June elbows her way in next to me, and for a moment, I think her mouth will open, that these foreign words will appear on her tongue, but instead, she waves him away and pulls me on through the crowd. A display of cups and plates catches my eye, beautiful calligraphy sweeping across the rims in blue that turns my stomach.
Long life. Prosperity.
Not broken. Not yet left forgotten in the mud.
A grandmother toting twin baby boys squeezes past me, one of the boys attempting to grab for my unevenly shorn hair. She smiles an apology before walking to a table loaded with treats I never could have imagined. The people clustered around the table argue with the man behind it as if there is something contrary about his bread. But it’s a good-natured sort of argument. As if these people grew up bantering and know what the other is going to say before the words come out.
The idea of family . . . of fitting into a place like this . . . feels warm inside my chest.
That is, until a high-pitched siren suddenly takes the air, shattering the hubbub like glass shards to an eye.
The people around us look up to the sky, not the panicked floundering of a crowd about to stampede, but with quiet questions, anxious hands reaching out to touch their brothers and sisters, children, as if to make sure they’re still there. The grandmother hauling her twin boys holds them close, not bothering to pull the boys’ hands away from the bread forgotten on the table, the seller equally lost in the clouds above us. June links her arm through mine and pulls me close to her side, the two of us clutching each other as we search the sky. Perhaps there is no home without bombs, without danger lurking just out of sight.
The man with the fish points toward the sea with his curved fish-gutting knife, the hulking form of the island crouching just off the sandy shore. There’s some kind of movement up at the tops of the three peaks stabbing up from its stony mass, like winking jewels in a crown.
And then the scream of heli propellers.
June ducks even before the sound finishes poisoning the air, dragging me toward one of the buildings. But the people don’t seem to be worried so much as confused, following the heli’s progress toward them.
“Friendly!” I shout to June, grabbing hold of her shoulders. “It’s friendly, I think.”
She puts a finger to her mouth with a hiss, looking from left to right to see if my City-tinged words will bring trouble faster than a heli ever could. The crowds seem to be on the move, a mother hoisting up her daughter to sit on her shoulders, patting her feet fondly even as her eyebrows pinch at the heli’s steady progress toward us.
I point back the way we came, the safest way to ask that we go back. We know where the island is. That’s what we came for.
June shakes her head, eyes glued to the heli. Now that it’s closer, I can see its scored metal skin, the gutter of laboring gears making me wonder at its vintage. June cranes her neck to watch until the buildings block its final resting place on the other side of the town. Grabbing my arm, she moves with the crowd, toward the ancient mechanical beast.
The heli landed in a field, a scattering of animals prancing away from the air-churning propellers even as they power down. A woman and two men climb down from the heli’s cockpit, the machine a much smaller creature than the one waiting with Tai-ge, Xuan, and Howl locked away inside. Beyond the heli, I see my first clear view of the bridge, probably half a mile farther down the beach, a stone statue of a woman standing with her hands raised on the other side.
The woman in front of us raises her hands too, but it’s to quiet the crowd. Her hair is cut to a blunt line just below her chin, her hooded eyes and olive skin looking as if she could belong to the City.
Not just the City. She looks like me. Even with the unsettled shifting and the cry of a frightened child echoing out over our heads, excitement fills me, threatening to burst out. We’re here. I can feel it in my bones. We’re going to find my family here. My mother’s cure.
These people aren’t afraid. Are they strong enough to fight off whatever it is Dr. Yang and the Chairman bring to their doors?
The island’s sharp peaks grin down at me, its secrets locked behind bars of stone. Xuan says it doesn’t matter how many helis the Chairman sends; none will get in.
When the woman speaks, her voice is lower, huskier than I imagined it would be, sewn through with urgency. She points to the clouds above us, and then to the south. There’s a reaction from the people around us, looking to one another and then to the island across the thin stretch of sea.
June tenses next to me.
