by Carrie Ryan
I stare down at where Elias’s blood drips onto the ground. I want to dig it up and somehow force it back inside him. Anything to make this situation better.
“Come here and hold this,” my mother says, calling me over and pointing at Catcher. I kneel next to her. “Press here, hard.” She places my hands over the shirt. I nod, feeling the material already damp with Elias’s warm blood. She pulls Catcher down the path toward Harry and they speak in lowered voices. Even though I can’t hear them I understand what’s going on by the way they stand and move.
They’re trying to figure out what to do. There’s no way Elias can walk.
I’m left with Elias. Left feeling him bleed against me. Left with the sound of the Mudo pulsating at the fences. I wipe my cheek on my shoulder, tears and sweat and pain. Odys lies next to me, his heat pushing along my leg as if to give me comfort.
I stare at Elias’s face, twisted and flushed. I take his hand in my own. I lean closer to him. “Elias?” I murmur. I don’t want to believe this is happening. Even if we constructed something to carry him on I’m pretty sure he couldn’t keep going. He’s too hurt. He wouldn’t make it.
I don’t even know if we’ll be able to go any farther anyway, now that the path’s been washed away.
He cracks open one eye, the lightness of it swallowing me. Every part of him is contracted in pain, every muscle rigid. “You have to go,” he says, barely opening his mouth. “The Recruiters.”
I shake my head, my shoulders hunching as I try to catch my breath. My tears blur everything but I don’t want him to see. I want to be strong for him; I need him to have hope. “We’ll be okay,” I say.
“Tell them to make you go,” he says. He pushes my shoulder. My hands slip from the bandage on his side. “Catcher!” Elias yells out.
Catcher runs over. I shake my head and struggle with Elias. “Stop,” I tell him. He’s using up too much energy, he could be hurting himself worse.
“Take her,” Elias says. His eyes are wide, his voice urgent. “You have to make her go. The Recruiters will use her to control you. You can’t let them get either of you.”
Catcher looks at me but I’m staring at Elias, my hands pressed back against his side. I’m not going to let him push me away. Not the way Catcher did. I refuse to let him give up on me. “I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him.
Elias turns to Catcher. “I’m a Recruiter. Leave me here. They’ll take care of me. They have to. It’s part of the oath.”
“You’re not one of them anymore,” I cry. Despair boils inside me and I twist it into anger so that I don’t drown. Because he’s right. He can’t keep going with us and he needs help.
Elias is grabbing Catcher’s arm now. “They’ll have to take me back to Vista, it will buy you time.”
“The path ends,” I tell him. “We can’t go any farther.”
“It has to keep going,” he says. “Annah and I escaped through the mountains. You can find a way,” he says. “You have to.”
“We’re not leaving you here.” I clench my jaw, desperate to somehow make this right. “We’re not leaving you out here alone. What if you’re wrong? What if they try to use you to get to Catcher?”
“It’s better than you,” he says softly.
A shadow falls across me, across Elias’s face. “We’ll stay with him,” Harry says, his voice soft. My mother crouches, puts a hand on my shoulder.
I shake my head, helplessness pooling inside me. “No,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’m not going. I’m not leaving him.” I lean over Elias again. “I’m not leaving you,” I whimper. “I’m going with you.”
“I can’t walk, Gabrielle,” Elias argues. “I can’t go with you. You don’t know what they’ll do to you to get to Catcher. I do! You have to get away from here.” His breath is hot on my face.
I know he’s right. I know I have to leave him. But I just want more time before we’re forced apart.
“Catcher,” Elias says, turning his head to look at him. “You take care of her.”
Catcher nods.
I close my eyes. I can’t get my bearings. Everything’s happening too fast.
Elias wraps my hand in his. “Find Annah,” he says softly.
I bite my lower lip, afraid of screaming out the misery I feel inside. “I don’t want to leave you,” I tell him. “What if we don’t make it out of the Forest?”
“You will,” he says, cupping my cheek with his palm. “The paths always lead out eventually. Trust me.”
“There was supposed to be more,” I tell him, pressing my mouth against his. I can taste his pain and despair mingling with my own. “I’m not ready. I can’t do it alone. I’m too scared.”
He smiles. “You’re the girl who swam through the ocean.”
“But I had you there with me.”
“You’re the girl who survived this Forest alone,” he says.
“That was different,” I whisper. “I didn’t know enough to be frightened.”
“Do you remember when I told you there was no difference between us and the Mudo?”
I nod.
“It’s because they survive,” he says.
“But they don’t love. They don’t remember.” I can feel the hopelessness swallowing me.
He presses his lips to my jaw, to the corner of my mouth, to my ear. “I promise I’ll find you again,” he whispers. “I promise you I’ll remember you. And I promise I’ll love you.”
I kiss him one last time. This time it doesn’t matter that Catcher and Harry and my mother are watching. Nothing matters but Elias. I want to push my love and hope into him, to heal him with it. To have everything he said before be true, as if wanting something enough will make it happen.
Because I want Elias. More than anything else I want to be with him now and forever. Nothing can change that.
