Rough hands were on her shoulders, pulling her from the ground. Men dressed in black, like the soldiers outside, but by now Kelsea recognized close guards when she saw them, and she shut her eyes, preparing for death.
“Get her out of here!” the Red Queen shrieked. “Get her out!”
One of them, clearly the captain, pinned Kelsea’s wrists behind her back, and she felt irons cuffing them into place. The irons were too tight; they pinched her skin as he snapped the clasps. But Kelsea still couldn’t stop laughing.
“You lost,” she told the Red Queen, and knew that she would never forget the woman’s face in that moment: the face of an enraged child denied dessert. Kelsea barely felt the guards’ hands tighten on her arms, yanking her out of the tent. The Tearling was safe, her people were safe. The sapphires belonged to her, no one else, and Kelsea roared with laughter, even as they hauled her away.
And at the End
The Crossing
Lily clutched a line of rope on the railing, trying not to fall to the deck. The ship rocked wildly; the water was roiling, stirred by wind and the thunder of explosions on land. Above them, storm clouds were highlighted against the night sky, a swirling purple bruise. Lily had been on ships before, but those had been powerboats, yachts that cut so smoothly through the waves that they barely felt as though they were moving at all. This was different, a terrible funhouse feeling, the ship’s deck literally rocking beneath her feet as she clutched the rope, trying desperately to support Jonathan with her other arm. Jonathan was barely conscious; Tear had removed the bullet and stitched him up in the car, but by the time he was done, the backseat was covered in blood, and Tear’s grim expression had said it all.
Far behind them was the skyline of New York, a smoldering orange wreck of dark buildings whose windows gouted flame into the black night. But Lily and the other people on the ship were not looking at the skyline. Their gazes were fixed on the sea behind them, on the two huge ships that had materialized from nowhere. From the shouted reports on deck, Lily also knew that there were several submarines out there, rapidly closing beneath the surface. They had been all right as they sailed down the Hudson and entered the lower bay, but then a siren had gone off, and now, as they moved out into the Atlantic, Security was closing.
“Five minutes!” William Tear shouted from the prow of the ship. “All we need!”
He is insane, Lily realized. Oddly, it didn’t seem to matter much. They weren’t going to make it, and Lily was sorry for that, sorry that she would never get to see the deep, clean river beneath the bright sun. But these ships were free, and Lily was going to die a free woman, and she would not have been anywhere else at this moment for the wide world, submarines or not.
“Ready!” Tear shouted, and the computer tech near Lily began to chatter into his earpiece in their strange language.
A hollow boom echoed on Lily’s left, followed by distant screams. When she craned her neck to see over the beams that covered the deck, she found that one of Tear’s ships was on fire, its back end flaming, gouts of black smoke billowing up into the night.
“Torpedo!” someone cried. A second explosion echoed, and then the ship wasn’t even half a ship anymore, only a smoldering ruin on the heaving ocean. Everyone on the deck of Lily’s ship had run to the railing, but Lily could not leave Jonathan, so only she saw William Tear turn away, clutching something in his outstretched right hand, all of his attention focused on the eastern horizon.
“We’re not even armed!” a woman cried.
The destroyers were closing now, less than half a mile away. Lily wondered why they hadn’t fired as well, but after a moment’s consideration, she knew: they meant to take the rest of Tear’s ships, to board them. Security loved its prisoners, after all. Lily’s burn wound throbbed, even though her palm had scabbed over with a dark crust, and she knew that whatever happened, she wasn’t going back.
Bright light suddenly engulfed the ship, blinding. Lily threw her hands over her eyes, a low squeal escaping her throat, thinking of the halo device that Tear’s people had used in the Security compound. Terror suddenly overwhelmed her, the terror that it had all been a dream, that she would wake up and find herself back in that room, facing the accountant, the box. But when she peeked through her fingers, she saw that this light wasn’t electric. It was plain old daylight, a soft glow on her arms.
