Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (22 page)

“Oh, Lupay, I used to get so mad at you. You’d say, ‘Here’s Forsada going off to save Tawtrukk!’ and you’d march my bear through the dirt, through piles and piles of old leaves. You even dunked her in puddles! Said she was crossing the river. Then you’d swoop that bear down on all the little people dolls and kick them around like Forsada herself had killed every last one. You got my bear all dirty. Then I’d run crying to your mama, and you’d climb that big tree and hide in the branches.”

I remember climbing the tree, and I remember Ginger playing with the dolls below on the ground. The rest…

Honey sneaks up to me and tugs at my shirt, a wooden cup in her hand. I gulp at the cold water, and the dull thunder in my head turns to lightning for a moment. My mouth muds up, but I don’t rinse it out and spit. I swallow all the water, with the dust and whatever else it’s washing down. I don’t care. I drain the cup in a few seconds and hand it back to Honey.

“More. Please.”

She rushes off into the darkness again.

Ginger still watches me, expectant. Her expression changes from amused to contemplative, to some kind of realization. She and Susannah share a look, some kind of a-ha they’re both having, but it’s lost on me.

“Look,” I say, my voice still creaking, “we don’t have time for this. Susannah, can you gather up all the kids that can walk eight miles? Whatever we can carry water in, fill it. We’ll need everything we can carry.”

Fear has returned to Susannah’s eyes.

Freda appears out of the darkness next to Ginger. “What else?”

“What’s happened,” whispers Susannah, her hand rising to cover her mouth.

Freda touches her elbow and says, “I think we’ll have plenty of time to hear that. Right now, Lupay needs us to get some things together.” She looks at me, a hardness behind her pale, puffed eyes. “What else? Torches?”

I don’t know. All these hours, and I hadn’t thought it through. It was all I could do just to keep walking.

They’re all looking at me like I’m in charge or something. Like I’ll magically fix everything. Like I’ll know exactly what to do. Well, I don’t. Every minute we talk about dolls is another minute lost.

“Shovels,” I croak just as Honey tugs at my shirt again. I gulp down the water again. A hundred more of those and I might feel normal again. “Thank you, Honey,” I say to her and give her back the cup. “Do we have any shovels?”

“Yes,” Freda says, “a few.” Her voice shakes, but otherwise whatever fear she has she’s starting to hide.

“Get them. We don’t need much else. As much water as we can carry. As much light as we can bring. And digging tools. And,” I finish, “everyone who can walk eight miles will need to help. Everyone.”

Susannah and Freda turn and hurry off in different directions. Here and there, family groups huddle together around a small fire or a lantern. My heart beats faster. A lantern. We have lanterns! That will be so much better than those smoky, dim torches.

Ginger takes my hands. “Sit down,” she whispers. “We’ve gone a long way. You need to rest.”

Together we sink to the stone and dirt floor, and I don’t stop at sitting. I lie all the way down on my back, let the aches fill me from my littlest toenails to the ends of my disgusting, matted hair. “And,” I whisper as I close my eyes and welcome the exhaustion that settles over me, “miles and miles to go yet.”

Ginger lies down next to me and snuggles up against me, her hand clasped around mine. Her warm softness feels good, and I let myself just feel it.

“Nearly there,” I call back. It’s the first time I’ve allowed myself to say it. The children have amazed me with their fortitude; there’s only been a few moments of whining from the two ten-year-olds. We left the smaller ones behind with their mothers. We had so few things to carry water in anyway, there was nothing for them to carry and they’d have probably drunk it all before we got half this far.

“About a quarter mile,” adds Ginger. Instead of a torch, she holds one of our two lit oil lanterns. Garrett will be so happy to see us. If he’s still there. Sometimes the thought of another cave-in pops into my head, and I have to ask Ginger to hum a tune.

A quarter mile. Pitch dark still ahead. Shouldn’t we be able to see something yet? Even the dimmest pinpoint of light where the hole we squeezed through is. Unless maybe they broke through and continued on—

There.

The weight I carry seems to disappear, and I start jogging toward what I’m sure is a lighter patch of blackness.

