THE WATER HITS me with a slap of sound and cold. Immediately, all sense of the boat is cut off. The creak of wood, the voices, the scrape and splash of the oars.
A curious sense of peace washes over me. It’s all right, I realize. This is how I do it—how I make sure they make it. Someone was always going to die. This way, the rest of them survive.
Thirteen steps—maybe it will be thirteen strokes—and they’ll have to manage with one hand apiece. But they’ll manage. Becca will take charge. The way it’s supposed to be.
I tread water, waiting. Waiting for what, I’m not sure. I should be afraid, but I think this is the first moment since we saw the road that I am completely, utterly calm. I have done all I can. It’s not enough, of course. Nothing would ever be enough. But it’s all I have to give.
And then something brushes past my leg. Then another, more constant pressure, like fingers probing the shape of my ankle. I kick out and connect with something that gives easily. I feel the passage of a dozen flurrying bodies around me, and I force myself to breathe evenly. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. But my instincts kick in and I can’t stay still and wait for it.
I kick off my shoes, try to gauge the direction of the road, and strike out. Swimming in clothing isn’t exactly easy, but the water has a strange buoyancy that makes up for some of the drag, and years of swim lessons come back to me readily enough. A few strokes take me away from the questing touches, and then I pause, catching my breath.
I hear voices up ahead, and for an instant I think it’s the others. But these voices are wrong. The language is wrong, something that chatters like a stream over rocks, and there are too many of them. I don’t want to swim toward the sound, but I’m sure that’s the way the road went. I take another few cautious strokes. How many is that? Seven, I think. Six more and—and there’s no way I’ll make it, not alone. The rules are the rules.
The voices draw closer. They’re all around me now, but still I can’t see or feel anything, anyone. They whisper in my ear, babble behind me. A hand grabs my arm. I yank away. Another seizes my leg and gives a sharp tug, pulling me under, and this time when I kick, I can’t break free.
More hands, and still the voices, bubbling and laughing and whispering. Hands grip my wrists, my legs, my hair. Fingers crawl over my chin, force their way in past my lips, scrape against my teeth as I try not to scream, knowing it will only let the water rush in.
I flail against the gripping hands. They tighten painfully, craggy nails scraping across my skin. I thrash one hand away and reach for the surface, but it’s too far away; I grasp at only cold water. I can’t hold my breath much longer. I can’t get loose. My lungs burn, and in a moment I’ll have no choice but to surrender.
The last thing I’ll see is nothing at all. Only darkness.
And then—light. A soft, golden light, filtering weakly through the water. Briefly, it illuminates the shapes around me. They’re almost human, with withered torsos and gaping, broken-toothed mouths, huge clouded eyes and hollowed cheeks, ash-gray hair billowing in the water around them. Beneath their breastbones, their bodies turn to tatters.
The light hits them and they scatter. Their movement is jerky, nauseating, but it tears them away from the light and in a moment they have vanished. I struggle for the surface, but my vision goes to spots. I reach for the light.
A hand plunges through the water and closes around my wrist, hauling me upward. Seconds later I’m being pulled over the edge of a boat, which rocks alarmingly. I spill into the belly of it, coughing and gasping as water puddles beneath me.
“Ho, there. Air’s for breathing, now, not water,” a low rumble of a voice says. I peer up. The light shines behind the man sitting in the center of the boat, but I can see the broad outline of his shoulders and the silhouette of his hat, wide-brimmed and crumpled as if jammed down on his head. “Let’s get you out of the dark, then, miss.”
He gets a grip on the oars of the little boat and turns it with a few practiced movements. Around us, the darkness is a solid shell, but it can’t press in past the limits of the light. I’m still struggling to breathe normally; the first word I attempt comes out as a sputtering cough.
“None of that, now,” he says. “You just hold tight. We’ll have you out in a moment.”
“Who are you?” I manage.
“Oh, now, there’s an interesting question,” he says. “Interesting on account of it not having much meaning anymore. Who I am is a man on the road, and that’s all that’s mattered for some time now. You can call me John, as some fair few have, though I can’t rightly recall whether any did so before I stepped through the Liar’s Gate.”
“You’re a traveler?”
“I was,” he says. “But those days are behind me. There’s no leaving this place for old John, but don’t worry yourself about that. I’ve learned to abide well enough. And here we are.”
We edge out of the darkness, back onto the glimmering path of light. John finishes his stroke and sets the oars a moment while he reaches behind him, fetching the source of the light. When he turns back, he’s cradling a hand in both of his. It’s been cut off just below the wrist, a bit of bone protruding from the desiccated flesh. The fingers cup a candle, melted almost all the way down, fat globs of wax spilling over the palm. He puffs his cheeks to blow it out and wraps the whole thing tenderly in a cloth he pulls from inside his jacket. Then he puts the bundle inside a wooden box at his feet and taps the lid as if to assure himself it’s secure.
