My heart races. More water trickles down my spine. I open my mouth, my lips feel dry. Too dry. It can’t be her. I know that. Every part of me knows that. And I know better now than to trust long-lost members of my old group who mysteriously, and very conveniently, turn up.
But she looks just like her….
The woman looks up, sees me.
Untamed eyes.
“Seven!”
And then Five’s running, and I’m sprinting toward her, my head spinning, my legs burning, aching, hurting. I skid forward, spraying mud everywhere as I unsuccessfully try to jump over a body. My foot hits it, and I’m sent off at an angle, pain darting up my leg.
But I don’t care.
My sister is here.
No.
I throw my arms out, skid to an abrupt stop. It’s not her. Can’t be her. I left her at Nbutai, during the attack. I drove away.
“Stay away from me!” I have no weapon so I hold my hands up between us, but my fingers are shaking because the sight of her makes my heart ache, makes the bridge of my nose feel all prickly.
Five takes a step forward, toward me, hands up in a surrender gesture.
“Stay back!”
“Seven, it’s me.”
She tosses her head, and the movement emphasizes the slightly hooked shape of her nose. The nose I know so well. She’s the only one out of all my siblings who has that nose.
“Listen, Seven,” she says. “I’m not really here. Two’s channeling me from the New World—I don’t understand it.”
Her words hit me, and my gut squeezes. The New World.
She’s dead. Confirmation. As dead as Two, another lost sibling.
She’s dead—dead because of me. I swallow hard.
But her words mean she must have got to the New World, if she’s with Two…and I doubt the Spirit Releasing Words were said for her by the Enhanced. And I know it should give me hope for Three, in case I can’t find his body—but it doesn’t.
I feel my face slacken. The rain’s stopped now. Everything’s just stopped, frozen.
“Listen,” Five says. She lifts a hand up, and I see her nails are painted red, perfect. The polish looks like one Elf brought back from a raid for her, months and months ago. “Two’s sending me here, because he needs to warn you. You’ve got to listen. Don’t go to a black lake. If you see it, you run. If you go to this black lake, you’ll die. But he’s going to try and get you to go there. He’ll trick you.”
Two needs to warn me? A warning? I stare at Five, then look at the sky. There’s no bison. This isn’t the Dream Land. But the Dream Land is the only way to get warnings.
“Seven! Are you listening? Two’s said if you go with him—”
“With Two?” I stare at her.
“No,” Five says. “Not with Two. Just listen, will you?” She tosses her head, exasperation in her eyes. “With R—”
She disappears.
For a second, I freeze, heart pounding. I turn around, look back and forth. My eyes widen. Then I lurch forward.
The space where Five was? Empty. I stare at the grass, but everywhere is too windy and rain-beaten for a person’s weight to make much of an impression.
I swallow hard. I look at the sky again. Still no bison. It wasn’t the Dream Land. It wasn’t a true warning.
I curse.
The spirits are messing with me, playing with me, trying to scare me. Hallucinations. They may have helped us before, but that was because they fed from us, got our energy—and even then, I couldn’t control them for long. Spirits are volatile, dangerous; one moment they help you, the next they hurt you. Even the ‘benevolent’ spirits, that, alongside the Gods and Goddesses, make us into Seers and control the Dream Land, are still unpredictable and need to be watched. They can be good one moment and then suddenly revert, their behavior temporarily getting closer to that of their evil counterparts. And now the spirits around here are inventing stuff, making me scared, trying to convince me Raleigh’s out there because his body’s gone, and they’re using my memories of Five to distract me, stop me from finding Three’s body. Maybe they want my brother to be trapped between worlds, to not make it to the New World. They’re trying to stop me from saying the Spirit Releasing Words.
Anger flares at how easily they tricked me. How easily I fell for it.
I brace myself, try to forget it, and look back. Corin and Esther aren’t in sight. They’ll be moving. I know I haven’t got long. I need to find Three’s body now.
“Did you find his body?” Corin asks as I rejoin them.
