The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) (9 page)

Focusing all my attention on her pretty face, I said, “I know what you’ve done.” The guilt that flashed across her features was gone so fast that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking for it. But I
was
looking for it.

I pushed her away. “Traitor!”

She immediately started babbling. “I’m sorry, Ash. I didn’t mean for it to be like this. I’m sorry you got hurt, and about Jaz and everything, but honestly, he should never have eaten that rabbit. . . .”

What was she blathering about? “What does this have to do with —? Wait,
you’re
the one who told the government about the pact?”

“I didn’t think anything would happen — you have to believe me. I wanted to go home. They said I could go home!”

“You
were
home, Bry!” I was so overwhelmed with rage, I was almost sputtering with it. Briony had betrayed us all, selling the Tribe out to the government and for nothing more than an illusion. In a single angry moment, I shouted out the truth she couldn’t bear to acknowledge: “And it was a better home than you’d ever had with your parents, because they don’t love you. They think you’re some unnatural thing, and they’ll
never
love you.”

The color drained out of her face, and for a second, she just sat there, pale and trembling. Then her eyes went flat and scarily mindless and she leaped for me, knocking the two of us to the ground. Bry was screaming, over and over, “They do love me. They do! They do!” We rolled across the floor, banging into furniture and toppling books as Neville jumped to his feet, calling for the enforcers. She was shrieking and clawing and kicking, really trying to hurt me, and I was so enraged that I was fighting right back. She tried to scratch my eyes, and I slapped her hand away, striking the edge of her jaw, which was painful in a satisfying kind of way. She howled, throwing a vicious punch at my side, and another. Something sharp dug into me, and Connor and Evan charged in, dragging the two of us apart.

Briony clung to Evan, clutching her face as if she’d sustained some severe injury, which I knew she hadn’t. For some reason, Connor kept trying to get me to sit down in the chair. He was shouting something, but it took me a second to understand what it was. “Ashala! You’re hurt!”

What?
I looked down, puzzled to find my white shirt marred by a spreading red stain.
I’m bleeding? How?
But then I realized.

They hadn’t taken away all her possessions after all. Briony had still been carrying her little knife.

I slid to the floor, the world shattering into fragmented images: Evan hustling Briony out of the room, Neville screeching for someone to fetch Wentworth, and Connor’s hands pressed to the wound in my side to stop the bleeding. He’d done this before, I thought vaguely, when I’d received that other injury. Had it really only been two days ago? Then everything faded into darkness.

When I regained consciousness, blurry figures wearing red robes were swarming everywhere. Someone spoke urgently. “Doctor, the blade was poisoned!”

Wentworth shouted, “Somebody get that collar off her!”

Confused, I thought,
My neck isn’t hurt.
Then I realized that she must want to Mend me, and the rhondarite would stop her ability from working on my wounded body.

The stone band was pulled away, and I tried to fall asleep and Sleepwalk. But I couldn’t. Instead, I drifted, sometimes rising to the surface of consciousness and sometimes falling beneath it, as if I were being carried along on the tides. It would have been peaceful, except that the connections my mind had made in Neville’s office spread out around me like a net floating on water, trapping me among painful truths.

I’d thought I’d been unlucky when I was captured in Cambergull. Now it seemed a bit
too
unlucky that a troop of enforcers — including the one who knew exactly what I looked like — had happened to be there at the same time I was.
Briony told them where I was going to be.
And her story about how Ember hadn’t sent anyone to the center after they’d heard what happened. That should have struck me as wrong instantly, and would have, if I hadn’t been so caught up in being terrified for Bry. No matter how futile or dangerous Em had thought it was, she definitely would have sent someone. Daniel, probably, since he was the fastest of the Runners. Although Briony herself was much quicker than she’d ever let on. She had to be, or she couldn’t have gotten in and out of the Firstwood fast enough to maintain contact with the government without arousing suspicion.
Why didn’t I see it?
Why hadn’t I noticed something was wrong, before she’d told them about the pact, before Jaz had died?

Grief washed over me, weighing me down, and I began to sink. I fell gently away from consciousness and life, drifting through nothingness, until my feet touched what felt like dirt. The blackness winked out, leaving me standing among trees — big tuarts and smaller peppermints and, in between and around, all the other plant life of the forest. The Firstwood?
Sort of
. Everything was brighter than it should be, the colors so vivid it almost hurt to look at them. Plus I was glowing with a faint blue light. Was this the Balance?

When Citizens died, their spirits were supposed to go to the greater Balance, the world soul. I thought Illegals did, too, even though the government said our fate was “uncertain,” being as we were outside the natural order. But if this was the Balance, then I was . . . dead. I supposed I should have been upset about that, but all I felt was an overwhelming sense of relief.
If I’m dead, I’m free
. No more worries, no more responsibilities, and no one else to save. The government couldn’t hurt me, and I couldn’t hurt anyone else, couldn’t
fail
anyone else, ever again.

I surveyed my surroundings. Souls were meant to either exist in the Balance as energy or be born back into a body, and it didn’t seem like I’d become energy. So I should be on my way to being reborn. I brightened, thinking it’d be great to come back as a wolf, or maybe something that could fly, like a hawk. Anything other than a Citizen. Except it wasn’t clear how I was meant to get to my new life. There didn’t seem to be any pathway to follow, or anyone to guide me, either. “Hello?” I called. “Is anybody out there?”

A twig snapped behind me, and I spun around to find myself facing a tall, olive-skinned girl. She tipped her head to one side, gazing at me out of eyes that were a peculiar shade of light green. “Hi, Ash.”