“What—” I say, but realize before I ask the question there’s really no answer that will make it make sense.
“There are two ways to survive the road. One of them is following the rules, the other is learning how to break them in just the right way,” he says. “Not much left of that trick, and the cost of its acquisition was dear, but as it’s saved one life, at least, I’ll call it a worthy price.”
In the lighthouse’s beam, I can see him more clearly. He’s white, with a russet beard streaked with gray and a broad, weathered face. His clothes are as rumpled as his hat and old-fashioned, though I don’t know enough to say whether the fashion is eighty years out of date or a hundred and eighty. One of his eyelids droops, and the cheek on that side is scored with deep scars.
“I’m Sara,” I say.
“Oh, that I know,” he replies. “And your next question’s going to be about your friends, who will have fetched up to shore by now, as soon we shall in turn. We’ve been waiting for you awhile now. There was some doubt as to whether you’d make it.”
“We?”
He doesn’t answer. The shore is in view, gleaming gray at the end of the light. The others’ boat is there, leaning drunkenly against the shore, pulling free and wandering back with every breaking swell. There’s no sign of them. I lick my lips, taste salt.
“They’re just fine,” he tells me. “You’ve come through the worst of it, now. For this stretch, at least.”
Then there is only the slap of the water against the hull, and then the scrape of sand as he drives us all the way up onto the shore. He steps out and grabs hold of the prow, hauling it up another foot before holding out his hand to steady me. I shiver, a cold breeze cutting right through my wet clothing, and he settles his rough woolen coat around my shoulders. It helps a little. I chatter out a thank-you, but he only smiles and ducks back to the boat to fetch his box.
With the box, and the hand inside it, tucked under his arm, he heads up the beach and the slope beyond, leaving me to follow.
I’ve got no particular reason to trust him, other than the fact that he just saved my life, but I also have no other options and no direction to go but straight up the last sliver of light to the next section of road.
Sand gives way to scrub, which gives way to the road, and the path of light ends. John pauses, pats his sides, and then turns back to me. “Ah. In the pocket there, if you please,” he says, pointing to the coat hanging limply around my shoulders.
I get at the pocket awkwardly and find a flashlight inside. There’s tape over the bottom, and initials—M. N.—in Sharpie. I decide not to wonder about who it belonged to. I hand it up to him and he uses it to light our path. We walk another few hundred yards through shallow hills, trudging up and down, which at least warms me.
Up ahead, a puddle of light spills over the road. A campfire. And the figures around it—
“There are your people,” John says. “Go on, then. They’ll be eager to see you, but these old bones don’t move so fast anymore. Take the light, then, I don’t need it.”
I accept the flashlight from him wordlessly—because I can’t manage words. They’re alive, all of them. I’m alive, a fact that finally sinks in as I lope along stiffly, my bare feet slapping the stones. I run as fast as I can and it isn’t fast enough. I resent every second it takes me to cross the distance to them.
Mel spots me first and lets out a whoop, running to meet me. I slow down, but she still slams into me and wraps her arms around my sodden shoulders.
“Sara! Oh my God, she wasn’t lying. You’re okay? You’re you?”
“I’m me,” I say, and then, before I can think better of it, I kiss her.
The kiss tastes of ocean water, and a damp strand of hair gets stuck between our lips, but I don’t care. I don’t care who’s watching, either, only that Mel is there and she’s kissing me back and there’s one thing, at least, that this road can’t take from me.
When we break away, she bites her lip, flushed. Mel, shy—that’s new. “Turns out waiting is a terrible idea,” I say, and she laughs. And then I look past her, and see Becca, cheeks streaked with tears that haven’t yet had the chance to dry. Mel follows my gaze and steps back. Gives Becca room to come forward.
Becca draws in close. She puts her hands to either side of my face and leans her brow against mine. “Don’t you dare do that again,” she whispers. “You’re my little sister. I’m supposed to be looking after you.”
“I’m older than you now, remember?” I say. “Also taller.” I hug her, and this time her answering embrace is quick and sure.
“Barely.” She steps back and grins, relief pouring into her expression. Then she clears her throat—what she always does when she’s trying not to cry. My gaze skirts past her, and for the first time I notice that they weren’t alone by the fire.
A girl stands backlit, wearing a white dress, a blue ribbon around her waist. Her hair is red brown, and falls in loose curls to the middle of her back.
“That’s—” I begin.
“Lucy,” Becca says. “We found her.”
“More like she found us,” Anthony says. He’s a few steps back, close enough to the fire that the orange of its light is still stronger than my flashlight. “She and that other guy. We were going off track, I guess, and then suddenly they were there with this light. He just reached out and yanked our boat back on track and went with us the last couple strokes, out of the dark. Lucy asked where you were. She knew your name. She knew all our names. And when we told her what had happened, she hopped over into our boat and told the guy to go after you.”
