Chapter 7
The trail is easy to follow at first. I can see the Land have been here, cutting down trees and making firebreaks. There’s nothing even smoking left, but we can see burnt treetops as we head away from the river.
How do you know exactly where it started? I type.
“When I first saw the light,” she says, “I turned the little crappy telescope right at it. The god was by a rock wall. It either came from inside it or below it or in front of it.” She shrugs. “I don’t know, but that’s where it started. And I want to see.”
She’s barely even looking back at me as we walk. I’m pretty sure she was too afraid to look on her own–I would be–but she’s not showing any hesitation now that I’m with her.
Here’s the thing about Tara. She’s always been pretty, but always in a way that said, “I’m better than you,” which automatically gets rid of any prettiness.
But maybe there’s more to her than I thought.
There’s no danger of me getting a crush, I’ve disliked her far too long for that, but it’d be inconvenient to suddenly start seeing her as a complicated human being instead of the stuck-up daughter of the worst woman in town.
We never found any evidence of anything, I type, aside from burnt trees.
“Maybe you were looking in the wrong places,” she says, still not looking back.
We were looking in the right places, I type, and even in the computer voice, it sounds a little pissed off.
“I’m not attacking you. I’m just saying, who knows what the right place is when we’re talking about giant disappearing gods?”
She’s right about that, so I just keep walking.
“What are you going to do after upper school?” she suddenly asks, like we’re normal friends who’ve just happened to run into each other.
What do you mean, “do”?
“It’s not a complicated verb, Ben. Are you going to go on to the advanced degree modules? Are you going to get a job?”
What job? I say. There’s farming and there’s politics.
“And science and medicine.”
And that’s it.
She stops and looks back at me. “Yeah? I don’t understand your point.”
What if someone wanted to make vids here? Or write books? Or music?
“You write music?”
No, but if I did, what would it matter? There’s like three instruments a human can play on this entire planet.
“There’s plenty of music programs. Composing ones, too.”
Yeah, but people just use them to write background music they don’t notice and never think about it again.
Her forehead goes all questioning. “And you want to write music that makes people think?”
I don’t want to write music.
“Books, then.” She crosses her arms. “Yeah, it’s books, isn’t it. Or stories for vids. Programs can do those, too, you know.”
They’re all crap.
“No,” she says. “It’s way worse than that. They’re all fine. And who wants fine all the time?”
Exactly. No room for genius.
“And you’re a genius, are you?”
I’m not saying–
“Ha, look at you blush.”
It’s too dark to see if I’m blushing.
“I can tell.” She turns and heads back on up the little trail. We have to climb over a lot of rocks and stumps, and I’m still carrying all my school stuff. This is not what I had planned for the evening.
Tara, I type.
“Keep your panties on. I don’t like all this either.” She jumps off an extremely tall log, freshly downed, its stump nothing but splinters and tree sinew. “But I think we’re here.”
I climb up on the log, using both my hands, so I can’t type and ask her why, but then I see.
Arrow is there.