I was sorting through my mental index of potential weapons when I heard another sound, this one the piercing cry of something much larger. A shadow passed over us, blotting out what little sun there was, and the giant bird thing paused, lifting its head. I saw the pupils of its eyes contract to pinpoints; then it stood up to its full height and let out a challenging shriek. As it did, I noticed the distinct lines of ribs beneath its feathery coat—whatever it was, it was clearly starving. Either there wasn’t much food here, or this thing wasn’t high enough on the food chain to compete. If the latter was true, I didn’t want to stick around to find out what was.
I made it around Josephine’s tree just in time to see something large and sinewy crash through the trees, talons out. It was maybe the size of a small airplane.
Nope, I thought, and grabbed Josephine’s hand. There was no way we could fight these things; I had nothing on me except Hue, who was resting in the hood of my sweatshirt—and he was no match for monsters like these, anyway. Josephine was already moving, and we took off through the underbrush as fast as we could safely go, given the fact that we couldn’t see more than six feet in front of us.
In retrospect, we probably should have gone even slower. The crashing and sounds of fighting were still all too close behind us when the dirt beneath my feet loosened, and I realized we were going downhill, fast. Despite my best efforts, my feet slid out from under me and I stumbled down the rocky ravine, Josephine beside me.
For a single terrifying moment, my shoes left the dirt and I was midair, with no idea of how far I might be falling. Then the ground caught me, not too gently; the wind got knocked out of me and I stayed there for a moment, stunned and in pain. The adrenaline caught up with me a second later, and I shoved my sleeve back up against my mouth, sucking in breaths only partially filtered of dust. I could hear Josephine coughing beside me, but it was all I could do to concentrate on breathing, on not panicking that I wasn’t getting enough air.
This place is a deathtrap, I thought, dizzily. How is there such a strong source of Walker energy here?
“Are we sure . . . this is the right . . . place?” Josephine wheezed, voice muffled behind her hands.
“Yes.” I coughed. “Well, I’m not sure this is the right place, since this seems to be some sort of deep . . . ravine. . . .” I paused. Josephine turned to look at me, expression both wary and weary. “Do you hear that?” I asked, feeling my shoulders slump. I was really tired of things trying to kill/maim/eat me.
Josephine tilted her head, listening. By the frown on her face, I could tell she heard it, too—a kind of clicking, or scrabbling, like something with a lot of legs crawling over rocks . . . or many somethings with a lot of legs. . . .
“Nope,” Josephine said, covering her ears with her hands. “Nope, I don’t hear anyth—”
“Come on!” I took off down the ravine floor, dodging rocks the size of my head and thin, spindly plants that looked like they’d either crumble to dust as I passed or be as strong and tough as razor wire.
Josephine was a few steps behind me. The sound was rising into an all-out chittering, and I didn’t dare look back as I ran. Only six feet of vision in this dust, remember?
Yeah. About that . . .
“Dead end!” Josephine gasped, removing her sleeve from her mouth long enough to press her hands against the rocks. There was a sheer cliff face in front of us, rising farther than I could see. I turned around.
I couldn’t see anything yet, but the noise was getting closer. As I watched, narrowing my eyes to try to see through the dust and resulting tears, I caught a glimpse of movement here and there at the edges of my vision. Long, sinewy black things, winding like snakes and skittering like scorpions. I started to make out a snap-snap-snap sound, like powerful little claws.
“Climb!” I said, cupping my hands and bracing myself to help Josephine up. She looked at me, at the cliff, and back toward the crab-snake-scorpion creatures. “See how high up it is!” I urged, remembering her reluctance to leave when I’d told her to run from the emu thing. She really wasn’t one to back down from something, even when it was probably safer for her. I’d have to keep that in mind.
She put her foot into my cupped hands and I heaved, ignoring the pain my shoulder and ribs. It was definitely gonna be time for some painkillers once everything on this planet stopped trying to murder us.
