She hugged me and stood up. “Are you going to be okay here on your own? Because I have to go now. But I can stay if you need me.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Unless you’re heading back to that map. Because if you are then I desperately need you, and you can stay here and get some fresh air and sunlight.”
She grinned. “I’m going to meet Daniel.”
“Go on then, Georgie.”
She went skipping away into the forest, leaving me to stare out at the water, and think about what was meant to be.
THE FIRST
GEORGIE
I wandered between the trees and over the earth and in the dappled light that came shining through the leaves. Today was a good day. I had helped Ash. I had told her what was real. But even better was that I had finally found the first person whose choices mattered. I’d sent Daniel to get Jules before I’d gone to see Ash and now Jules would be waiting for me.
There was a sound ahead, like rushing water, only it was rushing air. I stopped moving and waited for Daniel to materialise in front of me. He was so fast that no one could see him when he Ran.
When he appeared I asked, “Couldn’t you find Jules?”
“He’s in the caves. I’ve told him you want to talk to him about a future. But Georgie, are you sure we should tell him everything?”
I felt sick to my stomach. Daniel never asked if I was sure. “I don’t think I’m wrong …”
He shook his head. “No – sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean that you were wrong. It’s just that Jules has made no secret of the fact that he doesn’t like the way we do things here, and he’s with the Tribe because he’s with Ember. Not because he follows Ash.”
The queasiness vanished. It wasn’t me Daniel doubted. “You don’t trust him.”
“I want to trust him. He’s Tribe. But I don’t know about him yet.” His mouth flattened out, the way it did when he was thinking about something that upset him. “And it’s not as if we haven’t been wrong about someone before.”
He meant Briony, who’d betrayed the Tribe to Neville Rose and died trying to escape him when he’d betrayed her in turn. “You’re worried because I didn’t See what Bry was going to do.”
“I’m worried because none of us did, and somebody should have realised how untrustworthy she was. I should have seen it.”
He thought that because he was a hawk. Daniel’s eyesight was as sharp as the birds he was bonded with. He noticed tiny details about people.
“I don’t think Jules is like Briony,” I said. “But I didn’t think Bry was like Bry either. Until she was.”
“Me too. Which is what makes me wonder whether we need to tell Jules everything. Because if he can’t be trusted, it’d be better that he knew less about us instead of more.”
I hadn’t thought about not telling Jules everything before. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. I stared into futures, trying to find an answer. It was more difficult to do when I couldn’t turn them into a map so I closed my eyes, shutting out the forest so that all I could See were the possibilities in my head. What do I do? The futures told me.
I opened my eyes again. “We have to tell him. If he’s going to make the right choices, he needs to know everything we do. You see, it’s–”
Daniel held up a hand. “You don’t need to explain. If you say we tell him, then we do.”
He thought I was right. He didn’t doubt me. Now we had to go tell Jules, and I wanted to be there and not here. “Let’s Run, Daniel!”
I put my arms around his neck and he lifted me up. Then he Ran and everything turned into a blur. It looked this way for me but not for Daniel. Everything slowed down for him. He’d told me he thought he saw the world the way I did when he Ran, because everything moved so slow he could see all the ways things might happen. I said maybe that meant I saw the world the way he did when he didn’t Run, with everything blurred so you couldn’t tell what was to come. Only I didn’t understand how he could make any decisions when he didn’t know what was coming. I didn’t understand how anyone could.
When the world returned, we were in my cave. Jules was pressed against the far wall, staring across the room in wide-eyed terror at where Helper was crouched in the centre of the map with his fur standing on end and his front legs raised.
“Helper!” I ran over to him. “Are you all right?”
“Is he all right?” Jules spluttered. “That thing could have killed me!”
Daniel frowned at him. “You touched the map, didn’t you? Even though I told you not to.”
“I was only looking! I mean, I might’ve shifted a bit of vine to get a better view … how was I supposed to know it was his nest?”
I brushed down Helper’s fur. “It’s okay now,” I said to him. “Jules won’t do that again. You’re a good boy for looking after the map.”
Jules took a cautious step away from the wall. “What is it with everyone praising animals for attacking me?”
“He didn’t attack you,” I replied indignantly. “If he’d bitten you, you’d be dead. Even if he’d only spat a little bit of venom at you, your skin would be burned. Also it would have started to rot by now.”
Jules swallowed. “Listen, why don’t you tell me what this is all about? Because I’ve got things to do. Somewhere else. Far, far away from here.”
“Something bad is going to happen,” I said. “And I think you can help stop it.”
“Oh yeah? Stop what, exactly?”
“Ash is going to die.”
Jules went pale. “That is bad. Ember would never get over it.”
“Nor would Ash,” Daniel pointed out.
Jules shrugged. “You’ve got your priorities; I’ve got mine. Anyway, I didn’t even think wolfgirl could die! Doesn’t she have some kind of guardian serpent that can bring people back from the dead?”
“You mean her grandpa?” I asked.
“If that’s what she calls him.”
“That’s who he is.”
He looked doubtful. Ash had said not everyone found it easy to understand about ancient earth spirits.
