He puts his hand on hers. She grips his hand, holds it tightly. “I don’t know.”
“Do you trust me?” she says.
It’s a loaded question. There’s something in Iralene’s voice that makes it clear she wants him to consider his answer very carefully. He looks into her eyes—a bright vibrant green. He hasn’t really had a lot of interaction with many girls—not even his own mother. But still, Iralene’s not like other girls. She’s sweet and demure, but steely. Is she following his lead or secretly leading? She’s capable of much more than she lets on, and yet he’s sure that she’s good. “Yes,” he says, “I trust you.”
Iralene starts working the orb again. She’s pressing the screen madly. The room shifts and churns. The lights sputter. Finally, it returns to the farmhouse, but the lights dim and the cameras make little defeated clicking noises, and the orb sighs. “I’ve overloaded the system. You have a little time. Does this place mean anything to you?” Iralene asks.
“No.”
“Think about it.”
“Okay,” he says, nodding at the room in all of its plainness. “I’m thinking and . . . nope. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
She sighs. “You have to find what you hid here!”
“What I hid here?”
“I’m sure you hid something for yourself to find later. Why else would you ask me to return to this place?”
“You’re not making any sense.”
She rips back the covers, then gets down on her hands and knees, and looks under the bed. “Do you think this is easy for me? I’ve been waiting almost all my life for the possibility of you falling in love with me. But I can’t do it, not like this.” She gets to her feet, crying now, throws the pillows, runs her hands along the windowsill.
He walks over to her and holds her by her shoulders. “Iralene, calm down. Talk to me.”
She swallows and blinks, clearing tears from her eyes. “The last night before they swiped your memory . . . you hid something here so that you would know the truth.”
“Swiped my memory?” Partridge feels sick. “I thought you said that . . .”
“No, there was no accident.”
He thinks of their kiss. He looks around the room. “Were we ever . . .”
She shakes her head. “You were never in love with me.”
He rubs the back of his neck, feeling the hard plastic of his cast. He holds his hand out in front of his face. “But what about my pinky?”
“Partridge,” she says, “if you were going to hide something here, where would you put it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have known that I was going to be looking for it. Would I?” He’s confused but also angry. “All this time, you’ve been lying to me!”
“I’m telling the truth now. You have to think! There isn’t time!”
He walks around the room, feeling dizzy. “Nothing makes sense. I don’t know what’s true and what’s . . .” He looks at Iralene. “What did you mean you’ve been waiting all your life for me to fall in love with you?”
Iralene grips the bedpost, the bright blue veins standing out on her thin inner wrist. She’s sobbing.
Partridge walks up to her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m giving it all up,” she says. “You have a chance, Partridge. You have a chance to stop it from happening.”
“What?”
“He’s going to kill you.”
“Who’s going to kill me?”
“Your father.”
“Why would you say that? He’s just actually started to like me . . .”
She grabs the front of Partridge’s shirt. “You can stop him,” she says. “I’m giving you this chance. You have to take it.”
“Iralene . . .”
She walks away from him to the far wall. She leans against it. “I’m giving up everything for you, Partridge.”
“Why?”
She looks at him and smiles through her tears. “With you,” she says, “I really have felt the happiest I’ve ever felt in my life. I’d always wanted to know what that was like. Happiness. And I’ve felt it with you.”
“Iralene.” There’s so much more he wants to ask her.
She slides down the wall and sits on the floor, her dress ruffling around her. She pulls her knees to her chest and hides her eyes. “Find it,” she says, her voice muffled and hoarse. “You don’t have much time.”
PRESSIA
BREEDING
PRESSIA STARTED OUT RUNNING, but there was no way to keep the pace. So she begins running only on downhill slopes when the momentum is with her, like it is now. It’s dark. She holds Fignan under one arm. He sends out a cone of light that tours the trees—stunted, gnarled, and hunched—and then bounces back to the path in front of her. The ground is covered in dense ivy. It blankets rocks, the trunks of trees, the forest floor. She hits a patch and her boots lose their grip. She slips then staggers, steadies herself by grabbing hold of a branch. But she starts running again, dodging branches, jumping ruts, and jutting roots. She knows that she’s running out of time. The mud suctions the tread of her boots, slowing her down.
