What had started as a confrontation had turned into an impromptu motivational speech; William wasn’t sure how or why it had taken such a turn, but he was glad that it had, and from the looks of deep contemplation on the teenagers’ faces, it seemed that they too were pleased that the exchange had taken this direction.
‘Thank you for everything you’ve said, William,’ Jun said. ‘I’m glad I came to speak to you.’
Chloe was blushing now, embarrassed at her earlier outburst and how misplaced her feelings about William had turned out to be, but she too had been inspired by what he’d just said. She was somewhat reluctant to acknowledge this but realised that it was only fair to do so.
‘Thank you, William,’ she murmured, unable to make eye contact. ‘Maybe I, uh, maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe I misjudged you.’
‘Most do, lass, and I don’t blame them. You’re good kids, and I don’t begrudge you for feeling the way you do … did. It is in the past now, I hope?’
Chloe, biting her lower lip, her pale cheeks aglow with starkly red heat, simply nodded.
‘Will you come and eat with us, William?’ Jun asked.
‘Not today, my friend,’ William answered. ‘My stomach isn’t quite ready for a regular mealtime schedule just yet. But thank you for the invitation, I do appreciate it. I’ll just sit here with this masterpiece of a novel for a while longer, I think. In the words on these pages I find the spectacular beauty of what the human spirit is capable of, in the face of so much darkness, and such crushing despair. It gives me hope … and hope is something that we all sorely need now, aye, that we all sorely need indeed.’
‘Okay William,’ Jun said, clearly a little disappointed. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He and Chloe left, and William watched them in contemplative silence until they disappeared into the sea of late summer foliage. He hadn’t planned or expected to say what he had just said; the words had simply tumbled out, seemingly of their own accord, after having been cold-stored somewhere deep inside himself. As he opened the novel again and leaned back against the warm, sun-baked rock, he wondered how many of those words he actually believed.
32
WILLIAM
2nd October 2020
‘My ribs are still aching, and I don’t think the bones have quite knitted yet,’ William said, ‘but I don’t mind the aches and pains too much. It’s the withdrawal that’s the real bastard to get through. But as tough as it bloody well is, I’m getting there, step by painful step.’
He was barefoot, dressed in a simple white tee shirt and blue jeans. The other beastwalkers were similarly attired in casualwear. Njinga’s fluorescent hair – now pink – was almost painfully bright against the earthy tones of the wooden walls and the simple furniture of the cabin room, and her eyes glistened with a subdued but intense sympathy; the plight of any wounded being always struck a deep chord with her. She leaned against the wall, catlike in her casual athleticism; hers was the feline grace of someone utterly comfortable in their own skin, and adding to the heat radiating from her eyes was an explosive energy crackling just beneath the surface of her skin.
William sat down on the floor, leaning back and bringing his knees up to his chest as he released a long, slow exhalation; inside him emotions crumpled, compacting themselves into little molten balls of searing heat, like plastic folding and blackening in a fire.
‘I’m sorry that you’re hurtin’. I really am, William,’ Njinga said. ‘But you needed to get your ass kicked like that. If that’s what it took to jolt you outta that coma of self-absorbed hedonism you were stuck in, then I’m glad it happened.’
Njinga never failed to unflinchingly speak the truth, as hurtful or ugly as it could be, and to do otherwise would be against her nature, and William knew this. He sucked on his lower incisors, and his immediate presence drifted off to somewhere else, as it often did. However, the familiar sensation that announced the presence of another beastwalker jarred him back to the present before he became too lost in his memories. Njinga felt it too, and she glanced over at the door as it opened. Zakaria, stern-faced and unintentionally overbearing, as always, strode into the room, and his hulking physical presence, with its leonine aura of sheer strength and compressed power, quickly dominated the space.
‘William, William, William,’ he murmured, the gentle timbre of his voice at uneasy odds with his imposing physicality. ‘I’m happy to see how much progress you’ve made these past few days.’ His single good eye sparkled briefly with warmth, but his rough-hewn features soon regained their resting expression of grim, uncompromising composure.
‘Thank you, old friend,’ William murmured, his gaze distant and detached, almost to the point of vacantness.
Standing in one corner, Lightning Bird, with his idiosyncratic reticence, observed the conversation play out without contributing. In his dark irises, however, a radiant sense of hope burned bright and hot. The silent intensity of his grave countenance was broken by the hint of a smile, a crinkling at the corners of the tall man’s wide, down-turned mouth; the kind of expression that serves as hard currency passed between the oldest of friends. Finally, he too decided to speak.
‘It pleases me, William,’ he droned, ‘to see you walking among the living, and not in the Shadow Forest.’
‘And I’m glad that you were able to pull me from its suffocating darkness, brother,’ William murmured.
Lightning Bird walked over to
