Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I thought my eyes were messed up. Either that or my brain. Looked like the buildings were melting. Crumbling. But the buildings were still standing there in the same damn place. Then I realized something was creeping down the side of them. And whatever it was, it was coming our way.

I could see the shapes crawling out of the city. Rushing across the broken old roads towards us.

“Go.” I pushed Alpha before me. “Run.”

“Crow,” she screamed. “Move.”

We raced across the cars. Fear mining some last strength from our bones. Namo storming ahead, stomping through the gridlock.

I reached Kade. Tried to help him move faster.

“No.” He shook his head, staring behind me. “Start shooting.”

I spun around. And there they were. Coming out of the shadows. Scuttling over the cars and trucks. And you wouldn’t call them human. You’d never recognize them as that.

But that’s what they’d been, I reckon. Once.

Now they were warped bones and scraps of skin, buried in ash and bulging blue veins. Eyes like something out of your worst nightmare. Hands and feet crawling over the machines their forebears had ground to a halt. Mouths like open wounds.

And what filth had they fed upon? For how many years?

I remembered the Kalliq forcing that injured mammoth down into the mud pit. Realized the sacrifice those people had made. Sending mammoths down here to keep these monsters at bay, I reckon. Because these devils sure looked hungry.

I fired a shot. Two shots. Conserving the few bullets I had left. Counting each one of them, and making each one count.

That pack of freaks howled as the sub gun unloaded. They quit coming so fast but were still pressing in. Baying and whining, like they were daring me to shoot.

I stole a look over my shoulder. Crow had Namo heading toward the cliffs in the distance. But I couldn’t see Alpha, or Kade.

And when I turned back, the creatures had closed the gap between us. Just six cars back now. I fired another shot into the middle of them. But how many shots did I have left?

“Come on,” screamed Alpha. She was somewhere ahead of me. They were all ahead of me. I was the only one left.

I tried backing up, but kept my eye on those spindled varmints. They were hissing and howling. Mangled teeth and swollen black gums.

And I couldn’t move quick enough. They were scampering alongside the cars and weaving between them. They moved like the locusts in GenTech’s fields, swarming towards me.

I fired two more shots into that pack of gristle.

Then I turned around and ran.

The slab was creaking and crunching. Cars were pitching and sliding across the road. I heard the creatures wailing. Felt their snatching fingers and teeth. I spun to face them. Fired a bullet. But they were pouring all around me now. There weren’t enough bullets, and there weren’t enough time.

“Namo,” someone was screaming, “get on Namo.”

I glimpsed Crow up ahead, holding the mammoth steady. Kade hauling himself up its side.

And there was Alpha. Kicking her way through the pile of ravenous freaks that surrounded her. Then she was reaching the mammoth, climbing up on it, and Namo took off moving again.

I felt hands at my thigh. My back. Pulling me under. They were on the pack. At my neck. Screeching in my ears.

I raised up the sub gun and let that thing loose. Plugging rotten flesh with lead and steel and no longer counting my bullets. And when I got clear for a second, I bolted as fast as I could.

I leapt from car roof to car roof, trying to catch up to Namo and the others. But the mammoth was full on charging ahead, clearing cars out of his way with his tusks. He was too fast. I couldn’t reach him. And as he shoved the wreckage into piles behind him, it only slowed me down.

Then the road was shaking. Tearing and splitting. I could feel it wrenching apart beneath me. Separating.

And I was on the wrong side.

The slab shattered into a hundred pieces. The lava spinning us like a river, turning everything around. I watched Namo race across a piece of road turned to rubble. And then he leapt in the air with the others holding on tight.

He landed just high enough on the black cliffs at the far side of the lava. And he’d done it. They were safe.

But I was stranded.

And I had the trees.

Best thing going for me was I’d ended up on one of the bigger chunks of tarmac. Worst thing was the amount of company I had.

The creatures began to circle me. Snarling. Creeping closer. A pack of more than two dozen, hungry for one last meal. I aimed the barrel of the sub gun at them. But they kept tightening around me. Cinching in like a goddamn noose. They were fifteen feet away. Twelve feet. Ten.

I fired a shot at one that looked extra nasty. I fired another shot. And then that was it. I clicked the trigger, but the gun made a hollow sound. Empty.

Just act like you still got bullets, I told myself. Just act like you got plenty left.