Lily turned toward the light and screamed.
There was a hole in the eastern horizon. Lily had no other way to describe what she saw. The black shawl of night still covered the sky above her head, but as it dipped east, the shawl tore open, its jagged edges surrounding the hole like a broken portrait frame. Inside the frame was day, a pink and orange horizon above the azure water, as though the sun were about to rise. The light bathed everything, and Lily could see all of the other ships around her now, clearly, their flying sails stained orange in the dawn.
Thunder boomed behind them, shaking the deck.
“Get down!” a man cried, and Lily ducked, covering her head. But the whistling shot went right over them, over all of the ships, toward the hole in the horizon. Hatred blazed inside Lily, so strong that if any Security officer had appeared in front of her in that instant, she would have torn his heart out with her bare hands. They were trying to close whatever doorway Tear had opened . . . trying to take the better world.
“Tell them to get through!” Tear shouted from the prow. “We don’t have long!”
Their ship was in the lead, nearing the hole, and now Lily could feel warmth on her arms, the heat of sunlight against her skin. A cacophony of screams rang across the deck, wild screams from the people at the railing, and now Lily was screaming herself, feeling as though her entire body were tethered to that open horizon. As they passed through, she let go of the rope and hoisted Jonathan up, shaking him awake.
“The better world!” she shouted in his ear. “The better world!”
But Jonathan did not open his eyes. All around her, on the deck and on the other ships, Lily could hear them, her people, their cries of jubilation echoing across the open ocean. Behind them, the hole still remained, a dark stain through which nothing was visible against the western horizon. At least fifteen ships had made it through, but now the edges of the hole were collapsing inward, its circumference beginning to shrink. Lily didn’t know if the last ships would make it. Turning back to the east, she found William Tear clutching the railing, his face white as a sheet. For a moment, his entire body seemed to glow pure blue against the rising sun, and then he collapsed to the deck.
Lily turned to tell Jonathan, but Jonathan was dead.
Lily.”
She looked up, squinting in the dim moonlight, and scrambled to her feet.
Tear looked exhausted. Lily hadn’t seen him in two days, not since that night, and she was relieved to see him up and about; the longer he was absent from the deck, the more certain Lily became that he had somehow killed himself performing his miracle, that he, like Jonathan, would not wake up. Lily had asked Dorian about Tear, but Dorian was noncommittal. Lily had tried to make friends with several of the other passengers and found them kind but cautious; no one knew who she was. A younger woman, perhaps Dorian’s age, had patched her wounds, but for the past two days there had been nothing for Lily to do but sit by herself, watch the horizon, and wait for Tear.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he replied, but Lily still had her doubts. He looked like a man who had suffered some sort of wasting illness. “But I need your help. Come with me.”
She followed him toward the stern, trying to tiptoe quietly among the sleeping people who covered the deck. Tear, as always, seemed to make no noise at all, and he led her down the ladder to the deep hold belowdecks. The hold had a strange medieval feel, for only lamps and firelight lit all of its rooms; no electric lights anywhere. A broad, dormitory-like area lined with empty cots took up the bulk of the hold. There were over a hundred people on this ship, but most of them didn�
�t want to spend time inside. They preferred to stay on deck, their eyes scouring the horizon. Tear had prepared for this eventuality; at the far end of the dormitory was a room that contained not only plenty of food and water but about fifty gallons of sunscreen. Lily thought this room was where they were going, but Tear bypassed it for the next, which was understood to be private, for his use only. As they walked in, Lily saw that the room’s walls were lined with bookshelves, each of them filled with hundreds of books. But Lily had no time to marvel at these. In the center of the room, Dorian was standing over a table, staring down at what could only be a body wrapped in a sheet, the shroud sewn together by hasty fingers.
“It’s time, Dori.”
She looked up, and Lily saw, even in the dim glow of firelight, that her eyes were reddened from long crying. She looked a question at Lily.
