Nightfall (22 page)

Kana approached the edge of the wall and stared at the creatures in the watery sections of the grid. He had their sour-ripe scent in his nostrils, and it took all of his self-control to stand on the wall and pretend to be revolted.

Luckily, Marin's attention was drawn by something else. She clutched his arm and pointed into the far distance, toward the forest. The rain had lessened and the moon had emerged. At the edge of the woods stood a stone archway.

“There it is,” whispered Marin.

“Let's go,” said Kana. “They'll be here soon enough.”

They climbed down the wall to where Line was waiting for them. “What'd you see up there?”

“Graves,” said Kana. “And beyond that, the grid was filled with water.”

Line accepted this, in large part because of his eagerness to leave this place. They continued on the main path, heading toward the arch.

Heavy rains combined with the temperature drop had turned the path into a thick, muddy ramp. Pools of water lay
everywhere, and around the edges Kana could see ice beginning to form. Fat worms wriggled from the earth. They were longer than usual, with divots and protrusions running along their segments.

They pressed on, with Kana in the lead. In places they had to claw their way up, sinking their fingers into the mud. As they emerged from the valley, Kana stopped so Line and Marin could catch their breath. It was still scrubland, a mixture of thorny bushes and windswept grass. The forest began a stone's throw away. The trees here were shrouded in vines.

“Get down!” hissed Kana.

They dropped into a crouch to avoid lying on the ground, which was covered with thorns.

“What is it?” whispered Marin.

“There,” said Kana, pointing to several older trees growing on the hillside, no more than fifty feet away. They were small and scraggly, unprotected by the forest and therefore exposed to the constant wind from the cliffs. In the darkness it was impossible to see stationary objects, but movement was easier to track. Something was creeping through the trees, and as they watched, one movement became many. Several dozen tall, thin shapes were gliding down the hill, heading for the grid of stone walls.

“They're coming out of the woods,” Line whispered. In a panic, he hugged the ground and felt the cold numbing his skin.

Kana grabbed Line's sweater and pulled. “Get up. We have to go,” he whispered. Kana looked behind at Marin. She nodded.

They crept along the trail for several minutes, and began to run when they were safely away from the area. The trail curved
back toward the cliffs, then turned again in the direction of the forest. Up ahead stood the arch. It was roughly twenty feet high and appeared to be made of a single piece of stone that had been carved into a perfect semicircle. It stood ominously at the very edge of the forest, a clear gateway into the woods beyond. They approached the arch, standing in its moon shadow, and eyed it warily. The trees beyond the arch parted and a narrow trail wound into the darkness.

Line peered into the forest and then looked back at the cliffs. “This doesn't make sense,” he said.

Marin followed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“The trail seems to head due north, away from the Coil, more into the center of the island.”

Kana shook his head. “We don't know that,” he said, sounding both patient and exasperated. “It's just the beginning of the trail.”

Line's eyes flicked wildly to the left and right. “The point is—we start down that trail and we'll be walking into the thick of it.” He held his injured arm out as if it were made of wood. “That's where those things are coming from.”

“Line, we can't keep second-guessing ourselves,” said Marin with a heavy sigh. “If the trail doesn't hit the Coil, we can always turn around.”

Line squinted into the forest, willing himself to see even a little bit more. “This seems suicidal. We don't even have a candle.”

Marin nodded at her brother. “Kana can see.”

“But you and I will be blind,” countered Line.

“So far, everything that woman has told us has been true,”
said Marin. “She said to follow the river, up the gully, past the walls, and through the arch. And there'll be a boat in that cave—I know it.”

“Even if there
is
a boat, it won't do us any good without a sunstone,” said Line. “I don't know the sky well enough to go by the stars. And with all this rain and the clouds . . .” He gestured up toward the sky but didn't bother to finish his thought.

“Let's get to the boat first,” said Marin. “Then we can worry about the sunstone.”

Line shifted his wounded arm—and instantly regretted it. The arm felt raw, as if the skin had been flayed off. His neck and shoulders ached, too, and pain radiated down his back.

“It matters,” he said softly. “I'd rather die here—on this island—than out in the ocean, slowly, of thirst. Here, we can throw ourselves off the cliffs if we need to. At least it'll be our decision.” He turned toward the vanished seabed.

“Line—NO!” Marin grabbed his good arm and drew close to him. “Why are you talking like that?”

“Don't you SEE?” he yelled. “Even if we make it through this forest and onto the boat, without a sunstone, we'll just be sailing aimlessly. It's not a plan—it's just a different way to die.”

Marin bit her lip.
This is the moment,
she thought.
I can't stall any longer.

“Line—listen—this is crazy,” said Kana.

“No,” said Line. He raised his good hand to cut off Kana. “I'm right—you know that. If I have to die, I want to control how and where.”

