Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  The specter in my head is silent for a long time. Then, finally, she says, You never were one to give up. I’m here with you, Sevvy. I love you. This isn’t the end unless you decide to let it be.

  Decide to let it be?

  My inner self sits up, my curled spine going straight. I won’t let this be the end. Not with so many people relying on me.

  CHAPTER 19 June

  MY EYES STAY OPEN AT night partly to be sure the ocean doesn’t gobble us down while I sleep, but mostly because of Luokai. The only real sleep you get when SS is around is the dying kind, and this bench is a good spot to keep watch, no matter how many times Luokai tells me it’s warmer inside the boat’s canopy. I like to know where my enemies sleep. The water, just over the side of the boat. Luokai inside, where the screech of a door will give him away before he can get close.

  Whenever Luokai isn’t messing with the engine, he sits up on the platform and breathes deep, letting the boat go this way and that. At first it makes me watch him close, until he says, “If I keep myself calm, they stay away.”

  They. Compulsions.

  Luokai sees mine coming before I do, the horrible voice screaming at me to jump over the side of the boat, to pull up the floorboards, to yank at my own hair, not even leaving me a voice to ask for help. He’s always there when my mind comes back to me, his arms restraining me still until I stop shaking. He’s strong like Howl. Soft like Sev.

  Half gore like Dad.

  Like me.

  “Why do you worry so much about the water, June?” Luokai asks from the engine controls. He’s always saying something, like he needs to remind me he’s there, that I’m not alone.

  “It’s worrying that sends you into a compulsion.” Luokai does something to the controls, then climbs down into the room under the canopy. “You have to relax. Think about good things and keep yourself calm, because then SS has less to work with. When we get to the river, it’ll take us right to where I first met Jiang Sev. A week or two of hiking from there and we’ll be at the Mountain, where Howl was headed. We’re practically already there.”

  My ears perk at that. Didn’t Sev first meet Luokai at Cai Ayi’s trading post?

  Luokai is watching me, though, so I pull my feet up onto the bench. Fold my arms. Close my eyes. Try to keep myself calm, like he told me to. It starts with remembering the bubbles in Cai Ayi’s voice. Then I line up the kids Sev and I pulled out of the City in my mind to wash their faces and check that their coats are zipped. Their heads were shaved, and their insides were meant to be cut out, but they’re mine now, and so they’re safe, because I know what it’s like not to have someone to take care of you.

  As if you could take care of anyone now. The gore’s breath huffs in my ear. You can’t even take care of yourself anymore. Only thing you’re good for now is for Luokai to make sure he gets the cure.

  Another thought slips in behind this one, keeping quiet so my gore can’t hear. If we find the Post, I could leave Luokai behind. One of the roughers would come with me to the Mountain to find Howl. I could be safe again, far from SS and the monsters it makes of good people.

  Luokai appears in the door, sending me to the railing with my hand clenched tight around the metal strip stashed inside my coat, but I let it go when I see he has a bowl in each hand. He settles next to me on the bench and hands me one of them, the smell of old rice soaked to make porridge welcome in my nose.

  “I was hoping to ask you something.” Luokai carefully places a bite in his mouth, chewing slowly and swallowing. “I understand you may not answer, and that’s all right. I respect your silence. But if there is anything you can say, please do.”

  The bowl’s rim feels like bone in my mouth. One sip, one mouthful. That’s enough for now. I set the bowl beside me, wondering how long I can make the food last.

  “It’s my brother, Howl. I had to leave before he was even your age. He grew up alone.” Luokai’s eyebrows pucker the skin across his forehead like he’s thinking very hard. “He’s still angry at me for never coming back. For not finding him.”

  Luokai draws his fisted hand from his pocket, that communication thingy he likes to play with inside. Howl had one he used to hide from Sev, though I guess she found it in the end. “And there’s another person. Sole.” He opens his hand to show me the little metal disk. “I didn’t want to leave her behind, but I did. I was so frightened of hurting them.…”

  My shoulders hunch, the wind pressing in close. He left people behind to keep them safe? Dad’s face seems to almost burn through the image of the gore who nests in my head. Dad couldn’t let go, couldn’t set me loose any more than I wanted to walk away from him. It was those things that almost killed me.