They haven’t made it far. Corin’s holding something in his right hand. A bullet. So he got it out. I glance at Esther. She’s on the ground, and there’s more fabric wound tighter around her shoulder and arm now. A small rucksack hangs off Corin’s arm. Fabric spills out from it, getting soaked in a new bout of rain. It takes me a moment to realize it’s clothes in the rucksack. The dead Enhanced Ones’ clothes.
Of course Corin would collect them. Scavenging is the only way to survive.
I look back at the nearest body, look for a gun. A weapon. Anything. But, like with all the others, there’s nothing there to find.
“Sev? Did you find Three’s body?”
“No.” I pause, catch my breath. “No, I didn’t.”
After that hallucination, I checked all the bodies as quickly as I could, running and skidding from one to another. Three’s wasn’t there. But it doesn’t mean Esther’s right. I might’ve just missed his corpse. Or my mother might’ve found his body and wanted a proper send off for him, taken him to a river.
Corin reaches into the small rucksack, pulls something out, hands it to me. A small penknife. Holding it makes me feel a bit better.
“It was already in the bag when I found it,” he says. “The blade is sharp. At least it’s a weapon.”
I watch as Corin picks Esther up, one arm under her legs and the other under her upper back. He should be carrying her over his shoulder, easier that way. I turn again, eyes smarting for no apparent reason.
“So he’s alive then, your brother?” There’s hope in Corin’s voice, and I think Esther murmurs a little, though she keeps her eyes shut.
“No. He’s dead. They’ve taken other bodies too.”
“What?” Corin frowns. “Whose?”
“Raleigh’s. Could be others too that have gone. They could be coming back to collect them all.”
Or Raleigh’s alive, and that wasn’t a hallucination sent by the spirits to distract you.
I shudder, push that thought away.
Corin swears, then he’s turning his back to me. “How the hell does he keep surviving? I stabbed him in the chest for the Gods’ sake.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s alive. Doesn’t mean either of them is alive, just because their bodies aren’t here,” I say as firmly as I can.
Corin grunts. “Take the gun.”
I pause a little, then pull it from his waistband. I stare at the Colt Single Action Army revolver and realize I haven’t looked at it properly until now. It’s not a model I’ve used in a while.
“Is it Raleigh’s gun?” I try to remember the firearm Raleigh threatened me with.
“Yeah, got it from him after I stabbed him. Damn, I should’ve shot him too. Made sure.”
“Corin, he’s not alive.”
Corin grunts. “But your mother’s gone, and we know I didn’t kill her. She’s alive. And they’ve left their dead here.” He grits his teeth for a second or two. “Why would they take two bodies away with them?”
“Raleigh’s their leader,” I say. “They’d want his body for a ceremony or something.”
Corin shakes his head, then indicates the dead around us. “The Enhanced don’t send their bodies off, Sev—not that the Gods and Goddesses would let their souls into the New World… But they don’t say the Spirit Releasing Words either. The Enhanced don’t believe in the New World. It’s just a wild, Untamed fabrication, to them.” He pulls a hand through his hair. “T
he Enhanced have no reason to take dead bodies with them—and they don’t. Look.”
“They’d still do something for their leader’s body,” I say. “He’s important to them. A burial or something. And my mother might want to send off Three’s body properly…if she’s not completely converted.” If she still sees him as her son and not just another wild monster who died before he could be saved. “That’s why their bodies aren’t here.”
I press my lips together, breathe deeply.
“Maybe Esther is right,” Corin says after a long few minutes.
I turn slowly, stop. Something strange flits through my muscles. “You think that if I thought my brother was alive, I’d just be walking away? That I wouldn’t be racing off to whatever Enhanced town is the nearest and trying to get him back?”
Corin shrugs. “We don’t know where the nearest Enhanced town is.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “He’s dead, Corin. They both are. Three and Raleigh.”
But I can tell what Corin’s thinking: that I’m wrong, that they’re both alive.
We don’t know where to go.
