“I’m sure you have been following news of the recent disappearances and doing all you can to keep 56 safe,” I continue.
I know full well he couldn’t have even heard of them until Willoughby ordered the additional security. But he straightens slightly and puffs out his chest. “Yes, of course.”
“Very good. I have been sent to get your reassurance that you will inform the townspeople of the danger and urge them to use every means necessary to keep their children safe. I also want a guarantee that you will make good use of the extra Greencoats you have been lent. My superiors don’t want to hear of one, not even one kidnapping in 56. Am I clear?”
His spine becomes even more rigid. “Perfectly clear.”
“Excellent. Because the governor is quite out of sorts with those who have utilized lax security and allowed this to take on even a hint of the Provocation. I wouldn’t want to see 56 fall out of favor.”
This leeches some of the color from his face. “No, of course not.”
“Very well. That is all.” I smile and rise and thrust out a hand. “Thank you, councilman. I have every confidence in your cooperation.”
We leave the couple in a shocked huddle on their front porch.
“That was fun.” I giggle as the brick house passes out of sight behind us. “Thank you for playing along.”
“No problem.” He throws me a grin. “That performance back there was worth a mile and a half walk.”
“Definitely.”
But the Sweenys weren’t my only reason for the waterfront drop-off. I want Ethan to see the village where I grew up. As we pass through on our way to Opal’s house, I point out the empty slips where the trawlers will tie up in the afternoon, the dock where ocean ships deliver our news and our few luxuries, the school where Ollie, Tillman, and Hoke are certainly in class, and the cannery. He doesn’t react with the shock and awe I displayed in Epson City, but I can tell by the way he studies our surroundings that my humble village has made an equally profound impression on him.
“That’s it,” I say as the ocean vista succumbs to the curtain of the woods. “That was 56.”
It’s slightly unsettling, actually, knowing he’s viewing it all through the lens of privilege. But he doesn’t show the slightest hint of disdain. “I’m trying to imagine it here in winter,” he says. “I think I can see where you get your tenacity.”
“Shall we pick up the pace and see what Opal’s having for lunch?”
“Lead on.”
We cover the mile and a half at an easy jog. How many times have I done this same thing with Will? More than I can count. If I close my eyes, I am right back to last spring, to the intense days of training. Our steps sound identical. So does the cadence of our breath. But the aroma differs. The air still holds the sharp odor of brine, but instead of flowers and newly awakened greenery, I smell the crisp bite of dried grass and decaying leaves. Autumn has claimed my northern settlement even more fully than it has the mountain glades.
I don’t look at the Ransoms’ house as we pass, but my heart knows it is there. I lead Ethan directly up the path to Opal’s door. We had no way to tell her we were coming, so we take a moment to catch our breath on the bottom porch step before we knock.
“So this is where you grew up?” Ethan asks.
I see it through his eyes: the sandy, weedy yard, the scrub brush encroaching a little more every year, the tumbledown shed, the spent garden, the weathered cabin. It’s a hovel compared to some of the places I’ve seen, but every square foot of it is lavishly covered in love.
I smile. “Yeah. This is home.”
“I’m very curious to meet Opal.”
“You’ll love her.” I rise and give him a hand up. “Let’s go find her.”
We climb the porch—I point out the rotten step so Ethan doesn’t fall through—and knock, leaving our packs against the wall. “Opal?” I call, cracking the door open. “Are you home?”
We meet her in the kitchen. She gasps, then her face crinkles in delight. “Oh, my girl! What are you doing here?”
The hug she wraps me in feels like heaven. I hold her close, inhaling the fragrance of dried lavender. How I’ve missed her. “I’m here on assignment, but I can’t really talk about it.”
“Then don’t say a word. And who is this?” she asks when she releases me.
“Opal, this is my partner, Captain Ethan Alston. Ethan, my mother, Opal Wildon.”
