THE FIRST SNOWFLAKES FELL within the hour—big, wet flakes that made a soft thudding sound when they collided with our clothes. In no time our shoulders were topped with a thick layer of white. A spring snow.
The cold was bad, the footing was worse. More than a couple of us tumbled to the ground on slippery, snow-covered granite, scraping knees, burying hands in icy slush. I remembered the sign from before: Mountains don’t care.
We reached the top of the ridge and followed the trail east. We marched in silence, our feet crunching through snow. The Sisters rarely spoke to the Less Thans, and the Less Thans rarely spoke to the Sisters. Despite those days at Frank’s cabin, it was like there was still a divide between the groups. Even Hope and me.
Especially Hope and me.
Ever since that kiss in the tunnel, there’d been a certain self-consciousness between the two of us. Which was weird because—for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on—I got the feeling she understood me in ways no one else did.
“What happened to you?” I asked, sidling up to her.
“What do you mean?”
“After you were caught in the office. What’d they do?” I remembered her behavior in the fields that day—like a zombie from one of Flush’s comic books.
“Who says they did anything?” she said brusquely.
“I just figured. I mean . . .”
“They didn’t do anything.”
“Nothing? They must’ve—”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Her tone of voice made it clear she didn’t want to talk about it. She picked up her pace, and I hurried to catch up. We walked in silence. She used her spear like a walking stick.
“What’s his name?” she asked, when it was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Who?”
She pointed to Cat; as usual, he was at the front of the line.
“Cat,” I said. “Why?”
“I met him once.”
I could feel my eyes going wide. “You met Cat?”
“He stayed with us. In our cave.”
I suddenly remembered Cat telling me—the night we’d seen the massacre—how he’d been given shelter by a man and his two daughters. How they were on the run from soldiers.
“So that was you,” I said blankly. I wondered what happened to her family. Remembered what she said in the field. I had a sister.
Hope gave a nod, and I felt a pang of—what?—jealousy at the thought of Cat meeting Hope before I had. For some reason, I wanted to be the one who saw her first.
She walked on ahead before I got a chance to say anything else.
The sun rose and the sky cleared—a blue so intense it hurt to look at it. Whether it was the warming weather or the fact we were one step closer to the Heartland, conversations began springing up.
“Seriously, Batman has a soul,” Twitch said to Flush. “He lost his parents, so he’s fueled by pain. That’s what propels him forward.”
“Superman lost his parents, too,” Flush countered.
“He never really knew his parents. There’s a difference.”
Then they abruptly stopped talking, and I looked up. The trees had suddenly ended. All around were mountain peaks, capped in the purest white. It’s like we were on top of the world. A beauty that defied description.
“This is the saddle Frank talked about,” Cat explained, pointing to the stretch of ridgeline that connected one range to the next. The trail looked dangerously narrow, with steep drop-offs on either side, but we were buoyed by the possibility of a new territory. A new life.
We made our way ahead, and soon we came upon a series of red pearls: tiny spheres like cranberries scattered atop the snow. Flush ran to pick one up. No sooner was it in his hand when it squished between his thumb and finger. What was once a perfect sphere was now a messy oval.
“Yuck,” he said, wiping the red goo on his pants. “What is it?”
Twitch scooped up another of the red balls and examined it. “Blood,” he said. “Coagulated blood.”
“From what?”
When we looked farther up the trail, we noticed even more of the globules. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
We rounded the next bend and saw the source: a huge bull elk with half its stomach missing. The snow encircling the corpse was bright red, as though someone overturned a can of paint. A big, red target, with a dead elk in the bull’s-eye. The snow was patted down. Footprints. Animal footprints.
Hope knelt by the dead beast and poked it with her knife.
“Wolves,” she said, then stuck her index finger into the steaming entrails. “Still warm. This was recent.”
“How many, do you think?” Flush asked, trying to maintain a steady voice.
“At least ten. Maybe more.” When she stood up and surveyed the scene, we all became very aware of our surroundings: we were exposed on a naked saddle of land connecting one mountain peak with another. No place to hide. Not from soldiers. Not from wolves. A ripple of fear ran through us all.
“Come on,” Cat said. “We need to find some trees.”
I understood his thinking. A forest would provide wood and wood would provide fire and fire . . . would maybe keep the wolves away.
We marched without speaking. The angle of the sun deepened, lengthening our shadows until they were grotesque beings that didn’t resemble us in the least. And still there was no sign of trees for as far as we could see. It was just white mountaintop followed by white mountaintop.
The pace quickened. The lower arc of sun dipped behind a far peak, painting the snow pink and salmon. But the beauty was lost on me. Panic was rising in my throat.