And it isn’t so hard to understand. I have my own pain to hide, each step away from the City feeling like a betrayal of something sacred, of the things I knew and loved. I keep track of the days religiously, marking off one week, then two, trying to measure Howl’s estimate of walking to this mountain place in a month against our progress toward the blue peak in the distance. It distracts me from wondering what Tai-ge is thinking, doing. The ring I found makes an ugly rust stain on my pinkie, but I leave it there, scratching an ugly circle on the corroded surface, like the City seal.
It feels like a link to him, as if I can toy with it the way he did with his, turning it around and around and imagining he is doing the same. Every day the metal looks rustier, grainer, scraping against my skin. Is that what Tai-ge thinks of me, now that I’m gone? Has his mother managed to convince him I’m as awful and ugly as this old, rusted ring? A sad substitution for the real thing. Never a friend, much less a . . . whatever it was that my traitor brand made impossible.
Going back, even to explain, could be death for both of us. I have to look forward.
Unfortunately, forward is an unchanging view of the back of Howl’s head.
The land levels out around us, the river swelling to a huge glassy sheet. We stay close to the water, following the curve of the mountain range south. When the clouds thin, the rounded tops appear, hulking beasts painted over with a child’s watercolor set in grays and greens. Once, Howl points out the ghostly silhouette of a building clinging to a bald mountainside, sharply peaked roof gold against gray. A forgotten temple of some god who died along with the rest of this land.
The bag of Mantis feels too light every time I take it out, as if the pills are slipping out behind me in a trail leading back to the City. In another week or more, we’ll be . . . somewhere, though I don’t let myself think more than that. Is it the same “somewhere” my mother went after she tried to kill me?
But I’ll be alive. Not attempting to swallow clods of dirt whole, or carving my initials in Howl’s skin. Is that enough? That I’ve finally earned my four stars, but I’ll be alive to wear them?
The trees, the nighttime fires made from Junis (a wood that hardly smokes), the river, Howl’s long-legged pace, waking up with frost in my hair—it all hardens into a shield against the knot of homesickness and regret twisted up inside my chest. I feel as though I’m part of a machine: walk, sleep, eat, forget.
Until early one morning, Howl stops.
I peer around him into the trees, and my breath catches in my throat. We’ve found people. A pile of them.
Howl nudges the closest man over with a muddy boot, separating him from the pile. The body resists, frozen and fighting to remain a haphazard part of the heap. The man’s eyes are glazed over with frost, City seal etched out in his brown leather jerkin beneath all the dried blood.
Memories of boots crunching through bones and rotted flesh dance through my mind, so I decide to sit and watch Howl search the dead men’s packs for useful items. At least until my stomach calms down.
As he rummages, the body separate from the rest watches me. The index fingers on both his hands end in blackened stumps, his mouth a frozen crevasse, gaping open in a grimace of ice and blood. Would you have killed me too? he asks. Just like your mother. Killing everyone else to make sure you live. You don’t even know why it’s a choice between you and me.
My eyes lock with the dead man’s, horror-struck as they film over with black foam. Are you here to kill me too? The inky black trails trickle toward his mouth, death grimace twisting into a sneer. Quit acting like a poor, abandoned child. It’s in your blood. Kill me.
A hand on my shoulder sends a jolt of electricity through my body. “Sev?” the voice snakes through the haze, but cold seeps up through my coat, frosting my ears shut, the dead soldier’s icy fingers trying to find my throat.
“Sev?” The voice is louder. Yelling. The blackened face resolves into a pair of brown eyes. “Sev! What’s wrong?”
My shoulders lift from the ground and crash back down. How did I end up lying on the ground? I can’t fight the soldier’s iron grip bruising my arms. Water splashes across my face and the dark eyes become a face. Howl. Holding me down.
“Get off me!” I yell, jerking away from him.
Howl lets go, surprised. “You started shaking and fell over.” He raises my chin with one finger, appraising. “Are you sick?”
“No! I saw . . .”
“You saw what?” When I don’t answer, Howl sits back on his heels, eyebrows creasing in toward each other. “This is the third time this has happened since we’ve been out here. Not including that first night in the wine cellar.” He pushes a flustered hand through his hair. “How could you . . .” But then he takes a deep breath and starts over. “Are you taking Mantis like you are supposed to?”
I feel my face flush. “You hand it to me every morning and night. And watch me swallow.”
“Then what is going on?”
I take a deep breath. “I . . . see things. It happened back in the City a lot. Never this bad before. Except . . . except for the bottles.” I feel so ashamed. Dirty. Something is wrong with me, and I can’t talk about it. Not when a dead man was just speaking to me. “It hasn’t hurt you yet, so—”
“I’m not worried about you hurting me; I’m worried about you hurting yourself. What do you mean, you ‘see things’?” Howl unzips my pack, digging until he finds the plastic package of Mantis Dr. Yang gave me. He doesn’t seem to mind that I just told him I’ve been hallucinating. He just eyes the bottle thoughtfully. “Does it hurt?”
My mind struggles to find a way to deny what Howl has uncovered, to pull the secret back inside of me, where it will be safe, but nothing comes.
I don’t remember hallucinations happening at all before my sister, Aya, died, about two years ago. The week after I saw her shot down, I started having frighteningly real dreams. Dreams that woke me up screaming, dreams that didn’t go away even after I opened my eyes. It started happening more and more, until I was almost too frightened to go to sleep. Then came the daydreams, dark, twisted versions of reality, like the monster at the Aihu Bridge.
I shake my head, not sure if it is a response to Howl’s question or just an attempt to stop the world from spinning around me. “Just trying to keep you on your toes. Unpredictability: Boys love it. At least that’s what the nuns always said in our late-night girly talks. What did you find?”
His lips harden to a tight line, and for a moment I think he won’t drop it. But when he finally speaks, his voice is soft. “Nothing. They’ve all been picked clean.”
“Who would be out here killing Reds? I mean, if there’s no such thing as Kamar, like you say.”
Howl shrugs. “It’s no-man’s-land from here to the mountain.” He says it as if it’s a name, not just one of the many mountains we’ve walked over. “Most Outsiders stay clear. There were only Reds in the pile, though, so it must have been an ambush. Are you okay? You look terrible.”
I smooth a hand over my braided hair, picking out a few dead leaves and brushing the dirt from my back. “Better than they do.”
Howl glances toward the lifeless soldiers. “Not by much.” He puts the package of Mantis into his own pack and pulls out a bottle marked with Mantis’s characters. “I’m going to have you switch to these, okay?”
“You’ve had more Mantis this whole time?” A thread of annoyance cuts at my throat. “I’ve been so worried we’d run out. . . .” And why would it matter which Mantis I take? They’re all the same little green pills.
He pulls out three more bottles, stuffing them all into my pack. “And now you don’t have to worry anymore. You can carry it, if you want. Less weight in my pack.” He zips my pack closed and uncurls from his crouch next to me.
“The mountain . . .” I say it as if that’s the name of the place, the way he did, taking the hand he offers to help me up. “Did they do this?”
“Probably.”
“So they are the people we’re fighting. I mean, the people the City is fighting.”
“Yes.” Howl’s face shuts tight, wariness cloaking his open smile as it always does when I ask too many questions.