EPILOGUE
“When are they going to operate?” Max says, brushing the hair out of Pop’s eyes.
“The Sky said they’re getting it ready,” Mom says, though I can tell she’s impatient. “After all this, they’re not going to let anything happen to him.”
Because they heard him call in his Noise.
And the Sky told him point-blank he wasn’t going to come.
That he was willing to let Pop die this time.
Because of what we did to his people who lived in the town.
Because of what we’ve done for the last many decades.
Because of what we always do.
He was ready to give up on us, once and for all, even the one human he could sort of stand.
And then Pop reminded him of what Max said.
Our choices are what make us.
What will this choice make you?
Because leaving us to die is the one thing the Land have always refused to be:
Us.
Even though it’s arguable that the Sky would have been getting rid of a threat to his people, which is what Burly would have done, but then, yeah, the Sky would have become Burly. And who the hell wants that? No one’s seen that coward since the gods were all destroyed anyway.
What the Sky did instead was kill all the gods, then he and the Land tended to all the wounded. Even if some of us were still too stupid to trust them, most humans did. And that feels like a good step.
They treated Max and his leg. They stabilized Pop, and now they’re getting ready for a big full-on surgery on him. If people see that happening, see them saving Pop, maybe that’s another good step.
And we’re going to need all the good steps we can get in future days, I think. We still don’t know exactly where the rocks came from or why the gods came from them, but for now, Let the Glyph come seems to be the feeling. Let it see how we beat it.
And then make the Glyph tell us where it took our people.
All of which feel like pretty big words, I know, but a human figured out how to stop the gods, and the Land had the expertise to make it happen.
Everyone’s feeling right now like, Bring it, Glyph.
You see what we can do together? And I don’t know how long that will last, but you take the blessings you get.
I wish they’d hurry about Pop though.
“His heartbeat’s really low,” Max says, feeling his neck.
“They’ll be in time,” Mom says.
Is this them? I sign.
And it looks like it is.
The Sky walks ahead of a group of Land healers, some very old, some surprisingly young, even younger than me, I think. They’re carrying a number of jars and chemicals and surgical tools. They stop a little ways away from where we’re cradling Pop on the bench we brought out from the wrecked annex.
You must step away, the Sky says, but you may stay near.
“Good luck, Pop,” Max says, kissing him on the forehead. Mom does the same, and so do I. Then we all step back.
We never did find out for absolute sure if me or Max was the boy from the story, the one left behind, whatever that was going to mean, and I’m pretty okay with never having to be proven right.
My brother and I fight. But in the end, we fought together.
I’ll take that as a blessing, too. I know not everyone gets that.
I’m right here, I sign to him.
He nods back, right there, too.
The Land surround Pop, the Sky standing behind Pop’s head. He reaches forward and puts his hands on either side of Pop’s face.
He opens his Noise.
We’ve been told what will happen. The healers will do the surgery, their chemicals sterilizing everything, but the Land don’t have anesthetic as such.
What they do instead is someone connects heavily to them through their Noise.
We couldn’t quite understand what happens next because there don’t seem to be exact words for it in our language, but it’s how they bring people back from the very brink.
One Noise connects to another, and for a short amount of time, for the length of the surgery or whatever, the sick person is somehow lifted into the Conversation, leaving their body behind, for all intents and purposes.
I don’t know how it works. I just know it’s worked before for Pop, so it’s gotta work for him again, right?
Right?
Mom is standing there, eyes on Pop, so much worry coming off her I take her hand. She squeezes mine with a nervous smile, and Max takes her other one. I have no idea if whatever was wrong between Mom and Pop is fixed. I just know that we’re all here now, and none of us would ever be anywhere else.
We watch as the Sky’s Noise grows bigger, surrounding Pop’s. Then, leaving his hands on Pop’s face, the Sky tips his own head back, and their Noises rise and rise–
And we see the Conversation. Both of them are in it, connected to the Land, and I think I can even see Pop in there, his whole self shimmering and swimming.
And I think about how it all looks like water.
I think about what Mom said about why the gods always went to water with the kids they picked up.
About how if fire held the Noise together and water released it, then what we’re watching is what living in unleashed Noise looks like.