But even if I could get through these creatures, how was I supposed to make it to the cliffs?

I glanced across the lava, spotted my girl and that beautiful beast. The mammoth that could leap fifteen feet through the air. The mammoth that had charged on to safety. Because there they all were. Safe. And there was no way they could help me now.

Think. Come on, Banyan. Think.

There had to be a way off this rock. Had to be a way to get free.

Me and you, Pop, I thought, feeling the pack on my shoulders. This is what it comes down to—the two of us together. Just like the years we’d spent drifting in our rusty wagon.

Wait. I stared at the steel remains of old cars around me.

That was it. That had to be it.

As I took off running, the creatures quit their formation, and they howled and shrieked as they closed in. But I hoisted the sub gun by the barrel and swung it around, waving it in circles like a club. I nailed the first creature in the jaws and sent it flying. I scattered two more as I sprinted to the center of this asphalt island I was stranded on.

Didn’t have much time to make my selection. Just had to count on dumb luck. So I hit the side of a sedan and pried the door open. I kicked at the freaks behind me. Lashed out with the butt of the gun. And then, when I got clear for a second, I pulled the door wide and piled into the car.

I landed in seats made of leather, snapped the door shut behind me. But those things were all pressed at the windows. They were smeared at the windshield and gripped on the roof.

I slid into the driver’s seat, squashing the saplings against my back. I was fumbling around on the floor. The dash. But the keys were right there in the ignition.

So now I’d see how good this salvage could do.

I cranked the key. But nothing. Just the screaming and scratches at the windows. And I couldn’t look at those wretched faces. The gaping mouths and bloated eyeballs.

I cranked the engine, again and again. Hell, my old wagon sometimes needed plenty of times to get going. This weren’t no different, I told myself. The damn thing at least had to be well rested.

Felt like the hundredth time I turned the key, the car buzzed and sputtered. And the next time, I eased the engine into a growl.

Then I pumped the accelerator. Floored it. And damned if a song didn’t crackle out of the dashboard. Some jazzy number. And the howling creatures clashed with the happy tones of the music. And all of it clashed with the fear that was beating my heart.

I swung the car left. Then right. Smashing the other vehicles out of my way. And then I sped forward. The freaks on the windshield could barely hold on. I flipped on the wipers. Still swerving. Trying to loosen their grip. Doing anything I could to get a view and aim for the edge. Faster. Forward.

And then we took off.

That sedan never made it to the cliffs. Got close, though. Got more than halfway.

And then it nosedived into the molten roar.

I was already scrambling backward. I crawled across the seats and busted a hole through the rear windshield. Then I inched out and staggered on the tail end of that old sedan as its front end sank into the Rift.

The music gurgled and was gone beneath me. And I had seconds left before I went down the same way.

On the cliffs, a dozen feet too far, Alpha and Crow were screaming and pointing. And Kade was scrambling around, like he was searching for something to throw out to me.

I unhooked the bag then. Got it loose from my shoulders. I was ready to throw those saplings to as safe a spot as I could. And I would have gone down without them, though I’d have gone down screaming.

Only I didn’t toss that bag to the cliffs that were too high, and too far. Because as my legs trembled and the lava swamped up red and closer, just inches from my boots, I held the pack over my head, and damned if something didn’t reach out to retrieve me.

Namo.

The mammoth we’d traded for. The beast we’d dragged into hell. He perched his front legs on the cliff edge and reached down with his long, shaggy trunk, scraping the top of the pack and making the thing come unraveled so the saplings poked out in the fumes. Then Namo curled his trunk till he’d wound it tight to those saplings, and I held onto the pack and the clump of trees inside as the mammoth hoisted us into the air.

Not a moment too soon. And no moment lasted longer. As I floated up, the car disappeared beneath me with a juicy shower of sparks.

But then Namo was in trouble. The cliff edge was giving out beneath him, and he stumbled. Hunching backwards. And as he reared up on his hind legs, he lost his grip on me and the trees.

I ended up with one hand on the rocks and one holding the pack of saplings. My feet slip-slapping beneath me. Heat blowing up off the lava, making my grip on the cliff sweaty and loose.

I stared at the others, up on the remaining safe ledge above. Not too far, I reckoned. I could probably claw up there—if it weren’t for this fistful of trees.

But it wasn’t just Namo that could reach down to me now. I saw Alpha, climbing down and leaning towards me. Stretching and straining.

