by Annie Oldham
“You never told me you had an assigned vocation in the colonies. Or vocations, in your case.”
We slow even more so I can write on his hand. You never asked.
He flinches for a moment and squints ahead. “You never offered to tell.”
The words hurt, tearing into all those old pains that I’ve buried all this time. But he’s right.
I’m sorry.
He shakes his head. “I am too. I didn’t want to bring it up. I wanted all of that to be left behind.”
I grab his arm and stop him. You’re right. I kept too much in. Didn’t trust you enough. What do you want to know?
He pulls me to him and his lips brush against my hair. He tugs on my hand and prods me into the lead. We break into a lope, single file this time as the woods close in around us. We follow a deer trail no more than a foot wide and the wet foliage bends in on us, streaking us with dew. Jack hasn’t forgotten how to tread quietly, and all the old mannerisms return in a matter of minutes—the light footfall, the alert posture.
“I’ll ask yes or no questions. Just nod or shake your head. We’ll have plenty of time for writing things out later. Where are we going, anyway?”
I pause long enough to write, Cabin.
Jack’s eyes light up. “The one where we found the sleeping bags?”
I nod.
“I liked it there. I’m glad you found it again.”
A bird cackles in the distance, and I whip around to face the noise. Jessa probably would have laughed at my paranoia, but Jack’s face is deadly serious.
“Is it worse than before?” He peers in the opposite direction, just like we used to scan our entire surroundings together.
I nod. You have no idea.
“You’d be surprised. With the number of nomads you sent to the colonies, you’re probably the most hunted nomad in New America. Do you keep track of them?”
Who?
“The nomads. Do you know how many you rescued?”
I shake my head. It’s the last thing on my mind.
“Four hundred thirty-two.”
My jaw drops. All my time has been spent hiking to the ocean and back again and again as I found more people longing to escape. I could tell you how many days to which drop site, how many steps between scanners, but I had no idea how many people I’d sent to the ocean. Over four hundred. I must look pretty stunned because Jack grins.
“One of the nomads called you a Moses. Mr. Klein said you’d have no idea what that meant and I’d better explain it to you.”
Apparently even Mr. Klein knew Jack was coming back to me. My shoulders relax and I step closer to him. His arms wrap around me. I marvel how this all comes so naturally to us. After parting the way we did and not seeing each other for months, I thought a reunion would have been awkward at best. I look up at him, and his full lips part as he catches his breath. He sees me watching and turns from my face. Well, maybe we’re still a little awkward.
He runs a hand through my hair. “I like it. You look good with short hair.”
Thanks.
“How far to the cabin?”
Two days.
“Your days or mine? You probably noticed I’m not used to this.”
My days.
“We’d better get going then.” Jack squints to the sky, looking through a break in the trees. The sky is heavy with dark clouds. “It looks like rain.”
We stop for the night in a copse of young trees. There must have been a fire here a few years ago because all the giants give way for these slender pines. I don’t want to light a fire, but Jack’s teeth are chattering. He shakes his head when I offer to collect firewood.
“We can’t light a fire. Not here.”
We are. I won’t relent on this. I remember how cold I was the first night I came from the colony. I wasn’t used to anything colder than seventy-two degrees. Jack looks miserable as he wraps a blanket around himself and shivers.
“Well at least let me get the wood since I’m the one who can’t take the cold.”
The wood is wet and the fire smokes and hisses at us. Jack wraps an arm around me, and I burrow against his side, trying to give him some of my warmth. We’re both snuggled down into our sleeping bags, and I pull mine up to my chin. The nights are chilly, but with summer only a month or two away, we won’t need the fire much longer. Jack hums into my hair. The melody is soft and sweet. I can’t place the song, but I don’t want to ask him what it is and have him stop humming. The crickets croon in the background, and with the soft pat of rain falling, I’m surrounded by an orchestra that sings straight to my soul. Jack absently runs his fingers through my hair as he hums, and his head bobs once or twice against mine. I turn to him.
