by Carrie Ryan
But we’d always learned the Forest was nothing but a wasteland. They fenced it off to try to control the infection—to try to trap the Mudo. But these pages tell of something different. I greedily skim, skipping where the words are illegible and the ink has blurred.
The village was originally part of a larger network, a series of interconnected nodes strategically placed by the government and its armies at the epicenter of the infection. Some villages were heavily supplied and armored, populated with the chosen few: dignitaries, scientists, women and children. They were meant to ensure our survival. Other villages were the remnants of refugee camps given the scraps of what the military didn’t need or couldn’t use. My mother’s village—our village—was the latter, an abandoned field station left staffed by a handful of monastic nurses.
We were always taught that the government created the Forest. That they’d used natural obstacles like canyons, wide rivers and impassable mountains as natural barriers and built fences where necessary. They’d said they were trying to contain the infection—closing off the worst of it and driving into the Forest any Mudo hordes beyond.
But the diary explains that they hid it for another reason too. The hope was that by flooding the Forest with the Mudo and cutting it off they could accomplish one of two mutually exclusive goals. They would either contain the infection before it spread too far or they would create a safe zone in the last place anyone would dare to look: the center of the infection. They knew that if the first goal failed, the world would fall into chaos. Strongholds would fall to bandits.
But no one would think to look for life in what my mother always called the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
For a while the various villages communicated, traded and shared. But then they began to fall. Survivors escaping from the infected villages would stumble down the paths looking for refuge but would usually end up spreading the infection instead. The network began to collapse. One by one the villages in the Forest succumbed to the infection until there was only a handful left.
And that was when my mother’s village cut themselves off. The nurses banded together, their faith in God and duty absolute. They closed the gates, declared the paths forbidden and told the people they were the last survivors of the Return. Any evidence otherwise was hidden or destroyed, including any outsider who dared come near the village.
They passed down their faith, calling the Mudo the Unconsecrated—the cursed by God. They built their world-view around their religious beliefs. But they also passed down their medical training and used it to look for cures. To look for answers. But they never found either. Just isolation and existence.
Interspersed in this written narrative are birth and death records; lists of betrothed; the married; those inducted into the Sisterhood and Guardians, the rulers and protectors of the village. Most of the recent history is missing but I flip through the pages until I find the latest entry. There are creases down the middle of it and it appears torn at the edge, as if it was once pulled from the book and folded.
On one side in a neat script is a list of betrothals and I’m about to flip the page over when a name catches my eye. I trace my fingers over the letters: Mary. And it lists her as betrothed to Harry. I flip the paper over, looking for a record of their marriage, but there isn’t any. Only the last entry:
Gabrielle was the end of us. She breached the fences. Unconsecrated have overrun the village. Infection rages in the Cathedral and we have closed ourselves off in the catacombs. We are the end. We are all that is left. We will search the tunnels for other villages. Other havens. But we despair that this is truly the end.
God’s will be done.
In the last gasp of light I shuffle through the remaining pages but there’s nothing more. No explanation. I’m left barely able to breathe, finally understanding what it’s taken to survive. And how quickly it can all disappear.
I trace my fingers along the ragged edges of the pages, wondering what it must have been like to be part of the Sisterhood when they decided to close themselves off, what desperation they must have felt, when I see something written on the inside of the back cover:
We will always survive. There is always hope.
I smile at the small words, wondering who wrote them and when. Wondering if that’s all it takes to survive: hope.
I hear steps on the path behind me and I snap the book shut, reaching for my knife. But when I turn around it’s Harry walking toward me. “Your mother was worried,” he says softly. He notices the book in my lap but doesn’t say anything about it.
I let the knife fall back into the loop on my belt. My cheeks heat at being caught with the book. I hold it out to him. “I didn’t mean to hide it from you,” I say. “I guess I was hoping that I would learn something about the village and where I’m from. And maybe about my mother. Learn who she was. If I’m anything like her.”
Harry smiles and moves to a rock facing mine. He sits on it, stretching his legs out in front of him. I notice his face tighten some as his knees make a popping noise. “Mary has always been a little obsessed with knowing the truth of things,” he tells me and I smile, staring at my hands. “I try to tell her that there are just some things we don’t get to know in this world, but …” He shrugs. We both know how stubborn my mother is.
“What was my mother like when she was my age?” I ask him and when he hesitates I add, “I mean, Mary. What was she like?”
He laughs. “A troublemaker. Headstrong,” he says. I can hear the smile in his voice. “There are some stories she should probably tell you, not me. But …” He shifts, stares past the Mudo, past the fences. He laughs again, softly.
“Your mother was a terrible singer,” he finally says.
I smile. “She was?”
“Oh goodness, yes,” Harry says without hesitation. “The Sisters used to ask her not to sing at services. They made her just move her mouth, pretend.”
I feel laughter building inside me, bubbles bursting and floating up, making me feel lighter. I realize that it’s been too long since I’ve laughed.
