Maybe because it’s what August wanted, maybe because she won’t leave Noah on his own, or maybe simply because she’s stubborn… but she’s staying with us.
“We should be able to reach Mill City by nightfall,” she says, tapping a finger against her sheathed knife. “If we leave now.”
We follow the river downstream, moving quickly, keeping to the shadows cast over us by the steep ravine walls and thick trees. Noah plucks berries from the thorn-covered bushes as we pass, then hands them back to Cricket and me. “Crowberries,” he says, not slowing his pace. He knows we need to keep moving, put more miles between us and those men.
But I’m so hungry, I nearly cry when the tart sweetness explodes between my teeth, tasting unlike anything I’ve ever had before. Near the roots of an upturned tree, Noah kneels down, quickly digging into the dark soil with his hands, then uses the knife sheathed at his ankle to cut away a deep red root.
“Wild carrot root,” he says, handing me a thickly sliced piece. I bite into the knobby root—it’s hard on the outside but soft in the middle, and has a sweet, earthy taste. I prefer it over the berries. Noah cuts out several more pieces, tucking them into his coat pocketfor later, then glances up the river behind us, listening for men on horseback, for voices, but when he hears nothing, he falls into a steady stride beside me, letting Cricket march ahead—thrashing her way through a wall of reeds down to the river, creating a detour for a tracker to follow—to confuse them, and hopefully send them in the wrong direction. She’s seemed stronger all morning; maybe the few hours of sleep has fortified her, or the pills have simply dulled the pain. And it’ll wear off eventually.
“I know she seems tough,” he says, nodding up to Cricket, who turns from the riverbank, back up to the trail. “But it’s not that she doesn’t want to help you—she’s just afraid.”
“Of what?” I slide my hands into my coat pockets, feeling the bottle of pills, wondering if I should have given her more before we set out. “Dying?”Because of me.
One side of his mouth twitches up. “If there’s one thing she’s not afraid of, it’s dying.”
Some distance ahead, Cricket climbs up the lower limbs of a dead tree, peering upriver to be sure we’re going the right way, before dropping back to the ground and continuing on.
“Cricket’s parents died of consumption when she was young,” he says, voice settling into a low, unbreakable rhythm. “No one really wanted her—they worried she would die soon after, that she wasn’t strong.”
I shake my head, finding it hard to imagine anyone thinking Cricket was anything but sturdy and resilient and tough.
“She was only eight when she started living on her own, scavenging for food,” Noah goes on. “She joined August’s group from time to time, but she never stayed long—she always preferred tolive alone. I think it’s because she’s afraid of getting too close, making a family she might lose.” He swallows, looking ahead to where Cricket has wedged her way through two large boulders that must have fallen from the top of the ravine, nearly blocking the path, but leaving a slim, narrow channel just large enough to squeeze through. “But even when we don’t see her for weeks, she always comes back to August’s camp, usually with something she stole. And this time—” He looks at me, pauses, like he’s trying to see something reflected back in my eyes. “She came back with you.”
The wind slides up from the river, brushing through his dark hair, and he lifts one of his eyebrows at me—a sincere look of curiosity. Maybe he never thought he’d really find me, like I feared I wouldn’t find him. Both of us hoping for something that seemed impossible. Both of us moving toward each other, like hands feeling into the dark, unsure of what we’d find.
I let my eyes fall over him: the heavy slope of his eyelids like peering into a forest of green, and the dark, sun-drenched hue of his skin. He seems so guarded, a toughness that has surely kept him alive. Yet I’ve caught glimpses of something else: sadness, but softness, too, cracks where the light peeks through his armor.
“We need to move faster!” Cricket calls back to us before ducking into a patch of thin elm trees, probably to create another diversion—a path to nowhere.
Noah picks up his pace, sidestepping around a spiky bitterbrush. “She’s just scared of what will happen,” he says softly so she won’t hear. “She knows you’re a risk.”
And yet she’s still here,I think. She hasn’t turned back; she hasn’t fled to those men and handed me over. If Noah is right, and she isn’tafraid to die, then maybe it’s him she doesn’t want to lose—she’s afraid for Noah’s life, more than her own.
We move through a clot of tall cattail reeds, the same kind that grew back in the valley, and my fingers touch their soft stalks before letting them sway back into place. “Are you afraid?” I ask, squinting away from the sunlight that flashes through the giant trees.
“I’m scared shitless,” he answers, lifting the corner of his mouth and skipping his eyes over to me, the same reticent warmth in his stare I noticed moments ago. The part of him he keeps tucked away beneath hard glances and steely eyes and a deep, commanding voice. He has the presence of someone who leads, who others will follow.
But I give him a quick smile, then look away. Because my mind is a mess of too many thoughts. Too little sleep. Too many reasons why we need to move faster.
The walls of the canyon begin to retreat, becoming shallow, and the path ahead rises up out of the ravine into a flatland, the river trailing away in the distance.
Cricket stops, a hand held over her eyes to survey the expansive terrain, heat rising in waves from the dry prairie. “Haven’t heard anyone tracking us,” she says. “No horses.”
“They haven’t given up,” Noah answers, his voice sure, like he knows they won’t just turn back—they’ll follow us to the very edge of this land, until there’s nowhere else to go and nowhere to hide. These men won’t stop. He pulls out the circular thing from his pocket and holds it in his palm. For the first time, I see an arrow balanced in the center beneath a small round piece of glass. The arrow hovers, then turns slightly to our left. Then he places it quickly back into his pocket, like he doesn’t want me to see.
But ahead of us lies a bleak stretch of prairie, no forest to travel through, nothing taller than bunchgrass and a few scattered heaps of dry brush. Beyond it, I can see a string of low, rolling hills. But it’s a day’s journey from here, at least. As soon as we step out from the cover of the few oaks along the riverbank, there’s nowhere to hide.
“Which way is Mill City?” I ask.
“Straight ahead,” Noah answers.Straight into the open rangeland.
He kneels down beside the river and fills the canteen. Then he runs his hands through his dark hair, letting the water stream over his face, down his neck. I don’t let my eyes linger on him: flushed cheeks and unsaid thoughts. “The river turns west a half mile up, the opposite way we’re headed,” he says, water dripping from his lashes. “This is the last time we’ll see water for a while.”
Cricket bends down, splashing water onto her face, cooling her skin, and I do the same, sinking my arms in up to my elbows—goose bumps prickling my flesh. But I know it won’t last. Soon we’ll be out in the open, in the midday heat with no shade. Soon my skin will burn.
“Ready?” Noah asks, wiping the last of the water from his forehead.
Cricket brushes past him, away from the river and into the open—without a word, as if to prove her grit. To prove she’s unafraid.