Corin asks me several times—probing to see if I’ve got any Seer knowledge, but I haven’t. I know he doesn’t like asking me. He’s the leader, and I can tell by the way he says the question, with his brows furrowed, that he thinks it makes him look weak. Like he should know what to do because he’s the leader.
So we just walk. And we keep going until the Spirit Temple’s out of sight, until the battlefield is long behind. We follow the contours of the land, sticking close to the bases of the hills. After a couple of hours, our pace is slower, but the land’s leveling out. The terrain is changing, merging into savannah. I wonder what we’re going to do about food when I catch a glimpse of two ostriches in the distance. It’s been years since I’ve had ostrich meat, and I don’t even particularly like it, but it still makes me salivate. Corin doesn’t appear to see them, and, just when I’m about to point them out, they’ve gone. I grit my teeth hard until my jaw aches.
“We need to keep going,” Corin says sometime later, shifting Esther’s weight. I’ve slowed down, my legs are aching. “We’ve got to find people soon. Esther needs medicine. And we need food.” He looks at me, purses his lips. “If we could just find a town, one of us can raid it. I can raid it, get medicine,” he quickly adds, his eyes darting away from me. “You can stay with Esther.”
I feel my cheeks filling with heat. I know what he’s thinking, how he’ll never trust me on a raid again.
Lesson four: Never let yourself be Enhanced. Once it’s done, there’s no going back.
No going back? But I managed it.
But I know I’m not the same.
And the more we walk, taking turns to carry Esther, the more I can’t help but feel contaminated.
We stop a couple of times to drink rainwater that seems to be clean, and we’re well into the grassland by late evening. We find a few trees that are a little closer together. A little more secluded. It’s stopped raining, but the ground’s still sodden.
I stare at the trees. Acacia trees. But they’re too close together for the savannah. It’s not right. Acacias should be growing in the cracks of the dry ground, not here, where it’s wet. And the savannah shouldn’t be wet. Yet it is.
Still, the acacias have seeds, and we collect them. We normally use them in soups, or roast them, but now we eat them raw. Corin mutters about collecting some of the wood and boiling it, using the extract as a medicine—says his mother did it once, but he can’t remember what it was for. In the end, we just eat the seeds and collect the young leaves and shoots. We can boil them later, for food, if necessary.
Corin says we should stay here for the night, so I look around as he heads to a nearby stream to get washed; he has a lot of Esther’s blood on him. The light is bad, streaking through the branches and leaves, and I peer carefully, look for any movement.
It is too quiet, too still.
This land isn’t right. It’s all changed, and I know that before—when we were still traveling with Rahn and Three and the Marouska-imposter—we weren’t this close to a savannah…even if it is a strangely wet one. It’s got to be the spirits, in the battle. They changed the land, broke the rules. To help us? I bite my lip. Maybe. If they changed the land after the Enhanced retreated, it would make it harder for our enemy to find us again.
But it seems mad. Things like that shouldn’t happen, I know that. The land around the battleground—like any land—is supposed to be solid, constant. And I think about our terrier, wonder where he’s ended up. I see him now, hundreds of miles away, trotting over dried desert ground, then slowing, nose to the floor as he follows a trail. His tail will be up in the air, but he’ll start whining after a while. His barks will get shorter, sharper. And by the time it’s properly dark, he’ll be frantic. Looking for us. Looking for someone.
Maybe the Enhanced will take him in…and give him augmenters too, make him into the perfect canine companion. No, that’s silly. They don’t give animals augmenters. But then we didn’t think they’d ever use weapons. I swallow hard.
A few minutes later, Corin returns. His skin is flushed, and the smell of smoke wraps around him, wafts over toward me.
I gesture around us as I set the rucksack down. “What do you think of the land, how it’s changed? Do you think it’s the spirits?”
He shrugs, looks across at Esther. “Spirits can’t be trusted. Not even the good ones. Not fully. They made us sleep at that temple for far too long.” He pauses. “Works better for us though, if they really have changed the land. We don’t want to be hounded by the Enhanced.”
