There’s no way to know how long this is taking.
We’ve got no sun.
No moon.
No ticking clocks.
Just choices.
They measure the distance between who we are and who we’re turning into.
Except it’s the same choice, made again and again.
Choose the opposite of gray.
It takes forever.
It takes a moment.
Footsteps echo outside.
The door rattles.
Fetchers come in.
They stand. Loom.
They think they’re bigger and stronger than us.
Not anymore.
Crow leaves her corner.
Her skin and eyes are brown.
Her hair and dress are black.
Her shadow on the wall is a thing of wing and claw and bite.
Crow’s hair sweeps across the ground to smash against the Fetchers’ ankles.
First gets knocked flat.
Second staggers. Crow darts in and slashes.
The top half of Second’s mask falls off.
There’s nothing beneath.
Second screeches and dives for his missing eyes.
I pounce on First’s chest. Grip the edge of his mask.
He lurches up to his full height.
I hold on and swing, pulling with all my strength.
The mask comes free.
I fly across the room.
Hit the ground.
Roll.
Get to my feet with First’s false face in my hand.
The empty space where his head should be screams.
“Give it back give it back give it back!”
I throw the mask against the wall.
It shatters.
First howls.
Heavy feet pound in the distance.
There’s no more time for Fetchers.
“Crow! A Feed’s coming!”
We charge out the door.
The Feed thuds down the tunnel.
His mirror eyes widen when he sees us.
He roars.
I turn to run away.
Crow grabs my arm. Spins me back around. “We stop the Feed.”
She’s right. My mind knows it.
But my body wants to flee.
I haven’t gotten rid of all my gray.
There’s still a piece buried inside.
A gray that makes me want to hide from the Feed.
Choose the opposite of gray.
I face the Feed.
Straighten my shoulders.
Lift my head.
Stare into his eyes.
Name my last gray. “You’re shame.”
The Feed flinches. He thinks I’m naming him.
I am naming him.
“This gray’s yours,” I say. “My colors are mine. I’m not carrying your shame for what you did. Only my pride. For surviving you.”
The last gray disappears.
Like it never existed.
It never should’ve.
Not inside me.
I’m not the one who should be running from him.
He should be running from me.
From us.
Crow sings:
“No more for the Feed.
No more in need.
Colors shine bright.
Today catchers fight.
Dead Feed, dead Feed…dead!”
The Feed runs.
We chase.
We follow the thump, thump, thump of footsteps.
The tunnels go everywhere and nowhere.
The thump stops.
He’s run out of tunnel.
There’s only a wall ahead.
The Feed punches the ceiling.
Blood drips down his arm.
He squeals in pain. Pulls himself up through the hole.
We tear after him, leaping up into…
The world.
The taste of fresh air in my mouth.
The feel of soft dirt under my feet.
The glow of the moon and stars above.
I stagger. Throw out my hand. Catch myself against a tree.
Crow tips back her head. Stretches out her arms like she can hug the sky.
“We are rainbow girls, Isobel-the-Catching! We will bathe in the clouds and sing in the sun, and let the world paint our souls and our souls paint the world!”
“We will.” I point. There’s a light in the distance. “But not yet.”
We go. We find a cage.
Light shines out from gaps between white wooden bars.
Birds of all colors huddle at the top.
The Feed stands at the bottom.
There’s only one door.
It’s shut. Locked.
The Feed smiles.
The birds call out: “Free us! Free us! Free us!”
Crow’s hair rises to either side of her like wings.
Strands of black beat the air.
Wind gusts. The door rattles.
The Feed stops smiling.
The birds flutter in excitement.
Crow beats harder. The wind gets stronger.
The door rips from its hinges.
It spins into the night. Smashes into a tree.
Birds fly out in a rush, singing their thanks.
Tiny feathers float in the air.
We walk into the cage.
The Feed falls to his knees.
We circle him.
We’re a loop that begins with me and ends with Crow.
Or begins with Crow and ends with me.
He cowers.
He changes.
His tall frame gets shorter.
His arms and legs shrink.
His eyes aren’t mirrors.
He’s lost his glasses in the chase.
The Feed is a man.
The man’s head turns from side to side.
Tracking our movements.
His skin is sweaty. His lips tremble.
He’s terrified. But it doesn’t make me happy.
It doesn’t make me anything.
Crow and I don’t have to do this for ourselves.
Not anymore.
We have to do it because the Feed must be stopped.
Only we can stop him.
Only we will.
I put my face close to his. I can see into his brain.
“You’d like to think you’re important to us. But you’re not. When this is done, all you’ll be to us is a bad man we once knew.”