Fignan keeps her on track, lighting up a map with old roads and landmarks. And he’s counting down the hours to the solstice. Seven hours and forty-two minutes left. There’s a chance she’ll make it, but she doesn’t think of the destination—only each step to the next.
She misses Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud. She still thinks about El Capitan’s kiss, his I love you, Pressia Belze, and Bradwell, watching her leave. The more she thinks of them, the more certain she is that she needs to be here, without them, on her own.
She’s seen a few glimpses of birds—or are they bats? They seem shrunken, and they dart more than glide. Small rodents skitter through the underbrush. They’re twisted creatures—deformed in ways she’s come to expect: fusings, scalded skin, hybrids.
But the air here isn’t as blurred and darkened by ash, which makes it seem like the world is bigger, simply because she can see more of what lies around her. The greenery has rebounded more quickly too.
A thorned twig hooks Pressia’s pant leg so hard that she falls. She catches herself on one elbow, but the jolt knocks Fignan into her ribs, kicking the air from her lungs.
She pulls her leg free, ripping her pant leg. A spot on her skin feels stung. She touches it and finds a welt. When she pulls her hand back, her fingers are smeared with blood.
“You okay?” she asks Fignan.
He bobs his lights.
“Nasty thorn,” she says.
She stands, the welt throbbing, and tightens her hold on Fignan. She starts to run again, but the ground feels even more slippery. She has to slow down, reaching from tree to tree to stay on her feet.
The dirt feels like it’s shifting beneath her—as if the ivy is alive. She pushes on as fast as she can, but then something wraps around her ankle. She falls again. A vine curls over her arm. She tries to rip free, but there are more thorns. They quickly puncture her skin. Blood rises then drips over her arm. Another vine entwines her leg. “Fignan!”
One vine circles her biceps, snakes up her shoulder, then behind the back of her neck across her cheek and toward her mouth. She shakes her head then thrashes, ripping up some of the vines. They simply pop from the dirt, their loose root tendrils dangling, but the cord of the vines holds strong. She and Fignan are lashed to the ground. She’s stuck. She panics. “Fignan! I can’t move!” Only her eyes are wild. She doesn’t want to die out here. She’d rot into the ground. Bradwell and El Capitan and Helmud would wait for her, never knowing what happened.
She hears Fignan buzzing and then a piney scent fills the air. “Do you have a knife?” she shouts.
He beeps.
She can feel him sawing away vines. He severs one and it goes slack, spiraling off her leg.
Fignan moves to the vine twisted around her good arm, saws through it. She can then pull the knife from her own belt, and they’re both working. She feels a new vine loop the ankle of her boot and q
uickly constrict the leather. She turns and slices it.
She gets to her knees, then she’s almost standing. A quick vine whips through the air and circles her wrist where the doll head meets her skin. She imagines the vine choking the doll, and the image freezes her for a moment. But then she slips the knife between the doll head and the vine and cuts herself out. Fignan pops loose the last vine tethering her to the ground and she stumbles free.
The ivy recoils, hissing away from her.
She grabs Fignan and starts running as fast as she can. His light bounces along the terrain in front of them until she sees the end of the woods. She sprints toward it as fast as she can. Once out of the trees, she keeps running until she finds herself in the middle of a field.
There’s a stretch of land and the hulking remains of a building in the distance, walls on either side that crumble to nothing. The ivy has inched up the remains of the walls and the building, cloaking all that’s left—perhaps devouring it.
Her lungs heaving for air, she sets Fignan on the ground, rests her hands on her knees, and tries to catch her breath.
“We’ve lost time,” she says. “How much do we have left?”
“Five hours and twelve minutes.”