“Garrett!” I shout his name, and I pick up my pace. I can’t see the walls as I get farther from Ginger’s lantern, but it feels so good to run. My legs and back stretch and flex, and I ignore the pain in my head and the exhaustion that squeezes every part of me. “Garrett!”

The light ahead suddenly winks out, and I slow. Was it just my mind? Am I losing it? Was there really no light there?

“Loop?” Garrett’s voice croaks at me, tired and bruised. Either I really did see the light, or I’m now so crazy I’m hearing things as well as seeing them.

I run a bit farther and then slow again. “Garrett? We’re here. We’ve got water, and shovels. And lanterns!”

The light appears again suddenly, now only fifty feet ahead. Then it winks out again, and I see what’s happened: Garrett’s head blocked it the first time as he looked for us, then he retreated, and now he’s shoving himself through the hole.

A few more seconds, and my body slams into his in the dark. We both fall into the pile of soft dirt, me on top of him, and both of us laughing. There is nothing to laugh about, of course, except the lightness of relief that comes with being together again. I lie on top of him for a moment, feeling his arms loose around me. I want him to hold me tight, to pull me to him. I want to smother him.

He half rolls onto his side, spilling me into the dirt. “Sorry, Loop,” he groans. “Can’t breathe.”

Stupid of me. Of course, he’s been digging for—what—ten hours? He must be half dead. But I can’t help it. Half dead is better than all dead.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back.”

“Of course I would.”

The others approach, and I wonder what the children are thinking. Walking all this way underground to a dead end and then have to turn around and go back.

“Um… did you say something about water?”

“Oh, right.” It felt so good to lie here tight against him on this pile of soft dirt, in this tight little place. I forgot how exhausted and thirsty he must be.

I try to squeeze my arm behind me to pull my flask out, which is pinned under my own weight.

“Sorry, Garrett,” I grunt, “but you’ll have to grab my flask. It’s hooked on my belt or something.” I roll a little away from him, so my face is almost against the wall of the corridor. Together we squirm until he can squeeze his hand under my hip, around my back, and pull the flask out.

“What in the world are you two doing,” Ginger says as she arrives and raises the lantern above her head. “Really. I mean, I know you like each other, but now hardly seems the time.”

“We don’t like each other!” I blurt out before I can stop myself, and I roll onto my back again and glare at her. Garrett’s hand is pinned under me again, but he strains and yanks it free, holding the flask. “I mean—”

“That’s okay, Loop,” he says as he stands up and takes a long, slow drink. The cave’s air feels suddenly cold where his hot body had pressed against me. As he tilts his head back and lifts the flask, I see his hair has grown out a little, almost down to his shoulders now. His arms seem thicker and more defined, or maybe it’s just the way the lantern’s light plays across his skin. He’s turned away from me, and though he’s still as slender as a girl, his shoulders seem more broad than I thought.

He finishes his drink and lowers the flask. He gives me a half glance. “We knew what you meant.”

He holds the flask out at me, his eyes on the hole rather than me. When I take it, water sloshes inside. It’s still half full.

“I should get back to work.” He looks at Ginger. “I don’t think we’ll make it in time. Even going three days nonstop…” He looks down at his hands, which look raw and pink. Have they been digging with their hands all these hours?

He turns to clamber back up to the little hole.

“Garrett!” I don’t want him to go back. I want him to stay with me, just a few more minutes. He’s all I have left of Shack, of us. I want to touch his raw hands, want to massage his aching shoulders, want him to lean back against me and rest in my arms.

He pauses but doesn’t look at me.

“Um… take a shovel.”

“Just toss it through after me,” he says, and he claws his way up and dives through the hole.

Ginger stares at me, the lantern still held high. She looks a little scared, and a lot tired. But not half as tired as I feel. She looks, I don’t know, maybe hurt. Maybe mad. Maybe she’s mad at me like Garrett is for saying such a stupid thing about not liking him. I didn’t mean to be hurtful. They should know that. Garrett of all people should know that. If he’s mad, he’ll get over it.

“What!” I demand at Ginger.

“Didn’t you hear him?”