“The Serpent and Ash brought Connor back,” I said. “She was Sleepwalking and he used her ability. I don’t know if it could work that way for her.”
Daniel added, “Georgie is seeing Ash die across different futures. So it doesn’t seem as if the Serpent can – or will – intervene this time.”
Jules rubbed at his jaw. “Okay. No help from the giant snake. What about if we keep her away from the ci–” He stopped talking, staring at me. “No. That’s what you meant before, isn’t it? Back when we were all sitting in the Overhang, and you said it didn’t matter if she stays or goes?”
I nodded. “Keeping her here isn’t the way to stop it. You’re the one who can stop it. You’re the first.”
“The first what?”
“The first person whose choices will matter.”
“What does that even mean?”
Perhaps I hadn’t explained it right. I looked at Daniel.
“From what Georgie can tell,” he said, “there are certain people whose choices will be critical to whether Ash lives or dies.”
“And I’m the first, huh? Who are the others?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “I only just found you.”
“All right … then what do I choose?”
“I don’t know that, either. I can’t know that. There are too many possibilities and too many choices.”
He threw up his hands. “Then what am I supposed to do? You do realise you’ve only got about a week before she leaves the Firstwood? It’d be good to have some kind of plan by then, don’t you think?”
“It isn’t so much about having a plan,” Daniel said. “Not when there’re so many possibilities in play. It’s about making the right choices when the time comes to make them. And we might not be able to tell you what to choose, but I think I can tell you how to choose.”
He sounded stern. I’d never heard Daniel sound like that before.
I hadn’t even known Daniel could sound like that. He never spoke that way to me.
“Knowing Ash is in danger will change how you act,” Daniel continued. “So I think part of it is making the choices that you might not have made, if you didn’t know about the danger. And the rest? Be Tribe, Jules. Because we don’t give in and we don’t give up, especially when one of us is in trouble.”
“You think I’ll give up?”
Daniel gave him a hawk stare that said, I notice everything about you. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Jules muttered under his breath. “Just because I don’t worship at the feet of the great Ashala Wolf …” Then he waved at the map. “This danger you’re seeing. Is it Ash who gets in trouble? Or is it flyboy?”
I didn’t know who flyboy was. But Daniel said, “He means Connor.”
Jules nodded. “I was with Connor in Spinifex City before he went to rescue Ash from Terence. If she was dead, he wasn’t coming back. And it’s the same for her, isn’t it? Neither one of them outlives the other for long.”
I swung around to stare at the possibilities spread out across the wall. “You’re right. Connor dying or Ash dying – it’s the same. They’re so … um, so …”
“Tangled up together,” Jules said. “Have you told them yet? About the danger?”
“We can’t. If Ash knows, she dies trying to stop other people from helping her. And if Connor knows …” I studied possibilities. “He gets himself killed trying to stop people from protecting him. Or they each die trying to save the other.” I sighed. “They’re no good at saving their own lives. Because neither of them think they should have lived.”
I turned back to Jules. He seemed confused. Something I’d said hadn’t made sense. I went over the words in my head, trying to work out what it was that hadn’t been clear.
Then Daniel said, “Before they came to the Firstwood, Ash lost her little sister and Connor lost his mother. Neither of them were there when it happened, and both think that if they had been they could’ve saved them. That they should have saved them instead of being the ones who survived.”
The confusion went away from Jules’s face. He understood now. “Have you told anyone else about all this?”
“No,” I said. “The more people who know, the more chance there is of Ash finding out and if she finds out she dies, because she won’t let us protect her. Anyway, it’s only the people whose choices matter who can stop this. So you can’t tell anyone.”
“Hey, I don’t want to share,” Jules replied. “I just want to make sure you’re not telling Red.”
“Because it would make her sad?”
“Because it would make her more than sad. Red thinks she broke the world and wolfgirl is going to fix it, and if you take the hope of that away … Red won’t cope, especially not if there’s nothing she can do to help. And, if she does come up in your web as someone whose choices matter, you come and find me first, understand? You come and get me before you tell her.”
“I will. Promise.”
He let out a breath. “Okay. Well, unless there’s something else you can tell me, I better go start thinking about how I’m going to save the world.”
“There’s nothing else,” I said. “I’ll come find you if there is.”
Jules walked out, but in a strange kind of way, looking at me instead of where he was going. Then I realised he was looking at Helper. Jules didn’t take his eyes off the spider until he’d made it out the cave, and his footsteps hurried away very quickly once he was outside.
Helper chirped a gleeful question at me.
“You didn’t exactly drive him off,” I told him. “But he was very afraid of you.”
“Has anything changed?” Daniel asked. “Now that Jules knows?”
I wasn’t sure. I stepped closer to my futures, moving across the wall as I reached out to trail my hand along the connections. The futures were speaking. I could hear snatches of conversations, like voices from a faraway cave. Jules’s voice: I told her what she’s signing up for. She still wants to come. Then chatter too faint to make out, followed by the voice of a man who I didn’t know: Must I save humanity again? It really is becoming rather tiresome.