I press my face into his neck, feeling him, smelling him, tasting his skin. And then I pull away from him, wondering if it’s impossible to hope we’ll find each other.
“You have to go,” Harry says. “The Recruiters aren’t that far behind us anymore. I can already hear their shouts through the trees.” He hugs me and hands me a pack, his fingers lingering on my shoulder.
I turn to face my mother, who stands next to him. Odys sits at her feet and presses his muzzle against my hand. I scratch his ears, unable to believe that I have to leave her again.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, my voice small and scared.
She places her hands on my cheeks. I think of all the moments in my life that we’ve stood alone together, just the two of us against the world. Of how much of our life that we’ve shared. And yet I feel as though this divide has opened between us, a gulf showing me just how much of her I didn’t know.
I always thought of her as my mother and not a woman who used to be a girl like me.
“You stay safe,” she finally says. “You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You push.” She smiles, her voice watery. “And you always remember that your mother loves you.”
I place my hand over hers. “Will you be okay?” I ask her, afraid that I might not see her again. Worried that I should have taken better care of her somehow. “What if you get in trouble for leaving? For going beyond the fences?”
She sweeps her thumb over my cheek, smudging away my tears. “It will be okay, Gabrielle. Don’t worry about me—it’s my job to worry about you, not the other way around. I finally get to show Harry the ocean,” she says. “I’ll take care of Elias. We’ll find you again. I’m not letting go of my baby girl that easily.”
My heart breaks at her words, at the hope and finality of them. We stare at each other, neither one of us wanting to be the one to turn away. The one to leave. “I have something for you,” I say, trying to delay the inevitable. I reach into my pack and trace my hand along the broken binding of the book she dropped while fleeing from the village. I pull it out, the edges of paper crumbled and cracked,
and give it to her.
She gasps, placing a hand over her mouth as her eyes widen with surprise.
“I wasn’t able to save it all,” I tell her. “But I was able to pick up some of the pages.”
When she reaches for it her hands are trembling. She holds it, brushing her fingers over the faded words stamped on the cover. “This is everything from the Return,” she says. “It’s the history of the village. Of everyone I knew.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I read some of it. I just …” I look down at it. “I needed to know.”
She looks up at me. “Thank you,” she whispers.
In the distance I hear the Recruiters shouting, getting closer. The sun’s breaking over the mountain across the valley, urging us forward.
Catcher stands by the cliff where Elias fell, Odys growling whenever he tries to get closer to us. “I think only this top part’s been washed away. I can see where the path starts up again,” he says. “Partway down the mountain. I think we can make it.”
I turn back to Elias, his eyes squeezed shut tight against the pain, sweat on his forehead. I reach down and brush my fingers over his lips, along his jaw, and he looks up at me with a soft smile.
He touches my chin with his finger, tilting my head until I’m forced to look at him. “I found you once before,” he says. “I promise I’ll find you again. When you get out of the Forest go to the Dark City.” He reaches around his neck and pulls out the leather cord with the metal disk bearing the Recruiters’ seal on it. For the first time I notice tiny numbers etched on the other side. He drapes it over my head, where it twists against the superhero necklace Cira gave me.
“I’m a citizen, that should get you entrance,” he says. “I promise you I’ll find you.”
I begin to shake my head. The world’s too big—it’s too easy to get lost. But he presses his hand against my cheek. “I’m not letting you go, Gabry,” he says. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll go back to Vista, I’ll do what it takes to recover and then I’m coming for you. I promise. Just wait for me in the Dark City.”
Elias grabs my fingers before I can stand up. “I love you, Gabrielle,” he says, his face fierce. “I won’t lose you again.” In his eyes I see everything—the promise of us. And in that moment I believe it.
Then Catcher’s there beside me. He’s pulling me to my feet but I fight with him until I’m back by Elias’s side, my mouth against his ear. I want to tell him that I can’t bear to leave him but I don’t know how. Instead I can only say “I love you” and watch as he closes his eyes, a smile touching his lips.
“Go,” he says.
And I nod and back away from him until I feel Catcher standing next to me. I try to hold back the sob that bubbles in my chest.
“He’ll be okay,” Catcher murmurs to me. And I want to tell him that I know but I can’t.
The morning’s still struggling; the sky is beginning to burn bright along the edges but is still not able to dissipate the mist hovering in the valley below. We can barely see enough to make out the remnants of the path partway down the cliff from where we are. It looks as though some huge giant walked by and swiped his hand along the side of the mountain, digging out the earth, uprooting trees, flattening bushes, slinging mud and twisting fences.
“I think the path’s still intact down there,” Catcher says, and I nod because I don’t know what else to do. Mudo are beginning to gather below us, stumbling over roots, slipping along loose stones, tumbling down the steepest parts and falling into the darkness.
I look back at Elias lying on the ground, my mother kneeling next to him. He lets his head fall to the side, his eyes cracked open. His face is white, his muscles tight with pain. I want to run back to him, slip my hand into his and take whatever punishment comes by his side.
“Go,” he mouths.
Trying to swallow the burning in my chest, I turn, ease over the edge of the cliff and start skidding down the side of the mountain.