“We can still make it,” she says, but she feels weak. Her clothes are lashed with small rips and dotted with blood seeping up from her skin. Each nick of a thorn feels like a bruised welt. “I just need a second,” she says.
She starts shaking; her head feels like it’s filled with bees. Her vision blurs and as she tries to focus it, she stares at a small clutch of clover with waxy leaves. She turns Fignan so that his light shines on the leaves. The ash that’s settled on the greenery is fine and silky, so light that the green of the leaves still shines through. The leaves are dotted with tiny insects, like little ticks but with bright red, hardened shells.
The insects seem to have front pincers that work as arms shoveling ash as they click across the leaves on their delicate legs. “Are they cleaning the ash away, clearing little paths?” she asks Fignan. But then, no—it seems like they’re eating the ash. They’re streamlined and purposeful. Their bodies are symmetrical, each one like the other. She says, “What if they were bred for this purpose?” She stands upright, feeling chilled and sick.
Fignan beeps.
“If it’s true, some of the Irish survived. They’re here, somewhere, and they’re smart.”
EL CAPITAN
BROTHERS
THERE’S SOMETHING AT HIS MOUTH—nudging his lips, harder and harder, insistent. He slaps it away. Flecks of cold water spray his face. The clang of metal against metal.
He opens his eyes. He’s on his side, curled.
His head. He reaches up and touches a gauzy pad over what feels like a gaping wound in his skull. The pain is sharp and deep—has his head been splintered open with an ax?
He hears Helmud’s nervous breathing in his ear—faint and rapid. He’s not alone. He’s never alone.
They’re in the airship.
The airship is down.
They’re lying in the conical nose of the cockpit. His blurred vision focuses on grass and ivy, flattened on the other side of the wide window—like flowers pressed in a book. He remembers his grandmother’s old books; pick one up and a purple flower would slip out—flat, dry—and wisp its way to the floor like a little gift, like a little secret love note.
He kissed Pressia.
The thought of it rockets him forward. He lifts his hands—his rough, callused palms up—and stares at them. He held her face in these hands. His lips touched hers. Why did he kiss her? Jesus. Why in the hell did he do that?
“Helmud,” he says, his voice rough and dry. “Where is she?”
“Where is she?” Helmud says.
“Stop it!” he shouts. “This is not the goddamn time for that shit, Helmud.” He tries to stand up.
“Stop it!” Helmud yells, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and jerking him backward. “Stop it!”
El Capitan looks around the cockpit. Helmud has been trying to feed him. A metal cup, packets of dried meats. Helmud’s knife.
El Capitan feels dizzy. His hand slides along the glass. Just as he gets to gis feet, his boots skid out from under him and he’s down again. He can’t even stand. His face goes hot with shame. Bradwell was here when he kissed Pressia. He’s sure of it. El Capitan slams the heel of his boot into the glass wall. What does she think of him now?
She’s gone. Not that she could stay. How could she? The clock’s winding down. She had to go. But did Bradwell go too?
“Did they leave us here to die?” El Capitan says. “Goddamn it, Helmud. Did they think you were going to take care of me?”
“Take care of me,” Helmud says.
He knows that he should be wondering if they’ve gotten to Newgrange, if they’ve found the formula, but instead he’s thinking that they could say anything to each other behind his back. They could make fun of him. Of course she didn’t want him to kiss her. He’s a guy with his brother on his back, a freak among freaks.
He knows why he kissed her. He was proud of himself for flying this airship, even proud of himself for the emergency landing. And when he saw her face, he was glad she was alive. He loves her. He said it aloud. He’s sure he did. And there’s no going back now.
“Maybe we’ll die here, Helmud. Maybe that’d be for the best.”
Helmud twists to one side. He’s rummaging through a sack. “For the best.”
“I’m glad that Dad gave up on me before he saw us like this. You know, Helmud? You know what I mean? I’m glad he left before he saw how sick we are. We’re sick. Look at us.”
