“You’re the Astronomer.”
My feet inch backward. Only a couple more steps and I’ll be at the door. I’ll drop the towel, and I won’t look back.
My heart pounds in my ears. I flash a look behind me, then back to her. But her face has changed. Her jaw untightens, and I think I see tears forming in her eyes. She lifts a palm to me. “I’m sorry, I—” She swallows, clears her throat. “I’ve heard rumors, but I didn’t think you were real.” Warmth reaches her face now, softness, her ears tugging down. “I think it’s terrible how they’ve hunted you. How they torture people they think might know where you are. They hung a rancher a few miles from here when he refused to let them search his hay shed. They thought he knew something that he didn’t.” Her shoulders drop, and my heart settles only a little.A little.“Those Theorists come through here every month, they take half of what I make at the hotel, and threaten to burn the town if I don’t pay.” The wrinkles around her eyes make her seem older suddenly, too much heartache over the years wearing her down to the bone. “I won’t hurt you,” she says finally. “Or tell anyone you’re here.” Her eyes falter, and she swallows tightly. “My husband always said that you might save us. That you were the cure.” She nods to herself, drawing in herlower lip. And I think she’s going to ask me if it’s true, ask for some cure I can’t give—like the old man at the house where we took refuge after the storm. But instead she says, “I hope it’s true. I hope that wherever you’re headed, you set things right.”
She wipes at her eyes, taking in a deep breath—like she’s steeling herself, pushing down the pain—then she bends down, picking up the empty bucket from the floor, and slips past me. But from the hall, she pauses, looking back. “You’re safe here. I want you to know that.” A small smile edges across her mouth, kind, genuine, hiding nothing. “Get yourself washed up, and I’ll bring dinner to your room.”
My body is thrumming nervously, and I stay beside the door, listening as her footsteps move down the hall. I tap a finger against the wood—maybe I should still run back to the room, tell Noah we need to leave… but I stay and slow my breathing. Something inside me trusts her, believes her. Not everyone in this world can be bad. Not everyone beyond the valley will hunt me,hurtme.
She’s taking a risk, letting us stay here, but she has reason to hate the Theorists: they steal from her; they kill her neighbors. I want to believe we are safe here, for just tonight.I want to think she will keep us safe. Keep our secret. Because she is a woman who knows loss as much as anyone. And I could see the pain of it in her eyes, the cavern of loss that makes holes so large in people you can’t miss it.
Hiding us here is redemption for her.
It’s something she needs to do: for her husband, for every person she’s known who’s been tormented and murdered by them.
She won’t turn us in.
I release my hand from the door and undress swiftly, slippinginto the bath. Warm water pools in all the shallow places of my body, the relief almost enough to make me cry, and briefly I let my throbbing head rest back against the hard edge of the tub. I could fall asleep; I could close my eyes and forget where I am and how I got here; I could let a daydream fool me into thinking I’m back in the valley and there’s nothing to fear. But instead I wash my hair quickly, then hurry out of the bath.
I don’t want to risk staying in too long, where I can’t hear what’s happening outside, where I’m too far from Noah.
Back in our room, Noah is standing at the window, curtain pulled back, keeping watch. My wet hair is coiled over my shoulder; the clean cotton nightgown that Maybelle left for me is a size too big, hanging from my frame, and when Noah turns, his eyes fall over me. Greengreen green, like he can see right through the thin white fabric, not just to my skin, my constellations, but tome, who hides beneath my flesh. He blinks, and for a second he looks like he’s going to say something but can’t find his voice. He looks almost in pain. Nervous. Lost in a swarm of his thoughts.
Heat pricks at my cheeks, and I tug at the waist of the nightgown.
“You look—” he starts, then changes his mind. Loses the words. His lip tugs at the corner, like he might smile, then forces it down. A fire roars inside me. An itch to be closer to him.Closer, always closer. But finally he clears his throat, snaps his eyes back into place. “She brought food.” He nods to the wood dresser where two plates sit waiting, each filled with sweet-smelling biscuits and seasoned beans and fresh apple slices. And a pitcher of water.
I walk to the dresser, touching one of the apple slices, my mouthwatering. “She knows who I am,” I say before taking a single bite.
Noah’s eyes cut to the door, then back to me. “Let’s go,” he says in a rush, reaching for his coat on the bed.
But I lift a hand to him. “She’s not going to say anything.”
“We can’t be sure. We need to go.”
I drop my hand from the plate and walk toward him, letting my vision settle on the coolness of his eyes. “It’s okay,” I assure him, resting a hand against his chest, feeling the rapid thud of his heart beneath his shirt.Thump, thump,his heartbeat like a wild creature ready to bolt. “She hates the Theorists,” I say quickly. “Hates what they’ve done. And I trust her. She won’t say anything.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to risk it; he wants to escape out into the woods, away from this town. But I don’t pull my hand away, and we’re so close that I could rise on my tiptoes and press my lips to his, kiss away the fear and the doubt, make him understand. I could kiss him and we’d lose ourselves, forget where we are, forget why we’re running. And pretend there’s nothing outside these walls hunting us. “Noah,” I say, and his eyes hook into mine. “Trust me. We can stay here tonight.”
He touches my chin, my jaw, nodding. “Okay.”
It hurts being this close to him, a twisted, impossible feeling in the core of my chest, a gnawing like bone against bone, like time tumbles away from me, summer becoming winter becoming spring again. I could lose myself in this room, alone with him, with his fingertips against my skin.
But my stomach grumbles, desperate for food, and I pull my hand away from his chest. Not allowing myself to slip into his arms. “You can take a bath,” I say softly, sensing he doesn’t want me to be alone. “I’ll be all right.”
He lowers his hand from my face, watching me a moment, time slowed again, before reluctantly leaving the room and making his way down to the waiting bath.
I sit at the edge of the bed and eat so quickly that my stomach aches, then walk to the window, watching the street for approaching horses, for any sign of the men. But the town is quiet, not even a dog barking. It’ll be easy to hear if anyone rides into town; it’ll disturb the very fibers of this sleepy, out-of-the-way settlement. But in that silence is another sound: a ringing in my ears.
It’s always there now, a low vibration rattling the curves of my skull, making my skin shiver and itch.It’s getting worse. But I won’t say anything to Noah—I don’t want him to know how bad it is. I don’t want him to worry. There’s nothing to be done, anyway—but get to the sea before it’s too late.
I lay a palm against the glass, watching as the sky loses its color, dipping into night. But I can still see the fractured edges, the buzzing, and up beyond the pines is the dark patch of sky—swallowing up every point of light.
It’s larger now, the shadow closer than it should be.
Mom’s warning ripples through my thoughts:The sky is unstable. And soon there’ll be only darkness.
Noah appears in the doorway, hair wet, wearing gray linen pants that Maybelle must have given him—that were surely her husband’s. But his chest is bare, still damp from the bath, and my eyes can’t help but trace the lines of his tattoos, the silver ring hanging from a chain around his neck. He is made of nothing but lean, hardened muscle: a boy who fights, who runs, whosurvives. He has trained for this, and it shows in the rigid slope of his shoulders, his stomach like stone.Eyes that meet mine… too deep, too filled with something that almost looks like need.