“She’d sing anyway, of course. Sometimes just to see Sister Tabitha scowl.”
We’re both snorting with laughter now, our breaths short and sweet.
“You could hear her from across the village,” he says. He wipes at his eyes, tears glistening. “As she got older, when she was closer to your age, I think she was embarrassed by it. She wouldn’t let anyone hear her. But she still loved it. She used to sing as she did the wash by the river.” He shakes his head with the memories coming.
“I would sneak up and listen to her sometimes. She just …” His voice grows quieter. “She just seemed to be so full of life when she sang like that. So free. Like the fences …” He reaches out, traces a finger along the metal links and pulls it back before a Mudo can grab for him. “Like none of it existed.”
He places his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands, staring at them as if they hold the answer to some question he seeks. “Does she still sing?”
I shake my head in the darkness, sad to know there’s this part of her I’ve never known about. “No,” I tell him. “Not anymore.” It’s as though my mother’s life has been cut in two and we each hold only half of her memories. And I realize that even combined we would never know the whole. She’s greater than the sum of what we remember of her. The woman Harry knows and the one I know are just edges of something larger.
I think about Elias and what he knows of my life in the Forest. And of Catcher and what he knows of my life in Vista. But does either of them know the whole of me? Would either of them crawl to the edge of a riverbank to hear me sing offkey just to be near me?
“You were supposed to be married,” I prod him, wanting to know more about her. “You were betrothed.” I point to the book. “It says it in here.”
He laughs but I can no longer see his face and he’s silent for a long time. “I thought I loved her,” he finally says.
“You didn’t?” I ask.
“I didn’t … I didn’t know her. I had an idea of her in my head. I didn’t let her be who she needed to be.”
“Does that mean you can’t love someone if you don’t really know who they are?” I ask him. I think about Elias, about the secrets he always seems to be keeping. As if he’s afraid to let me know everything about him.
“It means that if you never try to see them for who they are, then you don’t love them enough,” he says.
I purse my lips shut, trying to figure out the difference.
“What about now?” I ask him, remembering the way he held her hand, the way she pressed her palm to his cheek.
He picks up a stick from the ground and bends it until it almost breaks. Lightning bugs waver around us, tiny stars of exploding light. “I’ve been selfish in my life,” he says. “And goodness knows your mother has been as well. But that’s what love is like when it’s fresh and new. It’s fire and thunder and heat.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck.
“When you’re young you have such expectations of each other. So many needs. And when you’re older …” He shrugs. “You want someone who understands. We’ve lived different lives. We’ve loved different people. But I think that there will always be that …” He struggles for the right word. “That understanding we share. Of having grown up in the same world, of having lived through the same memories.
“I have always loved Mary,” he says. “Even when she was someone else’s. When she couldn’t love me I loved her. I’d like to think that maybe if things had been different before, if I’d had a chance to grow up with her, to prove myself … but I know it would never have worked. It took everything else, it took her leaving and me going back to the village. Sometimes things aren’t meant to be the first time around,” he says. “Sometimes you’re lucky if they’re ever meant to be.
“There’s something to be said for feeling like we’ve known each other forever.” He clears his throat and I wonder if he’s embarrassed to be sharing so much. To be so open and exposed.
“Your mother …” He pauses again. “I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that’s why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed.”
He stands, his knees popping again. The moans of the Mudo overlie his words, like a melody humming. “You don’t have to be that way, Gabrielle,” he says, starting back down the path toward our little camp. “Sometimes it’s those things you can’t touch that you need to hold on to the most.”
That night I dream of gleaming towers and pure white streets. Of sounds and smells. Everything spins around me as I stand in the middle. Lights flicker, people pass but I stand firm. Facing me, only feet away, is another girl. She’s tall with blond hair and green eyes. She stares at me through the chaos.
As if together we are the pivot around which the world turns. As if we are the balance to it all.
The sun rises and sets. The world around us crumbles. The people disappear, the sound fades. Plants push through the roads, vines twist up the buildings. And still we stare at each other.
Until the sun sets and this time doesn’t rise again. And the moon becomes a hollow shell. The air is cold and sharp like ice. The plants wither and die. The buildings have long disintegrated and it’s just the girl and me in the darkness.
She’s my sister. My twin. I can see it in her. Feel it in me. She was always there and will always be there. I reach out my hand to touch her, to hold her but somehow I can’t bridge this space between us. I struggle harder, pounding against the impossible invisible, knowing that more than anything else I need her and she needs me and that somehow I have to find a way to get to her.
I wake up to the sound of moans. To the thrashing of the Mudo against the fences, so close on either side of the path. My chest aches from the dream, from the feeling that something’s missing and I have to take several deep breaths to calm my frantic heart. I feel warmth in my hand and I turn my head to the side to see Elias asleep next to me. He’s curled around me, his breaths puffs of mist in the dewy morning.
His hair is thicker, longer than when I first saw him. Three faded red lines trace down his cheek, a reminder of when we met and I fought him in the ocean. How easily such traces of our past are erased. His face is slack in sleep, his lips slightly parted.