I know she notices the way I’ve dropped the word foster by the slight catch in her stride as she moves forward to give Ethan a hug, totally disregarding the hand he holds out. “It’s so nice to meet you, captain.”
“Ethan, please.”
I’m impressed with how easily he moves from Military officer to gracious guest. I give him a grateful smile.
My stomach has been rumbling all the way from town, and I’m sure Ethan’s hungry too, but I don’t want to use up the stock of food Opal and the children have stored away for winter. Acorns, however, are plentiful. “You wouldn’t mind helping me whip up a batch of acorn pancakes, would you, Opal?” I say. “I haven’t had good home-cooked food for months.”
Opal can see right through me. “Nonsense. I’ve been able to purchase plenty with the money you send home. Let me fry you up a pair of ham steaks.”
I’ve forgotten about my salary. Being home, where we’ve scrimped and scavenged for years, has driven it from my thoughts. “Actually, I really do have a hankering for acorn cakes and maple syrup,” I say sheepishly.
“We’ll cook them both.”
Ethan sits at the table and nurses a cup of peppermint tea while Opal and I prepare the meal. We do our best to include him in our conversation, but I can tell he feels out of the loop each time Opal catches me up on this neighbor or that schoolmate. “Ethan,” I finally tell him, “if you’d like to go outside and walk around, we won’t be offended. I’ll call you when the food is ready.”
He rises with a careful smile that makes Opal laugh. “Poor boy, we’ve bored you to tears. I might not have a grand house, but if you walk east through the bayberries, you can’t beat my view.”
Ethan gives her an easy salute and disappears out the door, leaving his tea on the table.
“I like him,” Opal tells me. “He seems like a real good sort.”
“Ethan’s the best sort, Opal.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Better than Will Ransom?”
My smile fades a little at the corners. “No one’s better than Will. But Ethan’s close.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ve turned our special day blue.”
“No, you haven’t,” I say. But my eyes fill with the emotion I’ve held back since landing. “I miss him, Opal. Sometimes I can hardly bear the thought of all the years standing between us.”
Her arm slides around my waist. “You’ll make it because you have to. You’re strong, child.”
But sometimes I just don’t want to be. “Have you heard any news of him?”
“Elise told me he graduated from basic training with honors.”
It reminds me how very alike Ethan and Will are. Yet, I can hardly imagine gentle Will being able to snap out commands and demand respect the way Ethan does.
“If you want to slip him any messages,” Opal adds, “jot them down and I’ll run them over to Elise later today.”
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you, Opal.” Then I go to the desk drawer containing her stationary and write down a brief note. Mostly that I’m doing well, I’ve finally passed the Military Five, and I think of him often. I’m not good at writing on the spot like this, but he’ll be able to read my heart. He always does. When I finish, I fold the note and lay it on Opal’s bed.
“You’d best go fetch your other young man,” Opal says when I return. “Lunch is ready.”
I find Ethan sitting high on one of the boulders at the shore. I shade my hands and squint up at him. “How did you get up there?”
“My super powers.”
>
“Ah, I see. It’s time to eat.”
“Aren’t you coming up?”
“I don’t have any super powers.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” He reaches down a hand. “Come on up.”
I suppose the pancakes can wait a minute or two. I reach up and our hands lock around each other’s wrists. With his upward momentum, I climb the rock with ease. From this height, I can see over the curve of the shoreline all the way to the lighthouse ruins on the cove’s far promontory. “The view improves up here, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He smiles at me like I’ve just let him in on some obvious secret. “Haven’t you ever been up here before?”
“I told you, I don’t have super powers.”
He laughs. “Oh, right.”
The sea is as calm as I’ve ever seen it. I think I can spot a trawler far in the distance and point it out for Ethan.
“The ocean’s beautiful,” he says, squinting at the horizon. “I imagine you have a particular fondness for it, living this close. Do you miss it, living in the mountains?”