I gasped. “Georgie? You aren’t . . . You’re not . . . Georgie, are you dead?”

She shook her head, sending her long black curls flying around her shoulders. “I think I’m dreaming.”

“You can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is the greater Balance. You can’t get here by dreaming.”

“But,” she replied in a bewildered tone, “I
am
here.”

“I know! Are you sure you’re not dead?”

She laughed. “I’m alive — I promise. I came because you needed me.”

“I do?” An idea popped into my head. “Hey, are you my guide? Are you just appearing as Georgie, like the part of my subconscious that appears as Ember?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

“Well,
I
don’t know!”

She shrugged. “I guess neither of us knows. Anyway, what’s important is, we have to go.”

“To the next life?”

“No, Ash! To see the Serpent.”

I gaped at her in dismay. “The Serpent? Is
he
dead? Did the government catch him?”

For a second, she looked very confused. Then her face cleared, and she said in a slow, careful tone, “No, Ash. Not
that
Serpent. The — um, other one.”

“What other one?”

“You’ll see. Come on.”

She tore off through the trees, and I ran after her, following along behind as she emerged from the undergrowth and pelted along one of the forest trails. The geography of this Firstwood seemed to be pretty much the same as the one I knew, almost as if it reflected my forest.
Or maybe this is the real Firstwood, and ours is the reflection
. Which was a freaky thought.

It made me happy, though, to see the familiar pathways traveled by the Tribe, and I marked each branch of the trail in my mind as we passed it. If I turned there, I’d eventually reach the clearing that was our summer camp. There, I’d find my way to where the waratahs grew, the big red flowers from which we harvested a thick, sweet honey. There, I’d go to the cave system that was our shelter in winter. The caves were also where Ember had her “laboratory,” where she mixed up her various herbal concoctions and invented stuff. I almost took the path to find her before remembering that I didn’t
want
to see Em in this place, since I still wasn’t sure if you could be here without being dead.

Georgie ran on until there were no more branches off the trail, and I knew where we must be going. I sped up, outpacing her slightly, and reached the sandy shore of the lake before she did. Leaning over, I rested my hands on my legs, catching my breath and looking out over the water. This was
my
lake. I was the only one who swam here because everyone else thought there was something spooky about the dark water. I had to admit, there was a kind of broodiness about it, but I’d always loved the way the lake was so unfathomably deep and mysterious. It was especially impressive now, the blue water lit with dazzling light where the sun hit it and colored with purple shadows where it was shaded by the overhanging trees. There was no Serpent, though. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone here except for us. “Are you sure this is the right place, Georgie?”

She nodded and came to stand beside me. “Yes. Because when I meet you in the Balance, this is where we come.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “You do know that makes no sense, right?” To my horror, I saw that she was starting to disappear, fading away around the edges. “Georgie, what’s happening to you?”

“This is when I wake up, Ash.”

I put my hand on her arm, as if I could keep her with me by hanging on. “Georgie, if you’re really sleeping, I need you to remember something. Tell Ember that Bry’s a traitor. Do you understand? If she ever contacts you, she can’t be trusted.”

“It’s all right. We already know.”

“You do? How can you know?” She didn’t answer, and she was disappearing quickly now. “Georgie! Don’t be dead.”

“You either, Ash.”

She smiled at me, then vanished.

I barely had time to register that she was gone before I heard a popping noise, and another. Bubbles were rising from the center of the lake, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. I took a curious step closer to the water. Suddenly a huge, sinuous shape broke the surface, sending ripples rolling outward that splashed against the shore.

An
actual
serpent?
Run, Ash!
But my legs wouldn’t obey the commands of my terrified brain. I stood trembling as the massive snake slid upward, its pale blue scales shimmering with rainbows in the light. The creature bent toward me, swiveling its head until it was upside down, and a deep, male voice rolled across my mind:
Hello
.

There was something about the way he was watching me from his upturned silver eyes that was strangely comic, and I suppressed a hysterical urge to laugh as I replied, “Hello, yourself.”

You are very small.

“You . . . you’re kind of big.”

I am, aren’t I?
He turned his head the right way up.
You do not tend to your pain.

“Um, I’m not in pain.”

Yes, you are.

“No, I’m —” I stopped, abruptly aware of a deep, throbbing ache in my chest.

You give up too easily. Because you will not forgive.

My chest was burning now, and I was starting to feel hot all over, kind of feverish. “Who am I supposed to forgive?”

Yourself.

“I
can’t.
”

Why not?

“B-Because,” I stuttered, “Jaz and C-Cassie are dead.”

Death is a great transformation. But it is not an end.

The shivers racking my body were getting so bad that I could barely stand, and I was in no condition to argue the meaning of life — or death — with a giant snake. “I think I’m sick.”

It is your pain.

“Can you help me?”

Yes.

“So, help me!”

His long tongue flicked out and coiled around my body. Alarmed, I tried to fight free of his grasp. “What are you doing? Let go!” The Serpent lifted me up and flung back his head, sending me soaring through the air. I hit the lake with a tremendous splash, still yelling, and swallowed a mouthful of water as I plunged downward. I tried to struggle up to the air and found myself suspended in the depths, unable to move as the water I’d gulped flowed through me like an electric wave. My entire body continued to shake, but now it was from the inside out, as if every tiny cell within me were rattling against the ones next to it. Then something broke free inside my chest, streaming out to vanish into the lake, and I shot to the surface, gasping for air.