It had taken Weevil over a week to walk straight again. I winced. "It was like that?"
"Not really. But every time he hit me, mostly I just thought about how I wished Gossel could be trampled by a wild boar too, just once." He put his arm around me now, drawing me in closer. "The sting will pass soon."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You saved me from something so much worse." He shifted against the cave wall, probably to protect his back. "What happened with Governor Felling?"
"She doesn't like me much."
"That's ridiculous, everyone likes you," he replied. "Well, except for Farmer Adderson. And the people you sing to in the towns. And the Colonists who dumped out their medicine, and the wardens and their evil governor who've imprisoned us on this Scourge Colony."
I tilted my head up at him. "There is no Scourge, Weevil. There is no disease."
He pursed his lips, then said, "I wondered about that while I watched you on the treadmill. You've never been so strong. It was like you'd never been sick."
"Because I never was," I said. "Not from a disease anyway."
He humphed. "That discovery won't endear you to the governor, I'm sure." He chewed his lip a moment while he considered that, then added, "Why is she doing this?"
I shrugged. "She claims it's the way to save Keldan, but how can it? Although she hates the River People, this started long before she came after us. Her personal enemies were brought here too, but only a few people compared to the total number who have come through this Colony. Most of them are just ordinary townsfolk, like Jonas or Clement or Marjorie. How could taking ordinary people help Keldan?"
Now Weevil shrugged. "What are we going to do?"
"If we remain here, the wardens will eventually find us. The governor already gave her orders for me, and it wasn't to throw me a party."
He smiled. "That's too bad. In this storm, it'd be an exciting party."
"After the storm passes, we have to get off this island as quickly as possible. Maybe we can sneak aboard the governor's boat, when she goes home tomorrow."
Weevil shook his head. "Too risky. Did you see how many wardens she brought with her? We'd never avoid them all."
"The boats that we used to come over here?"
"They'll have been pulled back to Keldan already. This island was designed as a prison, and the governor knows that."
I exhaled in frustration, and Weevil drummed his fingers against the cave walls to think. He said, "We'll find a way off this island, I promise. Once we leave the caves, I'll look for a boat while you continue resting."
I didn't even argue. "A rest sounds nice. I climbed a mountain for you today, Weevil. A thousand-mile mountain."
He brushed a hand over mine. "And if it takes walking this island a thousand times, I will find us a way home. Now sleep."
For the first time, possibly ever, I obeyed him without argument. If I were not so tired, I would have argued, and probably won. Yet as I fell asleep, I decided that he deserved to win, maybe just this once.
Let's go, Ani."
For all I knew, Weevil had been poking at me for five minutes before I finally responded to him. I sat up and stretched and only then realized that the water around us was over my legs. No wonder I had been dreaming that I was so cold. In this water, I was shivering.
As we got to our feet, everyone else was already exiting the cave.
"The storm?" I asked.
"Worse, I'm told. But it'll slow down the wardens too. How are you?"
"Better than before." My legs still ached, but as blood began flowing through them again, they were warming. And they were supporting my weight, even as we sloshed through the flooding waters. "I can come with you to find the boat. We shouldn't be separated."
"We need to separate," Weevil said. "If another boat exists on this island, I will find it, but you have to find Della. We'll all meet again on the shore, where we first landed. If there are no boats, we'll overtake the wardens and steal the governor's boat. I can handle one or two. Judging by the way you look, you could manage any warden over age eighty-nine. Maybe Della can bribe the rest." His head tilted. "Perhaps this isn't a good plan."
I gave his arm a squeeze as I followed him out of the cave. "Find us another boat, one big enough for all the Colonists, if possible. But be safe, all right?"