“Just the sound of the waves crashing below my window at night,” I admit. “But I’ve never loved it the way Will does.”
“Will?”
I haven’t mentioned Will to him before, and I didn’t mean to now. I suppose he’s still lingering in my thoughts. I keep my eyes fixed on the ocean as I answer. “Will Ransom. My next-door neighbor. He’ll sit out here for hours.”
Ethan peers at me more closely. “I see. And are we likely to run into Will out here today?”
“No. Will’s gone.”
I can feel the question in his continuing stare, but that’s all I’m willing to share. I turn a beaming smile on him. “Shall we go get some lunch?”
The ground looks a thousand feet below me as I lie on my belly and ease my legs over the side of the boulder. I drop the last five feet and plop onto my rear. Ethan makes a more graceful dismount. As we walk back to the cabin, he admits, “I’ve never had acorn pancakes before.”
I didn’t even consider Ethan’s upbringing when I made my request. Of course they’ll be unfamiliar to him. “They’re better than wheat. More substance to the flour.” But when we sit down to eat, I choke back my laughter as he chews and chews and chews, politely trying to swallow. When Opal rises to refill our water, I take pity on him and surreptitiously swap out the rest of my ham steak for the remainder of his pancakes.
“Thank you!” he mouths.
The hour with Opal provides a healing balm for my spirit. When the dishes are washed and it’s time for me and Ethan to leave, she asks, “You’ll be back for dinner, won’t you? The kids would hate to have missed you. Especially Hoke.”
Hoke. I’ve tried to squeeze him from my thoughts as I have crowded out Will, with about as much success. I need a clear head to face whatever may be waiting for us at the portal, and that leaves no room for worrying about my baby brother. But now that Opal’s brought him up, I have to ask. “How’s he doing?”
“He misses you. But he loves school. He’s made a few friends among the town kids.”
I smile. Leave it to Hoke to bring town and fringe together. “I’ll try to get back tonight, Opal, but I can’t make any promises.”
“I understand. Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
I hug her, and Ethan thanks her for the meal, then we are back out on the road following the dirt two-track, our packs on our backs. I lead Ethan through the hardwoods. I last came this way with Will, when he brought me to the new berry patch the night we gave up studying and watched the twilight descend from the ridge. This time, however, I don’t get to go around the cemetery. I walk right into the middle of it.
I feel the portal long before I see it, like a buzzing within my own brain, far stronger than it’s ever called to me before. I walk around a gravestone, push aside a clump of underbrush, and there it is.
When I discovered the glowing disk years before, it was only the size of a dinner plate hanging at eye level. Enough to discourage my presence, but a danger only to errant birds that might unwittingly pass through it. As I suspected, the circumference now matches the one that claimed Jud, powered by the radiation passing through it.
“Can you see it?” I ask.
“I don’t see anything but trees.”
I point. “It’s just there. A flat circle hanging in midair, glowing faintly blue.”
“I remember what it looks like from your memory, but it’s not there.”
“It’s there all right.” I grab the end of a good-sized fallen branch and walk right up to it. The closer I get, the more clearly I can envision the body parts flying out at me. I stop right in front of it and lay the branch on the ground. “Don’t cross this line or you’ll end up like Jud.”
I retreat immediately. That circle of light is the mouth of a lion.
“Suit up, Jack. We need to find out exactly what it is. Where it leads.”
We unzip our packs and pull out snug-fitting decontamination suits complete with filtration systems and plastic bubble visors. The atmosphere in Brunay, if that is indeed where we are going, has never been tested, and Willoughby insisted. The suits are a mottled gray material, hard to see in both light and shadow, but I feel like my head is encased in a tight stocking.
“All right, where is it?” my partner asks when we’re dressed, his voice only slightly muffled.
I take a deep breath, fighting down my sudden nausea. Grasping his hand, I insert both of our arms. They promptly disappear to our elbows.
Ethan knows to expect it, but he can’t mask his amazement. “Unbelievable.”