I step back.
“We won’t think of you again.”
Crow dances.
The world explodes.
As Catching’s voice stopped, so did the wind.
The dust that had been swirling outside drifted down to the earth, letting the light back in. Except it was the soft light of morning instead of the bright light of the early afternoon.
“It’s the next day?” I gasped. “How can it be the next day?”
Catching shrugged. “Like I said. Not a small ending.”
She’d also said she didn’t know where the end of her story would take us. I felt like it had carried me across an ocean to an unfamiliar land. Except I knew the world hadn’t changed; the way I saw it had. Something fundamental had shifted in my head, and things were different now in ways I was struggling to define.
I glanced over at Dad and gasped again. He looked bad. His face was crumpled, not just around the edges the way it had been
before, but all the way in. I hadn’t seen him like this since right after I’d died. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Catching.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I’m so sorry.”
Her lip curled. “I told you. You’re too late to save me.”
“I know.” His voice broke. My gaze flicked from him to her, puzzled. Then Catching said, “It’s about a hundred paces to the west. We shut it up. Took the keys. But it’ll be open for you.”
“The keys to what?” I asked. “What’s a hundred paces to the west?”
Neither of them answered me. Dad rose to his feet. All the way to his feet, drawing himself up to his full height in a way that made me realize he’d been slumping for months. His crumpled face smoothed out into hard, clear lines. I hadn’t seen him like this since I was alive.
The lines in his face were deeper now, carved by pain, but otherwise he looked like the dad I’d known. Better, even—he looked like the man he would become, in a world where he lived even though I didn’t. And I didn’t know if Catching’s story had taken him to a new place too, or if he’d been changing for a while, deep inside, or if it was a combination of both.
“Beth,” Dad said, “it’s time to go.”
I hesitated, looking at Catching. But she didn’t seem fragile the way she’d done after telling the earlier parts of her story. This ending had drained her, but it also seemed to have released something. There was a lightness about her that hadn’t been there before.
Catching looked back at me and grinned. I blinked, not sure I was seeing right, but I was. An actual smile.
“Go on, Teller,” she said. “I’ll see you later. And don’t worry so much. You’ll know when you know.”
My mind circled the end of Catching’s story as I followed Dad out of the room, trying to puzzle out what it all meant. But as we emerged from the hospital, her last words suddenly seemed like excellent advice. I’d know when I knew, and in the meantime it was nice just to walk alongside Dad when he was so tall. I’d almost forgotten what it was like for him to be the teller and me the butterfly girl.
So I didn’t ask any questions about where we were headed, or why, as we drove away. It was only when Dad called Allie to arrange for her to meet us that I learned we were going back to the beginning.
As we neared the children’s home, though, Dad stopped the car.
“We can drive in further,” I said, pointing to the stretch of narrow road ahead. “Heaps further.”
“I know,” Dad replied. “And I will. But I need to talk to you about something first.”
There was a grimness in his voice that I didn’t like. I’m not worrying about things right now, Dad. You are. “What is it?” I asked warily.
“There’s going to be a point today when we get to a place, and when we get there, you can’t come in. I need you to promise me that you won’t.”
He wanted me to stay away from something? I could do that. “Okay.”
“This is important, Beth.”
“I said okay.” He continued to stare at me with worry in his face, until I added in a more serious voice, “Really, Dad. I won’t.”
He nodded, satisfied, and drove on to the home. Allie was already there, leaning against the side of her car and staring at the trees as she waited.
Dad parked and got out, walking over to Allie. “Did you bring what I asked for?”
She nodded, waving at two flashlights sitting on the hood of her car. Dad grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the ruins of the home. Allie took the other flashlight and followed after him.
“You really think there’s something left out here to find?” she asked. “The whole area was already searched.”
“Derek Bell was in charge of that search, yeah?”
“Um…yes. Does that matter?”
“Yes. I think it does.”
Dad reached the edge of the ruins, swiveled, and began to walk away.
To the west.
In even strides.
Which he was counting under his breath.
Catching had meant one hundred paces from the home, and I didn’t know how Dad had known that. But then, he’d been on the trail of an idea about this case since yesterday morning at Bell’s place. And even thinking about what that idea might be made my head hurt again, like my brain was complaining about having to make connections too soon. I let my thoughts go and trailed after Dad and Allie, enjoying the walk through the cool morning air.
When Dad reached eighty paces, the wind came sweeping along the ground to gust past us, as if it was traveling ahead. Crow? Like in the story? I looked back, half expecting to see her, but there was no one there.
Dad kept going until he reached one hundred and stopped.