“The trees,” she hollered. “Throw me the trees.”

I swung up the pack. High enough she could reach it. And as she pulled it to safety, I held on, letting her pull me up, too—until the pack started ripping. If it tore too wide, the saplings would come loose, fall out.

I had to let go.

“Give me your hand, bro.” Kade reached down. And just when I had nothing else to hold onto, I gripped hold of that bony stump at the end of his arm.

And then Kade was hauling me up the last part of the cliff, and I was scrabbling with my feet at the rocks till we were all the way clear.

I rolled away from the edge and onto my back, and I stared up at the faces squeezed together above me, Namo nudging at my chest with his trunk.

“For Zee,” Kade whispered, and I tried to say something to thank him. I reached my hand up and gripped his arm again. I nodded and swallowed. And in the end, the only words I could muster were the same two he’d used.

“For Zee.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I felt like a lump of coal, but they dragged me up, and we huddled there for a moment, peering back into the painful glow, watching the remnants of the old world city and old world machinery. And soon it would fall, I thought, as I watched some of the wretched creatures crawl back inside their concrete shells. Soon it’d burn and be fuel to start over.

“This way,” Alpha called, strapping the pack of trees to her back.

She’d found a tunnel. And as soon as we’d hustled after her and gotten Namo squeezed into the narrow passage, the air got cooler, softer. Easier to breathe.

We rushed on, fast as we could stagger, Namo bumping through the passage and bouncing Crow at the ceiling. And we were all sucking down air as the air grew sweeter. No more smoke. No more steam.

As the tunnel coiled through the rock, it kept getting cooler. And like the Speaker had told me—we’d followed the heat, and now we followed the howl.

It started as just a hum in the distance. But as we traveled further, the passage grew broader and the air began to rush towards us. Calling to us. Spinning at the craggy ceiling.

The passage opened up wider and higher until it became an endless cavern. Thing seemed to stretch on forever. And light spilled in up ahead. Rays of white and beams of blue, making it easier to see now.

Once we had plenty of room to maneuver, Namo started to saunter around at a pretty good trot. So we loaded him up, all of us climbing aboard and bundled together, holding on as the mammoth hurried through the open cavern, traveling beneath the roaring winds.

Was a lonesome place. The walls high and distant. The wind rushing above us, swirling and wailing and pounding like waves. The ceiling pushed further from the floor of the cavern—a half-mile high, then even higher. And as it reached upward, the rock gave way in places to patches of ice, making the ceiling twinkling and bright, as the sun found its way from the heavens all the way down here through some frozen part of the world above.

So we were past the Rift but still far enough north for things to be iced up for the winter.

Just gazing up at the frosty colors made me feel cleaner and mended. Though it made me feel even more thirsty, too. But that was all right, because as we drifted deeper into that bellowing cavern, leaning back on Namo’s fur and bouncing along, his feet began to make a splashing sound. And before the sound even fully registered, Namo was guzzling at the pools, then spraying us with water straight out of his trunk.

We clambered down into the knee-deep water. Cool but not too cold. And it could have been frozen, for all I cared. I flopped on my belly and gulped down water till my belly was full. Then I rolled onto my back, looking at the high ceiling of rock and ice, listening to the music of those faraway winds.

“It keeps going,” Alpha said, kneeling beside me. I gazed with her into the distance ahead, the pools all joining into one big stretch of water.

Hell, no, I thought. Don’t let it be another damn lake.

But it didn’t get any deeper. Even as the water stretched all the way to the walls around us, it stayed about knee high, and we could wade right on through, dunking our heads to drink whenever we felt inclined. It was good water. Clear and soft and sweet. I felt it charge through me, like it could flush out my brain.

And when evening came and light no longer seeped down through the ceiling, we had the strength to keep on walking. Taking hold of Namo’s shaggy fur as we trekked alongside him, taking turns riding with Crow on the mammoth’s broad back and sticking together, until we could stagger on blind no longer.

Finally, we rested. Namo stretching out on his side and us all stretched out on the side of his belly, rising and falling with each breath he took. Warm in his fur and from the heat of his body. Felt like being on a little island, surrounded by water and darkness.

Alpha reached out, finding my hand with hers, and I lay there a moment, feeling the great pulse of Namo’s heart through my spine. Then I felt Alpha shuffle the plastic pack so the trees were between us. She’d been carrying them since the edge of those black cliffs I’d almost never reached.

