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I stall as long as I can. There’s no way I want to get back on the bike.
One of Cadence’s distraction techniques ought to do the trick—and I have more than enough questions to keep him busy for days. “What was on the other side of that fence?”
“What fence?” Ash fastens his pack and holds it out to me.
Yeah, I don’t think so. Not happening. “Yesterday. Before you made me get on that thing.”
“The bike? Cady used to love biking. We had these cute little miniature bikes to practice on. Spent more time repairing and recharging them than riding, but still.”
I cross my arms, still ignoring the outstretched pack.
He plops it down and throws up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. You’re talking about the haunted village.”
Cadence snorts. “It wasn’t haunted.”
He shrugs. “Sure, no one lived there, but that’s the point. Monsters still took it, even though there’s hardly any water and it wasn’t a real settlement.”
“What, it was a fake settlement?”
“Exactly—there’s a whole little village inside, all fake. There’s a sign on the other side, facing the old highway. At some point, they collected all these really old buildings and made a pretend town in there to show how people used to live a long time ago. There’s something like it up past Nine Peaks, but bigger. So, even though it wasn’t a real human settlement, I guess it was haunted by the past enough that it drew monsters anyway.”
A fake village. I can’t wrap my mind around it. How could people move whole buildings? And why go to all the effort? And—had what I’d felt really been monsters?
I chew my lip, considering. The voices, those shadowy presences, they hadn’t felt like the Mara. But maybe different kinds of monsters have different ways of hunting. I’ll have to be more alert next time . . .
Ash wrestles me into the pack while I’m distracted and swings his leg over the bike.
“He’s better at this game than you. Give up and get on already,” Cadence says.
Ash grins and pats the rock-hard seat behind him invitingly. I groan and ease onto the stupid thing.
He revs the engine and takes off so fast I have to wrap my arms around him just to stay on. I slit my eyes against the rushing wind and endless stream of insects hurtling by.
From a distance and blurred by tears, nature isn’t so bad. It’s even better when we break free of the dark trees. The mountains seem nearer today, like prickly towers jutting up against the sky, gray and reassuringly solid.
I almost miss the dirty yellow miasma of my poisoned city. The sky is so blue and the air is both clean and not. At the speed we’re moving, it becomes horrifyingly clear just how much crap is floating around out here. At least Ash shelters me from the worst of it. Most of the bugs and bits seem to splat on him before they can reach me, as long as I keep myself tucked behind him.
Today’s route seems more direct. There are fewer spots where we have to get down and walk over or around craters and heaps of debris, or thick mud, or shallow water. And I don’t hate the sparsely covered rock of the canyons as we weave high above the dangerous river nearly as much as I did yesterday’s dense, dark forests. When we reach a stretch of road that runs through a vista of rolling hills and craggy ridges beyond, that’s interesting too. The hills are bumpy with amusing dusty blotches like old fabric that’s been washed too many times when we stop in a hot, arid spot mid-day to recharge the bike.
Ash folds panels out of the sides of the hated contraption to catch the light while we eat. I stagger in circles trying to regain feeling in one half of my body while doing my best to ignore the pain in the other. In addition to pre-existing damage, now my fingers are chapped, my mouth is dry and my lips blistered. My skin is prickly, itchy, and getting redder all the time, and my hair is stiff with grit.
I lean over and scrub my forearms against it, dislodging a filthy rain that patters into the dirt. I try not to look too close at the results. Apparently Ash hadn’t sheltered me from as much of the airborne yuck as I’d thought.
“That stream should be shallow enough if you want to wash up a bit.” He points to a ditch at the side of the road. “Just keep an eye out, and if you hear something rattling, don’t move.”
I eye the vegetation-choked trickle. Cadence cackles. A whole section of the weeds start thrashing.
There’s something alive in there.
I stumble back, yelling for Ash. The bike falls with a crash. He sprints over, twin blades flashing silver.
After yesterday’s river monsters, I’ll happily let him take the lead. The Mara might be deadly, but they aren’t nearly so disgusting.
He dives over the edge. Weeds fly. Foul-smelling mud splashes in great, greenish-brown globs.
Stillness.
“Ash?” Rubbing my arms against crawling revulsion, I peer into the ditch.
He’s knee-deep in brackish water and crumpled reeds, shaking. His head is bent, and he seems to be trying to get up, but he slips further into the muck with every movement.
I edge closer, in danger of sliding in myself.
I really don’t want to go in after him, but if he can’t get up . . . “Ash? You okay?”
He makes a choking sound and finally looks up. His face is painted with mud, teeth bared. He kind of wheezes in my direction.
“This.” He lifts an unidentifiable mottled clump. “Your monster.”
He waggles it, first gasping, and then howling with laughter. The thing in his hand is roundish. Stubby, wiggling bits poke out around the edges.
