“Vega,” Pa says now, tilting his head to look at me. “You know I’m not your real pa, right?”
I lower my gaze, watching Odie’s hooves stamp the ground with each motion forward, the wagon creaking beneath us, the clatter of metal as the harness vibrates. “I know.”
When Pa first came to the valley—I was only seven or eight—he arrived with his tonic, traveling door-to-door, venturing farther than most would ever dare just to reach our valley. At first, Mom was just a customer—buying jars to help with headaches or a throbbing hand after an injury working in the garden or repairing a broken roof slat.But as the years wore on, Pa started making the long journey to the valley more often, and would stay for days, sometimes a week at a time.
He taught me how to fish in the river, and where to look for wild blueberries near the overgrown thicket. And when I asked him what I should call him, he saidPa.Because that’s what everyone called him. It was the name painted on the side of his wagon:Pa’s Cure-All Tonic Elixir.And so he wasmyPa, and the closest thing to a father I ever had.
Mom loved him, I think. He was someone she could trust. But she was also afraid—our isolation was important to her, more important than anything else—and she worried that allowing anyone into our valley would risk our safety.
The more people who knew where we were, the greater the risk that someday we’d be found.
And now I’m risking everything in search of the Architect.
At midday, we cross over a low bridge made from roughly hewn logs. I lean over the edge of the wagon to peer down at the river, muddy and thick, flooded from rains upstream—not good for drinking. Odie lifts her legs high, fearful of the swirling water below, and when we reach the far side, a sign has been staked into the ground—hammered in.
WESTERN BOUNDARY CROSSING, it reads, jagged letters cut into old, graying wood.
“It’s the halfway bridge,” Pa explains, scratching at his eyebrow. “An east and west divider.”
I twist around, looking back at the land we are leaving behind:the western part of the country, where my mother is buried in the fresh soil. The ache in my heart returns, the unsettling feeling—the certainty—that there’s no going back. But I knew this was coming. It’s what Mom has been preparing me for, teaching me: stories about the sister stars, about an ocean far from here, at the very edge of everything. And an Architect who knows the way.
If I can find him in time.
But there is still a hollowness carved into my heart, and the farther I get from home, the more empty I feel. A tree with no center, only dry, scorched bark holding it together. “Mom said there were states? Boundaries that divided them.”
“Someday there will be state lines here. But not yet.”
He begins to hum again, a slow, melancholy tune that reminds me of cold winters and frosted ground that not even a shovel can break through. We reach a small creek where we stop to fill our canteens and a large jug that sloshes in the back of the wagon. The trees are tall and lean here, bony fingers reaching up from the flat soil, and Odie lowers her muzzle, patiently gulping up the clear water while I rub a hand through her mane. “Are we almost to the next town?” I’m growing more impatient, anxious. Too many days have passed since we left the valley, time seeping through cracks in my mind. The old woman, Imogene, said I wouldn’t find the Architect in the wheat town, but I certainly won’t find him out here, in the middle of nothing. I need to reach another town, a place with more people—people who might know something.
“We have to stop somewhere first,” Pa says.
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“We need to make more tonic.”
My eyes flick back to the wagon while Pa rubs his hands together in the creek, scrubbing away the dust. I don’t like the not knowing, feeling like I have no sense of where we are. Only at night can I look up at the stars and place myself roughly in its alignment—knowing that we’ve traveled east, and a little north. But I do not know our position on a map, or what mountains and plains and towns might lie ahead.
“Where I’m taking you,” Pa continues, “no one else has ever been.” He casts his eyes over to me, a seriousness in them, unblinking. “You must keep this secret, Vega. Keep its location buried inside you, understand?”
I swallow down a strange, nervous pang, like I’m not sure if I want to know this secret. Knowing things can be a burden—I’ve felt its weight, and seen the heaviness of it in Mom’s eyes. The secrets she carried, like hauling stones up from garden soil. Each one, something that would eventually crush her.
But I nod to Pa, sensing that I don’t have a choice. “I understand.”
He dips his hands back into the cool stream, rubbing the dirt from his knuckles, when Odie jerks her head up from the water, ears shot forward.
I peer across the creek, up the far slope… where a shadow moves.
Something in the trees.
“Pa,” I hiss. My heart thuds at my temples, and I flash a look over to him. “Something’s there.”
He stands up slowly, running a hand along Odie’s flank to keep her calm, then glances back at the wagon—maybe he’s calculatinghow quickly we might be able to turn Odie around and head back the way we came. Or maybe he’s thinking of the rifle he keeps tucked under his bedroll in the back, where he thinks I can’t see it.
My hands begin to twitch, remembering the brown bear who sometimes wandered down into the valley in late winter, hungry and desperate, nosing around the front porch looking for something to eat, and Mom would shove the pistol into my hands, instructing me to wait on the porch, gun barrel aimed at the bear’s broad head while Mom shouted at the bear tomove on up the ridge.I never fired a shot at the bear, but I always sensed it wasn’t the bear we feared the most. Mom was preparing me for a time when something else might wander up our road, something more dangerous.A stranger. And she wanted me to be ready: to know how to handle the pistol even when my heart was beating wildly in my ears, hands shaking with fear. I had to be able to tune it all out and defend myself when the time came.
Now Pa places a finger to his lips, telling me to be quiet.
Another snap of branches. A shadow shifting just out sight. Something,someone, is breathing rapidly in the trees.
