Chapter 16
The last sounds of civilization—faraway bursts of laughter, the bone-jarring clank of metal striking metal—vanish as I plunge into the dark forest. Soon, I hear nothing but my ragged breathing and the crunch of leaves underfoot, my every step stirring up the scent of dying things.
The temperature has dropped. I paint the air with my breath.
Whatever I’m following has gone quiet. Motionless. Are they watching me?
“Hello?” My voice is tentative. “Can you show yourself?”
There’s no response. I rotate in place. The woods have closed around me, each massive tree appearing exactly like the next.
There’s no path forward or back, no one to call to for help.
My throat closes in on itself, and the air turns as thick as porridge.
I recognize the signs of panic but am powerless to fight it.
My mind is beginning to choke when a great rustling ahead frightens me back to myself.
I’ve only seen a handful of animals in real life—the birds and beasts the Farmers raise, of course.
From them we get eggs, milk, quills, heavy labor, and—when they grow too old for anything else—meat.
I’ve seen river trout and the occasional wild turkey, rabbit, or squirrel that wanders out of the forest. I love the songbirds that flit overhead.
But that’s it. We learned about other animals from before the Wall in school: cats and dogs and unbelievable monsters like the elephant, an enormous horse-like creature with a tube for a nose.
Or the shark, which resembled a giant trout with a tall fin and rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Even something called a platypus that was so ludicrous-looking, I’m positive it was a joke.
But I’ve never seen or heard of a beast that floats.
I think back to the Guardian whose body I’d witnessed eight months earlier, her bones shattered, skin hanging off her in sheets.
And every time I blink, I see Peter’s corpse, sucked dry, flesh loose and wrinkled.
Despite my earlier confidence that Peter’s “animal attack” was a lie, I’m suddenly worried.
What do the Guardians know that they haven’t told us?
Why wasn’t Gryphon surprised to hear it’s possible to survive Beyond—and did that mean something could breach the Wall from the other side?
I shake that last thought from my mind. Our Wall is impenetrable. Security was so important to the Founders that they didn’t even install an exit. There’s no need to scare myself. I take a deep breath and locate the tallest tree. Setting it as an anchor, I begin a course I hope will take me home.
It’s a good thing, I decide, that we’re not allowed to enter the forest. It feels awful here.
Dangerous. I try to pick up my pace, and a branch snakes the edge of my shirt.
I swipe at it, heart beating so loud it sounds like it’s following me.
Suddenly, I hear a rumbling, and my blood turns to jelly.
Was it a growl? I spin in every direction.
Nothing.
Yet, how foolish I’ve been not to carry so much as a stick to defend myself.
I search desperately until I locate a loose branch nearly as tall as I am.
I wipe off leaves and sidewinding insects, not sure how I’ll use it.
To boop a flesh-eating monster on the nose?
I laugh shakily, telling myself I imagined the noise.
Marching onward, I push through a wall of underbrush until, at last, a lightness ahead suggests a change in the terrain. Is it the village? Please be the village.
I practically sprint toward the light, throwing my arm up to shield my face as I burst through the trees.
Where I’m stopped cold by shock.
“Albert?” I ask. Or think I do. I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming because it looks like the son of the Chemist House is sitting in front of me in his wheelchair, hovering just above the ground.
Behind him are enormous caves that show evidence of being quarried for some of the village structures. Is he living out here?
He flashes a buck-toothed grin and drops his chair the short distance onto the earth. “In the flesh.”
“It’s not possible,” I say. Even if the fourteen-year-old hadn’t self-Harvested with his mother and sister, the chair the Engineers made him was rudimentary technology.
And yet here he is, alive, inside the Wall, sitting in a wheelchair that was just floating.
Two impossibilities, but my mind clings to the strangest one.
Dumbfounded, I point at the chair and ask, “How?”
Albert’s whole demeanor changes as he sits up proudly, patting the wheelchair’s armrest. “It’s not hard to make something hover! Assuming you have the chair, you just take some wood and screws, a thick cloth, and…” His breath hitches, and he clamps his mouth shut.
I know guilt when I see it. I focus in on the chair.
Its joints are fitted with near-perfect precision, the carved patterns in the wheels hinting at repurposed materials.
The base of the chair, an elevated platform between the wheels, is dark canvas.
Impressive. But it must be power hungry, and few technologies inside the Wall can generate that. Except…
My eyes go round as saucers. “You didn’t!” I gasp, but of course, he did. “Holy Wall, Albert, you stole a solar panel!”
His cheeks bloom red. “It’s not like that, I swear,” he pleads. “Someone gave it to me.”
I cross my arms, inviting him to elaborate.
“I can’t tell you who.” He winces. “Just…trust me?”
“I do not!” I scoff. “Why would I?”
“Albert!” a familiar voice calls from behind him.
Reatha emerges from the caves, visible annoyance at Albert shifting sharply to shock when she spots me.
I can’t say I’m any less jolted to see her.
She looks as I remember her: dark brown coils in plaits, eyes slightly tipped up at the edges, and deep-set lines like parentheses encasing her lush nose and mouth.
When Albert’s little sister, Marie, follows, her hair in two cheerful puffs, I grab a nearby tree for support. I’d thought all three were long dead.
Something like resignation flows over Reatha’s face. “Rose,” she says. “How are you?”
I discovered the phrase “cat’s got your tongue” in a dusty novel I once checked out from the library. At the time, its origin perplexed me. I thought maybe housecats used to eat human body parts. I think I understand it now. I cannot form a single word, my tongue pinned in place.
“It’s shocking to see us, isn’t it?” Reatha says as Marie steps in front of her, draping her mother’s arms around her shoulders like a cloak.
The girl’s eight, if I’m remembering correctly, with a habit of eating herself to bellyache at ceremonial meals.
She smiles shyly, her dimples accenting an overbite identical to Albert’s.
“You’re all dead,” I sputter. It’s a ridiculous thing to say, given the circumstances. “You self-Harvested last month.”
Reatha smiles without showing her teeth. “Why don’t you come inside? I can answer your questions over tea.” She shoots Albert another annoyed look before turning to go back inside the cave she just walked out of.
I follow her, thinking of my mother’s corpse, and the Potter boy, drained and discarded, both killed by someone acting outside the system. Someone who moves too gracefully for human step, who I chased into the woods not ten minutes from here. It dawns on me then…
Albert.