I stopped when I reached the edge of the wall and pulled my hand away. “There’s a change.” I frowned. That wasn’t right. “There’s the possibility of a change. I think we have to wait for things to … become.”
I yawned, rubbing at my eyes. I’d been mapping and mapping, and I was tired. “I should look for the other people. Whose choices matter.”
“You need to rest.”
Helper chittered. He thought I needed rest as well, and it wasn’t good to map when I was this worn out. It became too hard to See. I could make mistakes, and mistakes were bad. Mistakes might get Ash killed. “I suppose I could sleep for a little while.”
I went to the bedroll I kept in the corner and lay down, cushioning my head on the pillow. Daniel sat beside me. My eyes were heavy so I let them close. “You have to wake me up if Jules comes back,” I said. “In case he has any more questions. Or if Ash wants to know something.”
“You don’t need to worry about anyone or anything,” Daniel said. “Go to sleep, Georgie.”
So I did.
THE STATION
ASHALA
Gull City had changed.
I was trying not to stare as if I’d never seen the place before, because acting like a tourist wouldn’t fit with the Gull-City-blue shirt and pants I was wearing. I was supposed to look as though I lived here, and I had, once. But this just wasn’t the city I’d grown up in. There were hardly any enforcers on the streets, and the ones that were around didn’t seem to be conducting any spot Citizenship checks. There had been a lot of enforcers on the gates, but they’d been on the lookout for Terence and Neville – part of the security Willis had put in place at the entrances to the city. And almost every second person I saw was wearing a badge with a red question mark on it. “The Question” was a tool of the reform movement, and it was this: Are people with abilities part of the Balance? The more people who answered “yes”, the more difficult it was to justify how we were treated under the Citizenship Accords. Judging by all the badges, there seemed to be a lot of people answering “yes”. Change was in the air. I breathed it in and smiled.
Connor was walking at my side and Ember ahead, with Nicky beside her. The four of us were going to meet Jules, who should be on the morning train. Like Em, he had a genuine Citizenship tattoo so he could ride the Rail without worrying about random checks. That meant he could get here in about a day and not the ten days it had taken Connor, Nicky and me to travel cross-country. We’d arrived an hour ago, to find that Jules hadn’t travelled with Em as he’d been supposed to because he was sick. Jules suffered from bouts of extreme weakness, an after-effect of the toxin Terence had once infected him with. If he wasn’t on today’s train it meant he was too weak to come and we’d have to do this without him.
We turned a corner onto the entrance to the station, and merged with the crowds going inside. I hadn’t been in this place since I was a kid, but it was about as big as I remembered. Trains rolled in and out of a huge white structure with a high roof that curved overhead. Some of the older parts of the city were constructed from salvaged old-world materials, but the station had been built after the recyclers were working properly. It was made of composite, white and shiny and embedded with sparkling flecks of colour that were all that remained of whatever had been recycled to make it. Old things make new things. Old worlds made new ones. Today it didn’t seem so impossible that this world could take what it had and make something else. Something better.
The three of us, and Nicky, made our way to the platform, positioning ourselves among everyone else who was waiting for the train. The big clock on the wall was telling me it was 10.50; we had ten minutes until it arrived. That seemed like a long time to be standing here with all these Citizens. Not to mention the enforcers – like the gates, this entrance was being wa
tched. But no one was paying any attention to us, and there was no reason why they should. We were just three more people in blue with a dog, among all the others who’d brought the family canine to greet people getting off the train. Ember said Willis had offered us an enforcer escort, but Em wasn’t comfortable with our movements being tracked and neither was I. Better to go as unnoticed as possible and look after ourselves rather than relying on the government to do it. And I definitely didn’t want anyone finding out that we had our own base in the city, in the form of the storage unit owned by Daniel’s grandma.
The minutes on the clock ticked slowly by until the train finally came rolling in, shuddering to a stop. I stood on tiptoes as the doors slid open and passengers began to pour out, searching for a familiar face. If Jules is wearing his face. Maybe I should wait for him to find us. Then the crowd parted, and there he was. I lifted my hand to wave – and froze.
Tripping along at Jules’s side was a girl with pink ribbons in her hair.
“Penelope?” I gasped. “Em, what–”
“I didn’t know anything about this!”
Pen let go of Jules and came running up. “Don’t be mad, Ash, please? I wanted to come.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I told her, glaring at Jules over the top of her head.
He shrugged. “Told you, I thought we could use a Mender.”
“And I said it wasn’t necessary! Or was this about you? Because if you were too sick to come without Penelope, you should have stayed home.”
“I’m not sick, wolfgirl. Just needed an excuse to catch a different train, since I knew Red would never go for bringing Pen with us.”
Ember drew in a shocked, hurt breath. “You lied to me?”
Pen opened her mouth to speak, obviously wanting to rush to Jules’s defence. He frowned at her and shook his head. At least he had enough decency not to hide behind her, but as for the rest … I didn’t know whether I was more angry at him or disappointed in him. Or maybe I wouldn’t be so angry if I wasn’t so disappointed.
This wasn’t the place to talk about it. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
The Foretelling of Georgie Spider Page 5