“That—you—gah—” Cadence joins in, speechless with giggles.
They’re laughing at a water monster. Granted, it’s a lot smaller than the river monsters we ran into yesterday.
A lot smaller. Call it a ditch monster? But I bet it could drown you just the same. It’s certainly not funny.
Ash shouts and flings the thing away. It glops back into the mud.
“It bit me!” He snatches his hand to his mouth, gets a good look at the mud covering it, and starts chortling again as he scrambles up the slippery bank.
“What if it’s poison?” I back up to give him space. If he passes out, I’d rather it happen up here where I might have some chance of helping him and not in the bottom of a monster-infested ditch.
“Poison,” Cadence chortles. “It’s gonna get you, Ash. Eat you right up. Just stand still for a few months and you’ll be sorry!”
“Don’t be rude. I’d take at least a year to digest, and you know it. Besides, I’d have to be the one eating it to get poisoned.” He shakes his hand, spattering mud everywhere. “Ouch, I think it drew blood.”
Then he looks past me. His smile drains away in an instant. Ditch water spatters the dust. “My bike!”
He races past, monster bite forgotten. I check the bank for signs of pursuit.
Ash hauls his evil, two-wheeled contraption upright easily enough. Unfortunately, one of the charging panels stays behind. In pieces.
A lot of pieces.
“Ouch is right,” says Cadence.
Ash scrubs his face, smearing mud, and jerks his hand away with a hiss.
Not sure how a little more mud in the monster bite could hurt at this point, but what do I know?
I nudge the shards of the bike’s charging panel with my toe. “Maybe we can fix it?”
“Sure. I’ll just carve some moulds, melt it down over a campfire, and rewire it with plant fibres.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Not in a million years. No, don’t kick it. We’ll take the pieces back for scrap. Someone will be able to do, uh . . .Well, something. Can’t leave it here or the turtles might really turn into monsters.”
“Turtles?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t remember them either? Of course not.”
“They bite,” Cadence sputters, clearly still overcome. “Turtle-monsters. Venomous snapping turtles . . .” She dissolves into giggles.
“You know we don’t get those. Probably just a little love bite from a Northwestern Pond or Western Painted. Must’ve given the poor little guy a good scare.” Ash looks at his bike and sighs. “This’ll slow us down, though. Give me a few minutes to change before we hit the road. And—maybe just stick close. The turtles won’t do you any harm, but there could be rattlers around.”
I nod intelligently and wait until he’s out of earshot. “Not a monster?”
“Not even close. Just an animal. They have those out here.”
“But it hurt him.”
“Wild animal. They’ll do that.”
“Are there many?”
Cadence makes a sound I can’t interpret. “Once. Maybe again, one day.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The wind rustles the roadside plants. Dirt skips across my shoes and patters against my legs.
“They’ll fill you in when we get home.”
“You mean when we get to Ash’s home.”
“ . . . whatever.”
***
I FALL ASLEEP ALMOST as soon as Ash lets me stop walking.
The connection to the charging unit on the other side of the bike turns out to have been damaged as well. That, along with a cloudy—and, more than once, rainy—afternoon, means we won’t be able to ride again for another day at the earliest. At least Ash strapped the stupid pack to the back of the bike while he pushed it. I got hot enough just carrying myself all day.
I’ve been learning a lot of new things: there are wild animals outside the city—yet another bit of nature I’m not too keen on. They can hurt you, but that doesn’t make them monsters, and there used to be lots of them, and might be again one day. I hope “one day” isn’t anytime soon . . .
Also: if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. The spicy stuff Ash carries, isn’t all that bad, actually: kind of savoury, and chewy. Though I sort of miss Noosh—Refuge’s bland, ground-bug-based liquid diet. Cadence says it’s because I was indoctrinated and lost all sense of taste.
I fold another piece of smoke-preserved dried something-or-other into my mouth to prove her wrong.
Another thing I never really wanted to know: ditch water smells even worse after a few hours in the sun. Sweat is also unpleasant. There’s something called “chafing” and also, similar but evidently worse because it’s on your feet, “blisters.”
Morning comes with a whole new crop of small hurts to add to the too-slowly healing old ones. I let out a yelp when try to I stand. Ash hurries over to help. Cadence won’t stop laughing.
“Should’ve let Hatif come along after all, huh?” Ash says cryptically, if sympathetically.
“Liam, right? I don’t see what good hauling him along would do,” Cadence says.
“Mm? Oh, right. You were gone by then. Hatif can dream-weave too, now. He’s not as strong as you . . . were. But he’s the best healer on our squad. Qareen—Orisa, you’d remember her as—can do a little weaving, too, but she likes fighting a little too much to really master it.”
Dreamweavers can heal? Why did no one tell me this before I lost my magic?