The woman speaks again, and the people nod along, the current of unease rippling to form waves and then a storm. She raises her hands, entreating and calm, finally turning to point to the island herself. When the speech comes to an end, I’m unprepared. She’s talking, and then all of a sudden she’s not anymore, heading off the back of the platform, the clusters of people around me beginning to shuffle toward the edge of the open space.
June grabs my arm and pulls us back the way we came, pushing us to go faster and faster until we’re past the market street, past the house where we saw the little boy, sprinting back toward the skeleton village and its broken china. The light has begun to fade to roses and gold, the air turning colder.
“You understood what she said!” The words come out in a gasp as we duck under the spiked fence, branches reaching out to slap at my face and arms. “What did she say? Was it about Dr. Yang and the invasion? She pointed south, toward the staging area we saw on the map.”
“Speakers,” she calls over her shoulder.
“Speakers?” I swear as a branch catches me across the collarbone, its sharp whip stinging. “What does that mean?”
“Speakers will protect them from the soldiers coming. On the island.” June hops over a fallen log and trundles to the side to avoid a hole into the ground.
“Protect them how?” Are speakers like Reds? With generals and guns and bombs? “Can you speak back? You’ll be able to tell them who we are and . . .”
A wind flushes past us, stealing the words from my mouth and setting the wide leaves on their hunched branches into an agitated fluster. June freezes, putting a hand out for me to stop as she swallows down a breath of thick air, her nose twitching. She puts a hand over her mouth, fingers clamping down.
“June?” I can hardly bring myself to whisper as every inch of her goes still, as if standing quietly enough will convince the grass and vines to slither up her legs and hide her.
“Run.” It’s a whisper that bites. She takes off into the trees, not quite the way we came. “Run!”
My heart batters at my rib cage in the split second it takes for me to launch after her, my insteps screaming as they pound against the uneven ground. Hands up to protect my face, vines and long grass tear at my feet, each trying to fell me as some kind of prey. Suddenly, June’s bright head disappears in front of me, going down hard. I slide to a stop, finding her on the ground, a long skid in the mud where her foot caught on a rock.
Her chest heaves up and down, her eyes wide as she scrambles up, hardly able to stand upright, as if she can’t decide whether to run or to hide. She grabs my arm, fingers painting bloodless white stripes across my skin.
One breath. Two. My lungs are too full of salt to inflate. I clench my eyes tight, waiting for teeth or claws, gunshots or knives to break the awful silence.
June raises her head, her vertebrae straightening one at a time as she listens to the forest. “They’re awake,” she whispers.
“Who?” I ask, my chest squeezing down until there’s no room left for bones or flesh or air or anything but fear.
As if in answer, a long howl cuts through the air.
CHAPTER 34
RUNNING THE REST OF THE way back to the heli is like dashing along a cliff’s edge in the dark—not so much wondering if you’ll fall, but when. When my feet find the metal ladder, the heli’s bulbous frame reaching out to welcome me and June back into safety, my insides still won’t let go.
Twisted down to nothing.
Tai-ge looks up from the controls, his fingers fiddling with the buttons and knobs as if he’s done nothing but wait until we returned. Howl stands in one quick movement from where he’s stationed by the storage closet door, one moment sitting, the next upright as if there wasn’t anything that had to come in between. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” His eyes rake June over, then turn to me, looking for blood.
“We’re okay,” I gasp, pulling the hatch shut against the twilight leaking up into the heli as June crouches near her pack. “We found a settlement. A big one.”
“A settlement?” Tai-ge stands, and his voice is a degree or two colder than it was before. Red creeps into my cheeks as I remember him standing so close I couldn’t breathe, his hands on me until I moved out of reach. I’m not sure now if he’s angry at all of us or just annoyed at me. “There are people within walking distance? Did they see you? Xuan said—”
“I think Dr. Yang’s helis are landing early.” I cut him off and immediately regret it. Xuan said what? And when? Did Tai-ge go into Xuan’s room after promising not to?
“They’re landing now? Yuan’s eyes.” Howl smooths a hand over his mouth, fingers rough against his scruffy chin. “If they lock the island down because they expect an attack, we’ll be stuck on the shore with no one to talk to but Reds as they march in.” Howl pulls Tai-ge’s pack down and checks inside before grabbing mine. “Is that why you ran back? Because we have to try to get to the island now?”