  “I loved them,” Luokai continues, and I sit forward, my brain finally all the way focused on what he’s saying. “But now that I’ve been gone so long, I’m not sure they’ll ever love me again.” He smiles, that puckered-up sour fruit expression taking his calm face and making it into a real person’s. “You know Howl better than I do. Is it in him to forgive?”

  I let my eyes fall down to look at my hands, my fingers white with cold, even bundled up inside my sleeves. Forgive Luokai for leaving Howl with people who weren’t his family, who treated him bad? The gore inside me starts to growl, but I hush him down.

  “Not forgiving can be dangerous. When you hold on to anger, it feels like you’re in charge, that you’re keeping someone else from hurting you. But then that anger is trapped inside your mind with no release. It can turn into poison.” Luokai rubs a hand across his face. “Not forgiving made me… hard. Made me refuse to help people when I should have.” I can feel it when his eyes come back up, like little flies crawling across my skin. “There’s some of that poison in you, I think. Maybe there’s been too much to forgive in your life.”

  The gore’s growls turn into bared teeth and claws. The wind holds her breath next to me.

  “Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. It means letting go so bad things don’t fester inside you. So other people’s bad decisions don’t spoil you. I’m still learning how to do it.” He shrugs. “I want my brother and me to be family again. But I can’t force someone else to give me another chance.”

  Sometimes there are no more chances. Sometimes the things you do are permanent. I touch my arms, long white scars streaking my skin like bird poop.

  “What happened?” His voice is so quiet, like Tian as she pet my head and told me I’d done well when I’d return to camp with my arms full of dead men’s things. Like the voice I gave Dad in my head after he couldn’t speak, though since it’s turned into…

  The gore whimpers, gnawing on his own paws.

  I kick my feet back and forth, take another bite of porridge and savor it in my mouth. Dad’s voice became a gore inside me, showing me all the ways to survive, and then growling that I don’t deserve it. I’ve been broken into too many pieces for anyone smart to want me anymore.

  How do you forgive people who can’t have a second chance because they’re dead? Maybe that’s the only time you can, because then you can be sure they won’t hurt you anymore.

  With a cure, maybe Luokai won’t have to wait until he’s dead to find forgiveness. Licking my lips, I look up and meet his eyes on purpose for the first time. They’re brown and stupid and full of hope.

  Hope that’s inside me. The wind nestles in close to me, and I smile. A little.

  CHAPTER 20 Tai-ge

  SECURING THE FACTORY AND GATE comes with only one terrible mishap. One of the younger soldiers found a friend sheltering inside one of the old worker dorms. It only took a moment for the Seph to get my soldier talking and then stab a knife in his chest before the soldier had even finished explaining what we were doing with the torches.

  When Captain Bai found the soldier’s body, the Seph was still kneeling over him, crying. Saying he didn’t mean to over and over, pressing hands to his friend’s chest as if he could somehow put the blood back inside. The fact that Captain Bai included
these details when he reported makes me want to trust him. As if he’s sending up a signal that he knows what I’m doing and it’s right.

  My stomach twinges with hunger as I walk with my soldiers, some of them joking and playing with one another as they go. Seeing them smile makes me realize how tight they were wound when I first got here. I wave them on, stopping to check the spot I hid my link. It’s there waiting for me.

  The deal with Mei is working already.

  Leaning on the cement wall just outside the cafeteria door, I compose my message to Mother: Success. Factory should be operational within days of reinforcements arriving. Unfortunately, a small number of Sephs broke into the market square during the operation, fouled most of the food, and left Captain Bai infected. His expertise is needed. Extra rations and any amount of Mantis you can spare, needed to get us through. We’ve had radio failure as well. Probably a week before any of our other connections will be up.

