“Wait,” I say. “Spingate, come with me.”
The reddish sun seems to ignite the air around her hair. If anyone was made for this place, it is Theresa Spingate.
We walk down the ramp and join Bishop. I point down at the vines.
“Do you think those plants are safe to step on?”
Spingate kneels at the ramp’s edge. Fingers outstretched, she waves her bracer-adorned arm over the leaves. The black jewels come alive, sparkle in many colors.
“The shuttle doesn’t detect any known poisons,” she says. “None that can go through the skin, anyway. Just don’t eat anything.”
I glance back at the big silver ship that brought us here, then at her.
“The shuttle told you that?”
She turns her head and pulls back her hair, shows a small black jewel nestled in her ear.
“It can speak to me through this. So can Gaston.”
I again look down at the vines. This is it—our moment. I consider letting Bishop go first, or even Spingate, giving one of them the honor of being the first person to set foot on our new world.
But I want that honor for myself. I am the leader, and it is my right.
I step off the ramp. The leaves are soft and cool under my bare feet, except for the ones that were blackened during the landing; those crunch and break. There is something firm beneath the leaves. I turn my spear upside down. Dried red-gray—Matilda’s blood—coats the blade’s flat metal. I need to clean that up soon; I want to leave all memories of her behind.
I push the spear tip into the plants. It sinks in a little, then clonks against something hard.
“Bishop, come help.”
He kneels beside me. His big hands rip at the blue vines and yellow leaves. That minty smell grows stronger. He clears the plants from a small area, leaving only crumbly brown dirt. He wipes that away as well, revealing flat metal.
I walk to a new spot, push the spear tip into the vines: clonk. I move to my right, do it again, hear the same sound.
The tree line…those leaves go straight up, a sheer curved wall of pale yellow surrounding a perfectly circular clearing. That can’t be right…can it?
Bishop stands. “Farrar, Coyotl, come with me.”
The three boys jog toward the wall of trees.
I turn back to Spingate.
“We’re standing on metal,” I say. “What is this place?”
Wide-eyed, she blinks. “I don’t know. The shuttle told us where to land, so we landed. I’ll see what Gaston can find out.”
Her lips move, but I can’t hear what she says. She cocks her head, hearing a voice meant only for her.
She’s so exhausted she didn’t think to ask about where we landed? Until this moment, neither did I. We were all so focused on escaping the Xolotl we didn’t give much thought to what awaited us on Omeyocan.
Spingate nods.
“Gaston says the shuttle doesn’t know much, but this isn’t a clearing—it’s a landing pad.”
So Omeyocan isn’t an unexplored wilderness after all. Did the Grownups build this? If so, when, and are those builders still here? This planet is ours, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have to take it away from someone else.
“Em!”
Bishop is shouting at me from the tree line. Coyotl and Farrar are leaning to the left and right, respectively, pulling apart the yellow trees. Only they aren’t trees at all, they are vines, the same kind I’m standing on—and in the shadows behind them, a metal wall.
Spingate tugs on my sleeve. “Gaston says he figured out how to make the landing pad rise up.”
It takes me a moment to process what she just said. I start to tell her no, but before the word comes out, a violent tremor knocks me off-balance, throws me down on the vines. Spingate falls to her hands and knees. The ground beneath me lurches upward, then stops so suddenly it tosses me into the air—I crash back down onto the soft plants. Another vibration shakes my bones, then we rise up, fast. Screams of metal hurt my ears.
“Spingate! Tell Gaston to make it stop!”
Another shudder knocks her flat, but she isn’t afraid. Her eyes are wide with wonder—she’s laughing.
“Gaston says it’s okay. Just hold on!”
The ground presses into me: we’re moving faster now.
At the edges of the clearing, the vines seem to pour down the sides, bunching up at the bottom like falling rope, but the vines aren’t falling—instead, the ground is coming up beneath them. Bishop, Coyotl and Farrar are still on their feet, lithely dancing away from the sprawling mass of plants.
What I first thought was the clearing’s edge is actually vine-covered walls, walls that shrink before my eyes. We’re rising to the top of this…this tube.
I suddenly feel lighter. We’re slowing.