A thick belt of stars winds between the two lovers, the glittering divide millions strong. “So they just look at each other, across the wall?” I ask, my eyes feeling heavy.
I can hear the smile in his voice. “She spends her time weaving her tears into clouds, to protect the earth from the sun’s anger. And in return, when the sun’s face is turned elsewhere, all the birds fly together into the sky to make a bridge across the wall so Zhinu and Niulang can be together.”
My eyes close, baying cries forgotten within the quiet safety of Howl’s voice. He settles in next to me, reassuring calm folding over me like a warm blanket.
CHAPTER 9
DAWN FILTERING THROUGH THE TREES surprises me. I feel as though my eyelids just closed, and they resist as the sun’s cold rays of light nudge them back open. Howl sits up next to me, dark circles under his eyes marking the sleepless night. When I slide to the ground, I freeze, staring at the ground. Heavily clawed paw prints are dug into the frozen dirt from here to the trees.
Howl crouches down, fingertips tracing the edges of the paw print closest to him. It’s larger than his hand. “So what do you think? Believe in gores now?”
I look over toward him, intending to say something flippant, but my eyes catch on the rock face behind him and words won’t come. Scratches gouge deep into the stone just under the ledge where we slept, at least ten feet off the ground. They were not there last night when we climbed up.
Howl turns to see what I’m staring at, and half laughs, though there’s no humor in the sound as his eyes jerk over the scarred rock.
“Will it follow us? Are we prey now?” I’m proud of how steady my voice is. Almost as if this should be normal. We’re outside the walls. Of course creatures would be hunting us in the night.
“I don’t think so. Guess we’ll see. If anything large and toothy bites my head off, just run, okay?” Howl passes me some hard crackers and water, pulls on his pack, and starts downhill.
“Wait a second!” I call, more to myself than to him, trying not to think of what happened when I was late with Mantis down in the wine cellar.
He stops and watches me pull the pills from the bottom of my pack, tapping his foot as I push two into my mouth and follow them with water, the soft casings sticking in my throat as they go down. Before zipping the pocket shut, I pull out the entire bag of Mantis packets and silently count them.
“What’s the matter?” Howl asks, glancing back at the claw-scored rock behind me and shuffling a few steps farther down the hill. “We’ve got enough Mantis.”
“For how long?” I ask. “A few weeks at the most.”
Howl sort of shrugs, turning away from me in a sharp huff of breath that steams up around his face as he starts down the hill.
“I’d like an answer to that particular question.” I skip a few steps forward, the terror of those glass bottle shards in my mouth still raw.
Howl turns back, head cocked to the side as if he is trying to tease threads of truth from whatever fabric Dr. Yang has woven for him to pull over my eyes. “The City isn’t the only place we can get Mantis. You’ll be fine until we get to the mountain.”
“Get where?”
“I’ll show you where we’re headed the next time I climb up to get my bearings. We should be able to . . . well, Dr. Yang says walking should only take a few weeks if we’re accounting for . . .” He gestures vaguely to my midsection, and my ribs give an answering twinge as if they know he’s pointing out their bloody, broken faults. “A month if we run into trouble. We’ve got more than enough Mantis to last that long.”
“A month?” I curl around my broken center, attempting to make a joke out of my chagrin, when he raises an eyebrow at me. “We’ve only been out less than a day and there are already gores trying to eat us. So unless you have something more exciting for them to eat hidden in that pack of yours, I’d have to say I’m less than confident in our chances at survival.”
“Gores only hang out where there are lots of people to pick off.”
I point at myself. “I wouldn’t say I’m ripe, but I’d put myself in the low-hanging, easy-to-pick category.”
Howl stops, surprised into smiling again. “We’ll be fine. I think.”
“Very reassuring.” I bite my lip, not wanting to think about the howls from last night. “Even if we do manage to avoid gores and Reds and whoever else might be creeping around out here, what happens when we get to this mountain place, which is somehow not the same as Kamar? Will we be safe there?”
“We’ll be fine,” Howl says again, turning back down the hill without meeting my eyes.
“Will all your limbs still be attached by the time we arrive, or will I have eaten you by then?”
“I’m not going to let you hurt me, even if you do go all Seph-headed. Scars are about as sexy as the Chairman’s dirty bathwater.”
I think for a second, following his slow meander through the trees, avoiding patches of icy mud. “Is that what you call him too? Even the Chairman’s son has to use his title?”
Howl glances at me over his shoulder as he walks, his voice quiet. “Can you imagine calling him anything else?”
I lick my lips, trying to think what to say, images of my own father hazy and shadowed at the back of my mind. He may have been distant, even more so now because I can’t think of him without his last moments crowding in to replace everything else. I shut my eyes, trying to replace the terrible images with memories of his arms around me, of the games we played and the special smile he had for Aya and me. However shadowy those memories have become, at least I know he loved me. An odd sort of hollowness replaces the quick rearrangement of thoughts in my head to keep the curtain draped over my past.
Odd, because I never thought a traitor Fourth would have reason to feel sorry for the Chairman’s son.
? ? ?
The rest of the week is all steep slopes and fancy footwork to avoid falling into the sea of twisty trees and boulders below us. Howl does take me up a tree to show me where we’re going, though the wildly waving branches are almost enough to keep me on the ground. The answer to where we’re headed isn’t as complete as I’d like, because he just points to a mountain in the distance, blue in the mist. It seems like a part of another world, too far for anyone to make it on foot, too exposed and open, as if the whole world should be divided into sections and walled in as mine has been up until now.
After a few days of walking, Howl points out a funny-looking tree dwarfed by the bent back and gnarled limbs of the elderly canopy above us. “Oh, good. I was worried we were too late in the year to get the last of these.”
I look back the way we came, glad for the chance to rest my aching ribs. I hope for a glimpse of the City’s gray walls, but the trees are too tall; nothing to see but pine needles and a corroded metal tube big enough to walk through. It almost looks like the carcass of a heli-plane, but different. Older. Shot out of the sky, and now half-buried in the exposed dirt like a gravestone for Before.
Howl shakes the little tree’s branches behind me, looking for something. I walk over toward the tube, scuffing my feet in the dirt. My toes uncover two scorched pieces of plastic and a small ring inside, rusted red from exposure. Maybe the only possession left of whoever flew the craft. The band fits over my pinkie finger, like the ring Tai-ge wears, the City seal circling his finger like a shackle.
What if the only thing they find of me is my four stars, corroded to dust?
They sit in my pocket, heavy and sharp.
“Here.” Howl interrupts my thoughts, holding something out to me as he walks over. “There’s a whole orchard down this hill.” He stops, brows furrowed as I lace my hands behind my back, eyes glued to the fruit he is trying to hand to me.
“Do you . . . not like apples?” he asks.