  Writing the words feels as if I’ve stuck a gun in my own mouth, my finger twitchy to shoot. Lying to my own mother. My General. The last hope for the City.

  I’ve decided I can’t let her see what I’m doing until it’s a success. This is a risk I’m taking, so she can’t be implicated.

  Mother’s response comes later than I anticipated. Not until I’ve already finished my first bowl of rice scraped from the pot and begun a discussion with Captain Bai about the best route to the Mantis labs. Expect a delivery after dark, Mother writes. The purple light is dim against the back of my hand, barely discernible even in the ill-lit cafeteria. We can spread ourselves no thinner after this. No more mistakes.

  Mistakes. My jaw sets, teeth aching from grinding together.

  “Is everything all right, sir?” Captain Bai asks. He still looks as if he’s afraid our mission this morning was a dream and there are piles of dead comrades outside for him to drag away.

  I stand up from the table, staring down at the flickering characters. It isn’t in Mother’s nature to accept that a subordinate—her own child especially—has come up with a better plan than hers. If we do succeed, if everyone can see it, not even Mother will be able to call it a mistake.

  But if I succeed by disobeying her, that will mean I’m telling everyone that she made a mistake. How can I take the orders I was given and make it plain they hinted at what we’ve done instead?

  Shaking my head, I dismiss the thoughts as premature. Before justifications can be drawn up, the initial groundwork needs to not disintegrate in a flaming mess. The fragile threads that link me to Lieutenant Hao aren’t going to thicken and thrive unless food keeps coming and the promises I’ve made about Mantis are realized. I avoid Captain Bai’s eyes when I respond to his question. “Everything is fine. We can start planning our approach on the First Quarter tomorrow when Lieutenant Hao is present.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  When I look up at the undercurrent of praise, Captain Bai locks eyes with me the way he’s not supposed to. As I fill my bowl with a second helping of rice and vegetables and meat, a dangerous warmth fills me, because even if I’m not sure of everything, at least I know one person now believes in me.

  Upstairs in my room, Mei sits against the wall with both hands pressed to her mask as if it will somehow keep her compulsions in. Her forehead knits when I hold out the bowl for her. Dinner isn’t the only thing I brought from downstairs. I pull the length of cord I took from the supplies heaped outside the orphanage from my shoulder. “No word from your colleague downstairs? Should I expect a building full of dead soldiers in the morning?”

  She stares straight ahead, her thick eyebrows crinkling. “You know it’s just me.”

  I set the bowl next to her when she doesn’t take it, then kneel next to her. “You want to eat first?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Is this where you want to be until the Mantis comes?”

  Mei’s eyes finally focus on me, her mask blocking all but the ice crystallizing in the air between us. “I hate you,” she says. And puts her hands out to be tied.

  * * *

  I leave Mei in the room alone to take off her mask and eat, stalling the moment I have to go to bed until long after the sun has gone down. When I finally enter the room, Mei refuses to look at me from where she’s tied to her bed, leaving me to lie down without so much as an insult. When I close my eyes, though, sleep seems to laugh at me, directing my attention to the Menghu only a few feet away, waiting for compulsions to take her.

  Still, I close my eyes, hope with all my heart the knots will hold, and wait.

  It isn’t until hours later, my guard relaxed, that an agonized scream jolts me up from my fake slumber. Falling sideways off the bare mattress, I land on my knees, groping for my gun. By the time I have it up and pointed at nothing but darkness, my fuzzy eyes finally focus on Mei, her face cadaverous in the pale moonlight. She pulls against the ropes, her breaths rushing like steam out of the cannery vents before she lets out another desperate yelp.

  “Please…,” she mutters once the cry is spent. “Please, there’s something inside me.”

  Her voice croaks, her whole body twisting against the ropes, attempting to get a hand to her mouth. “Please…” She says it over and over again, each more pitiful than the last, until tears bleed down her cheeks. Her breathing is so fast I’m afraid she’ll hyperventilate. Her head comes up slowly until she’s looking at me, but her eyes are empty. “Please, Tai-ge…”

  I turn away, the sound of my name almost worse than the screams. I’m ashamed to see her tied up and so frightened and… not herself, whoever that is. I’m the one who took her Mantis, who put her in this awful position.

