I have never felt more naked in my life.
Or more understood. Birch and I worked our way up to that level of reading each other, but it didn’t happen overnight—and it certainly didn’t happen in the span of one glance.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” he presses.
I don’t deny it.
He looks long and hard into me, like he can see every secret thing I’ve tucked away, even from myself. “I suspect we have a lot in common,” he says, standing. He wipes the sand from his palms, and extends the pants out to me like an offering. “Keep them—they look like they’d fit you, but if you’re uncomfortable in them, at least use them as a blanket.”
Out of instinct, I scan his hands and wrists for the markings everyone has: a wolf on the wrist, or a name on the finger.
He has neither.
“Name’s Lonan, by the way,” he says.
I take the pants. How does he not have any markings?
“Eden,” I say, still searching him for any telling tattoos, anything at all to help me piece together a picture of what his life has been. A name is nothing, it turns out, when it comes to learning someone.
“Eden,” he repeats. “Try to get some sleep.”
THIRTY-FIVE
DAWN COMES EARLY, with a patchwork sky of heavy clouds, their silver linings dulled to gray. Bits of blue peek through where the clouds are stretched thin.
There are more pleasant ways of being woken from a night of restless half sleep than hearing Alexa talking at Cass. Not to Cass—there is a difference. She follows him around like a mosquito, one he has yet to swat away or even acknowledge, as he stuffs various items into a tattered gray duffel bag.
When I take a look around camp—really take a look around—I’m surprised to see they’re the only ones making noise. Her unrequited pleading and his commotion create quite the scene.
Hope, wondrously, sleeps through all of this.
At first, I think the redhead is asleep. He’s flat on his back, barefoot, knees bent and pointing toward the sky, arms flung over his face as if to shield him from the sun. But he must hear me, or maybe my silence creates a force that somehow presses back against Alexa and Cass, because he’s the one who speaks first: “Make it stop.”
There are so many ways to reply to this on the spectrum of sarcasm to sincerity, but ultimately, he must know the only way to make Alexa stop is for Cass to warm up to her.
“Where are the others?” I ask, meaning Lonan and Finnley.
“Supplies,” he says, letting one arm drop to the sand, pointing in the general direction of the ocean. “Rowboat.”
Not a morning person, I gather.
I don’t see the rowboat, not at first, but I’m more alarmed by the other thing I don’t see. “What happened to your pirate ship?”
One corner of his mouth turns up. “Pirate ship? Are we that savage?”
“Savage? No,” I say. “Pirate-like, though? I think you are, maybe.”
Finally, he uncovers his eyes, squints at me. Waits to hear me out.
He isn’t as guarded as Lonan, especially since he’s still half asleep. This could work in my favor. Clearly, they know something about this place; it’s not like they accidentally washed up on the beach—they came here for a reason. It’s possible they’re seeking Sanctuary, just like we were. They knew about the totem map, though, and we didn’t. What else do they know that we don’t?
I need to be careful. Get answers without looking like I’m trying to get answers.
“Your ship—it looked like a ghost ship, all dark and haunted. I’m thinking you make people walk the plank and dive blindly to their deep, watery deaths.” I say all of this very dramatically, to let him know I don’t really believe these things. And I don’t. Then again, I didn’t believe in bloodthirsty beetles or tentacle plants that dredge up a person’s worst fears. “Also,” I go on, “when we met you, you were looking at a map, so I can only conclude that you’re searching for some buried treasure you want to keep hidden from the rest of us.” That part I’m serious about. I only hope I’m playing this well enough to get something real out of him.
The other corner of his mouth quirks up to match the first, but it isn’t exactly a smile. “All good pirates have their secrets,” he says. “Except we’re not pirates. We’re Deliverers.”
“Deliverers, as in people who cut out other people’s livers?” I ask in mock horror. This brings out a true smile in him—step one in getting him to reveal all the secrets he’s tucked away. In all seriousness, though, Deliverers? What is that about?
“We can’t tell you everything,” he says. “But I think it’s safe to affirm that your liver is in no explicit danger.” His smile is like the sunshine missing from this bleary day, radiant and warm.
“That’s a relief,” I say. “My liver thanks you.”
He laughs again, so I decide to press my luck. “So, this everything you can’t tell us—”
“Sorry.” He cuts me off. “I should have said I can’t tell you anything.”
“Not now, or not ever?”
He hesitates, and just like that, I know one of them will spill sooner or later. “Not yet.”
“I just want to know one thing,” I say, because he hasn’t built a wall or shoved an iron gate in my face. “Why don’t any of you have the markings?” I twist my wrist, hold up my E-D-E-N pinky.
His nose crinkles when he smiles. “Told you that much already. We’re Deliverers.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Then ask me something I can answer.”
I sigh. Best to go back a few steps. “Your ship—ghost ship, or no?”
“It’ll come back around in a week or so. Ship’s mission doesn’t stop just because its commanders are on special assignment,” he says. “Also, the ship wasn’t safe here. Didn’t want it to end up like yours.”
In splinters, he doesn’t have to say. Useless.
“Phoenix! Cass! A little help?”
The redhead—Phoenix, it seems—turns at the sound of Lonan’s voice, farther down the beach and deeper toward the trees than I’d initially been looking. Finnley is with him.
Hope stirs as Cass and Alexa blur past her. “What’s going on?”
Phoenix rolls to his feet in a fluid motion that is at once relaxed and controlled. He leaves nothing behind, no unspooling secrets for me to collect, not even a nice talking to you or so much as a glance.
“No one will say,” I tell Hope. I rise to my feet, dust the sand from where it collected in the folds of my cutoffs. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t find out.”
“Ridiculous,” Lonan says, when I declare we’re coming with them wherever they’re headed. He runs a hand through his hair, shakes it out.
“Things aren’t straightforward in there,” I say, motioning to the jungle. In there. I really, really do not want to go back in—but my desire to know what they’re up to wins out. They’ve willingly stranded themselves here for a week, for a mission so secret they’ve practically sutured their lips shut. That we’ve sought the same island cannot be coincidence. “You need us to help you avoid the traps we’ve already discovered.”