Far and Few

(Trigger Warning: violence, death of a child.)

“Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live…”

—“The Jumblies”, by Edward Lear

It’s the forty-second day, and Yana and I know everything about each other. Or, I know everything about Yana and I let her exit in a space between thinking she knows me better than any other and believing that there’s enough which she does not know to make me, with my five years’ advantage in experience, seem very wise and reliable. 

By the rules of this, I have held her every night, and dried her tears, and told her we would be okay. I have not let myself show fear until she was sleeping. I have not, after that first day, let her hear me crying. 

I cannot always be with her, and when the need for supplies forces me to leave this illusion of safety I’ve built for her, I know that her fear must be unbearable. 

I am ashamed, because sometimes when I was walking back to the train car that shelters us I half hoped that she would not be there when I got back inside. Caring for Yana forces me to pretend I am stronger than I am, and I do not want to keep on being strong. But by the time I would pull aside the smashed door of the car my heart would be in my throat, because without Yana I have no reason to keep pretending I can survive this. 

Despite all my cares I came back to her last night with pain I could not hide, and I had to try very hard to keep her quiet as I tied strips of cloth around my wounded stomach, layer on layer of a torn shirt through which the red blossomed without mercy. I was crying very much, and choking on it as I strained to comfort Yana’s panic. I fell asleep without meaning to, and left her weeping beside me. 

And now the morning of the forty-second day. Or early afternoon. There is very little light in here, as I covered all the windows to keep us hidden. I do not know how long I slept, only that I’ve woken into pain unlike anything I’ve ever known. My life before this, for fourteen years, was a gentle one. Yana is squatting beside me, looking sleepless and scared. Several moments pass, and I realize she is speaking to me. 

“…hurt?”

“Wah?” My voice is froggy and I swallow hard before speaking again, “what… did you say?”

“How bad does it hurt?” Her eyes are wide with fear and I wonder how long she’s been awake, alone in this dark space while I was unconscious, if she’s been trying to talk to me for long. She has been crying, and her face is very dirty. I will have to lie just enough to buy me a little time to figure out what to do. 

“Not so bad as last night.” Voice strained, I reach one hand to brush the hair from her face. Dark, thick hair that’s dirty but smooth. Its beautiful. “Water,” I let myself close my eyes, maintaining enough tension to keep myself awake. There is a clatter and the mouth of the bottle trembles on my lips. 

“There were voices while you slept,” Yana whispers urgently as I drink, “and dogs. They were very close. Leeni, is it really still safe here?”

Of course it isn’t safe. “Yes,” it hurts to speak as she moves the empty bottle from my lips, “did you hear what they said?”

“Uh-uh, they spoke that other language.” She’s trying to make me comfortable, doing the things I usually do for her. Her blanket is around me, red stained. I must have been bleeding through the night. “They sounded really angry.”

“It’s okay,” I hiss in pain as I shift to face her, the wound in my stomach sending little shivers of agony from my feet to my fingertips. “They probably sounded that way because they’re already retreating.” But the foreign soldiers always sound angry to Yana. The tones of the language are harsh to our ears, and their voices are unkind. I hope that the dogs they had were not following my blood’s memory. 

We were strangers on the first day. I was reading in my window seat and she was on the other side of the train car, annoying her nanny with questions about the town she was being sent away to stay in. The end of our worlds came so quickly that we did not have time to realize it was beginning before the damage was beyond repair. 

At nine, Yana had been sheltered from the news and speculation that defined the weeks leading up to that day. At fourteen, I knew enough to be scared when we heard the planes overhead, though when the bombings began the motives and possibilities became meaningless to me. 

The train derailed when one of the first bombs hit the tracks, and I think her nanny was killed instantly. I was traveling alone, and the people I watched dying all around us were strangers to me. I don’t know why we were the only ones in our car who weren’t badly hurt by the wreck. It didn’t feel lucky. 

Yana was screaming and I was panicking, and our distress was entirely separate until I heard shots and realized that the broken train was being boarded. 

We stopped being strangers the moment we curled together into a kind of cupboard at the back of the car that wasn’t really big enough for either of us. To keep Yana quiet I started to comfort her, and forcing myself to stop crying for her sake meant having the last of my own childhood torn from my hands. 

“Far and few,” I’d whispered brokenly in her ear, holding tight to her hands and praying she would not scream when the gunshots came into our own compartment, “far and few, are the lands where the Jumblies live.”

I drowned her ears in nonsense until it was quiet enough to start grieving. 

“Leeni, it’s still bleeding.” Teary-eyed, she’s trying to wash the hole in my side with rainwater. I should be doing that, but my limbs are very heavy and I’m fighting to stay awake so she will not panic. 

“Shh,” I hold a finger to her lips. Have my hands always been this pale? “Do you hear that?”

She goes silent, trying not to sniffle too loudly. After a few moments she shakes her head, her eyes scared. 

“You’re not... listening hard enough,” I murmur and let my hand tangle in her hair. When a few more moments of silence pass I begin to recite very softly, “and in twenty years they all came back, in twenty years or more,” she starts to interrupt with a question but I don’t let her. “And everyone said,” with the pain my side, it’s hard to think, hard to breathe, “‘how tall they’ve grown!’” 

I should have memorized more poems like this, more nonsense. My favorite poems were all sad, and I only know this one because it was assigned. 

I’m not gong to live through this. So what can I do? She’s nine, and we’re in the middle of war, and she’s not going to survive on her own. 

I wonder, should I try to get her to sleep and use a pillow to do gently what the world and the enemy will do cruelly and without love? The moments stretch, grow thin, become precious as the pain in my stomach eats at me. I was shot last night, and there was nothing I could do but run. Dying like this is awful. Don’t I wish someone had used a pillow in my sleep long before now? 

Do I? 

My hand tightens in her hair as I try to remember the last words of the familiar poem. Her hair is heavy and dirty and soft and beautiful. 

“And they drank their health, and gave them a feast, of dumplings made of beautiful yeast.” 

There’s a sound outside the train car and maybe it’s the wind or the enemy or help coming at last, too late. And there’s not time to wait until she’s asleep, and I should be gentle when the war will be cruel because she doesn’t stand a chance. 

“And everyone said, ‘if we only live, we too will go to sea in a sieve--.’” 

But I can’t die taking beauty from a world that doesn’t have enough. “You’ll make it,” I lie, breaking with the poem and holding her hands loosely, though I’m trying to clasp them with all my strength. I think there are voices outside, or maybe they’re only Yana’s voice, but I can’t hear what any of them are saying over the rushing of waves in my ears. I hope that when the world destroys her she, too, will have a pair of hands to hold. The door of the train car is being pushed aside, and the light is grey until it’s gone.