Madda arrives back just as I’m hauling Cedar’s blanket over the top of the pack. I’m not so sure I want it anymore. She eyes it. “Where did you get that?”
“Cedar,” I say, nodding toward him. “Weird, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says, narrowing her eyes as the first of the men head out. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She twitches the edge of the blanket so it drapes over my shoulders to keep me dry. “Still, it was a nice thing for him to do.” She pulls her knife from her belt, digging a fern from the moss on a maple before setting off. “Licorice root,” she says. “Gather anything you think might be useful along the way.” She cuts off the frond and starts to chew on the rhizome. “What’s Cedar’s shade?” she asks suddenly.
“A muskrat.”
She nods. “And Henry Crawford’s?”
I stare ahead at the man with the scarred face. “A weasel.”
“And mine?”
“I still don’t know.” I feel my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. That’s what I hoped you’d say. So,” she says with a deliberate pause, “have you seen yours yet?”
“No.”
“Figured,” she says. “We might have to address that while we’re out here. There’s not enough time to do everything in the proper way, you know.” She stops to draw breath and then heaves herself over a fallen log. “Never enough time to do anything properly anymore.”
Her voice disappears as a hemlock groans and topples to the forest floor before us, taking a man down with it. We both stand there, frozen in shock, until Madda comes to her senses and pushes me down into the ferns. Above us, wind parts the cedars and the sleek, bipod body of a searchcraft hovers over us like a great silver wasp, waiting to sting.
Madda drops down beside me. “Your gun,” she says. “Get your gun!”
I fumble for it while the men start shooting at the searchcraft, though as soon as I’ve dug the pistol out of my pack, I drop it. My breath comes in short, rasping snatches as I fish for the gun, and when my hand finally falls on the grip, I shoot at the sky, hoping I don’t hit anyone.
The sound of gunfire rips through the air, hissing and screaming as the searchcraft fires back, its energy weapons cutting across the forest, slicing trees in two. This isn’t what I was told about searches. My father said they didn’t want to hurt us, that they only wanted to stun us because a dead Other is no good to them, but now I see that’s not true. I watch a man fall to the ground a short ways away, one leg severed from his body, his precious blood spilling on moss.
Madda scrambles past me, rushing over to the man, dropping down beside him, the blanket Cedar gave me pressed to the man’s wound. She thinks she can save him, but she can’t. Even through the smoke and the gunfire, I can see he is fading. “Madda!” I scream as sparks begin to block my vision. Still, I grope for her, to draw her down to hide in the ferns. She’s going to get killed. The only way to survive is to get down low, hide, become a stone, a worm, a root …
And then the searchcraft’s engine starts to whine, and thick black smoke billows into the air. A cry goes up from the men as the searchcraft banks and vanishes from sight. A few moments later, the sound of its impact reaches our ears, and then, the forest goes still. Rain drops onto tree, onto leaf, onto fallen body. No one moves.
Henry Crawford stands, slowly, and speaks. “Tom, Ron, Cedar—go chase it down. It won’t be far.”
Cedar catches my eye as he jumps up. His face is flushed with excitement as he follows the older men off into the underbrush.
Madda touches my arm. “You okay?”
I nod and brush the last of the sparks away from my eyes.
“Good,” she says. “We’ve got work to do.”
I start to take a step after her, but my feet won’t move. Sparks return to float around my face while beneath my feet, the earth shudders. Breathe, I tell myself. Just breathe. The sparks recede. The shuddering stops.
Madda frowns at me but doesn’t say anything. What is there to say?
We step out of our hiding place to find an arm waving at us, except it’s dangling from a cedar branch. The owner of the arm is nowhere to be seen.
Madda kneels. A man lies in the rich humus, his head cradled by bracken. He has two arms, so the one in the cedar isn’t his, though a livid burn crisscrosses his chest.
Madda touches my hand. “I need my medicine bag. It’s in the top of my pack.”