“Yes, shove the shovels in after him, so what?” She still looks at me. “What?”

“We won’t make it in time,” she says.

“What are you talking about?” We already made it. We have shovels and water for them, and now we can help dig for a while before we send the children back for more water.

“He said we won’t make it in time,” she says.

I do remember him saying that. Even digging nonstop, he said. But now we have shovels.

We have to make it. Upper can’t be caught without warning. I have to get there.

I push myself up off the dirt, feeling pain flow through me like boiling water. “Shovels,” I say to Ginger, and I know it sounds more angry than I meant it. We will make it through. We will. We have to.

“Shove them through behind me,” I tell her, and I clamber up to the edge of the hole and slither through without even looking.

CHAPTER 18

Garrett and I have been walking for an hour. There’s still a quarter mile to the exit, but with every step the air tastes less like gravel and more like pine, and sky, and sun. When we broke through the cave-in, we didn’t wait for the others. We carved enough of a hole to squeeze through, and we started walking.

“Oh, lord, I think I’d forgotten fresh air,” Garrett says, and I know what he means.

“I wonder if it’s daytime,” I say, speeding up.

“I don’t care. Sun, stars, clouds, rain—as long as it’s outside,” Garrett replies.

I don’t know if he’s thinking about it, but I keep wondering how we broke through the cave-in without ever coming upon Shem’s corpse. We dug deep and long. Too long. I don’t know how many days and nights we dug, taking turns. I even lost track of how many water expeditions Ginger led back to the cavern.

Too long, I know it. Ignoring the pain that screams within me, I speed up. We can’t be too late. We can’t.

The last quarter mile is a blur, and Garrett and I stumble out from the side of a small rock face, crashing through a thick wall of ancient ivy, and thud into a granite wall. Wait, what’s this? Not a dead end. No, it can’t be. I ignore the bruising pain spreading through my knee and shoulder and hold the lantern up. It can’t be a dead end. I thought Tom said the tunnel opened into Upper, that it went all the way through.

It’s a little place, with the tunnel behind me and the rock wall in front of me, and ivy-covered cliffs to the left and right. Above, however, is empty, black sky dotted with stars. At my feet is a scuffed, blackened patch in the grassless dirt.

“Here,” says Garrett, and he moves around me to the right, through another thick curtain of ivy hanging from the ceiling. I follow him, pushing aside the heavy tendrils and forcing my way through.

“Hey, put out the light,” Garrett says from the other side as I emerge into the night. We’re in some part of the forest I don’t recognize. I don’t care where it is, really, as long as we’re outside. As I douse the lantern, I turn my head skyward. Clouds obscure most of the stars, but a few peek through like raccoon eyes staring at us, unblinking and cold.

“Just about winter,” Garrett says as he wraps his arms around himself. A full moon brightens the clouds, and it takes me a few seconds to adjust to the natural light after days and days of the constancy of orange lanterns.

My breath clouds before me as if all the dust and oil smoke and stale cave air is being expelled. I inhale deeply, again and again, feeling the sting of the frosty air fill my lungs and bite at my throat and nose. It’s such a good feeling, a true feeling.

“Aren’t you cold?” Garrett asks as he stomps his feet and rubs his arms with his hands.

“Sure,” I say with a huge smile. I can’t help smiling at him. “But I’d rather be half frozen out here than warm and cozy in there.”

“Hmm,” he grunts, rubbing his bare arms harder. “I forgot it was October already.”

“You forget a lot of things underground.” But some things I won’t forget, not if I spend a thousand years in the tunnels of Subterra. And I know there are things Garrett won’t forget, either. I set the lantern on the dirt at my feet and wrap my arms around him. We’re both steaming into the night as our sweat from the digging and the fast walk out dries on our skin.

He feels warm against me, and I press my whole body into his. He can’t hug me back because I’ve got his arms pinned against his chest, and that’s just how I want it. This is a warmth hug, a thank-you hug, an I’m-so-glad-you’re-not-dead hug. I don’t want him to think it’s something else. Maybe some day, when Shack’s memory is fading… I let go and pull back. I don’t want Shack’s memory to fade.