“LINE!” yelled Marin. Line dropped his hand and turned
to her. “Line,” she continued, more softly. “Listen!
We have the bloody sunstone!
I . . . have the bloody sunstone.”

Kana and Line both leaned in slightly, staring. Marin reached into her pocket, pulled out the sunstone, and pressed it firmly into Line's palm. The sunstone was a small oval set in a perfectly circular gold pendant, with 360 small hash marks along the circumference—one mark for each of the degrees on a compass.

“I found it in my bag a few days after we got back from the woods and I was too embarrassed to say anything,” said Marin. “I know—it looks really bad.” She paused, and her voice became even softer. “But we have the sunstone now, so please—can we just go find the boat?”

Line and Kana stared at Marin in disbelief.

Line's face remained blank for several seconds, then his whole body began to tremble. “I went back into the woods looking for that sunstone!” he snarled. “I
abandoned my brother
for that sunstone. And you had it all along!” He balled his hands into fists, clenching them so hard, the knuckles turned white.

“I didn't want you to do that,” said Marin. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “I never asked you to.”

“You said
nothing
!” He paused, looked around, and lowered his voice. “And all this time, I've been blaming myself!”

Kana put a hand on Line's shoulder. “We don't have time for this.” He spoke slowly and calmly, taking care with each word. “I'm not defending Marin. I'm just saying we need to go. We have the sunstone. Now we just need to find the boat.”

“Right,” said Line. He took several deep breaths, as if to gather himself. Then he turned, spat violently on the ground, and began walking away from them into the forest.

Marin chased after Line and reached out to touch him, but he just turned and thrust the necklace back at her. “Take it. I don't want to be accused of losing it again.”

His voice was so bitter—and in that instant, Marin wondered if things would ever be the same with them. She took the necklace and thrust it deep into the front pocket of her pants.

Together the three of them passed through the white stone archway and into the woods. The wind picked up—they could hear it whistling through the branches and gusting over the treetops. At ground level, however, all was still.

As he walked in furious silence, Line played over what had just happened. He should have trusted his memory of putting the necklace back in Marin's bag. He should never have gone into the woods looking for it. He should have boarded the furrier boats with everybody else, and he should—at this very moment—be sailing to the desert camp with Francis.

It was difficult to keep track of time while walking along the winding forest path. Line thought an hour had passed, then wondered if it was actually longer. His wounded arm was throbbing now.

Kana stopped walking and gestured for them to stop.

“What's wrong?” asked Marin.

“We're being followed,” said Kana.

Line turned around. “Where?”

“It's not behind us. It's in front.”

“What?” said Marin. She peered forward into the gloom. “How's it following us, then?”

“It's pacing us—matching our speed and staying out of sight,” said Kana. “When we slow down, it slows down.”

“What is
it
?” asked Line.

“I don't know,” said Kana. “I can't tell.” He looked at Line and Marin standing there, breathing in shallow gasps. They were exhausted and cold, and Line was grimacing in pain as he held his injured arm. He needed more lekar—that was obvious.

“I'm going to run up ahead,” declared Kana. “You two stay here and rest.”

Marin shook her head. “It's a bad idea to split up, especially since you're the only one who can see.”

“I won't be gone long,” said Kana. “We need to know what's ahead, and maybe I'll find the Coil.” He nodded at Line's arm. “And we'll need more lekar before we go much farther—I want to look for some.”

“You just want us to stand here, waiting for you?” asked Line. He was so tired that, unthinkingly, he began to lean against Marin, but then he remembered the sunstone and pulled away.

“The trees around here are huge,” said Kana. “You can climb into the higher branches and rest until I come back.”

“How is Line supposed to climb like that?” asked Marin, pointing to his bad arm. “It's crazy.” They had come up with many different plans in the last forty-eight hours, but this one seemed to be the stupidest and most desperate.

“I can climb,” said Line hotly. “That's
not
the point. The point is we'll be stuck here. Kana, what if something happens to you? What do we do then?”

“I won't be long,” Kana said. “Besides, if there's trouble ahead, I don't want us to just stumble into it.”

Marin placed a hand on Line's shoulder. “Can I have the vegetable sack?”

Line took the sack off his shoulder and handed it to her. She opened it, took out the small, rectangular flint, and gave it to Kana.

“Here,” she said. “You don't need light, but you may need fire.”

Kana nodded and took the flint.

“An hour,” said Line. “No more.”

“I know,” Kana replied.

Kana took leaping strides down the path, each one longer than the next, until it seemed as if his feet were barely touching the ground. He'd left his boots back down the trail, having taken them off while Marin and Line struggled noisily up a tree.

As he ran, Kana marveled at how much his reflexes had developed in mere hours. He knew where to step without even looking, as if he'd been sprinting through these dark woods all his life. The newly amplified sounds that poured into his ears—the sway of the branches, the rustle of pine needles, the chirping of bats—all fleshed out his sense of the forest. And above the din of the waking forest, he heard the creature just ahead. It was racing, moving quickly, and Kana was in pursuit.