I pull us free. “We don’t know what’s on the other side or what might come out at us.”
But he steps closer, holding up the palm of his hand against the circle just until it begins to fade. Then he presses his visor against it.
It’s an unsettling sight, standing next to a faceless man. My body trembles. My head begins to ache. I’m overcome by the same horror that claimed me as I lay with Jud’s leg on my chest. Finally, I can stand it no longer. I yank him out and drag him back toward Opal’s. “We can’t stay here.”
Ethan resists, clutching my hand and spinning me around. “Jack?”
I rip off my hood and visor. “Don’t make me do this, Ethan. I can’t!”
He catches the terror in my voice, in my eyes, and his hold tightens. He eases off his headgear, too, so we’re facing eye to eye. “Jack, you are not ten years old anymore. And Jud Wilfert is not coming through that circle.”
But I am shaking violently now—reliving that long-ago nightmare. “I killed him, Ethan. Just as if I’d pulled a trigger. He’s dead because—” My voice breaks, and my words deteriorate into a sob.
“No, Jack.” He grabs both of my arms, forcing me to face him. “A bunch of kids are alive because of you. Look at me,” he demands. He gives me a shake. “Look at me! He was an evil man. You were a frightened child. You did what you had to in order to survive.”
It’s true. It’s all true, but the memory, the emotion is so strong.
His hands move to my face, holding it in place so I’m looking straight into his eyes. “You are not a child anymore, Jack. You are a woman. A soldier. I’ve seen you evacuate twenty-five victims from an exploding building. You shot the men who attempted to stop you. You are capable. You are fearless. And Jud Wilfert has no hold on you. Do you hear me?”
I nod, sniffling hard.
“You are free of him,” he says firmly.
I gulp and take a ragged breath. “I’m free of him,” I repeat.
“And he’s not worth an ounce of remorse.” He lets go of my face but lifts my chin with a thumb and one finger. “All right?”
I nod more emphatically and wipe my face on my sleeve. My head still aches, but the panic and nausea have subsided.
“Good. Because we’ve got some giants to spy on.” And without another word, he refastens his hood and visor and sticks his face back throu
gh the portal.
I rub my hands up and down my arms to work some courage back into myself. Jud still lingers at the back of my mind, and I’m terrified of whatever lies on the other side, but I’m back in control. I’ve got a job to do. I reconnect my suit. Then I take another deep breath, square off with the portal, and plunge my face inside.
TWENTY-ONE
An eerily familiar vista fills my view. I’m peering into a forest with bright, vividly green leaves. I can see no life forms, human or otherwise. Just thick vegetation growing on gently sloping land.
I glance over at Ethan. Beneath his visor, a profile of his features hovers in thin air. He stares blankly, his eyes wide and shifting but landing on nothing, as if he’s looking into a dark room. I start to whisper to him, but his ears are back in the cemetery. I pull my head free and speak normally. “What do you see?”
He also draws back. “Absolutely nothing. It’s foggy as a cloud in there.”
“Really?”
“What? You saw something?”
“It was perfectly clear. Like looking through a glass window. It looks just like this except it’s summer.”
He frowns. “It must connect to your ability to see the portal.”
“But Ruby could see too. The world was clear in her memories.” I think aloud, remembering the footage from the scan. “Actually, she never figured out how she got back. She traveled through the night in the rain and turned up in the Hinterlands at dawn. She never even guessed she’d moved between worlds.”
“She just stumbled through a portal?”
“She must have.”
“And it was unguarded?” he asks in disbelief.
I shrug. “I never saw a guard in her memories.”
“How about this one? Was anyone on the other side?”
I shake my head.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he muses. “Each portal is a weakness in their defenses. A door an enemy could enter at any time. You can be darn sure we’re going to have an arsenal sitting outside every one of these things as soon as we possibly can.”
Recompense (Recompense, book 1) Page 25