Catcher goes in front of me, testing the strength of branches to hold on to, pointing out roots where I can wedge my feet. Even so I slip more than climb, the dirt loose and rocks constantly shifting whenever I think I have solid footing.
Every time I try to glance up behind me I fall, my elbows scraping against the ground, brambles tangling around my legs. Soon both Catcher and I are panting with the effort and even though the sun hasn’t fully risen we’re both coated with sweat.
“You can do it, Gabry,” he keeps telling me every time I stumble. And I don’t respond, just stay focused on grabbing anything to keep me from falling.
Where the slope’s steepest he slides down first, catching me when I tumble after him. We make it to a thin ledge and I glance up at the cliff edge about sixty feet above, seeing my mother standing there with her hands on her hips. Her face is tight with worry and she looks over her shoulder every few heartbeats. I wonder how close the Recruiters are. If we’ll be able to get enough of a head start to escape them.
There’s enough light now that the leaves on the trees glisten and shimmer, the sun’s rays streaking through the sky above. Not too far below us the path resumes, the fences intact, twisting through trees and curving to the right down the mountain and eventually running into what looks like the remnants of a road.
But between us and the path the mountain flattens out for a short distance into a thin strip of land with Mudo scattered over it, all of them reaching for me.
My heart races as I clench my hand around a thin tree trunk, using it to keep me steady. Catcher stares down, the tips of the Mudo’s fingers just barely brushing along the ledge beneath us. I kick their hands away from me but Catcher jumps down into the midst of them. I have to press my face into my arm to stifle my scream, still not used to how easy it is for him to walk among the dead.
Bodies tumble where he lands and then he’s on his feet, arms swinging. He grabs the Mudo wherever he can and shoves them down the mountain. They don’t even notice him, their focus so intent on me, their hands reaching for me.
Catcher grunts as he knocks the Mudo aside, their bodies flung off into the valley like broken dolls. Legs tangle around arms, torsos shuddering where they strike tree trunks, the moans weaving through it all. He doesn’t stop, just keeps pulling and throwing and pushing until there aren’t any Mudo left between me and the fences.
When he’s done he stands there, shoulders heaving, hands half clenched, staring up at me. In that brief moment I see that there’s nothing left of him that I used to know. There’s nothing of the boy I grew up with.
I stand on my ledge and look at him, the ferocity of his expression, the pain written across his body. The sun keeps seeping down the mountain, its rays illuminating him, making his hair glow like pure light. And then he holds out a hand and I catch a glimpse of the old Catcher, the one still buried inside. The one that will never fully be him again.
“You could get away, you know,” I tell him. “Just slide the rest of the way down the mountain and walk into the Mudo. They’d never find you.”
“No” is all he says. I stare at him a long moment but he doesn’t add anything else and so I take his offered hand, his skin slick with sweat, and let him help me down.
We keep scrambling, our barely controlled fall caught by the fences twisted over the opening to the path. We’re just climbing into the safety of the other side when I hear shouting above. I look over my shoulder and see my mother on the edge of the cliff waving her arms in the air, her mouth moving. Just then a Recruiter runs up behind her and grabs her arms. My body goes tight seeing them struggle so close to the edge. He’s trying to pull her back but she’s still shouting to me. She frees one hand and points down into the valley as if trying to tell us something but before I can understand the Recruiter grabs her again.
Like slow motion I see a blur of black roar from her side: Odys. He tangles in the Recruiter’s legs, tripping him, and then before I even realize what’s happening the man falls over the edge. His body tumbles right at us, his
arms reaching out to stop himself, smacking against a tree as he falls past.
My mother freezes, staring, and then her eyes meet mine across the distance.
“Run,” Catcher says, tugging on my arm. “We have to run!” Already more Recruiters are beginning to slide down the mountain after us and Catcher’s dragging me away until I can no longer see them or my mother. We race down the steep path, more like falling than running. Branches slap at my arms and face and roots trip me and I struggle to follow Catcher as he tears through the woods.
It’s still the dusk of early morning here underneath the tree canopy and it’s hard to judge distance. My toe catches a rock and I hit the ground rolling. Catcher doubles back just as I’m pushing myself to my feet, a long scratch snaking down the back of my arm, blood dripping warm on my fingertips.
He’s just holding out a hand to help me up when he hesitates. He cocks his head to the side as if listening for something in the distance. I glance over my shoulder, wondering if he hears the Recruiters behind me. But then the sound of something else tickles my ears.
Like a river. Or a waterfall.
Catcher walks down the path slowly, each step hesitant. I follow him.
We eventually run into a dead end against a tall wall made with dusty red bricks. It reaches into the distance to either side of us, bordering the winding arc of the road I glimpsed earlier on the other side.
We have no option but to climb it if we want to keep pressing forward.
I hold my breath as I slip my fingers along the bricks, searching for the weak spots and handholds. It’s difficult to find places to wedge my toes but eventually I struggle to the top, throwing a leg over so that I’m straddling the wall.
The sound of water’s stronger up here, the rush and roar of it. Catcher finally climbs next to me, both our hands gripping the edge of the wall just like the first night we crossed the Barrier.