“I’m gonna walk the island,” he said. “See what we’re working with. Stay here and rest.”
“No.”
“Mehar—”
“I’m not staying here by myself. I’m not sitting under a tree on an island I don’t know alone. I’m going with you.”
He looked at me like he wanted to argue.
“Fine. But we go slow. You tell me the second you feel dizzy or cramping or anything.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I said I will, Quest.”
He helped me up and we walked.
• • •
The island was small but it wasn’t flat. The shore wrapped around in an uneven loop and beyond the tree line the ground rose into hills covered in thick green vegetation that looked like it hadn’t been touched by a human being in decades. Maybe ever. There were no buildings, no paths, no trash, no signs that anybody had ever set foot here. Just trees and rocks and birds and the constant sound of the ocean behind us and the hum of insects in the brush.
It was beautiful. And terrifying. Both at the same time.
We walked inland, pushing through low branches and stepping over roots, and Quest had his hands on me, making sure I was secure the entire time.
The terrain rose, the trees got thicker, the air cooler. Then I heard it. Water. Running water, steady and constant. Quest heard it too, because his head snapped toward the sound and he pulled me in that direction without saying a word.
We pushed through a wall of greenery and there it was. A waterfall. Maybe fifteen feet high, pouring off a rock ledge into a shallow pool that was clear enough to see the stones at the bottom. The water was moving, not stagnant, and the mist from it settled on my skin, and it felt like the first clean thing I’d touched in twenty-four hours.
Quest let go of my hand and stepped into the pool. It came up to his knees. He cupped the water in his torn-up hands, brought it to his mouth, and drank. I watched his face and waited because if this water was salt we were in trouble. If it was fresh we had a chance.
His eyes closed. He drank again. Then he looked at me and something shifted in his face, something that wasn’t quite a smile but was the closest thing to relief I’d seen since the crash.
“It’s fresh.”
I almost collapsed. I actually felt my knees give for a second, and he grabbed me and pulled me to the edge of the pool. I knelt down, cupped the water, and drank. It was cold and clean and tasted like absolutely nothing, which meant it tasted like everything because nothing was better than salt right now. I drank until my stomach told me to stop and then I drank a little more because I had a whole human being inside me who needed water too.
“Thank God,” I whispered.
“Thank God,” he repeated.
We sat by the pool for a while. Not talking. Just sitting in the shade with our feet in the water and letting our bodies absorb the fact that we weren’t going to die of dehydration today. Tomorrow was a different question. Next week was a question I couldn’t even look at yet. But today we had water and fruit and each other and a baby who was still kicking and that was going to have to be enough.
• • •
We found the tracks on the way back to the shore.
I didn’t notice them at first. Quest did. He stopped walking so abruptly that I bumped into his back and when I looked down at where he was looking I saw them. Hoofprints in the soft dirt. Deep, wide, and fresh enough that the edges hadn’t crumbled yet. Whatever made them was big and heavy and had been here recently.
“What is that?” I asked, even though something in my gut already knew.
“Boar,” Quest said. His voice had changed. The warmth from the waterfall was gone and replaced with something flatter, more alert. He was scanning the treeline now, his hand on the knife in his pocket. “Wild boar. They’re aggressive and territorial and they don’t run from people. We need to get back to the beach.”
We walked faster. Quest kept himself between me and the trees and his hand stayed on his knife and I could feel the energy radiating off him, that coiled readiness that he carried underneath the suits and the charm.
When we got back to the shore he went straight to work. He gathered branches, driftwood, and dried leaves and then built a pile in the sand near our tree. He pulled his knife out and struck the blade against a rock until he got a spark. He nursed it intoa flame and within twenty minutes we had a real fire going. Not a campfire. A real fire. Big enough to see from the water, hot enough to keep things away.
