“We have a hundred and sixty-eight here. There are a hundred more in the woods near Mallick’s cottage. I’ll get more. It may take a few months, but the weather’s good. I want a thousand because it’s a big number, and less won’t have the same impact. I’ll have them, and get to New Hope by the end of August.”
“And then …” Lana stopped herself. “I’m pushing too far ahead. A week.” She looked at Simon, got his nod.
“We’ll be ready,” he said. “I’ll get word back to you,” Fallon continued. “Flash to you or come through the crystal. Or through the fire.”
“I don’t think you understand.” With one hand still holding Simon’s, Lana took Fallon’s, joining them. “We’re going with you.”
“With me?” Genuinely stunned, Fallon gaped at them. “You can’t.”
“I made the trip from New Hope to here with you,” Lana reminded her. “I’ll make it back with you. We all will.”
“Listen, just listen. I could be months on the road.”
“Raising an army,” Simon finished. “You could use some help with that. It happens we have some experience.”
“The boys are too young.”
“Ethan’s the only one younger than you were when you left for two years,” Lana reminded her.
“They’ve been training, and training hard. If I didn’t think they could handle it, they wouldn’t be going.”
“They’ll think of it as an adventure,” Lana added. “Every one of them.”
“But it won’t be. Raiders cruise the roads. Purity Warriors hunt for Uncannys and for slaves. Outside this—this bubble, there are bounty hunters and military, and flat-out crazy people who’d put a knife in you for whatever’s in your pack. It’s not a damn adventure.”
Lana leaned forward, eyes hot. “I was six months pregnant, alone, most often on foot, very often half-starved, and hunted outside this ‘bubble’ as you call it.”
“Yes, but—”
“You’re not alone in power and grit, Fallon. This man? This man,” she repeated in a voice as hot as her eyes as she gripped Simon’s hand. “He fought wars before you were born. He’s protected us and our neighbors since the old world ended and this one began.”
“I don’t mean to say …” At that moment, when her mother looked fierce enough to lead an army herself, Fallon didn’t know what she meant to say.
“What? Just what?” Lana demanded. “That we’re too weak, too soft, too naive to face the realities of what’s coming? We’re not. We say our sons are ready. We say our daughter doesn’t go alone, not this time. Not alone. And that’s the end of it.”
“I didn’t mean to … The farm.”
“It’s not going anywhere.” Simon left the heat to his wife, spoke easily. “We’ve talked this out and talked it through. The sisters and Jack Clanson and his people are going to look after things here. We’ll take the horses because we’ll need them, and the dogs because not taking them would break Ethan’s heart. We’ll take what the horses can carry, and be ready in a week. When your mother says that’s the end of it, kid, that’s the end of it.”
Why hadn’t she seen this? she wondered. In their eyes, through the crystal? She could just leave, be gone in … a flash. But they’d follow. And she’d have angered and hurt them.
“I never expected …”
“Adjust,” Lana suggested.
“There’s still training needed here.”
“And people in place to deal with it,” Simon finished. He rose, kissed her hard. “I’m going to head out, tell the people who need to know that we’ll be leaving in a week. I imagine you and your mom have things to do here. Lana, if you want the truck to get to Sisters Farm later, I can leave it for you.”
“We’ll be fine on horses. We’ll tell the boys tonight.”
“That’s the plan.” He kissed his wife in turn, then left his women alone.
“I don’t think you’re weak, or soft.”
Coolly now, Lana angled her head. “Just naive.”
“No. Not exactly. It’s just you, none of you have been very far from the farm in a long time. In a lot of ways it’s worse than it was when you traveled here from New Hope.”
“Safety and strength in numbers. Six together instead of one alone. We’re a family. We go as a family.”
“I couldn’t stand if anything happened to any of you,” Fallon admitted. “I’m afraid something will.”
“I’ve watched my sons become men long, long before I want them to. I’ve known since before you were born what you’d be, and still it was, and is, so hard to let you be.”
Reaching over, she covered Fallon’s hand with hers. “But I’ve accepted all of it, because I have to. Now you, my precious girl, have to let the rest of us be what we are. I know before this is done, you’ll go without us. I know, before this is done, I’ll watch my sons go without me. But not this time, Fallon. We go together.”
Lana rose. “We should take inventory, make a priority list of what we want to take with us. We’ll get a start on that before we ride over to the Sisters.”
With a nod, Fallon got to her feet because, Savior aside, her father was right. When her mother said that was the end of it, that was the end of it.
The week stretched into two with the challenge of an entire family setting out on horseback, on a long, potentially dangerous journey. With no way of knowing when any would come back.
They considered the idea of taking the truck, a horse trailer—even a wagon—and ultimately rejected it. They would, almost certainly, have to travel off the roads as much as on them. Added to it, the logistics and time spent accessing fuel made the use of the truck too complicated.
Horses might be slower, but Fallon wasn’t in a hurry. Though she still hoped to reach New Hope by the end of August, a few weeks longer wouldn’t matter.
The numbers she took with her mattered.
Lana insisted every inch, every corner of the house required scrubbing. Fallon saw that not only as pride, but a need to remind the house, its spirits, its memories, that it was loved.
Simon walked the fields, went over equipment, feeding schedules, the barn, silos, every outbuilding with those who’d serve as caretakers. His version of scrubbing, Fallon thought.
As much as she wanted to go, as much as dreams pushed her to begin, she took her parents’ distractions as a way to pigeonhole each of her brothers, one by one.
With Colin she played to his pride in being the oldest son and his protective instincts. She, and their parents, depended on him to look out for his younger brothers, and to show by his example the need to be careful and cautious, and to follow orders.
She appealed to Travis’s intellect, slyness, and his gift. She knew he’d be smart, oh, she depended on it, as he knew as well as she that their brothers might do something foolish. So if he felt they might, she counted on him to distract them.
With Ethan, she had only to appeal to his heart. Their parents would worry, so she knew, could depend on, him listening carefully and helping them not worry as much. He’d also be her head scout, as animals often felt danger before people, and no one knew animals as well as he did.
She hoped that would keep them all in line at least for the first miles, but imagined she’d have to repeat the talks—and come up with new angles—regularly on the way to New Hope.
As the days passed she came to believe her parents had been right. More, she saw this as another choice, and the right choice, to go as a family.
And on a soft May morning with the leaves springing green, and the sun spreading its first gilded light over the hills, they headed south, as a family.
Her brothers chatted like magpies, and the dogs—nearly as young and just as excited—pranced. But Fallon saw tears glint in her mother’s eyes as Lana looked back, one last time.
“It’ll be where we left it, babe.”
Lana looked at Simon, gave him a smile, and didn’t look back again. They rode through the first day with Taibhse soaring overhead. Her brothers never tired, nor did Faol Ban, and when the dogs did, Ethan took Scout up on his horse, and Simon took Jem.
They covered those first miles without incident, so Fallon nearly relaxed enough to enjoy her brothers’ sheer wonder.
They’d never seen roads so plentiful or so wide, so many houses huddled together on what they considered one plot of land.