He feels Helmud’s hand slip under his chin, pulling him up from the ground. El Capitan sits up, but not straight. He doesn’t have enough energy. He slouches, leaning against Helmud, who has a spoon in one hand and a little tin of rice in the other. Helmud loops his arms around El Capitan. He moves the spoon to his brother’s mouth. Helmud says, “Look at us.”
El Capitan feels like crying. Helmud, after all these years, is going to take care of him. It’s the two of them, bound.
“Look at us,” Helmud says again, and then he adds one more word: “Cap.”
He isn’t repeating a word. He isn’t just an echo. He said something. El Capitan doesn’t know when he last heard Helmud say his name—before the Detonations? El Capitan looks over his shoulder. He stares into his brother’s face. It’s like he hasn’t seen it up close in years. Helmud isn’t just a kid anymore. His face is warped but sturdy. His eyes are sunken and now they fill sweetly with tears. “Look at us,” El Capitan says. “Look at us.”
“Look at us,” Helmud says.
And then, overhead, El Capitan hears footfalls—heavy ones. A Beast? He sees his gun shoved up against the wall. He reaches for it. The pain in his head shoots down his spine. The gun is just out of reach. He plants his boot and shoves himself and Helmud forward.
The footfalls land hard inside the airship, which rocks a little. He hears someone coming toward the cockpit door.
His fingers brush the butt of the gun. He pushes off once more, wincing with pain, grabs the gun, swings it around, cocking it, and points it at the door—a large, shadowed figure.
“Jesus, Cap! Put that down.”
Bradwell.
“You’re here,” El Capitan says.
“Yeah, I’m here and Pressia isn’t. She went out, alone,” Bradwell says as he stands up.
“You let her?”
Bradwell glares at him, chin tucked to his chest. “Are you criticizing me? I don’t think that’s in your best interest right now.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“A threat,” Helmud whispers.
“Take it as a friendly warning.”
El Capitan doesn’t like threats or warnings, but he likes the fact that Bradwell seems rattled. Maybe the kiss had more effect than he thought. “How long has she been gone?” he asks, sitting up as much as he can.
r /> “It’ll be dawn soon. Maybe she’s there. Maybe not. I couldn’t go with her and leave you two here alone, could I?”
“You didn’t go with her . . . because of me?”
“Because of me?” Helmud says, putting down the tin.
Bradwell nods. “She told me I had to stay with you and Helmud, and she was the one who had to go.”
“You should’ve gone,” El Capitan says angrily. “The last thing I want is Pressia out there alone! Anything could happen to her out there! We don’t know this terrain, its Beasts and Dusts!”
“You wanted me to leave you here to die?” Bradwell says.
“Wouldn’t you have made the same sacrifice?” El Capitan says. “For her!” And, in this moment, El Capitan feels like he’s said the unsayable—that they’re both in love with her, that they’d die for her.
Bradwell crosses his arms on his chest. The birds rattle angrily on his back. “I guess we’ve got that in common.”
El Capitan isn’t sure what to say His arms are weak. He rests the gun on the floor.
“We also both know that she wouldn’t let either of us sacrifice the other on her account,” Bradwell says.
“Right,” El Capitan says.
“But also,” Bradwell continues, “I couldn’t leave you here to die . . . because you’re like a brother to me. Both of you.”
“Both of you,” Helmud says.
El Capitan is stunned. He feels guilty He kissed Pressia. Bradwell was standing right there. He told her he loved her. Brothers don’t do that to each other. “Sorry,” El Capitan says.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry about Pressia. I didn’t mean to—” El Capitan says.
“Shut up,” Bradwell says and he walks over to El Capitan, stands over his body El Capitan braces himself. There’s a chance Bradwell might kick him in the ribs. “You need to eat something.” He squats down, picks up the tin. “And we’ve got to think of how to repair the damages. We’ve got to find a way to get this ship home.”
“Home,” Helmud says.
“Home,” El Capitan says, as if he’s now the one who echoes his brother.