I bound away. Medicine bag, medicine bag, I must find her medicine bag. I repeat the words to stave off the sparks that chase after me. Their drone fills my ears, making it hard for me to think.
The pack sits in the mud, half open. I root through the top for the bundle that contains Madda’s most potent medicines. Why doesn’t she have it with her? She always carries it with her. And then I see it poking out from under the pack. I seize it and I’m back at her side within a few quick strides.
The rain has stopped. Mist descends, wrapping the forest in a shroud. Men walk back and forth, half-ghosted, carrying the wounded closer to Madda. She still sits beside the man with the burn, stroking his brow, and she doesn’t look up when I approach. I open the medicine kit. She waves her hand at me, as if I should know what she needs, but I don’t. This man is dying. Nothing will stop that now.
She reaches across, retrieving a bottle herself. WATER HEMLOCK, the label reads. And then I know. Madda doesn’t mean to heal this man. She means to ease his passing.
“Hold on, Ben. Open your mouth,” she says. “This might be a little bitter, but it will kill the pain.”
I turn away, but Madda yanks me back. “Get over here,” she hisses. “You’re a healer. Act like one.”
So I kneel next to Madda, remembering the day she told me I’d face difficult decisions, that there’d be times when I’d have to do things I’d rather not.
Yes, she told me, but maybe deep down I didn’t believe her.
But I’m here now, with a dying man beside me and none of that—what I believed, what I wanted, what choice I made—matters. If it were me lying there, what would I want? I’d want someone to stay with me, to talk to me, to take my hand and wait until I left this world. So I do that. I pick up the man’s dirty hand and cradle it in my own. Madda nods and walks off to find her next patient.
The man stares at me with vacant brown eyes. He’s about my father’s age. His hand is ice-cold. I have to force myself not to shiver. He has no shade. “Cassandra,” he says. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And yours is Ben?”
“Yep. Never got a chance to know you. I’m sorry about that.” His eyes flutter closed as his breath rattles in his chest. “So much I never got to do.”
I don’t know what to say, so I sing “Alouette,” like my father used to sing to Paul and me when we were little, and smooth Ben’s hair away from his eyes. Death is coming. I can feel its arrival, this raven that walks the spirit world with a black mask and a cape of rattles. I can hear him dancing, shaking his cape.
Ben clenches my hand. “I’m not long for this world. I hear the Great Spirit calling my name.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and nod. I hear it too. Don’t go, I want to say, but the decision isn’t mine. Ben wheezes, “It’s time.” A smile pulls at his lips and then, he’s gone.
I don’t know how long I sit there, singing, holding his hand. Long enough for his skin to take on a tinge of yellow. Long enough for his mouth to fall slack. There is no beauty in death. Ben is no longer Ben, but a husk sloughed off by his soul.
All around us people rush back and forth, setting guards, slashing bush, tending fires, bearing hastily made stretchers. I know they’re busy. I know there is much to do, but the fact that no one stops by, no one marks Ben’s passing, leaves me feeling so sad. These men knew him better than I did. They would know if he has children, a wife, someone who might be waiting for him to come home.
I pull a strip of bark from a
nearby cedar, and then pick ferns. I will weave Ben a garland to wear. My hands make the knots as part of me starts to withdraw. I see the mist hanging in the air, but I don’t truly feel it. I know rain falls on my head and drips down my neck, but I am not cold. I see the men moving through the undergrowth, their faces grim and serious, but I don’t hear them. The rain. The mud. The forest. The broken tree, stabbing up from the earth.
Ben, lying on the ground, except he isn’t. Only his body is. The rest of him is gone, off on the long journey to the land of our ancestors.
And then, blood rushes in my ears. Something snaps, and the cocoon protecting me from the noise and the cold and the truth breaks.
It’s Madda, calling me.
Reluctantly, I let Ben go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Three dead. Six seriously injured. Two of those will likely pass into the spirit world before dawn. Many with minor cuts, contusions, scrapes, burns. By all accounts, we’ve been lucky. It could have been worse, the men whisper. Much, much worse.
