Mud

They sleep. Not down in the grave but on the soft, loose mound¹ born of it. The hole is filled in, tamped² down, but they couldn’t quite return the dirt they originally took. For the first night since they fled near on two months ago, Lucy sleeps heavy. Dreamless. Though she doesn’t remember Sam coming to bed, there in the morning is Sam’s body beside hers, dirty and stinking³ of life.
Wet has visited overnight, those distant clouds issuing damp breath. Sam’s face is beaded. Dirt’s thickened to mud on their skins. When Lucy tries to clean Sam’s cheek, her finger leaves a streak⁴ of even darker brown.
She cocks her head, raises a second finger. Draws a second streak parallel to the first.
Two tiger stripes.
“Good morning,” Lucy says to the skull⁵ that guards the grave. It ignores her, of course, as it ignores the Western hills behind. It faces the mountains’ end. On this morning, the air boding⁶ a new season, it seems Lucy can see farther than before. Squint⁷, and can’t she see the peak of the last mountain? Squint, and don’t the clouds resemble lace? Squint, and can’t she see a new white dress, and broad streets, and a house of wood and glass?
Lucy presses her fingers to her wrist. Her thighs⁸. Her cheeks and neck and chest, avoiding the new soreness there. On the surface she’s no fatter and no thinner than she was the night before, but something inside has changed, laid to rest with Ba’s body. Wet on her cracked lips. She smiles, small at first, wary⁹ of tearing dry flesh. Then bigger. She licks her lips.
Water is coming back to the world.
Quietly, so as not to wake Sam, Lucy moves through the camp unmaking the home Sam built for burial. She unweaves the grass mats and lays the blades over the grave to hide it. She drops the stones back in the stream. She plucks up the branches and smooths mud over their holes. She packs their gear. She saddles Nellie.

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