“You warm enough?” I asked her, remembering the bits of Kalliq clothing we’d stashed in the pack.

We tugged out some of the mud-covered duds, bundled up a bit. Kade and Crow were already sleeping, so we draped a coat over them. And then we started checking the trees.

The saplings were still coiled tight together, but some of their thin stems had got split and some of the buds were mashed up, broken at the tips of their twiggy beginnings.

“You think they’re all right?” Alpha asked, fingering the damage on a soft green stem.

“I think they ain’t supposed to be stashed inside plastic. And look—the mud’s drying out. That’s what the Healer used to mend them.”

Alpha scooted down off the side of the mammoth and scooped up some water, crawling back up on her knees as she cradled the water in her palms.

“Trees need water, right?” she said, slowly dripping some inside the pack. The drops glistened and beaded on the stems, got soaked up by the gray patches of mud.

At the bottom of the pack was the small last bits of my old man’s remains, green and black and stubbled. And the fistfuls of algae I’d stored in there were still glowing faintly in the gloom.

“You want to eat some?” I asked Alpha, pointing at the moss.

“I say we save it. Who knows when we might find food down here?”

We laid down together again as Namo’s belly grumbled and he let out a sigh beneath us, while at the same time, Crow and Kade began some kind of battle with their snoring, like they were seeing how loud the loudest could get.

“Thanks for carrying that pack,” I said to Alpha.

“Of course. Can’t do this all on your own, bud. We gotta share the weight.”

“Reckon so,” I said.

Because it sure does lighten the load.

Light dripped again through the icy patches above, waking me up. And when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was mountains.

I felt upside down. Confused. I shook my head and scrambled to my feet.

The mountains were pointing down at me, hanging from the high ceiling and making everything feel flipped the wrong way. Made me dizzy, looking up at them—jutting out of the stone, between the patches of ice, then jabbing downward, reaching towards the floor of the cavern. It looked like the rocky roots of the earth itself. And the upside-down peaks stretched as far as I could see. Spiraled and jagged, like endless rows of stone teeth dangling from the roof of a colossal mouth.

The Speak It Mountains is what the Speaker had called them. And it did seem like they were speaking, the wind making strange shapes and sounds as it danced through the peaks overhead.

These mountains were smaller than the ones we’d climbed in the snow, thinner and more twisted, though still a good quarter-mile from the top to their tips, and packed real close. So I was glad we didn’t have to cross that maze of gullies and spires.

All we had to do was walk underneath.

I stood on Namo’s shaggy stomach, peering out across the water, where the peaks were reflected. And the reflection made them look even more like mountains, seeing as it turned them the right way up.

I looked up to the peaks, then gazed down at their gleaming reflection, and it looked like two different worlds, instead of just two different views. I stood there thinking that was how we built the world around us. All from our own perspective. Even GenTech, even Harvest. They all had their reasons. It was a hard thing to grapple with and know what it meant. And I wished Zee had been there to help me think it through.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

As we traveled beneath the mountains, their peaks reached even lower, sometimes reaching all the way to the ground, so we had to steer around them, twist inside them. Getting caught in the wind now. And the further we wound our way through those dangling cliffs, the more fierce the wind seemed to howl.

We kept to the widest gaps, following the broadest routes between the hanging spires, so we could steer Namo alongside us, his long fur flying in the gathering wind.

And when it got too dark to navigate the rocky claws of the mountains, we set Namo down to rest again in the water, threading ourselves in the fur of his belly. Once more feeling his warmth and the rhythm of his breathing, pulling matted old coats over us to keep us from the wind, and not even speaking as we hunkered down for the night.

I opened the pack and felt the trees, making sure the stems hadn’t gotten any more broken and that the healing mud was still slippery from the water Alpha had tended them with. Then I dug out the moss I’d gathered from the tunnels. It weren’t glowing so much now, it was crumbled and flaky. And I passed some to Alpha, then split some between Crow and Kade.

We all chewed it down, though it left a rotten taste, powdery on the tongue. Then the fatigue pressed me flat, and I put my hands on my ears, trying to block the sound of the punishing winds.

A splashing sound woke me. And when I scrabbled around for the pack, I found it was missing—figured it must have fallen off the side of the mammoth, and the sound of the pack hitting the pool had been what had woken me up.

