She digs in her bag and grabs her athame, feeling the lines of the labyrinthine pattern carved into the handle. “Here. Try this.” When she sets it to the bow and the raven feather, it becomes a sort of handle and a point all at once. It gives the dowsing rod a focus, but also a dangerous edge. June can feel potential along the edges of the knife. It looks as if it could work its way through anything.
The other Grays are giving her a collection of doubtful looks. “Unless we’re completely off base here, we’re dealing with spirits,” June says. “And spirits are somewhere else. Well, a somewhere else that overlaps with here. An athame can find where the worlds are thin and cut through to other places.”
“Theoretically,” Hawthorn says, the snag in her voice betraying that she doesn’t really believe this — that her understanding of magic has clean lines. Boundaries.
Danny steps closer, closer, tugged into the circle of June’s nervous breath. “Tell me everything.”
June tells her about climbing and falling, slicing and seeing. About towers of fog where there used to be trees. She touches her leg as she talks, feeling it all over again. She hears Imogen say It’s okay. I saw it, too, her fascination as sharp as June’s athame. “I know there are ways in. I cut a window, but there have to be doors.”
As Tempest loses its grip on us, it’s like a hand that’s been around my throat eases up for just a second. Which isn’t fair, because I love Mom, and that same hand is probably closing around her throat instead.
Tighter and tighter, for every hour that I’m gone.
I look to Rush for some kind of comfort — or even just to share this new sense of fear — but her face is darkly shuttered. She closed up shop, and I don’t know when she’ll open up to me again. If she will.
I know she hates the idea of following Emma Hart, of messing with this spirit who messed with Imogen, but it’s the best chance we have. Sometimes what you want and what you don’t are knotted like that. Sometimes there’s no real undoing them. I could explain that to Rush. I could tell her how I’m falling for her, and how Imogen is bound up with that whether I want it or not.
The closer we get to Imogen, the farther away Rush feels. For one foul pit of a moment, I think about turning back. Preserving what I have with Rush, even if it’s almost gone. They’ll never find Imogen without me. If I leave now, they’ll wander in circles all night and trail back into Tempest by morning.
I would never do that, though.
I would never leave them.
I set the path and the pace. The farther we go, the more fallen trees we find, slashing across the woods in great, sudden lines. They look like broken statues, fractured pieces of a lost world.
“Stop here,” Lelia says when the moon is hanging straight above us, bright as a warning. “This is where the map ends. More or less.”
“More or less,” Hawthorn mutters, holding her hand out for June’s water. The Grays are starting to look exhausted, and more than a little afraid.
How far would we have to walk before we died of dehydration? Exhaustion? How far do we push before we try a new direction? How do we avoid the death sentence of going in circles? Does Emma want five more dead bodies, to match the first two?
No one in Tempest would seriously question what happened to us. The weirdos wandered into the woods, thinking they could do magic, and never came out.
I hold the dowsing rod straight in front of me, locking my elbows. It droops and weaves. I stutter in one direction, then another, and the Grays try to follow me, but there’s nowhere obvious to go. I stop in front of tree after tree after tree, watching each one like it might swing open a secret door. But the trees are silent, their faces blank. This feels like the night of the fog dance, when Imogen was nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
I grab Hawthorn’s wrist. “You can scry trees, right?”
“Anything with a pattern in it,” she says, looking excited to be doing something other than hiking.
I point at the newest tree the dowsing rod has picked, and the three before that. “Do they have anything in common?”
Hawthorn draws a line with her fingers. Her breath comes harder as she studies the trees.
One of them has bark that shoots straight upward. Another’s bark is more cracked and crumbled, like the face of someone who has been alive too long and seen too much. The bark of the third spirals around the trunk. The fourth is softer, with deeper grooves, enough room for shadows to collect like rainwater. I’ve never noticed how different all of the redwoods are until this moment. I’ve seen them as part of a group. Like the way I saw the Grays when I first met them.
But they’re each as different as they are the same.
