Oh, that’s Wade.” He lowers his gun — but Wade, I notice, does not follow suit — and approaches Jade. “What the fuck are you doing back here, girl?” He claps her on the shoulder and ruffles her hair with fatherly affection, though I guess Tiarnan to be younger than Jade by at least half a decade: straggly beard, kid’s smile in a face already aged by the sun and the Ruin.
“Brought a friend.” Jade nods down at me where I slump weakly on the trike. “String still entertaining?”
Tiarnan shrugs. “When people make it here. Still pretty exclusive, though, y’know?” He looks me over, removing his dusty sunglasses and squinting in the sudden brightness. At first I feel like an exhibit in a museum of dying people, but then I detect the same pity in his eyes that I saw earlier. He glances at my shirt, muddied by the fluids leaking from me. He sees Jade’s bandaged hand, notices the bright redness of the scrape on her leg set against the more subtle pink of sunburn.
“Hell, Jade, you sure ain’t looking after yourself.” He looks across at his companion and some secret signal lowers his gun. “Wade, do me a favour, push our friend here down to the moat. Jade, why not walk with me? You can tell me why you’re still in this God-forsaken country after all String did for you.”
“You’re still here,” she says, but Tiarnan laughs and starts off towards the glittering moat.
Wade pushes the Trike — I could have pedalled, but I am tired and in pain and not about to pass up the opportunity of a free ride. When we reach the moat I can see what it really is. I wonder at the work that went into making it; the weeks of travelling to and from towns and deserted villages to collect all the materials; the dedication; the planning. The idea itself is sheer brilliance.
The moat is at least twenty metres across, composed entirely of broken glass. Bottles, window-panes, bowls, mirrors, windscreens, all smashed down into a sea of sharp, deadly blades. The sun glares from its multi-faceted surface and throws up a haze of light, and it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. It is effective as a thick fog at concealing what lies beyond.
I wonder how we will cross, but then I hear the musical crunching of glass cracking and shattering. Before I have a chance to see what is happening, Wade is lifting me from the trike and sitting me gently on a large, flat-bedded vehicle that has crawled across from the other side. Wade and Tiarnan help the other two men on the strange boat as they haul on a rope, dragging it across to the inside of the moat.
“Nearly there,” Jade says, bending down over me and blocking out the sun. “You okay?” As if the question gives my body a chance to answer, pain shouts and I fade out. The sun recedes, voices float away, and I fall unconscious to the grinding sound of breaking glass.