by Lenore, Lani
“That’s good news at least,” she said. There was a dire lack of good news lately.
“Is Nix leaving?” Finn asked suddenly.
A shock ran through her but she calmed when she realized that Finn had not meant to ask if Nix was leaving at this moment. She considered if Nix wouldn’t want it to be Finn’s business, but it wouldn’t be too much longer before he found out anyway.
“I really don’t know,” she said. “He’s still considering it. Why do you ask?”
He raised his head. “I was just thinking that there isn’t much farther to travel. Crossing the canyon with Mach’s help will save us some time – we hope – but Calico says that the only people living in the plains are of her tribe, and, well, I was just thinking, if Nix leaves, and maybe we don’t find the others, there will only be two of us. Toss and me. I’m not so sure Rifter will be pleased with that.”
Wren was in shock at his words. Though she didn’t want to, she began to consider it herself. Would Rifter be angry with her if all she brought to him were two of the six? Perhaps he would. Would he blame that on her?
She shook her head to put the thoughts away. She couldn’t think these things. When they got there, Rifter would have to take what she brought. She couldn’t disregard the possibility that perhaps Rifter had found the remaining boys on his own.
“Rifter will take what he gets,” said Wren, angered by the thought of him refusing them. “We’re all doing the best we can. I can’t force others to do what they don’t want to.”
Finn nodded with a nervous smile. “It’s just been so long,” he said, “since we’ve all seen him, you know. I’d feel much more confident if I had all the others with me.”
Wren smiled, unsure of what to say, but the truth was. She felt the same way herself. She wanted them all with her, to be surrounded by those who were familiar and dear when she faced the uncertain future.
“Well you can count on me. I’ll be there with you, no matter what,” she assured him.
Though it wasn’t much, it seemed to console Finn for the time. He smiled gratefully at her. Now, if she could only stop the nagging in the back of her own mind, insisting that she do as Nix had suggested to her.
Don’t go to meet Rifter. Stay away.
“So you’re sure about Mach, are you?” Finn asked. “It’s really him?”
“I’m sure of it. I just don’t know why he doesn’t remember us, or where his brother Mech is, for that matter.”
“It seems strange that he doesn’t remember,” Finn reflected, “unless he’s faking it. What better way to dodge meeting Rifter than to pretend he never knew him in the first place.”
Wren had been thinking that same thing.
“Well!” Finn said abruptly as a shadow veered too close to the tent. “I guess it’s time to get to work then – on the bridge.”
She looked at him narrowly. “Are you sure your leg is alright?”
“Of course it’s fine. You think a few scratches will stop me?”
Wren was not so sure. Before he could think to stop her, she knelt down to the ground and inspected his bandages, peeling away at the cloth to check out the damage beneath. He didn’t try to turn her away from it, and once she had peeled away the first layer, she was met with a surprise.
He’d said that a few scratches would not stop him. Scratches were all that were left. His flesh had closed itself overnight. She looked up at him for an answer, but could not get the question out.
“I told you,” he said with a satisfied smile, “I’m a fast healer.”
2
The canyon was deep and jagged, hewn down into the rock where a river had once been, now reduced to a miniscule stream of water below. Wren tried not to look down into it. It made her feel disoriented.
They had emerged into the gray daylight from the mountain’s base, but even the smallest amount of natural light hurt her eyes after being underground for so long. Wren squinted against the sun as she peered across the canyon, noting the distant flat ground which came off the plateau and into the plains.
It’s not far now, she thought with as much pleasure as nervousness. We’re almost there.
Wren tried to remember the time when she had first seen Nevermor as a whole – when Rifter had taken her up into the clouds and given her a view of it all. It was a distant memory now, but she did not dwell on it. There was plenty to be done and she intended to do her part.
She examined the others, who at the very least seemed rested. She paid closer attention to Nix, whom she was not sure how to approach after last night’s events. She had rejected him, though she hadn’t even realized she’d done it.
Now he will leave for certain.
When he noticed her gaze, he simply stared back at her, but his face gave nothing away.
“Alright, here’s the plan,” Mach said, opening up a scroll of paper where he’d made his calculations. “I’ve made note of three points to set charges to disengage the rocks. If set off at the right time, the chunks should wedge together when they fall and bridge the way across. It’ll be right here at this spot.”
“Where did you get that much gunpowder?” Finn asked, impressed.
“It was left here by pirates, among other things. No one ever came back for it, so I thought I’d help myself.”
“That’s decent luck.”
“What if this doesn’t work?” Nix asked, clearly skeptical of the whole thing.
“Then you’ll have to cross the long way,” Mach said mockingly. “Any more questions?”
“What are we supposed to do?” Toss asked.
“You get to help me move the powder kegs. They aren’t feather-light, you know.”
He pointed to the map and indicated the spots in the mountain where the charges would go, but Wren didn’t give it much attention. Instead she was looking into the distance, feeling nervous and yet anxious that it was closer, drawing her toward the end.