I backed up against the cliff, once again trying to figure out what I could use as a weapon. The black shapes were getting closer, taking their time now to assess my threat level. I tried to make myself look as big as possible.
They were about two feet long each, more like centipedes than snakes, with a bunch of spindly black legs, crab-like claws, and a wicked, scorpion-like tail. Now that they were closer, I could see there were patterns on their bodies, threads of red and blue and gold winding around their scales (carapaces?). It was kind of pretty, or it would be if they weren’t probably about to eat me.
“I’m up, it’s not that far!” Josephine called, and I took a breath and turned my back to them. I could barely see the outline of Josephine leaning over the cliff face, offering me her hand. I jumped and grabbed it with my good arm, using my feet and other hand for purchase as something wrapped around my leg.
I kicked wildly, feeling a crunch between my knee and the cliff face as Josephine hauled me up. Rocks and sticks dug into my hands and fingers as I scrambled over the precipice, but I pushed myself immediately to my feet and backed away from the cliff. I didn’t know if those creatures could climb or not, but it was probably safer to assume they could.
Josephine pressed her back to mine and we stood like that, panting, me facing the cliff and watching for any sign of those little spindly nightmare things, and Josephine facing wherever we were and looking for who knows what else. Giant emus. Demonic Big Bird, maybe, or a freaking tyrannosaur. With our luck, the one T. rex not extinct would live on this rock.
“Are you sure this is the right planet?” Josephine grumbled, finally, after a moment of blessed silence when nothing came up over the cliff edge or attacked us from the thick dust.
“Yes.” I sighed. “Hey, do you—”
“If you say ‘Do you hear that?’ I swear I will shoot you!”
I almost wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have the breath for it. “Do you have a handkerchief?”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Who carries a handkerchief anymore?”
“Everyone on InterWorld,” I defended myself. “They’re useful for a bunch of reasons. Like tying them around your face to block out smoke.”
“Well, I don’t,” she snapped, then reconsidered. “I have a bandanna and a knife. We could cut it in half.”
“Better than nothing,” I said.
It didn’t take long to slice Josephine’s blue bandanna in half diagonally, to use as a face mask for each of us. I pulled a water bottle out of my backpack, took several gulps, gave it to Josephine, and soaked both rags before tying mine around my mouth and nose. I automatically put the empty plastic bottle back in my pack so as not to litter, then had to laugh at myself. We were all taught to leave as little imprint on the worlds we visited as possible, so of course I would put the bottle away—but the thought of someone ever coming to this dead planet and finding a single plastic water bottle amid all the ruin was suddenly absurdly funny. I think I was a little hysterical.
I found Josephine’s hand, forging ahead through the cloud of dust and debris. There were boulders rather than trees now, giant black rocks bigger than I was, blocking the way. In some cases we had to go around, and the rocks reminded me of the last time I’d breathed in this much dust. This was like when I’d fractured my shoulder in the rockslide that had killed Jerzy.
I felt myself tensing up, expecting the ground to start rumbling and the boulders to start falling, to crush us. My heart was racing, but I didn’t know if it was the lack of oxygen or the sudden onslaught of memories. Either way, as Josephine and I plodded on, it took me a moment t
o notice the figure stepping out of the dust in front of us.
Josephine gave a sharp tug on my hand, which caused pain in about four different places. I snapped my head up, shifting my weight to my back foot—and then the air cleared, so suddenly it left me gasping.
Josephine’s hand slipped free of mine, likely so she could wipe her eyes. I didn’t blame her; I was doing the same.
“You’re Joseph Harker, aren’t you?” a voice said, and I looked up into the face of a different version of me.
Like me (and Josephine), she had pale skin, unruly red hair, and freckles. But her eyes were green, so vibrant that they seemed to shine. Her hands were held up, kind of defensively, and she was dressed like she’d stepped out of a medieval adventure novel: browns and greens, with high boots, leggings, and a plain tunic. Pouches and leather things I didn’t recognize hung from a belt with intricate tooling on it. Her hair was short enough that I second-guessed her gender for a moment; plus she honestly had the kind of face that could have been male or female.