“Birds,” Hawthorn says, touching the bark of the final tree. “I see a flock of huge, dark birds with their beaks open.”
Lelia’s posture, which has been slouching lower and lower inside her thin jacket, shoots up tall. She runs behind June and without saying a word, unzips her backpack with a low metal growl.
She grabs a compact and flashes the mirror at the sky.
They lift. Wind and effort and the tilt of wings. The delight of dark against dark. The slide of body against sky. Silver flashes below them. Brighter than moon. Sharper than moon. It cuts into their eyes, pricks their hearts.
They want it.
They dive fast.
Holding silver, like a splinter of moon, is their friend Lelia. Known, good, help.
“What do you have there?”
They show what they found. Who they found.
Red hair. Bright, bright.
“Imogen,” the others say. The Grays are known, good. They are Imogen’s flock. “That’s Imogen’s hair,” they say.
“Where is she?” they cry.
The raven with the curl snatches it away. Not yours, it screams. But it will take them to where they can find the rest. They lift — wind, effort, wings — and fly a straight line toward copper-girl.
We run.
We are mindless streaks. Muscles and blood. We run and we run and we run. The birds are a straight dark line above the woods, and I can’t even begin to keep up with their confident glide. I weave around trees and climb their fallen sisters, leap and hit the ground.
“Slow down!” Lelia screams at the sky, flashing the mirror again. June is working hard to keep up, but her leg is obviously giving her hell. The ravens don’t care. They’ve probably dragged us a mile, and now, with one last flash of black feathers against the night, they leave us behind.
“I need to see where they went,” I say, looking up. “I need to get higher.”
June grabs my hand and looks at me with all of her best, raw eagerness. “What you really need,” she says, “is to fly.”
“Is that something you can help with?” I ask, trying not to sound doubtful. I’m so tired of doubt. It’s always dragging me in the wrong direction.
June does a quick scour of the trees around us and points out one that’s thinner than most, dense with branches. “That’s climbable.” She shakes out her leg a few times. “I can’t go with you, though.”
“I don’t do up.” Lelia puts both arms around June, encircling her.
“I’m going,” Rush says. “Obviously.” That word darts around all of the defenses I’ve been putting up. My heart tells me two stories at the same time. In one of them, Rush is falling in love and she’ll do anything for me. In the other one, Rush needs to get to Imogen and she will do anything for her.
“Quick,” I say. “Before the ravens are out of sight.”
I leave the dowsing rod with June. Lelia gives me a push that helps me reach the first branch. It takes a few more for me to find a rhythm. Reach, grab, step, breathe. Reach, grab, swing up, breathe. Rush is not the fastest climber, and I can’t wait. I strike out quickly, seizing branches in a sloppy but powerful grip. At first I don’t let myself think anything but up. Fear is one branch behind me, catching up fast.
“Danny!” Rush calls, but she doesn’t say anyt
hing about going back down.
I can’t wait. There is no more time to make this happen. The ravens will be gone soon, if they aren’t already.
I grab for the biggest, heartiest branch above me. The one that’s so thick I can scrape my whole body onto it, belly-first. Rush catches up to me, straddling a branch, both hands on a smaller branch above.
“Look out there.” She points away from the body of the tree. We’ve broken through into a layer of the world that most people never see. Needles and branches form a spidery sort of ground below us. Clouds above us, the color of smoky quartz, look touchable.
“Have you ever heard of astral projection?” Rush asks.
“Seriously?” I ask, my voice dropping several stories to the ground.
“Listen to me,” Rush says. “Listen and don’t lose the thread of my voice. I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to keep your body here so the rest of you can wander. Can you do that?”
As Rush speaks, I imagine walking out on this branch, brushing lightly to the next tree. I think about branches dipping and skimming below my feet, and it’s almost like it’s happening. I test the air, and it’s not solid, but neither am I. This is the dream that little kids have about flying — not a hard rush of wings, but a simple floating.
“Find the ravens,” Rush says. “Find them and come back to me.”