“Didn’t seem important at the time,” Cadence says unrepentantly. “I never really trained as a healer anyway. Boring stuff. All chores and no fun.”
Ash gives me a strange look. I flinch at its intensity, and discover a sudden need to inspect my fingers. It’s obviously her he’s really trying to see.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he says quietly.
“Sounds like things turned out for you, anyway,” Cadence says, louder, brasher, as if to make up for his careful tone. “Two healer-gifted on your squad? Impressive. They’d come in handy right about now.”
It’s Ash’s turn to flinch. “Not their fault. They’d have wanted to come, if they’d known there was a chance you’d survived. We were told you’d died, but I knew you had to still be alive.”
He trails off—giving me time to wonder just what would have happened if he hadn’t stubbornly clung to belief in my survival. Most likely, I would have proved him wrong sooner rather than later.
“It’s just . . .” He takes an uneven breath, lets it out again. “Mogwai is captain now. You know her—or, Cadence, you remember Zoe. She’s great. She just doesn’t really know it yet. It wouldn’t have been fair to her if I’d hijacked our first solo mission.”
“So you thought you’d, what, sneak off on your own and make sure I was really dead?” she says.
“You’re not dead, Cady.”
“No? Then what am I?” She sounds more exasperated than angry.
I don’t buy it. But I’m more curious about something Ash said. “Did you?”
He blinks at the sudden change in topic. “Did I what?”
“Sneak away to come find us. Won’t that get you into trouble?”
Ash’s injured bike seems to summon him—he turns to it without answering. He takes his time inspecting the remaining charging panel in the morning light and brushing dirt from the grimy spokes.
“We should get going,” he calls over his shoulder. “I’d hoped to reach home today, but the power’s only up to five percent. Could take us another two, three days if we have to walk most of the way.”
Having some skill in redirecting uncomfortable conversations myself, I know a diversion when I hear one. I also know what it means—it had cost Ash something to come for us.
Just how much, I have no way of knowing, but judging by Cadence’s conspicuous silence, it could be a lot. Or maybe she has no idea either and she’s just being mysterious to mess with my head. The smothered snicker she lets out at that thought doesn’t clear matters up.
I do what I can to help Ash get us packed and moving again. Just walking hurts at first, until I loosen up enough to take in my surroundings. We’ve moved away from the river, and the mountains, though I can see higher bits of land in the distance, when I can see anything at all.
As far as I can tell, nature consists of tall, dark, spiky trees that cut off the sun, lower, fluffier trees and bushes that make it hard to see where you’re going, not to mention nearly impossible to actually get where you think you’re going, and dry flat bits where there’s mostly dust and low-growing stuff like grasses and little patchy bushes that snag your toes and scratch your calves and trip you up when you least expect it.
Then the whole thing repeats—big trees, little trees, flattish, dryish bit, more trees—oh, and also the other kind of flattish bits that are very, very wet. And extra-bug-infested.
Between the boggy patches of our route and the intermittent cloudbursts Ash insists on marching straight through, I’m not sure my clothes ever fully dry out. We’re getting low on food, we’re completely out of clean clothes, and both sitting and standing are now equally miserable, which is making me bizarrely jealous of Cadence’s smug incorporeality.
So, of course, she can’t help rub it in at every opportunity.
To keep us from bickering, or maybe just to distract me, Ash tells stories about his home. Some are about us as kids. Cadence likes those ones because they’re all about her. Even when they’re about her getting in trouble, or more frequently, her getting Ash and everyone around her in trouble, I can tell she loves it. But there are other stories, stories about what it’s like in Nine Peaks now, and what it’ll be like for me when I get there.
I know these aren’t real stories the same way I knew Cadence’s tall tales couldn’t be real even back when I was trying to be a good, mindless drone in Refuge. They’re too bright, too warm, too perfect. Things aren’t like that in real life. And every time he tells me how much everyone is going to love me, and how great it’s going to be, and how happy I’ll be once we get to Nine Peaks, all I can think about is how they’re really all waiting for Cadence. How disappointed they’ll be when I show up instead.
But three things keep me going past the dread and the bugs and the blisters and the chafing and the itchy, sweaty, too-many-days-without-a-wash grossness of it all.
There’s Ash. He’s just so happy about all of it, even the miserable bits. And also, utterly relentless. Part of me hates to disappoint him.
There’s Refuge, and Freedom, and Ange, and Under. They’re counting on me. If Ash’s home is where I can get help and regain my powers, the sooner I get there, the sooner I can get back to defeating the Mara.
And then there’s that stupid, hopeful part of me that keeps getting me into trouble. That guilty, childish wish for someone to take all my troubles and make them all better.
What if I get to Nine Peaks and everyone is just as happy to see me as Ash says they’ll be? What if it’s like coming home—for real?
I know better than to believe it’ll be as great as he says. But I can hope.