I blink my eyes away, air caught in my throat—not allowing myself to feel the pulsing ache in my lowest ribs—and I move away from the window, not telling him about the shadow. About any of it.
He walks to the dresser, eats one of the biscuits, then checks the window—neither of us able to feel completely safe. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says, an edge to his voice, like he doesn’t want to make me uncomfortable—sharing a soft bed in this room all alone. He removes a pillow from the bed, then finds an extra blanket in the dresser, making a place for himself on the hard floor. I want to tell him no, that he can sleep beside me, but I feel strange saying it, awkward somehow, so I climb into the bed alone—beneath white sheets that smell of mint, burying my head in the pillow, toes curling against the clean fabric. For a moment, I try to imagine I’m back in the valley, warm in my bed, that Mom is still alive and nothing has changed.
Noah blows out the single candle on the bedside table, and I slide deeper into the blankets, but it feels odd, unnatural, after so many nights sleeping outside against the hard ground, with the wind always close, and Noah beside me.
The hotel walls settle around us, a quiet that feels too thin.
“Tell me one of your stories,” he says from his makeshift bed on the floor, voice like winter snow, like a night sky. “About the first Astronomer.”
Back at the lake, I told him I saw stories in the stars. But when he asked what they were, I only gave him the vaguest of answers. Afraid to say too much. Now, though, I want to give him somethingmore—a part of me. Of who I am. “The first Astronomer,” I begin, “was the one who charted the night sky, and gave names to the constellations that didn’t yet have them.”
Even though it feels odd to say the story aloud—to share something that only existed between Mom and me—the words are effortless, streaming from my lips as easy as an exhale.
“What happened to her?” Noah asks in the beat of silence.
“She died in the valley long ago.”
“Alone?”
I imagine the tattoos that lined her skin, a woman who had marks just like mine—except she branded the ink into her own flesh, made a map of herself. “She wasn’t always alone,” I say, my voice a whisper in the quiet room. “She fell in love once.” The word feels like electricity on my tongue:love.
I wait for Noah to say something, but he only listens, like I’m telling him a bedtime story—except these stories are true.
“She met a man who loved her as much as she loved him. But they couldn’t be together. So he left her, and she spent her life in the valley alone.”
“Why?”
I roll onto my side, facing the edge of the bed, where I can just barely see Noah on the floor. “It was a sacrifice,” I tell him. “They did it for those of us who would come later.”
Noah’s expression pinches flat, like he doesn’t fully understand. “It’s a terrible ending to their story. Never seeing each other again.”
“It’s only a small part of a bigger story—the Astronomer’s story—and now it continues with me. And l have to see it to the end.”
There is an odd heaviness to his exhale—like he knows we’remarching toward something, the unknown, unwritten part of our story. “How will it end?” he asks, voice so deep it reminds me of the slow-moving river in autumn.
I let one side of my mouth pull down. “We won’t know until we get to the sea.”
The air feels still, a motionless quiet, thoughts stirring through both our minds. Beating hearts and sorrow and courage all churned up inside us.
“Who was he?” Noah asks after a long silence. “The man she fell in love with?”
Particles of light scatter across my eyes, and I take a deep breath, pushing them away. August never had a chance to tell Noah all the old stories—maybe he was afraid to tell him everything, after what happened with Holt. Maybe he wanted to be sure he could trust Noah before he gave up all the secrets, just in case Noah returned to his father. Just in case Noah betrayed him. Or maybe he didn’t want to burden him with the truth. The only thing that truly mattered was knowing the way to the sea. Better not to know the rest, be weighted by the truth of it all.
But Noah is still here.With me. And I want to give him this one small thing.
“The first Astronomer fell in love with the first Architect,” I say, flashing my eyes to Noah, his dark hair longer than it was when I first met him, grown out, his eyes like drops of morning dew. I could easily drown and never come back up. “They were together in the beginning,” I tell him, giving him the truth. I slide my hand under my head, propping myself up. “She studied the sky while he built things, homes and towns and settlements.” I think of how simpletheir love was in the beginning. When they had nothing to fear. It was a love without risk or threat of death.
Noah tilts his chin, looking up at me. And I think of the parallels linking my life with the first Astronomer. She and I both stared into the eyes of a boy who would protect us, who would know the way to the sea, who uprooted us from everything we thought we knew. Who made us feel alive, hearts beating like wings, stomach whirling each time their fingers grazed our skin.
It feels as if the past has bound me to this moment. Brought me here. To Noah.
I reach out my arm toward the edge of the bed, wishing I could touch him, wishing I could breathe him into my lungs and know for sure that no matter what happens, no matter what we find at the end of all this, I won’t lose him. But I know it’s a stupid thought.It’s a lie. So I sit up from the bed, pulling the quilt around me, then slide my feet to the cold wood floor.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, pushing up to his forearms, bare chest exposed.
“I can’t sleep on my own,” I say. “In that bed.” I crave the hard ground now, the thump of Noah’s heartbeat in my ears, the warmth from his body, the closeness of him beside me. His skin against mine. We’ve spent so many nights lying together in the cold—now it feels like the only way I could ever sleep.
I sink onto the floor and curl myself into the curve of his chest, skin and cotton sheets and breath in deep, weary lungs. He slides his arms carefully around me, along my torso, and I close my eyes, listening to the familiar rhythm of his breathing.I need to make this last. Hold on to this singular moment before it’s gone. “Back at thewater tower,” I say, a memory skipping through me, “when I said my name, you flinched. Like you knew it.”