“Yes,” Josephine said from behind me. “He is. I’m Josephine.” I’m glad she was able to form sentences—I felt like I was going to pass out with the sudden influx of oxygen. I pressed the bandanna to my face again, wiping away the dust before tying it to my belt, forcing myself to breathe slowly.
“I’m Jari,” she said, and the name tugged at my memory.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I used to live on base with roughly five hundred versions of me, all of which had names that started with a J sound. Even if their names were in a different language, or a mathematical equation, it could generally be translated to a J sound. Saying that this girl’s name tugged at my memory would have seemed vastly unimportant, except for one small thing: I’d never seen her before.
After a moment, I had it. “You’re one of the twins,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes. My brother is on his way.”
“Twins?” Josephine asked. “We can be twins?”
“It’s rare,” I said. “In fact, it was unheard of—but, yes, we can be twins. Apparently.” I smiled at Jari.
“It is not so uncommon to me,” she said. “I find it more disturbing that there are so many of you who are not twins. I could not imagine being without my brother.”
“Did it give you an advantage at InterWorld?” Josephine asked. “Like, in training?”
“We did not have much chance to find out,” Jari said.
“I never even got to meet them,” I explained. “They were brought onto the ship right before I left. They’re from a high magic world. Remember, I explained about the arc of magic and science. . . .” I trailed off, looking at Jari again. Her hands weren’t held up defensively, as I’d first thought. She was holding the dust and ash at bay, encasing us in a protective bubble of oxygen. I’d assumed (stupidly) that she’d had some sort of gadget on her at first, but she looked like she wouldn’t even know the difference between a grav-disk and a cell phone.
“How are you doing that?” Josephine asked.
“My particular gift,” she said. “Everyone on my world has one. I can adapt to any environment, or create one of my choosing in a small sphere around me. That is why they sent my brother and me out to gather food.”
“He can do the same thing?” I asked.
“He can change himself,” she explained, and turned to look up at the sky. Or, where I presumed the sky would be; there was nothing beyond our little sphere but a miasma of debris. “You do not think the appearance of a larger predator during your fight with the bird monster was coincidence, do you?” She smiled, abruptly lifting one arm to the sky—and an enormous red-tailed hawk came gliding out of the cloud of ash to rest upon her leather-covered forearm. He settled with a shuffling of wings, tilting his head at us.
“This is my brother, Jarl,” she said, and the hawk gave a quiet chirp. “He is not usually so feathery,” she added with a smile.
“Nice to meet you,” Josephine said, and I could tell from her tone that she’d once again decided this was all absurd and she was just gonna go with it.
“Same here,” I said, looking into the bird’s eyes. Bright green, like Jari’s.
“Jarl,” Jari said, getting the bird’s attention They seemed to confer for a moment, just looking at each other, though the bird showed little or no reaction and neither of them spoke again.
Finally, she gave a bounce of her arm and the hawk spread his wings, launching himself into the air. It disappeared into the miasma and was gone.
“Are you and your brother—” I began.
“Telepathic?” she interrupted, then smiled. “In a sense. What we have is known as kinesthetic telepathy. When he found you earlier, he sent me an image of what he was seeing. When I caught up with you, I sent him a feeling of triumph, so he knew to join us.”
“And you knew I was about to ask, because you sensed I was curious?”
“No.” Her smiled widened. “We have been asked that several times since we met all of you. I assumed it would be your question, as well. I can utilize telepathy with my brother but no one else.”
“Fair enough,” I said, though something she’d said was nagging at me. “You were looking for us, specifically?”
“Yes. Joeb sent us out to find you.”
I let out a quiet breath. Joeb was also a name I recognized. He was a senior officer on the InterWorld, and someone I thought of as a friend. As far as I knew, he had been on InterWorld when the HEX ship had found it. He should be stuck in the warp field like everyone else. If he wasn’t, and he had the twins with him . . . maybe there were more of us here than I thought.