He sits down next to me, puts an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him. I know he’s right—it is better for us. Because we both know if the Enhanced are near, are going to find us, then we won’t all get away—if any of us do.
I concentrate on Corin’s warmth as we watch Esther. She’s lying in front of us, her skin emanating a strange kind of sickly glow. Her breathing is shallow. It’s been a good few hours since she’s made any sound or movement on her own. But she’s still alive. And that’s what I focus on. For now.
“Look, Sev,” Corin says suddenly. His arm around me tenses. “About what I said…after the battle, up there…when I said I love you….”
I stiffen, blink several times, waiting for him to pull away, waiting for the coldness to bite.
But he doesn’t move. His arm stays right where it is. His fingers rest on the top of my shoulder, tingling my skin. I clench my fist, my hand is too sweaty. My stomach feels strange, empty.
Corin clears his throat. It takes him a while.
“I meant it,” he says in a voice that sounds strange, forced—not at all natural. “It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing because it was life or death. I do love you. I just… I only knew for sure then.”
I turn to face him, feel the muscles in my upper arm twitch. He moves his head; in the half-light, I see his face perfectly. The lines that are more ragged each time I see them. The sunburn that looks angrier. The faint scars on the left side of his face look redder, deeper—the remnants of a wildcat attack when he was a child. I can still see the claws ripping into his skin now.
I chased the cat away, even though I hated him then. But it didn’t matter. I just had to save him.
Corin takes both my hands in his, squeezes them gently. “Gods, I’m probably in love with you.” His pupils are dilated, and he shakes his head. “I always thought that I’d be saying these words after I’d been in a relationship a while… After we’d…done things.” His fingers feel thicker than I remember, make mine look more slender. “Don’t say it to me though.”
“What?” I lift my head a little.
“Don’t say you love me because I’ve said it. Say it when you mean it… If you mean it.” His eyes darken. “I’d rather you never said it, than pretended. I know you probably don’t love me, not at the moment. My feelings are stronger than yours.”
&nbs
p; I don’t know what to say, or how to feel, what to think. Other than he’s still the same old arrogant Corin, assuming he knows how I feel, and his feelings have to be bigger than mine.
But he’s right. I know that.
“You do like me, though?” His eyes narrow a little, but there’s warmth in them.
I press my lips together for a second, try to get the courage. And I manage the words in the end. “I like you.”
His touch makes me jump. Sudden heat as his thumb traces my jawline. I feel myself leaning in closer still to him, eradicating some of the little distance that had been between us. Part of me is surprised I’m doing this, that I seem to know what to do, but it’s automatic—instinct. Corin’s other hand goes to the small of my back, draws me in more. My eyes focus on his lips. Heat rushes to my face. I can see every pore of his skin, smell the smoke on him from that last cigarette, entwined with the musty scent of sweat. I stare into his eyes. His beautiful Untamed eyes.
Our lips meet, tenderly at first.
Then I kiss him deeper, shut my eyes, shut the world out as his mouth gets rougher, his breathing harder. He presses our bodies firmly together, and my hands end up on his shoulders, holding onto him. His are on my back, fingers catching on my shirt. I feel my heart get faster, hear my pulse in my ears as he pulls me onto his lap. As we kiss again, his arms tighten around me, that familiar cage. And…and this is Corin. This is Corin! The voice in my mind won’t shut up.
Then he pulls his head back a little. Cold air rushes over me.
My eyes spring open. Corin’s face is a few inches from mine, and the corners of his lips twitch. There’s a strange look in his eyes. A look I haven’t seen before.
“Are you all right?” My voice is odd.
He stares at me for a few moments, then nods, just watching me. So we stay here, like we are. Me, sitting on his lap. His arms around me, my hands on his shoulders. He offers me a smile. I return it. It feels so simple.
Then my pulse slows as I look past him, at Esther, completely motionless, but in a slightly different position from before—her head’s turned away from us.
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