JUNE’S HEAD APPEARS THROUGH THE hatch, her cheeks so pale, it’s almost as if she’s turning to ice herself. It’s a relief to see her, the awkward silence between me and Tai-ge suffocating. All the questions I should have asked while we were alone dried up in trying to figure out why I didn’t want to kiss him.
“Do you think we’re clear to start toward the island?” I ask, squatting down by the hatch. There isn’t much to see outside the cockpit windows, smudged over by a thick fog, and the uncertainty itches between my shoulders, as if someone is already out there watching us. Hopefully not the people Xuan warned us about, the ones who hate anything carved from City stone.
June shakes her head, gestures for me to follow her, then disappears down the ladder.
“I’m going out,” I say, not looking at Tai-ge. “Please don’t go in Xuan’s cell. And make sure he doesn’t try to run or anything.”
“You’re still worried about Xuan?” Tai-ge looks up from the console. “After what I told you? Or is it just that you need to talk to the others first?”
A flash of guilt singes my chest. “Please, Tai-ge. He’s a risk. And hasn’t been exactly helpful so far.”
“Well, you did lock him in a storage closet.” Tai-ge goes back to the buttons and lights flashing over the maps. The space between us feels empty, like a cramped and starving belly, but with no clear way to put something into it to take away the pain. He doesn’t look up again, staring at his instruments. “You aren’t . . . doing what we did before with Howl, are you? Going outside to plan?”
“No . . . June just wants me to come . . .” I breath deep, the air whisking in from outside pricking oddly in my nostrils. “What do you want me to say, Tai-ge? You know everything I do.”
He frowns. “Then you’ll explain to the others. About how we got out? Smooth things over so Howl and June won’t push you into keeping that door locked?”
I can’t quite articulate the anger that jabs inside me. I never had to argue with Tai-ge before we left the City. Just by principle of our ranking marks, it was obvious who had the answers. But now, since escaping the City, I wonder if Tai-ge would have even let me argue with him back then if I’d wanted to. In every discussion we have—even the subjects he has no experience with, like the existence of gores—he needs the evidence to pistol-whip him across the jaw before he grudgingly accepts that my thoughts could possibly have merit. About Firsts and Seconds, about SS having a cure, or even about Howl being the person I knew him to be rather than the one Tai-ge recognized. He’s let me lead up until now, let me make decisions without expecting me to fall in line with what he thought, but I know, deep down, he expects I’ll eventually come around.
“Xuan is going to have to do some more talking before we let him out of there, Tai-ge,” I say. “It isn’t Howl or June twisting my arm. It was my decision to lock him away.”
“And I’ll have to do the same before you let me hear what we’re going to do next?”
“Tai-ge . . .” I can almost hear my teeth grinding together, and have to force myself to stop before they break. “We’re just scouting, okay? Trust goes both ways. Please let me go look at what they’ve found, and stay away from Xuan so we don’t . . . I don’t know, find you with your head bashed in.”
“Right.” He rubs his neck, then stretches his arms out until his shoulders crack. Then he finally looks up from the console, meeting my eyes. “Okay. I can do that.”
Something inside me relaxes a fraction. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Howl and June are both on the ground outside, waiting until my feet hit the damp earth before leading me out into the wisps of gray and wet. Rain mists down from overhead, a salty aftertaste in the air that leaves my tongue curling my mouth. Wind whips my hair so the ends stab at my eyes and cheeks. The glare of sun penetrating the storm clouds seems to be coming from a few hours above the horizon, making it late afternoon. Buildings sulk just beyond the curve of the hill where we landed, looming like skeletons in the mist. Their outsides are bleached and spindly versions of what a home should be, their insides dark.
June stops under a tree just outside the clutches of the ghostly buildings and points to the ground, a pile of what looks unmistakably like excrement at her feet.
“Are we . . . skipping latrines this trip?” I ask.
“Gores,” Howl supplies. He looks around, pointing to another spot just farther into the abandoned settlement where a tree hunches over the old buildings like an old crone. “A whole hutch of them, I’d guess.”