Maybe we had more of a chance than I’d realized.
“How did he know we were here? Did he sense us Walk?”
“You will have to ask him,” she said, and gestured for us to follow her.
“Who’s Joeb?” Josephine asked as we walked through the thick red clouds, safe in our bubble of oxygen.
“Another one of us. A senior officer at InterWorld, from an Earth pretty close to ours. He’s a lot like me, I guess. Older, maybe.” Joeb was, in fact, a lot like me—but if I had to be honest, he was even more like Jay. He had a sort of big brother aura to him, and tended to look after all the new recruits; that was probably how he’d wound up on this world with the twins. “He’s a good guy,” I said. He’d been one of the few people to start talking to me after I first came to InterWorld. We’d talked about family, since in his world, his youngest sibling was a girl instead of a boy, and her nickname was Mouse instead of Squid. There were always little similarities like that among all of us.
“He is,” Jari agreed, navigating her way around the terrain. There were rocks here, sometimes, and gnarled little black things that might have once been trees. The only time I could see them was when the circle of clear air brushed past them, allowing us a glimpse of things here and there as we walked; otherwise they were faint shapes distorted by smoke. “He and four others came for us—my brother and me—on our world. There were other things, too, dangerous things we were running from.”
“I know what that’s like,” Josephine said, shooting me a dark look.
“So do I,” I reminded her, and Jari kept talking as we walked. I paced myself carefully; even though we hadn’t gone far, I was already feeling a strain in my calves. And my shoulder, after all that activity—as we walked, I pulled a roll of bandages out of my backpack and tied them into a makeshift sling to take some of the weight off it.
“Yes, Joeb said they come to capture us when we first realize our Walking power,” Jari continued. “Jarl and I did not think we would have any other abilities beyond our gifts, but . . . .” She trailed off, remembering.
“But then you figured out how to Walk,” I guessed.
“Yes. It was amazing . . . at first. But then the bad ones came for us, and we ran. We made it back to our world, but they pursued us. That was when Joeb and the others came. They were all very brave, and took injuries helping us . . . but Joeb made s
ure to talk to us after we came back to the sky dome, and make certain we were all right. Then the Captain sent us out—”
“The Old Man did?” I interrupted. “Why?”
“Old Man,” she repeated, sounding amused. “Joeb said that some people call him that.”
“Most of us do, honestly. Why did he send you off? And when?”
“I do not know why,” she said, looking briefly irritated at the interruptions. “You will have to ask Joeb.”
“Where are we even going?” Josephine asked. “Is there any part of this world that isn’t completely messed up, or does everyone just hold their breath all the time? Or do you have another ship?”
“We do not have a ship,” she said, “but the dust only reaches so far.”
It was at that moment that I realized the strain I was feeling in my legs wasn’t because of how far we’d walked, it was because of we were going uphill. I ignored the sudden thud of my heart against my chest. The thought of going anywhere near another mountain was daunting, at the least. . . .
I heard a hawk cry out above me, and looked up. Habit, really; I hadn’t expected to see anything. To my surprise, though, I did. Barely visible, so faint I thought I’d imagined it, there was the soft glow of sunlight and the shadow of a bird passing over us. The miasma was thinning.
“It’s a little farther,” Jari said.
“So you and your brother can send each other emotions?”
“Yes, and we are often aware of the other’s general location.”
“Have you ever done it by accident?” Josephine asked.
“When we were younger, yes. Not as much now. If we are in pain or afraid, we often think of the other first, and then those emotions may send by mistake. Jarl once broke his arm playing by the foxwillow in the last summer days, and I knew immediately.” There was something in her voice as she mentioned the incident, the casual way she spoke of things I’d never heard of reminding me of my own summers taking day trips to the beach with my family or when my sister and I ate Popsicles in the shade of the giant tree in our front yard. There was a sense of familiar fondness and a deep sense of loss; whatever a foxwillow was, Jari would probably never see one again. I would probably never see that giant oak tree again, either.