Noise, fire, and water were the only things malleable enough here for them to use, whoever they are, whoever the Glyph is, so that’s how they invaded, that’s how they attacked us.
I’ve also been talking to Mom about how, if they tapped into the Noise of young people in their dreams, then that means that the cure isn’t a cure.
It’s a silencer, which is different, isn’t it?
I know a lot about silence. And if that’s true, then the Noise is still there in all of us, waiting to be unlocked, if we want it.
It might also mean that locking it up soured it into the worst parts of ourselves, too.
No way we could ever get an unmixed blessing, I guess.
But for once, I’m choosing to look on the bright side. Like I said, we still don’t know why or where they took our young people, but they didn’t hesitate to kill other people, so that means Tara and Taper and Arrow and Echo and all the other kids could be alive somewhere.
And if that’s true, maybe we can find them.
Wilf and the townsfolk are already talking about ways we might do this, or at least the right questions to ask.
He’s also organizing any scientists he’s found alive to see if they can get their hands on unbroken comm equipment so we can try to talk to the Glyph before it gets here, tell it just what happens when you mess with us.
And also, it looks like Wilf might be mayor again after all.
While I’m thinking all this, the surgeons have got to work, and after all that waiting, they move fast, so quickly getting their tools into Pop and opening him up and getting their healing chemicals inside, they’re almost pretty much done–
When the Glyph comes falling out of the sky.
It looks like a meteor at first. It’s clearly sped way the hell up, no doubt after seeing what we did to its gods, and for a minute, I think we’re going to have survived all this only to be flattened in a huge smoking crater, but the closer it gets, the clearer you can see it.
See that it’s slowing its descent.
It finally stops, maybe half a mile up. Everyone is gasping at it by now, all the people in and around the annex, all the ones who’ve started emerging from the trees in the past hours, now that the gods are gone.
The Glyph is huge. Hundreds of yards long and stretching up several times higher than that.
And it just hovers there.
Like it’s watching us.
“What the hell?” Mom says, looking up.
The Land are all looking up now, too, as the Glyph hangs in the sky, huge as a moon almost, looking like a swirled rock.
Looking like the rocks the gods came out of.
All the confidence I had about us facing it is shrinking pretty fast.
“What’s it doing?” Max asks.
“I don’t know,” Mom says. She looks back at the Sky, who’s still connected to Pop, their Noises still deep in the Conversation. “Hurry,” she says under her breath.
The Land are hurrying, mainly I think to get their Sky back so they can see what he wants to do about this rock hanging in the air above us.
Then there’s a sound.
A pulse, really.
Then a deeper pulse.
The Glyph has turned itself so a pyramidal tip is facing down at us.
It begins to glow.
How in the world did we think this was over?
“Run,” Mom says.
But it’s too late.
Fireworks of glowing smoke come shooting out of the tip, one, then five, then a hundred, then spirals down on us like an ocean wave.
And each one is heading for a young person–
I see the first hit, a young boy running away with his father. The smoke envelops them, then spirals back up into the air and back to the Glyph–
The father is still running–
The young boy is gone–
I see another boy disappear.
Then a teenage girl.
Then one after the other after the other after the other.
And I realize–
The Noise gods were an advance team, maybe even just testing if we were suitable for whatever they want us for–
And now the Glyph is here for the rest of us.
And then I see a young Land in the healing team by Pop also disappear in a pillar of smoke.
And a young Land that came with the Sky’s guard, too.
It’s taking all the young people, human and Land.
And suddenly there’s smoke all around us, coming for us, coming right for me and Max–
I squeeze my eyes shut–
And when I open them–
Max is gone.
And I am not.
“Max!” Mom says, grasping at air where Max was holding her hand. “MAX!”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Max.
Max.
Then the smoke retreats, every tendril pulled all the way back to the Glyph–
Which spins upward again–
But it doesn’t leave. It just stays there. Silent, in the air, like a rock.
Every young person here is gone.
Max is gone.
They’re all gone.
Except me.
I’m the boy left behind after all.
But a fire starts in my belly.
I have never been angrier in my entire life.
Because they took my brother.
And they are going to regret that.
END OF BOOK ONE