I quickly stoop and retrieve the dark lantern, its thin metal handle already cold. “Wonder where we are.” I walk a few steps away from him, pretending to look around at the trees and rocks and hillsides.

For several seconds there’s just silence, like he’s disappeared. I want to look back and make sure he’s still there, that I didn’t imagine him standing next to me a moment ago. But I can’t. I’ve already broken from him.

Finally, he takes a deep breath and says, “No idea. I don’t recognize this place.”

Together we pause some more, and I look around like I’m trying to pull this view of the distant peaks and nearby hills from my memory. But I’m not really looking, and even if I did I’m sure I wouldn’t know where we are. I don’t know much about the area around Upper. If that’s where we actually are.

His teeth chatter as he asks, “Should we wait for the others, you think?”

Suddenly, standing around here in the cold with him for hours sounds awful. But there’s no way I’m going back into that cave, not even for warmth. We can’t make a fire. We don’t know who might see us. And we are losing time with every second I let myself worry about Garrett. There are more important things to think about.

“No,” I answer, and this time I look around for real at the hills and peaks and nearby trees. I can’t see the lake, which means we’ve come pretty far into the mountains. I point to my right. “Does that peak look familiar?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Garrett replies, stepping up next to me.

“Star?”

“Mm hmm,” he confirms.

He’s close, and I want to grab him again. The night’s cold has wrapped itself around me, and every breath chills deeper. I shake my head to clear the exhaustion. Maybe we should wait for the others. A little sleep would do us both good. I feel like I’ve been awake for years.

“If that’s Star,” he says, pointing and slowly moving his finger along the line of peaks to our left, “then Upper should be somewhere in that direction.”

He’s right. As bad as I am with direction, I know he’s right.

“Am I imagining it,” he says as he stares at the hill in front of us where he’s pointing, “or are the clouds a little red over there?”

The cold around me disappears, replaced by a cold deep inside. “That’s a fire,” I whisper. “Upper is on fire.”

He doesn’t contradict me, though I wish he would. I want to be wrong, but I’m not.

I put down the dark lantern and start walking. “Come on.”

“Lupay,” Garrett says, grabbing at my arm. I shake him off. “What are you going to do?”

I don’t know. But something. I keep walking.

“Look,” he says, running to catch up. “What can you do alone? Let’s wait for the others.” He grabs me, and this time his strength pulls me back. “If the Southshawans are already there, what can you do by yourself?”

“If they’re already there,” I reply, “what good is there in staying here?”

I stare hard into his eyes. They’re silver-white in the moonlight falling on us through the treetops. His breath clouds between us, mixing with mine. His hand clenches my arm, his ghostly face tight with emotion.

“Please,” he says finally, “stay here with me.”

He’s not really asking me to delay so much as he’s asking me not to go at all. I hear in his voice the dead ashes of defeat, but also an ember of hope. He and I both know there is no “here” as long as Darius is in Tawtrukk. Is Garrett suggesting we give up? Our only option would be to run away.

Could he really live with himself? Could he really give up Tawtrukk to escape with me over the hills? Try to survive in the Desolation, pretend all of this is behind us? Could he really give up his family—

But he has no family. I’m the only thing he’s got left.

The pleading in his eyes drags me down like I’m going to drown.

Could I give up everything, for him? Could I walk away from my mother, from Ginger and Susannah and Honey? Could I live with myself knowing I never tried to help? Could I live with him? I knew the answer to that long ago. I have no choice.

“I can’t,” I say, and I brush away his hand and turn, walking fast and hard before he can see the tears forming in my eyes.

I keep walking, keep hoping to hear his footsteps coming after me, keep hoping to hear his breath in the night. But he doesn’t follow, and he doesn’t call after me, and in almost no time he’s lost in the forest and I’m nearing the top of this little hill. And I can’t look back. I won’t.

I’m breathing hard, no longer cold as I crest the cleared hilltop.

