I inhaled. “I know.”
A glance down showed her lips curving. Her breathing gradually slowed. Her body melted into mine, so trusting. If she wasn’t asleep she was on the verge of it.
Sleep wouldn’t come for me. I knew this. Not with Luna curled against me and her words playing over and over in my mind. I don’t care what you say. You’re my friend. Not with the memory of those men and their bag of heads.
I thought of all this for long hours, staring into the trees.
TWENTY-ONE
Luna
AT MIDLIGHT, WE dropped down from the tree. I stretched, hands reaching for the sky, trying to work out the kinks in my body from sleeping the last few hours pressed up against Fowler in a tree.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked in concern when I heard him yawn.
“Never could sleep in a tree. Always afraid I would fall out.”
I had slept well, but something told me that was because Fowler had been holding me.
He’d been kind, talking to me and letting me touch him. I almost believed he didn’t hate having me with him, after all. When I had gone so far as to tell him that he was my friend, he didn’t even deny it.
Ducking my head to hide the small smile curving my lips, I started to move down the orchard path. I didn’t get very far before he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Hold a moment.” Fowler turned me so that my back was to him.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to take care of something first. They’re looking for girls, remember? We’re going to fool people into thinking you’re something else.”
I had almost forgotten. There was a bounty on my head in Relhok. Bile rose up in my throat.
He gathered my hair in his hand. “This has to go.”
I shouldn’t have felt a stab of regret, but I did. Countless hours of my life had been spent with Perla arranging my hair. Perla, almost exclusively, had arranged my mother’s hair, creating elaborate coiffures. Perla said my hair was like my mother’s. Dark with buried hints of mahogany. It had mattered to her, so it mattered to me.
I turned around, closing a hand on one of the plaited ropes that hung over my shoulder almost protectively.
“Come now, Luna. Nothing says ‘girl’ more than long plaits of hair.”
I thumbed the curling tip that hung practically to my waist.
He sighed. “Shorn hair trumps losing your head. You’re already garbed in trousers. This is one simple thing we can do to give you an advantage.”
I nodded, releasing my hair. “Of course.” To protest was vain and foolish. Still, as I presented my back to him a lump formed in my throat, thinking how horrified Perla would be. He gathered my hair up in one hand. There was pressure as his knife sawed through one plait and then the next.
The twin hunks of hair hit the ground like dead limbs. My head instantly felt lighter with my hair only reaching the top of my collar.
His strong fingers ran through my hair, loosening it around my head.
Cool air fluttered over the back of my neck. He sawed at a few random strands, working to create a semblance of evenness. “There,” he announced. “Not bad. How’s it feel?”
I moved my head side to side, testing the unusual lightness. A few strands brushed my ears.
“Do I look like a boy?”
He was quiet for a moment and I could feel his stare on my face. I lifted my chin, waiting.
“Maybe if they’re squinting.”
I let out a rough laugh. “Tell me we didn’t cut my hair for nothing?”
“Well, it’s dark, right?” He fumbled in his bag. “I think I have a hat in here. Yes. There we go.”
He plopped it down on my head, tucking a few bits of hair back from my ear. “There. Better.”
I smiled. Better. The word sank through me until the whole motive for cutting my hair asserted itself, and then nothing felt better.
“Why would they want to kill girls my age?” I had my suspicions that Cullan knew I was alive . . . that he was hunting me, but I couldn’t help hoping I was wrong. Eradicating an entire group of people, especially young girls, future mothers, seemed extreme just to get to me. Was he seeking extinction for mankind? What threat could he perceive in me? I was hoping Fowler could give me another explanation.
Fowler expelled a breath and started walking. I fell in beside him. He finally answered, proving, at least, that he wasn’t going to go back to ignoring me.
“When I was a boy still wishing for better things, I would sometimes get caught up in wondering things like why. Not anymore.” He took a deep breath. “Over a year ago I heard screaming and I followed it.” He laughed once, a hard, broken sound. “Thought maybe I could help. And you know what I found?”
I shook my head.
“I found a father shoving his own son at a group of dwellers so that he could get away. The boy kept calling for him. . . .”
I stumbled, horrified at such a scenario. My chest ached, unable to imagine what he was describing.