Whatever he was chasing was the same thing, or woman, who had spoken to Marin back at the citadel. He was fairly confident about this. In fact, he suspected that
it
had been following him for a long time. Perhaps for weeks—long before the furrier boats had arrived.
It
had been there, lurking in the
shadows, in his room, even.
It
had been waiting for him.
It
had been in his dreams, which, of course, weren't dreams or warnings that he was going mad. In fact,
it
had probably known what Kana really was long before Kana, himself, had.

At the moment, Kana was focused singularly on catching this thing. It wasn't a plan, per se. This was pure, hard-driving instinct. And he didn't fight it. He was giving in, and as he did, he could feel his former life as a weak, blind boy swirling away like water at the bottom of a drain.

Eventually, he came upon an opening in the forest. It looked as if a fire had killed a great stand of trees here and then quickly fizzled out. The remains of charred tree trunks were interspersed amid a sprawling field of waist-high grass. He could hear bats screeching from high in the surrounding forest. One thing above all was suddenly apparent to him: the creature had vanished. There was a chance that it had reacted to Kana's running by circling back and heading for Marin and Line. That was a possibility, but it seemed remote. The thing wasn't after Marin and Line. It was after him.

He took several deep breaths. The air seemed to alternate between warm and cold currents, reminding Kana of swimming in the ocean near shore. Even though he was deep in the woods, he knew he wasn't far from the sea, either. The Coil might be closer than expected. It might be very close.

When the trail entered the great clearing, it forked immediately. The main trail went back into the woods, climbing up steeply. The other fork, which was much fainter and clearly a side trail, headed across the clearing and down a gentle slope
toward what seemed to be another meadow. For a moment, Kana was tempted to take the side trail and see where it led, but then he recalled what the voice had told Marin. To find the boat, they had to stick to the main trail.

The thought of the boat tugged at his consciousness, pulling him back to his old self—Kana, the boy with a family and a twin sister, the boy who was trying to escape the island. He had to find the boat. He had to find it for Marin and Line. For them. Because he would
not
be leaving this island.

He breathed in deeply, feeling the truth of this thought curl into his lungs. It felt good—and pure. For a long time, he had refused to acknowledge it. During all these long months of the town's preparation to leave, Kana had felt more torn than ever. To him, the forest was coming alive, and while everyone else complained about the growing dark, Kana felt more in his element than ever. He thought back to the moment on the Dwarf Oak Islands when he had finally surrendered to what he was becoming.
This is who I am. This is where I belong.

Kana ran along the main trail, back into the woods, and up the steep slope. As he began to climb, the raucous squawk of far-off ravens broke the silence. Their shrill cries grew louder until it sounded as if they were right above him.

He arrived at the top of the hill and found himself at the edge of a bluff that dropped steeply into the forest below. There was water beyond those trees. He could smell it. He forced himself to picture Marin's face.
My sister is waiting for me,
he told himself.
How long ago did I leave them in the tree?
He didn't know. He'd lost track of time.
I have to go back.
He turned to go, but
as he did, a loud crack came from the nearby trees. Startled, he looked up and heard a low-pitched growl. Kana reflexively stepped back several feet and fell into a mix of rocks and bushes, and in the next instant, he was tumbling down the bluff behind him. At first he tried to stop, but then he realized this was the fastest way to put distance between himself and whatever was up on that hill. He focused on controlling his slide and avoiding the trees that dotted the lower slope.

When he finally came to a rest, Kana was covered in mud. He looked back up the slope nervously—heart pounding. He saw no signs of movement.
What had growled? Is it still there?
Then he heard running water. It was close—very close. Kana jumped to his feet and soon came upon a fast-flowing but shallow stream. He splashed down the stream for several hundred yards, then knelt and drank his fill of the cold, refreshing water. He resumed walking, and eventually trees opened up and the stream merged with a wide, flowing river. It was the Coil—no question.

As he stood there, he remembered Marin in the gully, repeating the woman's words:
You will find the river—and a cave. Inside is a sea vessel.
“I found the river,” he whispered, in a strange, hoarse voice that he hardly recognized as his own.

Just up ahead, another stream merged with the river. Here the water flowed over a series of flat rocks, which were streaked with red and black minerals, and gathered briefly in a deep pool. Kana walked over to the pool and surveyed the area. A clump of old, withered apple trees stood nearby. Bark peeled off the trees in ribbons.

A cold breeze flowed steadily through the trees. It smelled rich and musty, like handfuls of fertile soil thrown into the air. He saw a clump of tall zebra grass. Kana leaned in close. From this angle, he saw that the grass hid a wide, dark opening.

There it was—the cave.