Sleep.
His lips turn up just at the corners, and he shakes his head. “I don’t want to. I’ve missed you.”
I know exactly how he feels, but we both need the rest if we’re to reach the cabin tomorrow. We could stay this way for just a few more minutes though. I take his hand and watch the firelight flicker across his skin. His shirt sleeves are pulled up to his elbows, the edges still wet from washing in a stream. I run my fingers along his arm, and he closes his eyes and lets his head drop to his chest. He’s exhausted. I’m tired, but I couldn’t possibly fall asleep right away, not with Jack so close to me. Before we were imprisoned in the labor camp, I had grown so accustomed to his sounds at night—his breathing, his light snoring, the unconscious murmurs—that I couldn’t sleep without them. Now I have to learn to live with him all over again. I’m not complaining. Far from it. Jack is fascinating when he sleeps. His eyes dart behind his lids. Dreaming already? I smile. He did a good job keeping up with me today and not complaining.
I look at his arm. A small line just barely lighter than the rest of his skin mars the inside of his forearm. The scar from his first tracker, the one his father cut out for him. Next to it, so slight I can barely make it out, is the scar from his second tracker—the one given to him in the labor camp. A doctor in the colony must have removed it. I slide my arm next to his. I removed my tracker just as he would have done it for me, but I only had the scalpel from Gaea and my own grit to take away the pain. My scar is jagged at one end where I didn’t dip the blade in far enough on the first go, and the line is puckered in the middle where the suturing left something to be desired. It casts a faint shadow on my arm. I don’t mind, though, because it means I’m free from the government. They had me once—tracked my every move, tracked my every meal, tracked my every breath it seemed like. Now I’m out in the woods again with Jack beside me.
I suck in a breath until my lungs feel like they could burst. The smell of rain, pine, and smoke fill me. This is how it should be; this is right. I turn my head to rest against Jack’s chest and close my eyes. Thunder rumbles in the distance, percussion to the music still playing around us.
Chapter Two
Another rumble of thunder stirs me, and my eyes flutter open. The night is still dark with no hints of the gray light of morning. The rain has stopped, and the occasional drip on the forest floor tells me that it was raining only a few hours ago. The smell is still fresh. I gaze between the trees and see stars piercing the blanket of dark sky. The stars are dazzling when they shine so clearly. The clouds blew off quickly, I groggily think to myself. I still haven’t quite woken up yet. Thunder drums again. My brain is processing the sound. It hasn’t stopped since I heard it the first time just moments ago. Why is there thunder if there are no clouds?
I sit bolt upright, my breath coming in gasps, my hands already gathering my sleeping bag as I worm out of it, my body instinctively reacting to what my brain was too groggy to realize. Jack is slower to respond. He’s lived in the comfort of the colony, and isn’t used to the paranoia anymore. His eyes drag open.
“What is it?”
Then he sees the look on my face and he’s on his feet before I can blink, gathering his sleeping bag and crouching, ready to run. Old habits die hard.
Helicopter,
I mouth.
He nods. You never forget that sound. In my stupor I had taken it to be thunder, but there’s a helicopter out there. I wouldn’t be as worried if it were swooping by on a scouting run. But the sound hovers just above the trees at a distance. These woods might now be riddled with soldiers.
Jack remembers the old routine flawlessly: he stomps and covers the embers of our fire, I kick leaves under our sleeping bags so the depressions in the ground vanish, he pulls branches across the path we made into the grove, I scope the distance to find a safe direction to travel. In less than one minute, our campsite looks as if we were never here and we’re already running through the trees away from the sound beating relentlessly in the sky.
“They’re close.”
I nod.
Jack’s breath shortens as we scramble on hands and feet. We’re not trying to be quiet now. With that helicopter it doesn’t matter much anyway. We just need to put ground between us and what waits for us. Under the sound of the beating rotors, I hear shouts in the distance. Jack grabs my arm.
“Hurry!”
