CHAPTER 15
THEY LEFT EARLY in the morning. They set out with no fanfare. A few people were up to see them off, but most of the camp still slumbered. Rachel noticed Serena was one of those voicing farewells. She felt tempted to ask her to lessen a feeling or two—she hadn’t slept all night because every time she closed her eyes she saw Peter’s bloody hand, and the baern that had killed him. The baern, and others like it, were still out there.
“You look pretty tired.” Her father ruffled her hair.
Rachel just nodded. She didn’t want him to see that she was afraid.
“Listen,” he said. “I know that this is a big responsibility, but I was hoping you would be in charge of this.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the laser saw. “I’ve just gotten so used to a knife that this thing doesn’t feel natural.”
Rachel took it, feeling the smooth, deadly weight of it. “You can tell I’m scared, can’t you?” She didn’t want to look at him.
“Well, I’m scared too, Rachel.” He stood close. “We both saw what happened to Peter. We both know that that baern and other things like it are out there. I think if we weren’t scared, I’d have to wonder how smart we were.”
She finally looked at him. He was smiling. “We’ll be okay.”
Rachel shoved the laser saw into her pocket. She thought about what Ms. Moore had told her, before she had Crossed. That brave people are always scared. That you have to be afraid before you can be brave.
Daniel patted her on the back and walked over to Indigo, who was saying good-bye to Malgam and Nandy. They were staying, to get things ready for the trek to Salishan. Rachel tried to focus on the smooth shape of the laser saw and breathed deep.
As it turned out, the trek was relatively uneventful. In fact, parts of it were almost fun. They had enough food, and there was no sign of baerns. As each day passed, Rachel felt more at ease and closer to home. She and Pathik and Fisher took charge of gathering wood each night when they camped, and once they’d had their evening meal, Indigo would clear his throat and tell a firetale. He had all kinds. Some were about the first generation of survivors from when the Line was activated; how they suffered and persevered, how they despaired when all their babies were stillborn; the joy when the first baby lived, the first child born with a gift. He told a funny firetale about stumbling upon Daniel in the woods, wandering around sick as a lamb and wild-eyed, and how Daniel had thought he was a ghost of some sort. And there were tales of Salishan; of bountiful land, and safety; of miraculously undestroyed power sources—according to legend the island had been the site of a wind farm—and of Others who had somehow been able to reach the island. There were supposed to be boats abandoned on a shore not too far from the Others’ camp, awaiting those who wanted passage.
Rachel loved the firetales, imagining the people in them, and the places. On the night before they were due to reach The Property, he told a firetale about the greenhouse on Ms. Moore’s property. Pathik and Fisher had heard it before, but Rachel never had, and neither, it seemed, had Daniel.
“I remember it was night when we first came close to the Line. The lights were on in the greenhouse, and none of us had ever seen anything so beautiful before. The glass glittered, and the orchids inside were lush jewels. The men with me, well, boys really, we were all so young then, were amazed. As was I, of course, but I was about to see something even more amazing.”
Pathik tilted his head, puzzled. He’d heard the firetale many times, but this part was new.
“She was wearing a blue dress.” Indigo’s face softened and his eyes focused on something far away. “Her hair was golden, and floated around her face, lit like a halo. She came out of the greenhouse alone, and walked toward the meadow where we hid. She stood there in the night, and looked so lovely, and so lonely.”
“It was Ms. Moore,” Rachel breathed, entranced.
Indigo smiled and looked at Pathik. “It was,” he said softly. “It was your grandmother, Pathik. You’ll get to meet her tomorrow.”
Pathik laughed. “We’ve already met, in a way. She was holding a stunner, and she looked pretty fierce. At least that’s what I thought I saw from where I was cowering in the bushes.” He shared a look with Rachel, remembering the night she had tried to bring him the medicine his father needed.
She laughed too. “She’s not someone you want mad at you.”
Daniel crinkled his brow. “She has a stunner? Those are illegal for civilians, or at least they used to be.”
That sent Rachel into a fit of giggles. “Ms. Moore doesn’t think much of that law. You’ll like her, Dad.”
“So, did you know right then that you loved her?” Fisher was rapt, picturing the young lady lit up in the night that Indigo had described.
Indigo grew sober. “I think I may have, Fisher. I think I may have known that, right then.”
“What happened to the boys that were with you, Indigo?” Rachel stirred the last of the fire’s embers with a stick.