“We’ll have a bit of an incline to work with, but there are several of us, so I don’t expect that to be a problem,” Mach said. “Alright then, the kegs are back at camp. Get to it.”
The others began to shuffle back – Nix at least, scoffed at Mach’s orders, but still he went. He did not give Wren special attention as he had before, not seeming concerned whether or not he left her alone. That was well enough for her. She had her own ideas.
Mach hesitated, rolling up the scroll where his plans had been marked, and Wren saw an opportunity to address him directly. When he turned to follow behind them, he appeared surprised that she was still there.
“Aren’t you going with them?” he asked curtly.
“I’d rather walk with you.”
He laughed – a huff of annoyance. “I’m flattered, but you’re not my type. The whole ‘sweet and innocent’ guise isn’t really working for me.”
He tucked the plans in his back pocket and tried to walk past her, but Wren was determined not to be shut down.
“Are you certain we don’t know each other? Doesn’t it seem odd that I know your name?”
“You might have heard it somewhere else,” he said, stopping in front of her. “I already told you all you need to know, Wren.”
“I’m just trying to get to know you,” she said, trying to be pleasant.
“Like I said, you’re not my type.”
He stepped around her, aiming to get away from this conversation, but she had more to throw at him.
“Are you sure you don’t have a brother?” she pressed. “Maybe it’s him that I remember.”
Mach sighed, turning his face up toward the sky in exasperation.
“Fine, if it’ll shut you up, I’ll tell you a story,” he said rapidly, facing her. “It’s about a boy who got mixed up with the wrong crowd. His new friends were selfish, greedy and violent – and worst of all, they were paranoid. The boy found himself hiding among his peers, fearing the day that they might find out his secret, but he had to stay. He had to be what they were because he couldn’t go ba
ck to his old life. The new way was all he had.”
Wren tried to see into the story, to discover what he was really telling her. He had already admitted to being among pirates, and she believed that was what he meant. She was also under the impression that Mach’s memory was not as blank as he’d intended for them to believe, but still there was no mention of Mech.
“One day, the others started to get suspicious,” Mach went on. “But after months of the darkness, everyone was starting to look like a backstabber. They started to point fingers in the boy’s direction – claimed him to be a traitor. They tried to kill him, and in the process of that, he lost part of himself. After that, all he could think about was revenge.”
Revenge? Wren had her own feelings about that. She had never been one to seek out violence, and she had seen the damage it could do.
“So, the boy built a living machine, made for destruction. He wanted revenge, and eventually one day, he got it. After that, he went on to live his life alone. End of story.”
Wren knew a thing or two about what that sort of desire could do to a person. They had all seen it on Rifter years ago as he’d relentlessly sought the Scourge.
“Did it make him feel better – this revenge?” she asked, already sure of the answer, but when he looked at her, she second guessed herself. There was a vicious smile on his mouth.
“It was the most beautiful fucking day of his life.”
Wren was startled by that. Mach decided against fleeing for the moment, stepping closer to her, lowering his face nearer to hers as if to tell her a secret.
“If you are Wren, as you say you are, then I’d be surprised if you weren’t considering a bit of revenge yourself. My advice? Take every piece of it that you can get.”
“What do you mean?”
Mach seemed to know exactly of what he spoke. “As the story goes, a certain fairy wisp did something terrible to you. She deserves to be punished, right? And why shouldn’t she be? But who’s going to do it if not you? You deserve that.”
Whisper. Wren knew that she had been wronged by that wisp who hated her. The last two years of her life had been torment because of those few moments on the rooftop of Miss Nora’s Home for Wayward Children, led by the fairy’s spell.
Mach watched her, observed the gears turning in her mind as she processed what he’d said, and smiled nastily when he saw that there were no more words in her mouth.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I have some charges to rig.”
Mach walked away from her, leaving her stunned and uncertain in the daylight as he moved back into the cave. Perhaps their conversation had not broken through to him, but it had left her with thoughts she hadn’t pondered before.
She had never leant much thought to revenge, but now, reimagining that night the storm had been brewing over her head, it was all she could think about.
3
And so, they worked. They placed large barrels of gunpowder in precise spots and braided fuses together. Mach had everything planned, and Finn confirmed the calculations. He believed it would work and that built up Wren’s faith as well.
They worked through the day, until the sun began to duck down behind the jagged silhouette of the mountains. After Mach had checked over everything at least three times, he decided that all was ready.
“I hope this works,” Nix said under his breath. Wren was silently hoping the same thing.
Mach lit the fuses and they moved out onto the ledge where they’d first emerged that morning – where Mach was certain that the bridge would fall, and finally a resounding boom shook the mountainside.
Wren felt the vibrations beneath her feet but she did not believe she was in danger where she stood. Above them, she could hear the rocks breaking apart, and the remaining daylight was blocked out by large shadows as the slabs fell.
