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“It’s getting cold out here, yeah,” I replied. “She should’ve brought a jacket. ”
“You’re hurt. ”
I shrugged. “Not bad. ”
“Not now, no. It’s closing up quick. ” Ah. The way he said “quick” it sounded almost like “quake,” so there was some change after all—an accent to the vowels that didn’t belong to Dana.
“Well, it’s stopped bleeding anyway. I think. ”
“More than that. It’s closing. What are you, anyway?”
“What do you mean? I’m not…I’m not anything. But I can see you, obviously. All of you, when you come out like this. ”
He snorted. “That doesn’t make you half so unusual as you think. ” The closing word sounded like “thank. ” “She can see, too,” the soldier said, meaning Dana.
“I know I’m not the only one who can see—”
He interrupted me. “Lots of people can see. And lots of animals, too. But you’ve got something else here, don’t you? The bullet didn’t strike you too hard. It hit a tree first and came back. I saw it. But the wound is all closed up now, where the bullet skimmed you. ”
I fondled the sore spot and frowned. “How do you know? It’s too dark to see a damn thing out here. ”
“With this woman’s eyes, yes, it’s too dark. But before, with my own, I could see it fine. I see the blood especially well. It glows, to us. It shines in the dark, like your tears, and your sweat does. We can see it fine. It reflects to us like a cat’s eyes. If you ever come back like us, you’ll see it too. ”
The blood was drying on my shirt, making the fabric crackle when I squeezed it. “I wasn’t hurt bad. I was in shock before, but now I’m not. That’s all. It’s no big deal. ” I only sort of understood it myself, and to know that the dead could spot me as strange made me deeply uncomfortable. It was as if I were more like them, and less like the living.
He laughed, harsh and hoarse. “No big deal. If we’d had an army of men like you, we would’ve never lost. You’re touched with something, whether you’ll admit to it or not. ”
Another soldier joined the circle, chattering and pointing.
Dana’s head shook. “I can’t hear you,” he told the ghost. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just been too long since we tried to speak. I, I like these clothes she’s wearing, though. I like the pants. ”
I threw my head to the right, trying to bring the soldier’s attention to the other ghost. “Hey, buddy, I can’t hear him either, but I think he wants us to get a move-on. ”
“I can’t…” Dana’s head went back and forth again. “I can’t lead you out this way. I can’t see a thing. But I like her pants. I’ll let go now. We’ll take you to…there’s a, at the front of the place there’s a…there’s a building. We’ll take you there. ”
“Wait—don’t let her go yet. ” I held Dana’s body by the shoulders. “What’s going on? If you can talk to us this way, well then, talk. What’s going on at Dyer’s field? Who’s that asshole who’s been shooting at us? Why did Green Eyes leave?”
“Green Eyes,” he repeated. “That’s what you call him. He’s left us. He tried to keep the digging man away, but the bargain was up. The digging man isn’t afraid of us because he can only barely see us—only sometimes, at that. ”
The soldier’s mind was wandering; he seemed to have a hard time keeping a train of thought together. It sounded like a struggle to string the right words one after the other.
“The digging man—the man with the gun?”
“Uh-huh. That’s him. ”
“So you’ve seen him before. And there was some bargain made with Green Eyes, that he’d stay here?”
Dana’s body sagged back against a tree, and her knees began to fold. “A pact. Until the last descendant of the good general was gone. He watched us until the last one died. ”
“I don’t understand,” I said, which was possibly the understatement of the year. “Come on, stay with me now. I don’t understand. Please keep talking. ”
But the ghostly newcomer waved his hand and shook his head hard, motioning for quiet again. Maybe the “digging man” was closing in on us again, though I didn’t hear anything to indicate it.
Dana was slipping down, falling asleep by the look of her. I didn’t know what to do; I wasn’t in the habit of babysitting channelers. I didn’t have the first idea how to handle things, so I pretended she was fainting and I caught her.
“Please,” I said again. “I don’t understand. ”
“It’s because…it’s because we have no wings to the kingdom. ”