My head whips side to side as I search for a tree that will hide us. We’ve escaped the skinny pines of our campsite and are back among the adult trees. At the top of the next rise, the dark bulk of a huge tree looms before us, and the top disappears into the night sky. I hope its branches are thick enough to hide us; there’s nowhere else to go. As I jump for the lowest branch, Jack laces his fingers for my foot and hoists me up. I wrap an arm and both legs around the limb and then reach down for Jack’s hand and give him the tug he needs to grip it. He’s up beside me in a few seconds, and then we both look around, finding the lowest limbs and climbing, climbing, climbing until we’re ten, then twenty, then thirty feet off the ground. The bark scrapes at my palms, digs into my fingers and makes me wince, but I grit my teeth and climb. When I look down, I can barely make out the forest floor beneath us through the pine needles. If I look out beyond the tips of the branches, I can see more around us.
The voices come closer, and Jack and I press ourselves against the tree trunk, trying to blend in as best we can. My lungs are screaming at me to take a deeper breath, but I can’t. Not unless I want them to find us.
Through the filtered moonlight, I can make out our campsite, and three shapes come into the grove. Each one has a gun pulled up into a shoulder. I can recognize the posture even in the dark—I could recognize the posture anywhere. I’ve seen too many of these soldiers with their night-vision goggles and their ubiquitous weapons. They’re in a triangle formation, and the figure in the lead motions the others forward. They’re silent now, stalking through the woods with only the crackle of twigs to give them away. They know they’re close to their prey. They know we’ve been here. But how? We were so careful.
One of them stops and snoops around our campsite, digging through the leaves with the muzzle of his gun. He turns around and prods some more, then looks at the leader and the glint of moonlight on his goggles tells me he’s shaking his head.
Jack and I haven’t lost our touch—we still flawlessly cover our tracks.
The soldiers slowly turn three hundred and sixty degrees, covering every inch of the grove. They find nothing. They don’t even think to look up. I could laugh at their stupidity if we weren’t in such a precarious situation. It’s cold, but my hands are sweating as I cling to the tree. Jack hasn’t moved an inch since we found our perch, and his lips are tight. He won’t even look at me. He just stares at the soldiers below us.
One of the soldiers finally risks speaking. “Nothing, sir. There’s no trace of her.”
A crackling voice answers back, tinny through a walkie-talkie. “Check again. We know she’s out there somewhere. She made a drop yesterday.”
Jack finally looks at me, worry worn deep in his eyes.
So the government does know what I’m doing. They’ve figured out where the nomads are going. And they were so close to finding me, too. If I were just a few minutes slower, if the soldiers were just a bit smarter, they would have caught me.
The soldiers shrug and look around for a few seconds more before disappearing across the grove to cover more ground. The helicopter lifts into the air and flies above the forest. Our tree sways under its down draft. My foot loses its grip on the branch and I slip, my hands grappling the biting bark as my legs flail out from under me, and Jack catches my hand just in time to keep me from falling. We stay that way—me with one hand on the branch, Jack clinging to my other hand and the tree for all he’s worth—until the sweat is pouring into my eyes and both of our muscles are screaming for relief.
I haven’t heard the soldiers for probably five minutes, and the helicopter sounds at least two miles away. I finally let myself relax and Jack pulls me back up onto the branch, and I let my cheek rest on the bark. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Jack sits down on the branch, his legs dangling on either side as he leans against the trunk. “I knew it would be like this. I knew it would be. I just didn’t imagine it would start so soon. That first week in the colony, I checked my back after leaving and entering every room.” His shoulders slump. “It was so strange to feel safe again. Jessa teased me every time I did it.” He looks at me and arches an eyebrow. “For being twins, you two are completely different. After a couple of weeks, I finally relaxed. I’m going to pick up the habit again pretty quickly.”
I nod, and the tree bark scratches my cheek. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop checking my back.
“Think we should stay here until morning?”
I nod again.
“Alright. Well, come here.”