“Ah. The tale turns to a sad one there. Best to save that for some other night.” Indigo rose and stretched. “These old bones are ready for sleep.”
Fisher and Rachel had first watch together that night. As the rest of the camp dozed, they sat at the dying fire.
“Rachel.” Fisher spoke very softly. “Have you thought about what happens when we all get back to camp?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you and your parents plan to go with Indigo to Salishan?” Fisher kept his eyes on the forest.
“We’ll go.” Rachel wondered if she was supposed to be telling people. “At least I think we will. What about you?”
Fisher shook his head. “Michael will stay, so I will stay.”
“Because you owe him somehow?”
Fisher looked at her then. “What do you mean?”
“Because he raised you. Or is it something else?”
“Like what?”
“Pathik seems to think you’re ambitious.”
Fisher grinned. “He does, doesn’t he?” He spent a moment scanning the darkness beyond the glow of the embers. “I can’t blame him; I used to be.”
“Not anymore?”
Fisher didn’t really answer her. “I’ll stay in part because I owe Michael. But mostly, I’ll stay because I fear Michael, or at least what Michael might lead us to. He wants us powerful, and without Indigo and Malgam here to lead, we may forget that power isn’t everything.”
“You mean how he wants to use the gifts against the Roberts?”
“Yes.” Fisher motioned for Rachel to be quiet; he’d heard something. He stared at a particular spot at the meadow’s edge for a minute. When he heard no more, he continued. “Michael doesn’t think, sometimes. I asked him once how we would be different from Regs—I mean the Regs who abandoned us to our fate here—if we started using our gifts to kill. He didn’t even understand the question.”
“But what can you do, if you stay?”
“I don’t know.”
THE NEXT MORNING, they arrived at the campsite Pathik had stayed at while trying to make contact with someone at The Property. Rachel had stayed one night there, with him and the other boys on their way to his camp, after she Crossed.
Rachel eyed the black remains of the tiny fire they had made that night, and tried to believe it had only been a few weeks before. It seemed like she hadn’t seen her mother or Ms. Moore for ages. She couldn’t wait to get back to The Property.
“The hut is west of here.” Rachel knew that they had to go to the little brick maintenance hut at the edge of The Property to use the key. Jonathan had gone there with Ms. Moore’s key when she had Crossed into Away. That seemed like so long ago.
It wasn’t a long hike. The little hut squatted on the field, half on The Property, half Away. A bare line of dirt where the Line prevented the field grass from growing stretched out on either side. Rachel had seen it many times from the other side. There was a rusted padlock hanging from the door hasp. She imagined Jonathan had broken that lock, when he disarmed the Line for her to Cross.
She gasped when she saw it from where she stood now. There was no door. There was nothing but a blank brick wall.
“How do we get in to use the key?” Pathik stared at the brick wall.
“Of course,” said Rachel, mostly to herself. “Why would there be a door? They put this section up so fast, they didn’t plan.”
Daniel stepped forward. “I’ll claw those bricks out if I have to.”
“No need.” Indigo walked up to the hut. His fingers traced the bricks, testing the mortar. When he found what he was looking for, he took out his knife and began to chip away. The mortar turned to dust.
“What?” Fisher joined Indigo. “It’s mud! Dried mud.”
“This is how we Crossed, the boys and I, years ago.” Indigo removed the brick he’d been working on. “We put them back with mud, just as you say, Fisher.”
In a very few minutes, there was a hole in the hut wall big enough for Rachel to squeeze through. She dropped to the floor inside the hut, and took the key Daniel handed through the hole to her. When she turned around she could see the door across from her, but when she reached out to touch it, the invisible barrier of the Line prevented her. It split the little hut in two.
“Do you see the key slot?” Indigo’s voice came through the hole.
Rachel looked around. She was in what was basically an empty room. The only thing in it was a flat metal box, mounted to one side wall. The box spanned both sides of the Line, and it was lit on the top. Rachel walked over to it.
“Yes, I see it.” She could see where the key would fit, in a slot on her side. There was an identical slot on the other side. She stood, silent, staring at the box. She wondered what her father was feeling, outside the little hut, waiting to Cross back into his life, after so many years of thinking it was over. She wondered what Pathik and Fisher would think of her world. She thought of Ms. Moore, and how she would feel when she saw Indigo. But mostly, Rachel missed her mother, and she wanted to go home.
She shoved the key into the slot.