He takes a deep breath, his body shifts and tenses and his eyes open. We’re inches apart. He smiles. He reaches out and pushes a strand of hair from my cheek, rests his hand against my neck.
I want to savor this moment, to hold it close like a memory. But then a darkness begins to creep around the edges of my bliss. I think about how I was kissing Elias when I was supposed to be with Cira. How if I’d been there maybe I could have talked her out of trying to infect herself.
I sit up, rubbing my sleep-puffed eyes with my fists, the ache of her being gone still too fresh and new. I push to my feet, grab a canteen and start walking down the path, needing some time to myself to think.
Elias stands behind me. “Gabrielle, wait,” he calls out after me.
I don’t even bother to turn back. “No,” I tell him, waving my hand at him to stay behind.
My thoughts are a storm as I tread down the path, not caring where I go so long as it’s away from Elias and my mother and Harry. Cira’s necklace rests heavy on my chest and I suddenly feel trapped, pinned in. As though the fences are too close, the sky too low. My muscles bunch and tense, painfully tight, and I shake my arms trying to let go.
I stumble over a rock, throwing myself off balance. I let myself fall to my knees and roll onto my back, my canteen flying. I’m not hurt but even so I just lie there staring up into the watery gray dawn. I don’t move. I try not to think. I ignore everything around me.
Pink streaks into the sky mingling with a hue of purple when I hear the steps. At first I think it must be Elias coming after me and then I realize that they’re coming from the wrong direction. Dread fills my stomach. I reach for my knife but it’s not there, left behind with the others where I slept.
I roll slowly to my stomach and press my body against the ground, pushing myself to my feet as silently as possible. The steps are uneven. My first thought is that it’s Mudo trailing us from the village but then I realize that there are no moans. My body breaks out in sweat as I wonder if the Recruiters were able to get through the village. If they’ve already found us.
I grab a rock in each hand and crouch, waiting. I see the shadow before the person and I hold my breath. The figure walks around the bend in the path.
“Catcher!” I yelp, relieved to see his familiar face, to know that he’s okay.
He stops and stands there staring at me. His eyes take a moment to adjust. “Gabry,” he says, his face breaking into a smile.
I scramble toward him but before I get close enough to touch him he wavers on his feet. There’s something wrong. I reach for him but he holds out his hand, pushing me away.
“Catcher, what’s going—” I start to say. But then I notice the scrapes along his arms speckled with blood.
My eyes go wide, fear starting to tingle somewhere deep inside. I take another step toward him but he says, “Don’t,” and I stop.
He bows his head, the muscles along his jaw clenching and releasing.
“Go back to the others, Gabrielle.” His voice is hoarse.
“No,” I tell him, my chest fluttering anxiously. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” I clench my fists, dig my nails into my palms. I wish I hadn’t dropped the rocks. What if the infection is taking over him? What if he’s starting to turn? What if the blood isn’t his but someone else’s?
He shakes his head and stumbles again.
I rush to him, trying to help him stand. He tries to physically push me away but he’s too weak. “Gabry, please,�
� he says.
“Don’t.”
I take his arm in mine just as he falls to one knee. There are more gouges along his back, his shirt ripped.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to keep the worry out of my voice. I bend over his shoulder, trying to get a better look but he pushes me away again, this time causing me to stumble backward.
“Catcher, you’re hurt,” I tell him. I can’t understand why he keeps pushing me away. “What happened?”
He looks at me, the pain a haze around the edges of his eyes. “I know,” he says softly. “Running through the Forest—brambles,” he mutters. “Branches.” He blinks a few times as if he’s having a difficult time focusing. Sweat drips down his cheeks and neck. He looks gaunt, his wrists too thin.
“Have you been eating? Drinking?” I ask him. He shakes his head. “Catcher,” I say, my voice a mix of desperation and exasperation. “You have to take care of yourself,” I whisper. “Let me clean these cuts.”
I don’t know what will happen to him if he loses too much blood—when they die the Infected always turn, and I can only assume the same thing will happen to Catcher—that if he dies he’ll Return. I have no idea how long he’s been starving himself but he looks weak and dizzy. Just like Cira when I found her in the Council House. I press my lips together, realizing just how dangerous Catcher could be right now.
“No,” he whispers. “I’m infected, Gabrielle,” he says. “Don’t you understand? I won’t let you risk touching my blood. I won’t risk infecting you.”
I narrow my eyes. “But you don’t know if that would even do anything,” I tell him. “Plenty of people have been infected and bled on other people and nothing’s happened.” I think about the boy in the amphitheater who sacrificed himself to the Soulers. How he was bleeding and the Souler woman still touched him.
“That’s different,” he says. “I’m different. Unless I can know for sure I won’t infect you I don’t want to take that risk. I can’t be the one to hurt you.” His eyes go wide and roll back in his head slightly as he loses his balance and throws his arms out to catch himself.