I ease myself up onto my knees and slide next to him. He’s found a spot where two branches come together in a V against the trunk and form a wide seat. It’s probably the safest spot we could be in this tree. He carefully pulls out his sleeping bag, unzips it, and drapes it over us.
“You sleep. I’ll watch. I’ll wake you up in an hour.”
I’m not drowsy. The adrenaline is still pumping through my veins and it’ll be at least a few minutes until the rush starts to ebb. We sit in silence and he holds me, his head lowered against mine, and I cling to his hand for dear life. With the sound of the helicopter fading away, the other forest sounds resume. But I don’t feel safe. The worry still nags at me—how did they know I made the drop yesterday? There were no helicopters, no soldiers. If there had been soldiers, they would have sprung out of the woods at the chance of capturing a group of nomads. So how did they know?
I rub Jack’s hand as the thoughts race through my head over and over again.
“Relax, Terra. You’re rubbing it raw.” He pulls his hand away and wraps both arms around me. “We’ll be okay up here.”
The adrenaline is finally draining out of me, and I feel tired to my core. The thoughts of how they knew where I was are still racing through my head, but my body is too tired to think it through any more, and I can finally close my eyes and let sleep carry me away.
I wake up when the birds start singing at dawn, and I lift my head off Jack’s chest and squint into the distance. My leg slips off the branch and my whole body flinches, and I gasp as I suddenly remember where I am. Jack’s awake in a heartbeat.
“What’s wrong?”
I smile sheepishly and point to the ground. Forgot.
He rubs his hands over his stubbled cheeks, and his mouth opens in a deep yawn. “Sorry I fell asleep. I should have woken you up and let you watch. I was just so tired. I think that colony of yours spoiled me.”
I grin and take his hand. Glad you liked it. When I’m done writing, my fingers close around his and I study them for a moment.
Why did you come back?
He pulls his head away so he can see me better. “Do you really need to ask me that?”
You were safe. Never had to run again.
“Yes, but you weren’t there.”
I turn from him. I feel so guilty. I can’t help wondering if trading the comfort and security of the co
lony is worth coming back here just for me. Jack must see some of that in my face.
“You’re worth it, Terra.”
His voice is so earnest that I turn to him again. His face is an inch from mine, our noses touch, and his eyes bore into me. He doesn’t blink or turn just a fraction from me. Then he crosses the gap between us, and he’s kissing me. This should have been the way our first kiss was. Not that desperate attempt at the last possible minute to show him how I felt as we were standing in the freezing water. This kiss is gentle and says more than that first kiss ever could. The kiss isn’t long and is as soft as a whisper, but it scorches me so deeply I shiver. His hand touches my neck and hovers there, feeling like a wind-whisper. When my eyes flutter open, Jack is smiling. My heart races as I touch his cheek and my fingertips play with the hair curling around his ears.
The morning air is still crisp, and I realize I’m shivering. I probably have been the whole time and didn’t even notice.
“We should probably get moving.”
I nod and we drop our packs and the sleeping bag from the branches and make our way down the tree.
“You never told me why you left the colony. Compared to this, it seems like a paradise. I don’t understand why you stayed here when you could have gone back.”
We’re to the bottom branch and dangle and then drop to the ground. I look past the leaves and to the slivers of blue peeking between. I was a prisoner.
“I can understand that. It must feel different if you grew up in it.”
How are the others? I wonder if they’re as at home there as Jessa is or if any of them have the same misgivings as I did.
“Kai and her little girl are so sweet. Did Jessa ever tell you Kai named her Terra?”
Sudden tears prick my eyes.
“Really, she did.” He squeezes my hand. “Because of you she actually gets to enjoy her little girl. Lily is working in food prep or whatever you call it. She likes cooking. I’m glad the labor camp didn’t spoil that for her. Madge is still Madge. She’s a force to be reckoned with. Not very many people try to boss her around. And Jane is thriving. I don’t know if you’d even recognize her. She’s filled out a bit.”