Noah stands and walks to the edge of the cave, looking out into the dark. I lie beside Cricket, folded beneath the burnt blanket while her breathing is a rasp in my ear, but I watch Noah. Wishing I understood. Wishing I knew the secrets he keeps, wishing I knew what waits for us out in the dark.
When sleep finally pulls me under, I dream of the market, of running down the streets under a revolving night sky that spins and jolts above me, until everything splinters apart—the stars erupting, turning dark, until a great shadow sinks down from above and swallows me up.
My eyes flash open, and Noah is touching my shoulder, knelt over me, face only a few inches from mine. “Bad dream,” he says, like he already knows. Like he’s no stranger to them.
The morning sun is casting warm cords of light into the cave,and sweat beads across my forehead. Cricket is already awake—apparently feeling better—and she’s seated in front of the old campfire, poking at it with a short stick. “We have to go back,” she’s saying. “See if anyone is still alive.”
“No.” Noah releases his hand from me, and stands up, shaking his head.
I’ve woken up in the middle of an argument already underway.
“We can’t leave August behind,” she retorts.
Noah walks out of the cave, several paces down the rocks, as if he is going to the river, but then he stops, turning the circular object in his hand—the one I still haven’t gotten a good look at. “August is dead.”
Cricket drops the stick into the coals, sending a puff of ash up into the air.
No, no,I think, quickly pushing myself up.He has to be wrong.
“You don’t know that,” Cricket says for the both of us.
Noah slides the object back into his pocket, his gaze dipped to his feet. “I saw him.”
I feel my brows puckering together, and I stand up. “You’re sure?” I ask, my chest starting to rattle, an unnamable weight sinking over me.If August is dead, then this was all for nothing. I’ll never reach the sea, I’ll never do what I was meant to, and I won’t save anyone.I scrape my fingers back through my knotted hair, tugging against my scalp.
“Those men broke into the barn right after you made it through the wall. They shot him clean in the chest—” Noah swallows tightly, cutting his eyes away from Cricket and me, a wetness gathering at his eyelids. “I ran to him, but he was already gone.” A long exhale leaves his lips.
“No.” Cricket’s voice sounds like a whimper, her breathing shallow, and for a moment I want to reach out and touch her shoulder, but I sense that I shouldn’t. None of this would have happened if they hadn’t brought me to the barn—those men came looking forme, and August died because of it.This is my fault. And now that August is dead…
It’s all over.
It’s too late.
Cricket turns away, but I can hear the soft exhale of tears streaming down her cheeks, and she places the heels of her hands against her eyes as if she could quell the surge.
I feel myself sink to the ground—the hollowness of my heart dropping into my empty stomach, the ache in the very center of my bones making it hard to breathe.It’s over.The sister stars will arch farther and farther to the south, day by day, and soon they will blink out completely. I’ve come all this way, burned my house in the valley to the ground, and for what?I failed.Every Astronomer before me, who stayed in the valley, who marked their skin—they sacrificed themselves. For this. For me. So I could finally reach the sea. And now… it’s over.
All of it, for nothing.
I want to cry, a deep, unearthing sob, but my body is too weak, too dehydrated, and I only feel the weight behind my eyes, the pulsing pain.
I did this… I ruined everything, and now—
“We have to go on our own, without him—” Noah says firmly, swallowing down his own grief, stealing himself against the pain. But I can see the dampness at the edge of his eyes, a quiver at histemples. “We have to finish this. We don’t have a choice.”
My thoughts are broken by his words, cutting down to bone. “What?”
“We keep going,” he continues, as if it were obvious, his eyes flicking to me briefly, a cool taciturn green, before they fall to Cricket. “We can’t stop now.”
My lips tremble. “You know the way to the sea?” The sun shivers higher through the trees, warming my skin, but I’m shaking now, confusion and doubt pushing down every vein.
“Maybe we do have a choice,” Cricket interrupts before Noah can answer me. She drops her hands from her face, and I can see the slope of her mouth, the awful, grimacing frown, and the idea forming behind her eyes. “We could let those men take her.” Her voice is hoarse, low, like she doesn’t want me to hear even though I’m only a few yards away. “That’s what they want, Noah—they just want her. And they’ll stop hunting us.” She points a finger at me, but won’t turn her head in my direction. I’m not worth her cutting stare, not after what’s happened—not now that she knows August is dead, and it’s all my fault.She wants me to pay for what’s happened.She helped me escape the saloon, kept me alive as we crossed the desert plains to the water tower, and she came with me to the barn. But now I suspect she regrets it all. And although her words race up my spine, sending needles of fear along my skin, I also don’t blame her. I understand her anger, her fury—I blame myself too.
Still, I push myself up to my feet and take a step back into the cave, away from them both.
Noah moves closer to her, a hardness in his eyes, and he stares down at her, daring her to look away. “You don’t have to come withus,” he says bluntly. “You can go back to the barn, back to the water tower if you want. But I’m staying with her.”
I blink at him, a deep, broken part of me surprised that he still wants to help me—after everything.
