The Invasion of the Tearling

Thunder boomed behind them, shaking the deck.

“Get down!” a man cried, and Lily ducked, covering her head. But the whistling shot went right over them, over all of the ships, toward the hole in the horizon. Hatred blazed inside Lily, so strong that if any Security officer had appeared in front of her in that instant, she would have torn his heart out with her bare hands. They were trying to close whatever doorway Tear had opened … trying to take the better world.

“Tell them to get through!” Tear shouted from the prow. “We don’t have long!”

Their ship was in the lead, nearing the hole, and now Lily could feel warmth on her arms, the heat of sunlight against her skin. A cacophony of screams rang across the deck, wild screams from the people at the railing, and now Lily was screaming herself, feeling as though her entire body were tethered to that open horizon. As they passed through, she let go of the rope and hoisted Jonathan up, shaking him awake.

“The better world!” she shouted in his ear. “The better world!”

But Jonathan did not open his eyes. All around her, on the deck and on the other ships, Lily could hear them, her people, their cries of jubilation echoing across the open ocean. Behind them, the hole still remained, a dark stain through which nothing was visible against the western horizon. At least fifteen ships had made it through, but now the edges of the hole were collapsing inward, its circumference beginning to shrink. Lily didn’t know if the last ships would make it. Turning back to the east, she found William Tear clutching the railing, his face white as a sheet. For a moment, his entire body seemed to glow pure blue against the rising sun, and then he collapsed to the deck.

Lily turned to tell Jonathan, but Jonathan was dead.

LILY.”

She looked up, squinting in the dim moonlight, and scrambled to her feet.

Tear looked exhausted. Lily hadn’t seen him in two days, not since that night, and she was relieved to see him up and about; the longer he was absent from the deck, the more certain Lily became that he had somehow killed himself performing his miracle, that he, like Jonathan, would not wake up. Lily had asked Dorian about Tear, but Dorian was noncommittal. Lily had tried to make friends with several of the other passengers and found them kind but cautious; no one knew who she was. A younger woman, perhaps Dorian’s age, had patched her wounds, but for the past two days there had been nothing for Lily to do but sit by herself, watch the horizon, and wait for Tear.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, but Lily still had her doubts. He looked like a man who had suffered some sort of wasting illness. “But I need your help. Come with me.”

She followed him toward the stern, trying to tiptoe quietly among the sleeping people who covered the deck. Tear, as always, seemed to make no noise at all, and he led her down the ladder to the deep hold belowdecks. The hold had a strange medieval feel, for only lamps and firelight lit all of its rooms; no electric lights anywhere. A broad, dormitory-like area lined with empty cots took up the bulk of the hold. There were over a hundred people on this ship, but most of them didn’t want to spend time inside. They preferred to stay on deck, their eyes scouring the horizon. Tear had prepared for this eventuality; at the far end of the dormitory was a room that contained not only plenty of food and water but about fifty gallons of sunscreen. Lily thought this room was where they were going, but Tear bypassed it for the next, which was understood to be private, for his use only. As they walked in, Lily saw that the room’s walls were lined with bookshelves, each of them filled with hundreds of books. But Lily had no time to marvel at these. In the center of the room, Dorian was standing over a table, staring down at what could only be a body wrapped in a sheet, the shroud sewn together by hasty fingers.

“It’s time, Dori.”

She looked up, and Lily saw, even in the dim glow of firelight, that her eyes were reddened from long crying. She looked a question at Lily.

“He would want her here,” Tear replied. He levered an arm beneath the corpse’s shoulders, hauling it up. “Come on. All together.”