I lean my shoulder into one of the porch posts, my ribs still throbbing. “I’m sorry,” I say, “about losing everything.”
“Not your fault.” He lights his wooden pipe, and the sweet, clove-scented smoke coils up into the starlight. “Time would come eventually, when I either ran out of medicine or someone found it. That day was today.” He makes his way down the front steps, legs heavy, tired, and walks out into the softening rain, squinting down the road. He looks older, creases framing his eyes, body bentforward. I wish I could change what’s been done, but the past is already written—this I know better than most. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
“Okay,” I agree, not wanting to stay any longer than we have to. Just a few hours’ sleep and then we’ll keep moving. Always moving. Six nights have already passed since the sister stars appeared in the sky, and I can see their orbit shifting through the sky. Soon they will slip below the horizon, out of sight, and then it’ll be too late.
I need to keep moving—get to the next town. Find the Architect.
Reach the sea.
Pa turns to look back at me. “You should take two pills from the bottle you took.” He gestures toward my ribs, where my hand is clasped, the ache throbbing all the way up to my chest. “I can tell you’re in pain from that fall, might have a cracked rib.”
I wince against his words, knowing he’s right, and I might have injured myself when the bolo-tie man pushed me to the ground. But I had hoped he didn’t know about the bottle I took from the cabin. “I—” I didn’t mean to steal from him—I was only curious about the bottle, about the tiny white pills inside. I wanted to see them closer, study the words in smaller print on the side of the bottle, then planned to give it back.
“It’s okay.” He rubs at his neck, muscles sore from the day, from the long walk. “I’m glad you took it—it’s the last bottle we have.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, wishing I could undo what’s been done. First I stole the bottle; then I took his rifle and nearly got us both killed. I feel stupid, and stretched thin, and wrung out, like I haven’t slept in days.
“It’ll help with the swelling, and pain,” he answers, notacknowledging my apology. As if it’s not needed. As if things like this come and go in the world beyond the valley, mistakes made, dangers waiting in the dark between trees, and there’s no point dwelling on what’s already done.
I tilt my eyes back to the horizon, away from the twin stars, to where the night sky is dappled with strange light, particles that hover and crack apart—an anomaly. A part of the sky that is starless, bottomless, where no light lives. It vibrates, as if it’s breathing.
A monster always there, growing, like ink spilled onto a floor. Like death.
A thing that has never belonged.
It terrifies me.
I squint my eyes closed, not wanting to see it, the thing hovering in the darkness. The shadow breaking apart the sky.
And I turn away, ducking back into the farmhouse.
After a dinner of dried apples and wheat cakes slightly burnt at the edges, and the last of the goat cheese, I climb the stairs of the farmhouse and find myself in the bedroom with the white hand-stitched quilt and lace-trimmed pillows. Whoever once slept in this room collected pinecones along the windowsill and hung a piece of cloth above the bed with tiny flowers printed into the fabric—now faded to pale, watery colors by the sun.
Pa appears in the doorway, his left hand clutching his pipe while his right reaches into his coat pocket for the pouch of tobacco. “If anything happens,” he says, eyes clicking to the window, “run past the orchard into the woods, and keep going. If those men come back,you need to get away from here. Don’t wait for me.”
I touch the window frame lined with dust. The clouds have moved away to the south, revealing a wet, clear sky, and I imagine climbing down the roof, dropping to the porch, then sprinting out into the trees—the breath burning my lungs. Maybe I could make it into the dark unseen. Or maybe those men would catch me and drag me back to the farmhouse.
“If they had seen your mark, if they knew who you were—” Pa shakes his head, eyes lifting to me, and I wonder if he’s been thinking about this since we left the miners’ cabin. Maybe this is why he took the rifle from me when I was so close to pulling the trigger. It wasn’t just about avoiding a gunfight; he was worried what would happen if they saw the tattoo on my neck. He didn’t care about Odie, about his supply in the cabin—he only cared about me, making sure they didn’t discover who I am. “They would have taken you, Vega. And I’m not sure I’d be able to find you.”
His words make me feel instantly cold, an echo across my flesh. My name, my past, the marks on my skin… put me in danger. Put everyone near me in danger.
But I wonder if maybe death isn’t the worst thing out here. It’s beingtaken. Hauled away like Odie and never seen again.
“Okay.” I nod at him, but I also know: If those men come riding up the road in the night, guns drawn from their hips, I won’t leave Pa behind. I’ll stay and fight. It’s a feeling inside me I can’t explain. A stubbornness maybe—the same part of me that refused to lower the rifle, to accept that they would take Odie and there was nothing we could do.
Because there is a cold desperation in the eyes of every personI’ve met since leaving the valley, a wild kind of fear hardened into their bones, a thirst that is deeper than the need for water. But a need to survive.
A feeling I didn’t know existed, until now.
And if I want to survive in this world, I can’t always hide. Tucked away in the valley. Sometimes… I will need to fight.
Pa glances down the hall, listening, like he hears something. But it’s only the house settling, the last of the rain shedding from the roof. “Get some sleep,” he says at last. “We’ll leave just after sunup. Fort Bell is still a day-and-a-half walk from here, and we don’t want to miss the market, sell what tonic we have left.”
I nod.Another day and a half lost.Another day and a half ticking closer to the end. He slips away down the hall, and I hear thethwapof the front door as he walks out onto the porch.
I slide open the bedroom window and let in the night breeze, listening to Pa puff on his pipe from the front porch. I doubt he’ll sleep tonight; instead he’ll watch the road, listening for any distant sounds of horses coming up the drive. But right now, only the evening birds chitter from the trees, and the wind sings down the halls of the old house. I like it here, with its sweet-smelling orchard and tall, protective trees and hidden driveway.
But we can’t stay.