“He would want her here,” Tear replied. He levered an arm beneath the corpse’s shoulders, hauling it up. “Come on. All together.”
Dorian grasped Jonathan’s waist, leaving Lily to take the legs. Together, they heaved the body off the table, balancing it carefully on their shoulders. Lily could smell the corpse now, a hint of decay that seeped right through the sheet, but she ignored it, thinking of Jonathan, who had thought she was worth saving, who would never see the better world. Her eyes watered, and she wiped at them savagely, stinging her corneas, as they started up the stairs.
On deck, everything was quiet except for the waves lapping gently at the sides of the ship. In the moonlight Lily could just glimpse the other ships on either side of them, not too far off, keeping pace. In the end, only seventeen of them had made it through; three were lost, sunk forever in Hudson Bay. From overheard conversations, Lily knew that not all of the ships were packed with people, like this one. One ship carried livestock: cows, sheep, and goats. Another carried horses. Still another ship, its boards bleached nearly white, was carrying medical supplies and personnel. But all Lily could see now were the sails, little more than faint gleams under the dying moon.
They carried Jonathan to the rear of the ship, a place where few people chose to sleep, because the rigging blocked the view of the eastern horizon. At Tear’s direction, they balanced the body carefully on the railing. Lily’s arms ached, but she gave no sign of it. The burn on her palm had broken open again, oozing pus, but she hid that as well, surreptitiously blotting it on her jeans. She wished she had some clean clothes. She hadn’t showered in days. Other people were still wearing the same outfits as the night they’d launched; what would they do for clothing in the new world? There were so many uncertainties, and the only man who could answer them was Tear . . . but now wasn’t the time. Beyond the helm, the eastern sky was turning pale, but when Lily peeked over the railing at the stern, she could see nothing but darkness.
“Jonathan hated the water,” Dorian remarked hoarsely, and Lily realized that she was crying again. “After what they did to him. He fucking hated it.”
“Not this water,” Tear replied.
Lily said nothing. They had known Jonathan well, both of them, and she had never even learned his last name. She wanted to think of something to say, something important, but when she closed her eyes all she could see was Greg on his knees, Jonathan holding the pistol to his head. That was the greatest kindness anyone had ever done for Lily, but it wasn’t an act she could tell Tear and Dorian about. So she remained silent, though tears had begun to work their way slowly down her cheeks.
“Well, old friend,” Tear finally said, “we’re off to a good land. Let’s hope you’re already there.”
“Amen, South Carolina,” Dorian added, and then, by unspoken consent, they lifted the body over the railing. Lily didn’t help this time, only stood back. There was a muted splash, and then Jonathan was gone forever. Dorian waited another moment, then left without a word, walking quickly toward the stairs.
I killed him, Lily thought.
“It was his choice,” Tear repeated, making Lily wonder if she’d actually spoken out loud. She looked around, but they were still alone at the stern.
“What happened? Where did we go?”
“Nowhere, Lily. We crossed, that’s all. That’s how I’ve always thought of it.”
“Is it—” Lily forced herself to bring out the word. “Is it magic?”
“Magic,” Tear repeated. “I never thought of it that way; to me it seems the most natural thing in the world. But maybe magic is a good word.”
He reached into his pocket and came up with something clenched in his fist. “Have a look.”
Lily held out her uninjured hand and felt him drop something cold and hard into her palm. She held it up, squinting, trying to make it out. The sky had lightened now, in the sudden way it did just before dawn, but it still took Lily a few moments to identify the object.
“Aquamarine?”
“Sapphire,” Tear replied. “My family tree is documented all the way back to Cromwell, but that jewel has been with us since the Dark Ages. Maybe even further back than that.”
Lily held the sapphire to the light, trying to see through it, but the sun hadn’t appeared yet, and it was only a dark rectangle against the pale sky. “How do you know?”
“It told me.”