A dozen half-formed questions come to the tip of my tongue, but none of them are complete enough to voice. I stare at Lucy, who’s close enough she can probably hear everything we’re saying, but far enough away she isn’t intruding too obviously. She stares back. Then she lifts a hand and waves a little, a fluttering of her fingertips.
“She said she wanted to wait until you were here to talk too much,” Mel says. “And you’re soaked. And I can hear your teeth chattering from here. Come on, let’s go up near the fire.”
She throws an arm around my shoulder. I lean against her a little and catch Becca’s hand, just my fingertips hooked to catch hers, on the other side. Kyle and Anthony trail behind.
We reach the firelight and Lucy dances back a bit, elegant little steps to give us room to maneuver. I get close enough to the fire to feel the warmth before addressing her.
“Hi. I’m—”
“Sara,” she says. She smiles, cheeks dimpling. “And I’m Lucy, if you hadn’t guessed.”
John tromps up behind us and then past, turning sideways with muttered apologies to fit by the group. He goes to the far side of the fire, where a stool sits next to a pile of boxes and bags, and sets the box with the hand on top of it.
“Did you encounter any problems?” Lucy asks him.
“Oh no,” he says, blowing out his cheeks. “Just the usual sort of hungries, and the candle’s burning low, but you knew that.”
He rummages in a bag beside him and pulls out a length of wood and a small knife, and sets to carving it with a level of concentration that suggests he’ll have no part in the following conversation.
“John’s been on the road for quite a long time,” Lucy says. “Even longer than I have. I wouldn’t have survived its trials without him, but he’s—he’s not what he used to be.” John shows no visible offense at this, only whistling and working his knife into the wood.
“He’s the man your brother saw you with,” I say.
Lucy blinks at me. “My brother?”
“Your brother followed you into the woods, and he saw you get on the road with a man in a broad-brimmed hat,” I say. “That’s what the newspapers said.”
“Ah,” she says. “I think someone may have told me that story before. Sometimes I have trouble keeping track. I’ve worked hard not to lose my senses quite as much as dear John, but I’m hardly immune. I am eighty years old, after all. Even under normal circumstances, my memory might falter.” She smiles. “I didn’t know my brother was following me. John was already playing ferryman back then. He’s a very good person. Or was. He could have gotten off the road, but he decided to stay behind, and risk himself going back and forth to help people along. He told me I should turn back, but I was quite set on traveling.”
“Why?” I ask. “If he warned you, why would you—?”
“It calls to some people,” Lucy says, a little wistfully. “It’s lonely. It calls to the ones it thinks can make it to the end.”
My skin prickles. Maybe it’s just the cold. “Can you help us get to the end?” I ask.
She sighs. “The thing is, this is the end,” she says.
Seven gates. Everything we’ve come across has been consistent in that, at least. “We’ve only been through . . .” I count them off in my mind.
“Five,” she says. “The Liar’s Gate, the Sinner’s Gate, the Blind Man’s Gate, the Gate of Many Doors, the Sailor’s Gate. Sometimes they have different names. Sometimes they come in a different order, and the details of each change to suit the traveler. But to get here, you passed through five. I know. There ought to be two more. Come with me.”
She turns and walks into the dark. John stays put, whittling his stick and whistling through the bristles of his beard.
Lucy leads us down another hill and up the side of the next, then stops, pointing.
At the base of the hill is a wreck of shattered stone. An eruption of the earth, and the road beyond it utter ruin. Brambles grow over the hills beyond, and then a thick snarl of trees, a forest that stretches to the dark uncertainty of the horizon. Here and there I think I can make out a paler patch among the shadows, far beyond the limits of our flashlights, where another scrap of road remains.
Mel moans as we come to a staggered stop. “That’s it?” she says. “It just ends? Then how do we get off?”
“You have to leave the road,” Lucy says.
“But if we leave the road, we die,” Anthony says, taking another step toward the end of the road and squinting as if a solution will reveal itself.
“It isn’t that clear-cut,” Lucy says. She looks at me. “Sara left the road.”
“When I was running after Kyle,” I say. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you all,” she says. “When I can.”
“That beast would have killed you if Trina hadn’t stopped it,” Becca says.
“But she did stop it,” Lucy says. “And while the words are one of the more explosive things to find their way onto the road, they’re hardly the only tools at our disposal. The gates may be gone, but enough of the road remains to follow it—if you have the right connection to it, and to your destination. You all have keys, I presume. Have you all used them?”
I think through quickly—Becca must have used hers at some point, because she nods. Kyle opened that first gate, Anthony opened the gate after the water, Mel handled the third—which leaves me, and the gate at the beach.
“Good,” Lucy says. “That ties you to the road. If you’re careful, and stay focused, it should be enough. Well. Could be. But we don’t have any option but to risk it.”
“We?” I say.
Lucy blinks at me. “Isn’t it obvious?” she says. “I’m coming with you.”