If his expression wasn’t so serious, I’d think he was mocking me: bleeding scratches cover his shoulders, arms and face.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you.”
He smiles.
I look out at a sea of green. Grass and trees, the first living things I have seen other than my friends and the pig. Then I glance up, and anguish overwhelms me. My heart cries out for someone to make it all stop, to finally let us go.
This is another room. Different, massive, but still a room: we are not outside.
The ceiling glows brightly. I have to shield my eyes to look at it. Unlike the hallways, the ceiling here is arched, as if we’re standing inside the end of a long, wide pipe. It curves high above. I doubt I could touch the top of it even if twenty of us stood on each other’s shoulders.
Thick groves of trees line the sides, reaching up to the bottom edges of the ceiling arch. On some of those trees, I see bits of color in different shapes.
It’s…it must be fruit.
Food.
If we can eat it, we are saved.
Before us is a wide clearing of knee-high green that leads up to something just as beautiful as the fruit: water. It’s a spring bubbling up out of the ground, a sparkling, glorious, living jewel that rises as high as my face before tumbling down into tall reeds. The reeds run down the center of this room, a wide swath of them that is oddly rectangular in shape. At the far end of that rectangle, more grass, and beyond the grass, a line of trees that are so tall I can’t see past them, can’t see how far the arched roof goes.
“Food and water,” Bishop says. He looks at me, astonished. “Savage…you did it.”
I shake my head slowly. “But I didn’t get us out.”
“You will,” Bishop says. “I know you will.”
I look behind us. Here, the thicket is far different than it was in the dark room. Leaves cover it, making it look like a sloped, uneven blanket of deep green that lies comfortably under the shade of fruit trees. The thicket spreads left and right into the dense woods that line either side of this huge room. Through some spots, I can make out a stone wall.
We must have crawled through a hole in that wall.
Bishop stares at all of it, wide-eyed and smiling.
“This place, Savage…this place will keep us alive. We can rest.”
That word, rest, it triggers something inside me. I’m hungry, thirsty, and so tired. I haven’t slept since I came out of the coffin.
But I can’t rest yet.
“We need Spingate,” I say. “Maybe she can figure out if the fruit is safe to eat.”
Bishop shrugs. “If it’s not, does it really matter?”
He walks to a nearby tree dotted with blue, fist-sized fruits. He reaches up, pulls at one of them. The branch bends for a moment, then a stem snaps free and the branch springs back into place with a rattle of leaves.
I start to speak, to tell him to wait, but I say nothing. Bishop is right: if the food or water is poisonous, what difference does it make if we die from that or from starvation and thirst? I’m exhausted, drained. So is Bishop. So are the rest of our people. I’m not even sure if I have the strength to get back to them and bring them here. If we don’t eat and drink what we see before us, we’re finished anyway.
Bishop puts the blue fruit to his mouth. He bites down—it sounds crunchy. He chews. A bit of clear juice squirts out of his mouth, runs down his chin. He reaches up, snaps off another piece of fruit. With a wet smile, he offers it to me.
I take it. The fruit is firm and light, its surface cool to the touch.
Maybe it will kill me. If so, I don’t care.
I take a bite.
Flavors explode across my tongue: sweet, cool, tangy. I know that I have never, ever tasted anything this good. I chew madly as I take a second bite, then a third.
Bishop pops the last of his blue fruit into his mouth. His teeth crunch noisily on hard seeds even as he reaches for a different tree, a different fruit, one that is long and purple. Then he stops: something has caught his attention.
Knife in hand, he walks out into the knee-high grass. I see the deep scratches in his back, crisscross lines leaking blood. There are rips in his pants. I can see little glimpses of his thighs.
My face flushes hot, and I look away. His pants are the only clothes he has left. If those go, he’ll be naked. A grown man, naked. My stomach feels queasy, and I don’t think it’s from the fruit.
The grass seems to close in behind him. He bends, touches something, straightens, rubs his thumb and forefinger together.
I see redness on his fingertips.
He continues on, moves closer to the bubbling column of water. His limp is almost gone.
Finally, he stops. He stares down. He doesn’t have to call for me, because I know what’s there.
I walk to join him. The stiff grass feels sharp against my shins and knees.