Lily snorted, but Tear hadn’t cracked so much as a smile. She couldn’t tell whether he was joking, so she handed the sapphire back and leaned over the railing, staring down at the dim lines of white left in the ship’s wake.
“Are you healing, Lily?”
That was a difficult question to answer. During the day things were fine, because the sky was wide open and Lily could look from horizon to horizon. But she didn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time before jerking awake, certain that she would see the accountant standing in front of her . . . or worse, Greg. They were out of reach of all of that now, the ship’s prow cutting smoothly toward the better world, but Lily felt a sudden, terrible foreboding. All of the people around her, sleeping on the deck . . . surely they brought their own stories, their own violence. How could anyone build a better world, a perfect world, if people brought along their own nightmares of the past?
“It won’t be perfect,” Tear answered, staring moodily over the railing. “I knew that, almost as soon as I knew I would try to do it. The world will be better, but not easy. In fact, in the early going, it’s going to be very difficult.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at what we’ve left behind, Lily. We have no electricity, no technology. While I was asleep, Dori had the computer techs dump all of their equipment overboard, along with the guns. It has to be that way; technology is convenient, but we’ve long since passed the point where convenience outweighed danger. Tools of surveillance, of control . . . I knew, long ago, that these would have to be the first things to go. But think of the other things we won’t have! Fuel. Heat. Textiles. I’ve brought drugs and antibiotics, on the white ship over there”—he gestured northward—“but they’ll go bad long before the decade is out. We’ll have none of these things, unless we figure out how to make them ourselves, with whatever we find.”
Lily struggled to remain silent. She worshipped this man, she realized now, and it was a difficult thing, to hear him tear himself to pieces. But she suspected that he could not voice these doubts to anyone else, certainly not to all of the loyal people who had followed him for years.
“There will be animals in the new world, for meat, but we’re all going to have to learn to kill them without guns or machinery, to cook from scratch over an open fire. We’ll have to grow food. We’ll have to learn to build our own houses, make our own clothing. I have several people who know the process, from sheep to wool to weaving, but the rest we’ll have to learn. There was no way to do this without throwing nearly everything away, and if we want to keep anything, we’re going to have to learn to do it all over again.”
“You think we can’t?”
“We can, certainly. The question is whether we will. It takes effort to build, Lily. It ta
kes effort to put the community’s needs before your own. But in the coming period, everyone will have to do that, or we’re doomed to fail.”
“Socialism has never succeeded anywhere.”
“So we keep on trying. These are civic-minded people. They will raise civic-minded children. I chose them as such.”
“Me as well?”
Tear smiled. “You as well.”
“How do you know I’m civic-minded?” Truthfully, even Lily didn’t know if she was; there had been so little opportunity to find out. Her entire life with Greg played out inside her memory, an ugly feedback loop.
“I told you, Lily: I’ve known you all my life.” Tear held up the sapphire, displaying it on his palm. “I saw you here, long before I ever knew who you were.”
“Why?”
Tear stared at her for a moment, his gaze contemplative. “Are you healing?”
“Yes. My shoulder barely even hurts, except when I try to sleep. My hand’s being a pain, but I can bandage it again once there’s enough light.”
“You don’t fool me, Lily. Your injuries aren’t physical. You’re not healing yet, but you will.”
Lily felt her cheeks flush, wondering if he could look straight inside her and see the nightmares, Greg constantly lurking. It seemed likely that Greg would always be there, dug into some part of Lily that refused to let the past go.
“It might be that way for a long time,” Tear told her. “But I promise you, you will heal.”
“How do you know?”
Tear closed his fingers around the sapphire for a moment, staring off into some place that Lily couldn’t possibly begin to imagine. Then he held it out to her.
“Have a look.”
Feeling foolish, Lily lifted the jewel to the sky again, squinting. For a moment she saw nothing, but then the sapphire began to glow from within, a tiny blue flame against the lightening sky.
The Invasion of the Tearling Page 48