  When her breathing becomes more measured, I let myself look at her again. She’s still crying, her head bowed as low as the rope will let her go.

  “Mei?”

  She doesn’t move.

  “Can I… get something for you?”

  “I don’t want anything from you, filthy Red.”

  “What about a sleeping bag or pillow?”

  “Go back to your mother, Hong Tai-ge. It’s where you and every other Red belongs. Kowtowing to her shiny boots.”

  Mei is shaking, the raw stripe on her wrist now dripping blood where she pulled against the rope. I turn back toward the wall, eyes following the cracks in the plaster, hating the pity welling up inside me. Her hopeless posture sparks memories I don’t care to remember. Sevvy used to go somewhere else—somewhere inside her head—before she ran away from the City. She saw things no one else could. I couldn’t call attention to it or risk Mother or Father sending her to the Sanatorium, and I never brought it up because she never did. It seemed dangerous, a secret both of us were keeping.

  The words are out of my mouth before I think them through, the very least of what I wish I’d said to Sevvy when I said nothing at all. When I said worse than nothing. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I know I don’t understand exactly. But I’m sorry.”

  “How can you be sorry?” Her voice dies a little more with every word. “You’ve never had to worry about SS. You’ve never had to worry about anything.” The rancor turns me toward her again, her eyes made of fire and hate. Arguments puff up inside me, but I hold them back and let her speak. “You have never once had your hands blistered over a fire when you did wrong or gone to bed with welts and bruises after a day’s hard work. You don’t know what it’s like to finally escape only to end up here with a Red’s rope around my neck yet again.” She spits, the phlegmy string landing on my boot. “I’m not begging to you or your stars. Never again.”

  Her words sit like a hole in my stomach, an echo of something Sevvy told me about a girl she met in the Mountain. “Were you working for the City? Outside?”

  She doesn’t look up.

  “Not all of us knew about the living conditions on the farms. I didn’t even see a farm until I left during the invasion.”

  “If you didn’t know, it’s because you didn’t want to. You ate the food as it
came. Watched them build factory after factory, saw the helis carry materials from outside your Seph-cursed wall.” Her head tilts, and the sight of her eyes glaring through a sheet of sweat-soaked hair, her face like an angry ghost, leaves me with goose bumps. “The whole Third Quarter should have been enough for you to understand why you didn’t have to work. Just because there was no one there whispering in your ear what exactly the can of peaches in your hand cost doesn’t mean we weren’t trying to speak.”

  Anger unfurls inside me again, just like every time Sevvy tried to tell me that my life, my family, everything I know, is rotten to the core. There were good people here in the City. There are good Firsts, good Seconds. Scores of loyal people who wanted…

  My head falls back onto my pillow. What did they want? What do I want? To be safe again. For the world to allow me to sit in the same room as my mother without the stiff angle of my salute as the yardstick by which she measures my love. It was war that did that. Mei’s people invading, attacking us. Sev leaving and igniting the machine that ended with my home in ruins, the torch line sheltering a tiny heart of wellness in a body that is sick.

  Anger is a comfortable refuge. With anger smoldering around me, it’s easy to watch Mei’s accusations burn to nothing, because she doesn’t understand. She only sees things from outside our wall, where scavengers pick one another’s bones until there’s nothing left. Where there are no people, just monsters.

  Monsters. The last memory I have of Sevvy looks like Mei does right now. As if no matter how hard she looks at me, she can’t find anything of value. I don’t want you to speak for me, Tai-ge. I want to live in a place where I can speak for myself!

  I turn back to the wall. Clench my eyes shut. Listen to Mei’s long, shuddering breaths as I wait for a sleep that won’t come. After a long space of trying, I finally let myself sit up. Let my cold feet find the floor and carry me to the base of Mei’s bed.