If we lived in the Corridor, if we weren’t Others, the injured men would be treated in a hospital with the best drugs the UA government could muster up. In the Corridor, a broken bone is a painful nuisance. A little plaster, a few pins, maybe surgery, some rest, and you’re all better, sonny. Right as rain.
Out here, we have splints. Honey. Garlic. Boneset. That’s it. The two men who may still pass over? They’ve been burned by the searchers’ weapons. They might still have died if we were in the Corridor. But then again, maybe not. Maybe if we were somewhere else, they’d wake up tomorrow in a hospital room, smile at their family, comment on how lovely the lilies are, May I have a sip of water? Could you bring the bedpan, please?
Darkness descends around us. It’s not true night yet, but the shadows of the rain forest don’t know that, nor do they care. I’m sewing up a bone-baring gash in a man’s arm—I asked him his name but I don’t remember what he said—as I wonder why we’re still here. If the searchers found us once, what’s stopping them from finding us again? Maybe I should wish for that. If they came, we could send these men back with them. The searchers have reason to get them back to the Corridor quickly, to fix what we can’t. But then what would keep them from taking all of us? I don’t know. I still don’t understand why that searchcraft attacked or how it found us to begin with.
I think these things over and over and over because I don’t want to think about what’s happening beyond the canopy of the trees. I don’t want to think about how the searchers penetrated the boundary. I know Madda said there are gaps now, but still—gaps big enough to allow a searchcraft through? That means the boundary is failing. How long until it’s gone completely? And what will stop the UA from coming and rounding us up then?
Madda brings me a steaming cup of tea. “Drink it,” she says when I wave it away. “Healing is hard work. If you don’t, you’ll regret it later, and you’re dangerous to everyone, including yourself, if you’re exhausted.” She glances at the row of stitches that run up the man’s arm. “Nice work.”
I sip the tea. It’s bitter, but warm. “She’ll bring some to you later,” I say to the man when he glances at my cup.
“I hope not,” he says as he closes his eyes. “That smells awful. Hurry up. I want this over with.”
When I’m finished with his arm, I start mixing a poultice for a man who’s lost most of his right ear. While I pound and grind, Cedar returns with the two older men. They go to join Henry Crawford.
“Well?” I hear him say.
“Found it. Killed the two still alive,” says one of the older men.
“And the searchcraft?” Crawford says.
“Salvageable.”
“Did you mark its position?”
“Cedar did the triangulation. We’ll be able to get to it again. Disabled the tracker and covered it well, so the UA won’t find it unless they stub their toe on it.” He grins.
Cedar glances my way and I drop my gaze back to my work. The last thing I want right now is his attention.
Later, as the men are settling down to sleep, Madda comes and sits beside me. “So,” she says. “It wasn’t what you thought it would be.”
“No.” It wasn’t. It was harder, and scarier, and yet … good, too, in a way that tastes both bitter and sweet.
“I remember the first time I watched someone die. I want to tell you it gets easier, but I’m not sure it does.” She gives me a kind smile. “But it’s necessary, you know. Death—it’s not the end. Something happens afterward.” She points up at the single star that has poked its way through the clouds. “Some say that’s what we become. Others, they say we become part of the wind until the day we’re born again.” She shrugs. “We all get to find out sooner or later.”
“Madda,” I say as I tug my blanket closer. I’m suddenly very cold. “The boundary. You said that there are gaps now. Do you know why?”
She scratches her cheek. “Not exactly. I’ve sensed it for a while, that the boundary isn’t what it used to be, though as far as I know, this is the first time a whole searchcraft has come through. Before, they only managed to drop their soldiers through the gaps. Maybe … maybe it’s just that nothing lasts, you know?”
“But if that’s the case, Madda, shouldn’t we be ready to leave? If it’s not safe here?”