“We can’t go anywhere. The gores are out.” I swallow the words down when Tai-ge looks up to the ceiling, his mouth quirked to the side.
Howl looks up from my pack, his nose wrinkled and his hands full of one of my undershirts. “When is the last time you washed these?”
“Get your hands out of my stuff.” I try not to think about the dried-sweat crinkle of the clothes I’m wearing now. It’s difficult to find the willpower to peel out of so many layers when they’re the only thing between you and the wintry sun.
“No judgment. I was just asking.” He zips my pack closed and gives it a pat. “Just wanted to make sure we were ready to run. And I remember you being addicted to soap, so I’m just a little surprised—”
“I don’t like them that way! And you’ve got no room to judge. I’ve met your friends with their muddy hair and dirty bedsheets. . . .” I break off when he starts to smile, a response ready on his tongue. This is not the time.
I clear my throat. “You’re right about needing to move as soon as we can, though. Yes, we could get stuck out here with no way in if they close all the doors against Dr. Yang, but if they’re moving everyone from the settlements in at once, then maybe we can sneak in with them.”
“That does sound promising.” Tai-ge stands, walks over to the boxes of supplies, and pulls out a stack of clean bowls. “Shall we bring Xuan out, see what kind of pitfalls we’ll be up against?”
Bring him out. Like a beaten dog from its cage. Tai-ge won’t meet my eyes, won’t look at Howl, either. June is still beside me, focusing on Howl at the suggestion that Xuan should mingle out here. Howl gives her a small nod, sliding between Tai-ge and Xuan’s door as if he’s an extra level of separation.
“Let’s eat. I’ll talk to Xuan once we’re done. Give June some space.” I watch as Tai-ge pulls out a container of leftover rice from his pack, then starts digging through the picked-over supplies, coming up with a package of dried meat and ration crackers. His jaw is set as he walks back toward me, balancing the bowls in the cradle of his arms. “Are the waterskins still packed? I drank the one up on the console.”
“We filled the ones in the packs with snowmelt,” Howl volunteers, hands going to my pack again as if he means to pull mine out, but he puts them up when I glare in his direction. “Still needs decontaminating, though.”
“Because mine was next to my dirty shirts?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Because we didn’t purify it before, and I don’t feel like dying,” he assures me.
June extracts a bundle of water purifiers from her rucksack, flipping the packets across her fingers.
“I understand that something makes June uncomfortable about Xuan, but do we really have time to make everyone comfortable?” Tai-ge sets the bowls down next to me. “If there’s a window where we will be able to get in—”
“Tai-ge, it isn’t up to you.” I go up on my knees as he walks back toward the door, June shrinking down in her spot, hands balling into fists around the water purifiers.
“If we have to leave as soon as the gores stop hunting, we’re going to need everything planned and put together, and we need him. . . .” Tai-ge blinks when Howl doesn’t move away from the door. “At the very least, he has to eat. I need to talk to him. He has to help me . . .” Tai-ge trails off, every word he chooses seeming to displease him further.
“You specifically need to talk to him?” I suck in my cheeks, Howl’s ears wide open from his spot by the door. “Tai-ge, do you know more about Port North than we do?”
Tai-ge licks his lips. “If he has to be our interpreter—”
“We might not need him,” I break in. “June can—”
Tai-ge raises his voice, talking over me. “If we need him to interpret for us, treating him this way isn’t going to make things go well for us.” He turns away from the door to look at me. “I told you, Sev. He just wants to escape, the same as we do.”
“Maybe,” I ask quietly, sliding closer to June so our shoulders touch. She’s a corpse beside me, waiting. “But are you really willing to risk all of our lives on bullheadedly assuming you understand the situation better than the rest of us?”
Tai-ge’s face goes from hard to granite.
