Read Online Tamaruq by E. J. Swift - Free Book Online

exactly. Only that he couldn’t remain where he was. Not in Cataveiro. Not where she died. And this man was going south, and Mig has never been south, and why not? Besides, there’s something about the Osirian, something – Mig can’t think of a better way to put it than
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. He has a sense. A feeling in his gut. The little kids at the old warehouse would say that the jaguar has passed him by.
    Of course, they talk rot. He wonders what’s happened to them. Ri, that clown-faced girl, the others. Did they survive the epidemic? He’s seen for himself how quickly the redfleur spreads – you only have to touch someone who’s infected and it’s over. If one of them got it, the chances are they’re all dead. It’s painful to think about it, so after a while he doesn’t. What’s the use? He can’t do anything for them. His life has changed – he’s with the Osirian now. Mig the adventurer. Mig the expeditionary.
    As they move further south, Mig finds himself capitalizing on this
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in order to get what they need. The people who work on the farms are simple. They don’t have much, and Mig can’t imagine they know much, and that makes them the ideal recipients for his message. The first time it’s by accident. He’s bargaining with the farmer – she’s a tough one, and there are two young kids in the corner, sickly-looking brats wearing mouth-and-nose masks, their eyes peeking over like lizards in a hole. Mig almost feels sorry for them, and almost relents, but no—
    ‘Thirty peso.’ He names his price decidedly. It’s stolen money, but that’s no reason to be bounteous with it.
    The farmer drives the price up. Mig pushes back. Eventually they reach an accord. As he’s loading up the pack she says, with a hint of sourness, there’s enough in that bag to feed a skinny stalk like him for days. Mig replies without thinking.
    ‘My friend needs to eat. He has to keep his strength up.’
    ‘Your friend is sick?’ The farmer is instantly wary. She shifts her stance, placing herself between Mig and the two children.
    ‘He was,’ says Mig. He shouldn’t say what he says next but something propels him on, perhaps the faces of the kids, staring at him like he’s a curiosity, a boy fallen from the sky. ‘But he survived.’
    The farmer is reluctant to pursue the conversation but Mig holds out, allowing a tantalizing silence to expand, and in the end she can’t help herself.
    ‘Survived what?’
    Mig whispers, ‘The redfleur.’
    There is the briefest of pauses.
    ‘Get out,’ says the farmer. ‘You should know better than to joke about that.’
    ‘I wouldn’t tell a lie,’ says Mig, which isn’t true, although in this instance it is the truth. He directs his next words at the kids. ‘There’s scars on his face and all the way up his arms. The redfleur came for him but he survived, he’s as alive as you or me.’
    ‘Enough.’ The farmer is angry now, but Mig isn’t alarmed; rather he’s aware of the weight of what he’s just revealed. ‘Take your things and go.’
    The kids’ eyes are round as peaches. Mig feels a peculiar spread of satisfaction as he hikes the pack onto his back and heads out of the farmhouse into the dusty, suffocating heat of the day. The blue sky yawns above him and the fields stretch out on all sides for as far as he can see. Usually his loneliness would fall upon him in this moment, like a curse, but telling the tale has done something. It’s staved it off, for now at least. He returns to the Osirian with a swagger in his walk.
    ‘Good haul?’ asks the Osirian, with a smile.
    Mig nods.
    ‘Good bargaining.’
    That night they eat well and it does not rain.
    By the middle of the night Mig is overcome with guilt. What was he thinking? He resolves to keep his mouth shut. He is resolved all the way to the next farm where somehow it happens again, and this time Mig does not have the excuse of an accident, this time, he can’t resist provoking the farmers, and the