She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “Remember when I told you there were things you’d have to say that no one would want to hear? Well, that would be one of them. I’ve said it. No one wants to listen.” She sighs. “They’ll come around, though—soon, I hope. Before it’s too late. But don’t you worry about that now, Cass. You’ve had a long, hard day. Get some sleep.”
I shuffle around, and when I’m mostly comfortable I close my eyes, but it’s some time before Madda’s words leave me. Before it’s too late. Before it’s too late.
What if it’s already too late?
I dream.
I dream of Paul sitting by a fire, staring at the embers. Bran sits across from him, a rifle resting across his knees. I float between them, a wraith called up by the depth of Paul’s vision, or maybe the dream’s merely a manifestation of my mind, a hopeful projection of what I wish was happening.
I touch Bran’s cheek and he shivers. It’s then I know that this is real, that Paul’s called me into his world for some reason. I sit by Bran’s side, rest my head on his shoulder, and watch my brother, wondering why he wants me here. What does he need me to see?
Something shifts in the shadows behind Paul. I’m not the only one he’s summoned. Faces peer out of the darkness, contorted in suffering. They moan and reach for Paul with crippled, wasted hands.
I scream at them to leave him alone, though my voice carries no weight in this place, and neither does my body, for when I try to push the faces away, my hands pass right through them and I stumble into darkness.
It’s all right, Cass, I hear Paul say. I had to try. He shakes his head and I spiral through the darkness until I feel my body jerk awake.
We set out for the boundary around midmorning. I’m not sure why we’re still going. Surely we should take the injured men back to town and see if the searchers attacked there too. But the order is given to move out and that’s what Madda’s doing, so that’s what I do too.
Three men, not two, passed during the night and Henry Crawford decided not to leave until beds had been made for the deceased high in the tops of the cedars where they can see the sky. I feel the dead men now, looking down over our shoulders as we leave them behind.
The men around me sing as we walk. I don’t know what they’re saying, though I can understand the gist of it—a song of mourning. A song that will accompany the deceased on their journey to what comes after. The men sing in their soft, rustling language, a language that I don’t know, though the sound of it makes my head swim. Madda places a hand on my arm and squeezes it from time to time, probably to make sure I’m staying with her.
We walk well into the night, and ri
se early the next morning to walk again. The day passes without incident, and by late afternoon, we arrive.
The forest just stops. One minute, we’re in the trees, and the next, we’re not. Legend says that a long time ago, the earth just slipped away into the ocean. My father said it was too full of sorrow over the land lost to the earthquakes, so it wanted to die too. Now it sits at the bottom of the ocean, looking up at the stars.
My gut aches at the sight of the ground stripped bare of every living thing. No birds. No trees. No water. Just the red stone running like an artery, bleeding all over the place, red stone as far as I can see.
I press my hand to my mouth, biting down on my knuckle hard to stave off the panic surging inside of me. Cedar pulls my hand away. “Don’t,” he murmurs. “They’re watching you. Want to know what you’re made of, whether they can control you better than Madda. Don’t let them do it.” He lets go of my elbow and walks away without another word.
Men approach from the east. They talk with Henry Crawford, who shouts at us to move out. A path traces the edge of the forest and leads to a makeshift camp, where mildew-stained tents huddle close to a cabin tucked into the tree line.
Madda drops her pack on the ground. “Leave yours too. They won’t need us for a while. We’ve got other business.”
I set my pack down and follow her into the woods. I’m so relieved to be away from the red stone that I’d happily follow her anywhere.
We walk north for a good long while, long enough for the shadows to drape themselves across the trees. Madda doesn’t speak. I don’t speak. Whatever we’re doing needs to be done in silence.
Our path runs uphill to where the forest thins. Madda pauses, scans the mountains, and then turns west. We scramble down an incline of pebbles, and then I see it: a tall, black stone, so polished our reflection ripples across its surface. It stands in a crater where nothing grows.
“What is it?” I whisper. Sparks buzz around my head, drawing closer and closer until I’m afraid to breathe, for fear of inhaling them.
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