She remembered something from years ago – a scene misplaced but not forgotten. Rifter and the Scourge were fighting. There were boulders falling from the sky…
Nix’s hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her back a bit, and the great rocks fell before them. It happened so quickly that she was barely able to follow it. The large slabs of stone fell precisely, wedging against each other, and just as Mach had predicted, there was a bridge of rock before them when the dust settled, steady and straight.
“Ha-ha!” Mach shouted. “It worked!”
Finn and Toss were impressed, howling with pleasure, but Nix only seemed amazed.
“I can’t believe that it worked,” he muttered. Calico seemed to agree, but she had been quiet all day. Wren guessed that the weight of her vision could be blamed for that.
Wren was not sure how Mach had managed to come up with such a plan, but she could not let those complicated thoughts take away her gladness that it had been as easy as they’d hoped. Perhaps it was not so unbelievable if the world accepted the change. The work had been a strain, but in the end, the finished product was truly a work of genius.
“Alright then,” Finn said. “Who wants to go first?”
At that, none of them were quite eager to volunteer.
“We’d best hurry,” Calico piped up seriously. “The explosion was no mere toppling of stones. Curious monsters might come to observe it soon.”
Wren hadn’t considered that, and she guessed the others hadn’t either, for they quickly came to life.
After a close inspection, Mach was confident enough that he agreed to lead the way, and the rest followed onto the narrow passage. Despite a bit of vertigo, Wren found that the bridge was as sturdy as promised, and all went across one after the other until they had come to the other side.
On the further side of the dark-stoned canyon, she looked down the incline until her eyes ran across the flat, grassy land beyond. Wren suddenly thought of Vorks, her heart taking up a quicker pace, but then swiftly recalled that Finn had said no Vorks dwelled here.
The plains.
Wren was happy to have reached this place. Already, things seemed much calmer, as if their journey was finally coming to a close, but she knew that meeting with Rifter again was only the beginning. She looked over the long stretch of land, squinting her eyes to gaze toward the horizon, certain that she saw a small cluster there. Calico’s settlement? How far was it? Five miles? Twenty? Suddenly, not even that was very far.
As she stood there, she realized that her pattern of thought had changed just a bit since she’d started out. At this moment, her thought might have been ‘I will finally see Rifter again’, but that was not what she longed for. The thought that came forth from the inner core of her mind was: ‘Finally, I will have the truth’.
Her companions moved past her, but Wren did not notice. Toss and Finn spoke words of thanks to Mach for his assistance, which Mach replied that they had helped him just as much.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Finn asked him, and Wren turned aside curiously at that.
Looking at Finn and Toss, Mach seemed different than he had this morning when they’d spoken alone. Perhaps it was the day he’d spent with them all that had swayed him, but his expression was no longer haughty. Instead, it was a bit sorrowful.
“I–” Mach started, but hesitated. “I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s anything for me out there.”
Wren was sad to hear him say that, but she turned away. It was not her conversation, and if that was his choice, she had no business speaking toward it.
I tried, but I have to let him go his own way.
“Do we have anything to fear from your people, Calico?” she heard Nix ask on her other side. “We haven’t always been on the best terms.”
“I would imagine that they are expecting us,” the huntress responded, a slight smile on her mouth. Wren did not think she had seen Calico smile like that since she’d been in their company. “Come. We should go.”
Calico started off ahead of them, and though it might have been a pain for him to do so, Nix looked over at Wren, meeting her eyes.
“Are you ready
?” he asked, casting his gaze back toward Mach briefly. Not quite as zealous as when she’d begun, Wren had nothing more to say about it. The twin – or whoever he claimed himself to be now – had made his choice. He did not want to meet with Rifter, and she had to accept that.
“Yes, I’m ready,” she answered.
Wren turned, setting her gaze to the horizon. This was it. Her last steps.
“Wren…”
Her attention was called back to Mach, who was standing alone at the edge of the bridge under the darkening sky. He was fumbling with his bandana, twisting it between his gloves. At her approach, he removed the goggles from his eyes – but then looked boldly into hers for several moments.
“I lied to you,” he confessed, “but of course you already knew that. And I’m sorry for being an ass.”
She didn’t say anything, and Mach smiled shortly – sorrowfully. “Never allowed to be an individual, and yet now I am one, but because of that I have been forgotten. You’re gathering the Pack, and I understand what that means. Now that I’ve told you the truth, I would guess that you’d ask me to come with you too.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off before she began.
“But I can’t go with you, Wren. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He lowered his head. She wanted to ask him why, but he clearly was not done speaking. There was one thing she was sure of: his refusal was perhaps nothing to do with Rifter, but something to do with Mech.
“I just wanted to ask you for something,” Mach went on. “Don’t try to look for my brother.”
That was not the sort of request she’d expected.
“You won’t find him, and if you do, you’ll regret it. But if you do happen to come across him, I’d like for you to give him a message from me. It might help you.”
“Alright,” she nodded with interest, preparing herself to remember the message.
“If you would, tell him I said to remember ‘duality’.”
Wren stared at him a moment, thinking he might go on, but he did not. She shook her head in confusion.