Free Humanity by J.D. Knutson Page B

desperately needed.
    Gideon didn’t say a word. His brown eyes
never left mine; his arm dripped blood.
    What would it feel like to kill him?
Satisfying? Liberating?
    Lonely.
    When he was gone, I would have no one. I
would have to face each day on my own. There would be no one to talk to. No one
to think about nothing with. He had been preparing me for that, for the
inevitability of being alone. He had been teaching me how to savor life for the
peaceful moments, and how to block out the bad.
    He had taken so much from me.
    But he had also given me a sense of
peace.
    No, I didn’t feel peace for my parents.
But, even though their deaths were still a raw wound, there had begun to grow
in me an understanding.
    And he’d apologized. He’d had a family of
his own, and knew what it was like to lose them.
    If I killed Gideon, what would I gain?
    At this point, I might lose more.
    “The stars,” Gideon murmured, coaxing.
    I shook my head at him, stern. But the
words had already crept into my brain.
    The stars. If I killed him now, we
wouldn’t watch the stars together that very night. I would be alone. I would
move on, and never look back at this place. I would have to be on guard
constantly, ready for anyone that might hurt me.
    Gideon had never hurt me. Not physically,
at least.
    I wanted revenge. It pained me to know
Gideon was alive.
    But now, after spending a month with him,
it might be more painful for him to be dead.
    I sighed, closing my eyes. Then I lowered
the gun.
    I heard some scrabbling around and looked
up to see Gideon pocketing his knife, still watching me.
    “Do you want the gun back?” I asked,
offering it to him. “You’ll probably swipe it from me at some point anyway.”
    “You know what? You keep it. Why would I
take it from you when you’re not going to kill me? It’ll be useful for us both
to be armed.”
    “But what if I change my mind? What if I
decide to kill you after all?”
    He looked at me again, his eyes boring into
mine. “Candace, after the month we’ve spent together, I trust you. You’re not
going to go back on your decision.”
    “How do you know?”
    “You’ve been dwelling so much on the
anticipation of killing me, and I could always see that deadly potential in
you. . . If you were going to kill me, I’d already be dead. You might lack
resourcefulness, but, if you had been desperate enough, you would have come up
with something. I already knew you wouldn’t kill me. I knew the moment you
looked at the broken glass back there.” He nodded in the direction we’d come
from. “You looked at it and didn’t see it as a weapon. Just as something
broken.”
    He was right. I hadn’t even considered
the possibility. This carnival had so many things that could be used against
Gideon – there was a lot more broken glass, hoards of it everywhere – and I
hadn’t seen any of it.
    Gideon had known – he had suspected all
along. He wouldn’t have taken me here if he hadn’t. He would never have let me
near anything he thought I could use against him. Not until now. Not until he
thought I wouldn’t use it against
him.
    My eyes dropped to the ground. I backed
into one of the columns, then slid down, resting my forehead against my knees.
    “I’m going to go slice up that lion. I’ve
never had lion before – I think he’ll be a bit gamey, but will probably taste
just fine.” I heard him shuffle off.
    What was I going to do now? The hole that
was my parents gnawed away at my chest.
    There was nothing I could do.
    Except maybe continue to follow Gideon.
    After a while, Gideon came back carrying
long pieces of lion flesh. I noticed he’d wrapped my mother’s shirt – the one I
had previously used as a bandage on his leg – around his bloody arm. I probably
should have offered to cut the lion for him, considering the injury. It would
have been a common courtesy. I couldn’t quite bring myself to care enough,
though.
    He set the meat on the stone floor before
leaving me