I take a few steps like walking across an old, worn-out mattress. I don’t look down, because there’s no reason to. The world I need is laid out in front of me. There’s a dark smudge in the distance. The birds.
I arch my feet and strain forward. The air around me doesn’t rush and tug as I expect it to. It’s buoyant, with little swirls of motion. But somewhere behind all of this ease, I have a single fear, lurking.
Imogen.
She’s out there, and the closer we get, the more fear hits me, cold droplets running together.
“Find them quickly, Danny,” Rush says, and the rough confidence of her voice is rippled with worry. There is no real boundary between us right now, because our bodies aren’t standing in the way, and her fear floats into me.
Something is wrong.
I try to turn around, but I can’t. The needles on all sides are dark as inkblots. The sky is suffocating, the moon crouched low.
“Find the ravens and come back,” Rush says. But backward is a different sort of magic than forward.
I know how to find people, how to leave people, not how to come back safely.
So I do the one thing that feels right. I cling to the little piece of Rush that I have — I hold on to her voice like a rope.
“Danny, come back,” she says. “Danny!” And then I’m crashing through the air, blurring breathless past the trees. I come back into myself hard, and there is a moment when I’m so sickeningly solid, I think that gravity is about to claim me, that falling is inevitable.
Rush grabs my arms. She holds on to the branch with her legs. We’re holding each other up. Our weight balanced. Our bodies keeping each other from falling. Our foreheads pressed together, gently.
The cold droplets I felt weren’t just fear. Rain is hitting my skin, icing me through, attacking me in tiny cold bursts, and then the sky opens.
The storm comes on so fast, it gives the Grays whiplash.
Hawthorn looks up at the sky, her glasses freckled with water, then streaming. June’s eyes catch the sickly light of a storm. Lightning fills the clouds, brilliant through the gray. It rips out and strikes at the world.
Rush and Danny are tiny in the face of it. They are so far away, and the Grays can’t do anything. It’s the same helplessness they’ve been battling since the minute Imogen left. They can’t lose anyone else. They can’t walk back to Tempest with a smaller number of weirdos than when they left.
“They have to climb down,” Lelia says. “Before . . .”
Thunder cracks the quiet night to pieces, shaking the ground so hard that the whole tree sways.
The Grays grab for one another, Lelia and June and Hawthorn holding on tight even though they’re not the ones who need the safety net. June pours out the contents of her flowered backpack, but nothing in its depths can help them now. The wind is so spiteful that they can’t even light candles to help draw Danny and Rush down safely. Hawthorn hands out luck crystals: the jagged citrine points shading from clear to yellow to purple, the smooth tree rings of tiger’s eye. The Grays palm them with sweating hands.
That’s small-time magic, though. It’s more for their own comfort than it is for Rush and Danny’s safe return. Lelia has never seen a storm like this one, and she keeps a record of every storm in Tempest. This moved in faster, roared down harder, and won’t let up, no matter how hard they rub the stones. The rain grows into white fury. This storm is messing with them in a way that feels personal.
Lightning showcases Danny and Rush, stuck on a branch that they can’t climb off without free-dropping to the one beneath it.
“This is what nobody ever mentions,” June mumbles, as her leg sparks, hitting the top of her pain scale — part exhaustion from the hike, part anticipation of Rush and Danny crashing. “Down is much harder than up.”
A voice slices through the clamor of the rain. “That’s Rush,” Hawthorn says. “Is she hurt?” But she’s not screaming. She’s singing as the girls drop, branch to branch. The notes are high and slippery and strange. And the feeling in what she’s singing isn’t calm or safe or even down.
It’s You can’t catch me.
Rush is turning the storm. The Grays lose the melody as lightning strikes the tree next to Rush and Danny, blasting the treetop bare, and thunder fills their bodies.
Danny slips, hanging one-handed. June’s entire body fires up with memory. With a perfect understanding of how this moment feels.