I reached down and groped through the darkness, trying to find the pack with my fingers, and when I realized the wind had stopped, I felt my body begin to unwind with relief.

But then the wind started up again, and it was even worse than before.

Almost sounded like it was made up of voices. People whispering. Thousands of them, all speaking over each other and confusing the words. The sound crept inside me like tiny fingers, wriggling in through my ears and spinning my brain.

But it weren’t really voices. Just the sound of the wind. Told myself I was imagining things. Or maybe I was still sleeping. Dreaming.

I hurried down into the pool to search for the saplings, the cool water coming up to my thighs, and I felt it seeping through the remains of my clothes, caressing my bones and my skin, and it all felt much too real for a dream, I tell you that much.

But then why could I still hear those damn voices?

I put both hands over my ears, blocking out the terrible chorus of whispers, and I waded through the dark, splashing about. Couldn’t find the pack anywhere, though, and just where the hell was it? Had the wind blown it clear across the damn pool?

Soon I was crashing around and getting desperate. I called out to the others, but they’d never hear me with the wind raging so loud. And that wind was playing tricks on me, turning me in circles. Got so I couldn’t even find my way back.

I started running fast as I could through the water, my hands still clamped over my ears. And by the time I stopped, I was lost in the darkness, and completely alone.

I began to scream for the others.

“Wake up,” I kept shouting, almost like I was shouting it to myself. Almost like I was still back there, sleeping on the side of the mammoth’s belly, and this me that was out here wasn’t out here at all.

Something half-solid hit the side of my leg.

I had to take my hands off my ears to reach down into the water. And then I found what I’d stumbled upon—the pack. But as I pulled it out of the pool, I realized the pack had come open and the saplings were floating free of the plastic, their limbs soggy and all matted together.

The wind sounded more like voices than ever now. Tumbling and urgent, and really freaking me out.

And I tried to shove the saplings back in the pack, pushing the good Kalliq mud back in place at the bottom, but as I groped in the dark, my hands got too slick. And every time I got the pack tied back together, it all just kept coming undone, and the saplings would start falling back out.

I held the shrunken last bits of Pop’s face with my fingers as the saplings rattled and shook in the wind. It was as if the wind meant to snatch the trees from me, tug them away. But then, out of all the wind’s whispering voices, one voice whispered louder than the rest.

“Banyan?” The wind curled the word around me. “That you?”

“Pop?”

“It is you.”

“Don’t.” The word was sharp on my tongue. I thrashed around in the water, staring all around me but swallowed by shadows, blind in the dark.

“You’re gone,” I called. “You gotta leave me alone now.”

“No.” The voice trembled against me. “Not gone. Not yet.”

I screamed into the wind, but it blew the words back at me, and they hit me and shattered everything I wanted to say.

So I tried again, even louder.

“What do I do?” I cried, as if the question had been chiseled inside me and to speak it now meant prying open my heart.

“You know.” The wind wailed back. “You already know.”

“No.” I held the stump of trees before me, Pop’s remains at their base like a broken skull. “How can I know without you here beside me?”

“I am beside you.” The wind rushed through the thin, coiled saplings, shaking them so hard, I thought it might tear them apart. “I’m right here, son. I’m here.”

“No, you ain’t, damn you. You left me alone in that wagon. And look at what you left me to do.”

The wind shredded the stone and clawed at the water, like a storm had broken out inside this black hole.

But now the wind was just noise. No more voices. No words.

“Wait,” I shouted into the empty bluster and fury. “Come back.”

I held the crumpled trees against me, clasping them to my chest as I knelt.

“Come back here,” I whispered. “Pop. I miss you. I miss you so much.”

The winds quit and the world turned silent, leaving just the sound of my sobbing and a wheeze in my chest. And I had to be careful not to break those saplings, I was hugging them so awful damn tight.

I tried to untwist my muscles. My breathing ragged as I tried to keep steady. And when I stared down into the pool, it was like there were lights on beneath it.

No.

Not lights. A sun in a sky.

I peered down as if from out of the heavens, gazing at a world that lay gleaming below. And I could see Waterfall City—the great falls, the thundering roar. And there were Pop’s trees, along the banks of the Niagara. A forest. Leaves heavy in the mist and apples ripe for the picking.