“No one followed you out of Dazhai and you knew it, Tai-ge,” Howl’s voice is quiet. “I’ve seen you Outside enough to know what kind of training you’ve had, and you didn’t use it on your way to the heli. Neither of you stopped, circled back, never even looked over your shoulders, which makes me think you knew no one was going to follow you. And, if you were worried about Xuan scaring Sev—which”—he glances at me—“is sort of ridiculous, because Sev isn’t the type to go off screaming into the woods at the first hint of a threat—you could have left Xuan behind a tree somewhere and explained things without taking him all the way to the heli. Most of a day’s hike. You took him straight to the heli, then stayed there instead of coming for us.”
“Us? You weren’t supposed to make it out of the heli,” Tai-ge retorts. I’ve only seen Tai-ge lose his temper once, back when I first found him before the invasion. He was cold and quiet, a firecracker only seconds from bursting. This seems as if the fuse has already run out, the deafening pop just hasn’t hit our ears yet. He turns to me. “Weren’t we supposed to get rid of him?” He almost yells it. “The traitor . . . Outsider . . . whatever he is who almost killed you? He’s the reason you have Xuan all locked up—”
“If I hadn’t come, both of you would still be in that camp.” Howl glances at me. “At least Sev would be.”
“Okay, stop.” I stand up, moving between the two of them. “Arguing isn’t going to help anything. Tai-ge didn’t have the map key, Howl, so it’s not like he and Xuan could have left without us—”
“How can I stop?” Tai-ge keeps talking over me. He clasps his hands and sits when I stare at him, his expression sparking as if he didn’t just shout me down when I was defending him. “If you believe any of Howl’s accusations against me, then what does that make me, Sevvy?”
“Stupid?” Howl says it under his breath, but it’s not a real attempt to hide what he’s saying. “At best.”
Inside the storage compartment, Xuan starts to laugh.
Tai-ge looks down. “This isn’t right, Sevvy. And don’t tell me Xuan could be communicating with Dazhai or Dr. Yang or the Seph-cursed Chairman, because I know you searched him.” When he finally meets my gaze, his are eyes hard. “You said you trust me. Is that the truth?”
“Tai-ge . . .” His
name feels like a rock lodged in my throat.
“I don’t see why basic decency—feeding Xuan, not locking him up—is wrong when he’s the reason we’ve gotten this far. . . .” He pushes himself up from the floor, grabbing two of the bowls. “But whatever being Outside for so long did to you, Sevvy, I’m not going to be a part of it.” He walks over to the door, towering over Howl. “I’m going to go in and eat with him, if that’s all right. Maybe you all should get this over with and just shut the door after me.”
Howl holds his spot in front of the door, not even bothering to sit up straight, his face written over with a cocky sort of disbelief as he looks up at Tai-ge. The air is so charged it’s a wonder it hasn’t yet ignited.
“Open the door.” June whispers it, the electricity dancing between Howl and Tai-ge dimming to nothing when they turn toward her dead voice. “We need them. I—I don’t speak.”
I close my eyes, hating the ghosts in her tone. “You don’t have to speak, June.”
“I don’t speak like Port North. Not anymore. When we were in the village . . .” June shrinks down, her shoulders folded clear up to her cheeks. “Xuan . . .” Her mouth forms his name like a nail, the point digging into the roof of her mouth. “We need him. And Tai-ge to fly us back.”
Every word sounds like loss, cutting into my chest. My arm finds her shoulders and she doesn’t move for a moment, her spine supporting all her own weight. But then she gives, just a fraction, letting me hold her.
Tai-ge gestures for Howl to move. He does, though it takes longer than it probably should, and he doesn’t move far, forcing Tai-ge to brush past him. When Tai-ge opens the door, Xuan’s waiting just on the other side, his chin propped up on his bound hands, his eyes a fraction too wide. He grins at us, flipping his awful hair out of his eyes. “What did I do in my last life to deserve such wonderful entertainment?”
CHAPTER 35
THE HELI IS A TOOTHFUL sort of quiet. Staring down into my metal bowl, grains of rice like maggots over the bits of cold potato, I wait for the first of us to bite.
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