“Don’t be afraid, Danny,” she yells. “Fear is what fucks you over.” If she clenches up now, she’ll smack into branches on her way down, hit the ground tensed and hard. She’ll shatter.
“Go loose all over, and then let go,” June instructs in a hoarse scream.
Danny eases out of her grip.
Slowly.
She drops and hits the branch beneath her. The air is a tangle of screams. But Danny has gotten one arm and part of her chest curled around the branch, and slowly, painstakingly, she pulls herself back into control.
The fear leaves Rush’s voice, and now she’s not screaming but she is crying out, wild and fluttering and free. The Grays pick up that sound and throw it back at the sky. Louder. Harder.
Danny helps Rush down, giving her a place to step, a body to hold on to. She helps Rush all the way to the final branch, and then Rush is letting go. Hitting the ground. Rush is back with the Grays, where she belongs.
She looks dazed with fear and triumph.
Danny slides to the ground, cringing against impact. The Grays catch her. It’s the least they can do. June pulls small, sticking bits of Danny’s wet hair from her face and hugs her, jumping to keep warm, and kisses her, cold wet lips against cold wet lips. Hawthorn and Lelia do it, too. Then they tip their heads back and scream at the thunder.
“I didn’t find the ravens,” Danny shouts over the full-throated storm, the raging Grays. But no one is disappointed. That’s a small-time feeling compared to what’s coursing through them right now. Rush grabs Danny by the wet straps of her tank top and kisses her. Everyone has been kissing her.
But Rush doesn’t stop.
I’m waiting for the end, but this kiss sprawls into a messy, beautiful beginning. Rush crowds my hips with hers, fists in my shirt like she’s in the middle of an invisible fight and she can’t tell if she’s winning or losing. Her breath falls warm on my neck, and then she’s kissing me at the soft branching place between neck and shoulder, working her whole body against mine, like she might be able to pass through me if she tries hard enough, like I am a doorway to somewhere she wants to be.
The Grays are watching.
They are silent, unblinking, blurry because noth
ing else can be perfectly in focus when Rush is kissing me.
“Whoa,” June whispers.
“Wait a second,” Lelia says, raising her hand. “I have questions.”
“What about Imogen?” June asks, and I snatch back from those words like they’re trying to burn me. I wonder how long I’ll have to be here, how special they’ll have to believe I am before anyone asks What about Danny?
It was bad enough in Michigan without having to worry about losing this feeling. The one I just got when I touched the electric arc of Rush’s lower back and opened my eyes to find her face so close, eyes open and staring back at me, so blue I can’t imagine any other color. It takes me back to the first time I saw the redwood trees. The scale was shattered. My heart couldn’t adjust.
A feeling this big shouldn’t exist.
It shouldn’t even be possible.
I’m about to walk away from it, but Rush takes my hand and slowly, carefully, leads me away from the rest of the Grays.
“I’m sorry, Danny!” June cries after us.
Rush laces us between trees. Soon we are in our own grove, rounded on all sides by tall, thin trees — ones that look young, somehow, even though they’re already a hundred times taller than we’ll ever be.
Rush takes my hands in both of hers.
“Remember when you kissed me in the cemetery?” she asks.
“Of course.” I remember every movement, every breath.
Rush inhales, like she’s going to need the full strength of her lungs for what she has to do next. “You said it made your magic stronger.”
“Yeah . . .” And then I see the rest. Rush wants me to kiss her so we can find Imogen. And part of me — the part that’s made of magic — wants that, too. But the stupid boring Danny part is heartbroken.
“I love her,” Rush whispers, and those words hit my heart like a widowmaker. I’m pinned to the truth. “I love her, and I’ll always care about her, and I’ll never stop looking for her.” She starts shaking, probably because she’s wet and cold, and I put my hands on her upper arms, rub up and down slowly. Maybe it’s strange that I’m taking care of her while she’s saying these things, but she’s got this look on her face that keeps me right where I am. “Imogen was never really with me. She was halfway gone before she disappeared, and I didn’t want to admit it.”
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