But then my view got blocked. Covered by clouds. And when the skies cleared again, I saw the forest inside the Steel Cities. The trees creeping their way south, blunting the edges of buildings. I saw shantytowns sheltered from the wind, colored with green and patches of shade.

Next was the rusted forest in Old Orleans, the cypress and fern and Hina’s statue. I saw it entwined with shrubby green foliage, as Pop’s trees worked their way through the understory and whirled their way up. Every bit of brass and steel became covered and mended. The metal trees no longer shiny but muted and juicy as they soaked up the sun.

I saw the trees planted in the cornfields, immune to the locusts. I saw them on the streets of Vega, growing amid the buildings of the Electric City as the neon billboards flashed.

But in all of those places, there were folks on the outside. Hungry hands and mouths full of dust. I saw them on the outskirts of every last vision. They crept like shadows as they sank in the mud. And they were starving, though apples bounced on the branches and shone in their eyes. The new fruit was always too far out of reach.

The people growing the apples had plenty. They had full bellies and more food on the way. But the strugglers left out stayed starving. Trapped and broken. Just as wretched and wronged as before.

Didn’t matter where the trees grew—with the Rastas or pirates, in the cities or on the plains. The story always spun out the same. There was always folk left hungry. Because there’s always another GenTech, ain’t there? There’s always another man who’d be king.

I staggered through the water. Not even trying to see where I was going. The pictures in the pool faded. The words had all quit.

It was just me and the void now, like a couple old friends back together. And finally, I ran into Namo’s shaggy trunk. It was whipping around in the water as the old beast rumbled and slept, and I traced my way around him, holding onto his fur so I’d not lose him. Then I pushed myself up and onto his belly. Still hugging the saplings against me as I crawled into a ball.

I did not weep as I lay there.

But at some point, I must have slept. Or fallen back outside the dream.

Sunlight crept down through the patches of ice above us, illuminating the peaks and the water. I blinked at the brightness, trying to ignore the ache behind my eyeballs and the rancid knot in my guts.

“Wake up, bud,” Alpha said, grabbing my shoulders. “Quick.”

“I’m awake,” I told her, still slumped on my side.

“Then get up. Now.”

I rolled over to face her.

“You look like I feel,” I said. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin was clammy and gray.

“I can’t find Crow,” she said, and I realized now how frantic she sounded.

But there weren’t no need to worry, I reckoned. The legless Soljah couldn’t be too far away.

I was too quick sitting up and it made my guts spin. Something rotten came bubbling up. I leaned over and choked out a ball of slime, barely missing Namo’s belly as I spat into the pool.

“What the hell?” My eyeballs seemed to throb in their sockets. But my guts felt better right away.

“Happened to me, too,” Alpha said. “Puked as soon as I opened my eyes.”

I stood up real slow, my legs tired and scratchy.

“I think that wind drove me mad,” I said, looking about for Crow. Couldn’t see him, though. And where the hell had he got to?

Kade came splashing towards us from behind the tip of an upside-down peak.

“I can’t find him anywhere,” he hollered.

“He’s got the trees, bud.” Alpha stood beside me, so pale, like all the blood had seeped out of her skin.

I stared down at the water. “You sure? I think the pack might have fallen off. I remember it happening in the night.”

We splashed around in the pool, but that pack full of saplings was nowhere to be found.

“It’s not here,” Kade said, slapping his fist on the water. “Crow’s got them. And we’re wasting time.”

“Well, shit. He can’t get far,” I said. “Not on those broken old stumps.”

“Unless he’s been faking it.” Kade was trying to keep calm. Trying to breathe steady. But it wasn’t working out too well for him. “Maybe he’s just been biding his time.”

“Faking it?” I said. “You’ve seen those things GenTech gave him.”

“Come on. We’ll ride Namo.” Alpha was getting the mammoth to stand up. “We’ll be quicker.”

“Did you dream?” I asked her, as Kade climbed up onto Namo’s back.

Alpha paused for a moment, like she was gathering all the strength inside her, and her face was like a ghost as she studied mine, measuring me in some new way with her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said, in a way that weren’t nothing like the girl I was used to. She stared at the hanging peaks, now silent above us.

“The Speaker told me we’d come here,” I said. “Said this place can show you things you need to see.”

Alpha just kept staring at the dangling mountains.

“You think it’s true?” I asked her. She had goosebumps up her arms and her shoulders. “You cold?”

“I’m just scared, Banyan.”