I have been here before. Once, long ago, when I was little. We came to Upper, my parents and I, when I was six or seven. We left home before sunrise and got back way after dark. While my father was doing some work in the town, my mother and I came up here with a picnic and watched the butterflies in the wildflowers. We looked down over the village, its little cottages sitting in tight groups in its cozy valley. My mother thought they looked like cows standing around in a field, but I thought they looked like a big pile of dice that someone had dropped. She laughed.

I wonder what she would say the village looks like now. She wouldn’t be laughing.

I stand in the same place we had our picnic. The heat of a hundred blazing cottages almost knocks me over, burning away the winter chill. Black figures roam among the burning hulks, devilish silhouettes carrying torches, setting fire to everything that’s not already burning.

I’m too late.

Despair settles on me, pushing me to my knees in the scraggly, dry grass. Garrett was right. What can I possibly accomplish by staying in Tawtrukk?

The gravelly dirt bites my knees through my stiff pants. Sadness and pain and anger surge up inside me in sobs. Why hold them back anymore? Who would care? I sink to the ground and lie there, my arms wrapped tight around me, tears flowing into the dust. My sobs start to come so hard and so fast I can’t even breathe, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t care.

Sounds drift up on the heat and ash from the valley below. Men yelling, fire roaring, wood breaking. I hope they come up here. I hope they find me. I hope they kill me quickly. I want this all to be over. I want to be dead, to forget it all for real. There’s nothing but pain anymore, nothing but sadness and rage. And I want it to be over.

I cover my head with my arms and sob silently into them until the tears run out and the moon disappears behind the mountaintops and the sky begins to gray with the first hint of dawn.

Voices pull me from sleep. I’m curled tight into myself, and although the sun tries to warm me, the night’s cold strangles my bones, grips me all the way to my soul. I try to uncurl, but unbelievable pain fights its way through the numbing cold. I try to find a part of me that doesn’t ache, but there isn’t any.

I have no disorientation of waking in a strange place. I know exactly where I am. I feel the prick of tiny rocks poking into my cheek, the scratch of the dry grass on my back where my shirt has been pulled up, the deadness in the arm that’s pinned under my stomach. I can’t stop shivering, even though every convulsion brings new pain.

The voices are very close.

“… deserted. Like they knew, or like—”

“Darius won’t be happy.”

“What will you tell him?”

“Me?”

“Someone has to.”

The voices are men. Soft, but near enough to be clear in the calm of the early morning.

“Patrick. Have him tell Darius. Where is he, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“He disappeared when you gave the order to burn the town.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yeah. He and a couple of his guys—you know, I don’t have to tell you who—they said they were going to go look for the people.”

“Hmm. Are they back yet?”

“No. Maybe they fell off a cliff or something.”

“Ha. We should be so lucky.”

There are only two of them. And one of them gave the order to burn the town.

I lift my head an inch or two, slowly, to peek at the voices. Ow. My neck and back feel like they’re being crushed in a vice, and my head feels like it’s being pounding by a peen hammer. The two figures sharpen from blurred blobs. They’re facing partly away, looking down at the village. But they only have to turn this way, just a little, and they’ll see me. It’s a miracle they didn’t spot me already.

“You know he’s poisoning more men every day, don’t you?” The first one, not the one who gave the order. His voice is rougher, like he’s got rocks in his throat.

“I know.”

“We have to do something about that.”

Poisoning the men? They have this guy Patrick who’s killing off other Southshawans? I need to get to know him. Sounds like my kind of guy.

“Know of any cliffs around here?”

The rough talker laughs. I don’t get what’s funny about that, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve been slithering my arm behind me to unhook my whip. What I wouldn’t give for a couple of good throwing knives. But this hunting knife will have to do.

After another minute, the order-giver says, “Better get back,” and they start sauntering down the hill.

I wait a few more seconds, tensing and relaxing my muscles to wake them through the pain, then I leap to my feet, my whip in my right hand and my knife in the other. I wobble with the first few steps, but in a second I’m running and coiling my arm for my first strike. They hear me when I’m almost on them, and they turn in surprise. Rough-voice is thick-faced and red, with short hair and an onion nose. Order-giver is lanky, his black hair tied back in a long, tight braid that sways behind him when he turns.