“I have,” I reply, rubbing my hands. They are red with the violent cleaning and cold.
“Not like that,” Howl says, taking the soap. He hands me a shirt to dry my hands on. One of his.
Drying my face keeps me from answering for a moment. “I’ve never been up to my ankles in it before, no. Who do you think he was? Who any of them were?”
“They shoot anyone who comes up the road without stars. They could have been infected. Fighters. People trying to escape?”
People trying to escape what?
“It’s too hard to carry the bodies up the mountain, so they just burn the ditches every few weeks.”
Lighting a fire seems stupid so close to the road, so we pull out our sleeping bags and eat crusty bread and dried meat from inside them. We agree the quicklights should be for emergencies, so we let the inky darkness fall, watching the sky turn black through the swaying branches. I’ve never slept outside before, and the noises and the wind play against my nerves like an erhu out of tune.
A long chortling wail echoes through the trees, needling through my skin. Howl and I sit up at the same time and look at each other. His smile cuts through the dark as he says, “What do you think? Gores, or imitations to flush us out?”
“Gores?” Gores are just a fairy tale. Supposedly, during the times Before, the people who lived here used dogs genetically engineered with some sort of hyena DNA on their police and army forces, the animals so large they could bite a man in two. According to the Outside patrollers, they stand taller than Howl’s lanky six feet and, now that they’re feral, the creatures are set on killing any human they come in contact with. I can still remember an Outside patroller marking the wall to show one of my classes how tall the last gore he’d had to fight was, showing us scars all up and down his side from the creature’s teeth. Only the next patroller to come to the class scoffed at the story, sure the last gore he saw was at least three feet taller—all soldier stories spun to give Third children nightmares. “I’m sure there are lots of animals out here, but aren’t gores a little . . . exaggerated?”
Howl doesn’t say anything for a second, eyes in the trees around us. “I don’t think so.”
Another cackling laugh slips through the frigid air as we gather our belongings, images of monsters I didn’t think could exist prickling the back of my mind. Another wail, closer this time. My ankles and calves protest as we start downhill again, throbbing in time with the crackling pain radiating out from my ribs. Howl stops abruptly, pointing to a nest of boulders jutting up into the tree canopy like a giant’s dead hand clawing to escape the ground.
“There’s a ledge big enough for both of us.” Howl nods to the farthest boulder. “Up for a climb? Nothing will be able to reach us if we sleep up there.”
Another animal scream splits the air, creeping down my spine in a cemetery of goose bumps. I nod.
Howl climbs up first, taking each pack as I hand it to him, then helping me. It’s an easier climb than the ditch, but the rock feels too smooth against my hands, as though we’ll slide from our perch the moment we close our eyes.
We spread out our sleeping bags, setting up our packs as pillows, but it isn’t very comfortable. Not that it could be with Howl’s back brushing mine. For a strange moment, I’m almost glad to be worried about falling off and being eaten by whatever is making those terrible baying cries, because it means I don’t have to feel awkward about sleeping with a boy right next to me.
Another of the haunting cackles rips through the air as I huddle in my sleeping bag. It becomes a game, like watching lightning strike and counting the seconds until thunder breaks. Every cry is closer, and I find myself counting breaths as I wait for the next call to echo around us. Finally, I pull the hood of the sleeping bag over my head, trying to block them out.
Howl rolls over. “Can’t sleep?”
“Really? Sleep?” I ask, my teeth chattering.
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I watch my breath mist out in front of me, two, three, four, five . . .
His hand finds my shoulder through the sleeping bag, pulling me over onto my back. He points up toward the sky, through the waving tree branches. “Do you see that star?” Howl asks. “The bright one?”
Following his finger, dark spreads out over us like eternity. The few stars we could see through smog and light in the City are nothing compared to the thousands of pinpricks letting light in through the shell of the night sky. “That one?” I ask, my hand pointing up with his. Another moaning call screams through the air, and I curl back into the sleeping bag, clenching my eyes shut.
Howl’s arm slips under me, pulling me closer. Normally, it would be too close, but the gore’s wail pierces every inch of my skin, as if the creature has already found us and taken a bite of me. Howl’s presence feels like a shield, a distraction.
“That bright star,” he says, “that’s Zhinu. She’s the daughter of the sun.” I open my eyes again, trying to concentrate on what he is saying. “All the other stars paled in comparison, doomed to serve the most beautiful of their number. At the crook of one brilliant finger, they would bring her flowers from Feiyu”—he points to another bright point in the sky—“or travel even farther to bring her a wisp of breeze from He Wu.”
His breath mists out over both of us, freezing on the scrubby moss growing out from the rock above us. “But she wasn’t content with all of her suitors and servants. She was bored of everything, from the moon’s idle gossip to her father’s angry blustering against peasants who had stopped worshipping him. Now, disobedient peasants sound interesting, Zhinu thought. So she jumped from the heavens down to earth and landed in the middle of a flock of qilin.”
“What are qilin?” I interject, looking over at him.
Howl purses his lips, thinking. “I don’t know. My mother used to tell me this story, and her grandmother used to tell it to her, and her grandmother before that, so some of the details are a little hazy. Qilin are supposed to be good, I think, but dangerous. Something from a story that couldn’t really exist, with beautiful black-and-white hair that trails down to the ground and long fangs for ripping meat.”
My thoughts immediately go back to the baying that creeps closer every minute, but Howl’s rhythmic cadence draws my attention back to him.
“Zhinu was terrified. She tried to jump back to her place in the stars, but one of the qilin caught the train of her dress between his teeth, determined to eat the beautiful creature. Just as he was about to nibble on her little toe, a beautiful voice sang out over the forest and brought the beast up short. The whole flock ran toward the voice.
“The daughter of the sun followed, curious to know what kind of animal could calm such terrible beasts. But it wasn’t an animal, it was a peasant man, handsome, and with a voice sweet enough to rival the cosmic symphony. The moment they set eyes on each other, they fell in love, and were married that day. His name was Niulang.”
“Niulang and Zhinu lived happily together for three years before her father, the sun, found her. As punishment for running away and marrying a peasant, he set her in the sky so far from earth that she could only weep tears of sorrow and memory. Niulang killed one of his precious qilin and followed her, hidden under its skin.” Howl points up to the sky again, another star twinkling above us as if in response. “But the disguise didn’t fool the sun. He built a wall between Zhinu and Niulang, so he would never be able to find her. So they could never be together.”