The darkness didn’t answer back. Even the night animals and bugs went quiet, like they were listening with her. Now that she was here, the plan that had seemed so simple was showing its holes. For her to take Xan to the dogs, the dogs had to be there. If they weren’t…
“Hello?” Her voice sounded thin, even to her. Stretched and desperate. “Please, are you there?”
She parked the cart in the soft ground at the water’s edge and stepped toward the trees. The already black night grew darker. There wasn’t even starlight here. Only an absence, like looking straight into the pupil of an eye as big as the world. She put her arms out, fingertips waving for the fronds and scrub that she knew was there but couldn’t see. Her eyes ached from trying to see anything. Her ears rang with the silence.
“Please? I need help.”
Nothing answered. Despair she hadn’t known she was fighting washed into her. If the dogs weren’t there, then Xan was gone. And gone forever. And he couldn’t be. Grief shifted in her belly, shook her legs and hands. The dogs had been there for Momma bird. They couldn’t leave her brother dead, and just save a fucking sunbird.
Her parents would wake up. They’d see the body was gone, and her with it. They’d be angry, and what would she tell them? What would she say to make them understand that the rules they knew weren’t her rules, that Xan didn’t have to be dead. They’d stop her. She balled her hands into tight, aching fists. She couldn’t let them stop her.
“Hey!” she shouted. And then again, loud enough for the air to scrape at her throat. “Hey! I need you! I need help! It’s important!”
The silence was absolute.
And then it wasn’t.
She couldn’t tell how far away it was. With nothing to see, sound could deceive her, but somewhere ahead of her, a hiss and crackle of scrub being pushed aside. The rock deer maybe. Or a shambler. Or any of the thousands of uncategorized animals of Laconia that were still waiting to be named.
Or the dogs.
Uncertainty came over her in a wave. It was too big and too strange. Like she’d waved at the sun and it had waved back. Maybe this had been a bad idea, but it was too late now. She steeled herself to face whatever came from the black. The tramping drew nearer, louder. It multiplied and spread. They were coming.
Something touched her hand. A gentle pressure that tingled like a mild electric shock.
Cara dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the dog, hugging the strange, too-solid flesh close to her. It was warm against her cheek, and rough. It smelled like cardamom and soil. It went still, like it wasn’t sure what do with her affection and joy, and it stayed still until she released it.
“Over here,” she said, stumbling back to the pond. She gestured in the darkness. And maybe the dogs could see her, because they followed. Starlight glimmered in their bulging eyes.
Xan’s funeral whites glowed in the darkness, a paler shadow. The dogs gathered around him, and it was like watching what was left of Xan dissolve. Darkness consuming darkness.
“He’s my brother,” Cara said. “A truck hit him. It killed him, like with Momma bird. But I need him back. And you brought her back, so you can bring him back too, can’t you? I mean you can, can’t you?”
She was babbling, and the dogs didn’t respond. Mostly blind, she stepped in close, her hands on their backs. The dogs were still and quiet as statues. And then one began making its ki-ka-ko call, and the others picked it up until it felt like a choir around her. Until her head spun with it. She sank to her knees to keep from losing her balance. In the sky, the stick moons glittered green and white and blue. The stars looked warmer than their lights.
Xan bobbed up to the surface of the darkness. The dogs were carrying him, one under him bearing his weight on its back. Others holding his arms and legs to steady him as they walked.
“You can, can’t you? You can fix him?”
The dogs didn’t answer. Xan floated out to the trees, and then behind them. And then there was only the sound of the dogs walking. Then not even that.
Cara sat by the water, hugging her knees. Slowly, the natural sounds of the night came back: the trill of insects, the trill of birds. A high, fluting call from something a long way off, and an answering call from even farther. The stillness cooled her, but not badly. All she had to do now was wait.
*
Voices woke her. They were calling her name, and she couldn’t remember where she was. It wasn’t her bed or her room or her house, because there was a dawn-stained sky overhead. Her clothes were wet with dew.
“Cara!”
She was on the edge of calling back, when the last forgetfulness of sleep slid off her mind. She clamped a hand over her mouth as if her arm didn’t trust her throat to stay quiet. She scrambled to her feet. Momma bird and the little ones were already on the pond. The dead, black eyes didn’t take Cara in. The cart squatted where she’d let it. She snatched the little bag of food out of it, took two steps toward the voices, and then two away. Her mind felt like it was buzzing.
If she told them now, they’d call the soldiers. They’d come and they’d track down the dogs. She didn’t think they’d wait for Xan to come back, and he had to come back. But there were only so many paths. They’d find her at the pond, and soon. She’d have to say something, wouldn’t she? And what if they didn’t let her come back?
She felt like she was still struggling with the dilemma even as she trotted out toward the forest, and the darkness under the fronds. She pushed through the underbrush, twigs and the stick-hard fingers of the scrub sliding off her. A rough break in the plants showed where the animal path led away to the south, and she followed it.
She’d never gone past the pond before. There were probably surveys of the land somewhere. Or maybe not. A decade was a long time to live somewhere, but a planet was larger than the best intentions. She might be going places humans had never been before. Or no one except for Xan, anyway.
The voices grew more distant, but still clear. Her legs ached, but the work of moving fought back the cold. The voices went silent. She thought maybe they’d given up looking for her, but when they started again, there were more. Voices she recognized. Instructor Hannu, Stephen DeCaamp. Mari Tennanbaum.
Her father.
“Babygirl!” he cried. His voice sounded raw. Like he was hurting himself by shouting. “Babygirl, if you’re out there, we’re right here! Baby!”
She wanted to go back to him, to tell him everything was all right. That she was and that Xan was too. Tears rose up in her eyes, blurring the world.
“Sorry,” she said softly, pushing forward. “I’m so sorry.”