The hairs rise on my arms, memories of black eyes eclipsing my vision. We haven’t seen so much as a hair from a gore’s tail since we flew out of the burning City. “Is that why there aren’t any people here?”
June shakes her head, a violent jerk that dispels my visions of a gore feast.
“This place was evacuated, by the looks of it.” Howl rubs the back of his neck with his hand, then pulls the collar of his coat up to his chin, shoulders hunched against the wind.
I try to look through the mist, wind agitating the gray air into what looks like a torrent that masks the empty buildings beyond. “How did you know to land here, June? Is this where they took your mother from?”
She touches the trunk of the tree, fingers tracing the rough lines of its bark as if she knows it better than the lines of her hands.
Howl leans forward. “Did they take lots of people all at once or sneak in and pick people off . . . ?”
June shakes her head, pointing to the village. “They took all of them.”
Goose pimples on my arms prick like needles as she takes a step toward the houses, staring blank-eyed at the ghosts of what she used to know hovering out there in the mist.
Something moves in the long grass behind me. I spin to look, almost expecting a gore’s throaty song to cut through the heavy pall, but there’s nothing there. I rub my arms. “Should we go extract a direction out of Xuan and head out? With the language problem, though . . .”
“We probably have a little bit of breathing room before anyone notices we’re here. In this kind of cover, even if someone saw us come down, it would be hard to pinpoint where exactly.” Howl takes a deep breath, eyes scrunched against the wind. “We should probably not leave the heli until we’re sure where we’re headed, though. Not unless you want to come out looking like that.” Howl gestures helplessly at the wind-battered buildings. “Especially with gores hunting in the area. And not knowing about where we’ll find people, or where the water starts.”
The ocean. Is that what is in this salty air? So much water it weighs down the wind and drinks up the sun? Every gust feels like a whip against my cheeks, tearing at my hair and pushing against me, as if this storm wants to herd us into the empty-eyed settlement.
“We don’t have great visibility, but we should be able to see if anyone tries to come at us,” Howl continues. “Safer than trying to hike closer and hope the gores eat Xuan first. We can take a look around to see what we’re walking into, get a good night’s rest, and make an early start tomorrow.”
“We have how many days before the helis come? Five?”
Howl nods. “Five days until they leave from Dazhai. What they plan to do when they get here . . . I don’t know. Xuan seems to think the island is impermeable.” He looks back toward the skeleton houses. “Not sure why. You know anything about it, June?”
June shakes her head, taking another step toward the ghost village, nothing inside it but mist and memories, and suddenly I can see scorch marks on the walls, the last remembrances of a fight years dead. Will someone come for us in the night? Whoever it is the City wouldn’t tell the Red General’s son, the Chairman’s son, about?
Here we are in a place where City words and scars are enough for a bullet in the head. I touch my traitor brand, the star lopsided as if it means to melt off my hand. “Let’s go back inside before the gores come out.”
“Gores don’t hunt till after dark.” June peers up into the sky, her hair a tempest of gold. She reaches out to touch my sleeve. “Come?”
An extra thread of uneasiness laces through the discomfort already belted around me. June, who has never once had something nice to say about my ability to stay quiet, would rather have me along to scout than be alone in this place?
I take a deep breath, the briny air stinging in my throat as I nod. I can appreciate not wanting to walk through the blasted remains of something that used to be mine alone. Grateful that she chose me. She needs a sister, not a scout.
June points to Howl and jabs her chin toward the heli. He waits for me to nod before heading back toward the ladder, flickers of light seeping out through the hatch into the blustery air. The worry I once had about Howl hurting Tai-ge vanished. Howl doesn’t have a reason to. I’ve realized he’s not so much a monstrous gore. Maybe a surgeon instead, planning which bits need to be cut in order to get him to his end goal.
Still, I don’t feel the need to look back as we walk away. And that by itself is enough for me to blow out the candle lighting my thoughts.