There was nothing here except trees and dirt.
“Did you get a tip or something?” Allie asked, in a tone that indicated that perhaps the tip hadn’t been very reliable.
“Something like that,” Dad replied. He didn’t seem discouraged. Instead, he turned in a slow circle to survey his surroundings. After a second, he spotted something and took off at a run. Allie rushed after him and I rushed after her, the two of us tearing through the trees and into a big clearing.
There didn’t seem to be anything here either. But Dad had stopped again and become fascinated with the ground. He was scanning the dirt, his gaze traveling back and forth across the space. Then he hurried forward into the shadow of an overhanging rock.
“Here!” he called.
I ran over and so did Allie. There was a metal door set into the ground, pushed back on its hinges to reveal a ladder going downward.
Allie gasped. “What is that?”
“You told me yourself that old Oscar Sholt thought the apocalypse was coming. I think he built a bunker.”
Allie peered at something dark caked on the door. She paled. “Is that dried blood?”
“Looks like it to me.”
“Hello?” she yelled. “Anyone down there?”
There was no answer. Allie shook her head. “Someone could be hurt.” She clicked on her flashlight, tucked it under her chin, and began to descend the ladder.
Dad shot a stern look in my direction. I crossed the clearing to sit on a fallen log and called over to him, “See? Not going anywhere. I wouldn’t break a promise to you, Dad.”
He gave me an approving nod and climbed down the ladder after Allie, his feet echoing on the rungs as he disappeared into the earth below.
I rested my hands on the log and leaned back, listening to the rush of water from the river in the distance. The air was sharp with the tang of eucalyptus from the trees, and sunlight was filtering through the leaves to create patterns of light and shade on the ground. This seemed a pretty, peaceful place, and I was content to sit here for a while.
In the quiet, my mind felt as if it was relaxing into a new shape, adjusting to whatever shift had occurred within me as I’d been listening to Catching’s story. Calm flowed from my brain through my body. For the first time since I’d died, I felt as if everything would be okay.
Then I noticed something glinting on the earth nearby, and went over for a better look.
It was a pair of glasses, half buried in the dirt.
Catching’s story and my experiences in this town suddenly slammed together. Connections fired and popped through my mind. I yelped in pain, clutching my hands to my head as everything meshed into one sequence of events. Then it was over, and I let my hands fall, looking around the clearing with new eyes.
The fallen log I’d been sitting on was at one side of the clearing.
On the other, the overhanging rock Dad had ducked under resembled an egg lying on its side.
There were mirror eyes in the dirt at my feet.
This clearing was where the Fetchers had taken Isobel Catching. The t
unnels were the bunker. The cage of birds with its white wooden bars was the weatherboard children’s home. And I’d seen these gold-rimmed glasses before—in the photograph Dad had shown me when we’d first come to the home.
One of the Feeds was Alexander Sholt.
His was the body found after the fire.
And I knew who’d killed him. I knew who’d killed them all.
Sounds came from the bunker. Someone was climbing the ladder, and they were doing it fast. Allie came bolting out and dashed into the trees to double over and throw up.
Steadier footsteps followed hers, and Dad came out too. He didn’t vomit. But he looked like he wanted to. He walked to the rock and put both hands against it, leaning into the stone and ducking his head to take one deep breath after another.
After a few more minutes of retching, Allie ran out of food to bring up. She straightened, wiping the back of her arm across her face, and called in a shaky voice, “I’m going to the river. To wash out my mouth.”
Dad waved his hand in acknowledgment but kept leaning into the rock. I walked over to him, but I didn’t speak. He didn’t seem capable of talking right now.
Eventually Allie returned, weaving through the trees and back into the clearing. She was dead white and seemed to have aged ten years.
Dad straightened as she approached. The two of them exchanged a long, worn-out look, as if they were carrying the weight of the world between them.
Allie spoke first: “People were held in there.”
“Girls,” Dad said. “More than one.”
She gave a jerky nod. “There was a jacket. On a table. I don’t know if you saw—”
“I saw.”
“Of course you did.” She hugged her arms around herself. “The thing is, I know that jacket. It’s Derek Bell’s. I’ve seen him wear it a thousand times. This…this is what he was involved in, isn’t it?”
The second Feed.
And I’d met him.
Talked to him.
Not known what he was.
Catching had once told Dad he’d say there was no such thing as monsters. There were. But me and the rest of the world had only seen the men.
“I think he was a part of it, yes,” Dad said to Allie. “Along with Alexander Sholt. And Cavanagh and Flint, who were both being paid off. For their silence, I assume. And their cooperation. Some of the victims could have been from the home.”
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