Two Moons of Sera (22 page)

Mintoch nodded and began to swim. His lithe body, although
unused, took to the motion easily. His muscles may have been weak from
enslavement, but his body knew what to do, and the movement came as naturally
as breathing.

~
Wait! You have to stay with Tor. He can’t swim like you.
~

Mintoch rolled his eyes and swam back to the quickly
disappearing haven around Tor.

“All right! Let’s go.” I grabbed Lock’s hand and pulled him
back into the water. He had no choice. It was swim with me or die.

The four of us worked our way upstream in the pitch black of
the underground river. I struggled to see the path ahead and avoid any jutting
rocks or sharp turns. Even with my genetic advantage, I found it near
impossible to see, and Mintoch doubtless experienced the same. Tor offered what
help he could but mostly focused on swimming and holding his breath so Mintoch
could scout ahead.

Breathing for Lock was easy. We swam close together, me more
pulling him than him swimming, and when he needed a breath, he squeezed my
hand. At first, crushing my lips against his to exhale the oxygen I pulled from
the water into his lungs was clumsy and awkward, but as time went on, fatigue
and practicality won out. We all just needed to get out of here.

Time passed slowly. Swimming upstream made it impossible to
tell if we had made any progress, and in the blackness behind us, I was sure I
could hear the constant shouts of pursuers.

Exhaustion clung to my body, weighing me down. I couldn’t
stop now. The river would just carry me back to the cage. I swam harder,
lugging Lock along as his body gave out under the exertion of such an intense
swim. When I glanced over, I noted even Tor was fading. We had to escape the
depths soon.

~
Looks like light ahead,
~ Mintoch announced in his
singsong Sualwet.

I sang out with relief, earning myself a raised eyebrow from
Tor. Even underwater and unable to breathe, he managed to give me attitude.

I tightened my grip on Lock’s arm and hauled his weight
around the bend. His fatigue made it difficult for him to help me. I pulled him
to my chest so he could hold on to my shoulders. My legs moved in unison,
trained in the swift motions of my Sualwet upbringing. Would my body know how
to swim like this if I hadn’t spent my childhood watching my mother? Tor’s
oversized movements and awkward kicking would have made me laugh if we were
anywhere else.

Before long, breathing for Lock became second nature, and
now, carrying him like he were a hatchling, I was able to move faster. The
promise of land reinvigorated my burning muscles. Ahead I glimpsed a twinkle, a
shimmer in the water too subtle for Erdlander eyes, but to a Sualwet, it was as
clear as the stars at midnight.

I rushed ahead of Mintoch and Tor. Soon the dot brightened,
a pinprick in the blackness, streaming light down through the river. I swam up
and broke the surface where the light became the brightest. We found ourselves
in a small space where the walls of the underground river peaked high above.
Water rushed past us without filling this small break.

Lock latched onto me and gasped for air, finally breathing
on his own after our arduous swim. His head rested on my shoulder as he clung
to me. The opening was high, and we would have to scale the cave walls to reach
it. Lock was too exhausted for me to leave him long enough to try, and the
river would carry him away without a second thought.

“Air!” Tor exclaimed as he broke the surface. His hair hung
heavily around his face, but his eyes jumped from me to the opening above in
excitement.

~
How will we get up there?
~ Mintoch asked as he
joined us.

Tor and Lock both looked to me.

“He wants to know how we’re going to get up there,” I said.

Tor smiled his devious grin. “Tell him I’m going to need him
to hold steady so I can get a little higher up.”

I translated for Mintoch, and he nodded with a quizzical
frown. Once he had the go-ahead, Tor swam to Mintoch and placed his feet on the
boy’s shoulders. Mintoch treaded water easily, staying above surface even with
Tor’s added weight. Tor hunched down and flung himself up to the cave wall.

With the same grace and ease I had seen him scale the cliff
by my home in the cove, Tor climbed the slope until he was scampering
upside-down toward the sun-filled opening. My breath caught as I watched him
skitter across the rocky surface. I was still pulling oxygen in from the water,
but the instinct to breathe ceased as fear for his safety gripped me. What if
he fell?

Tor inched to the opening, and we watched, treading against
the current of the river as he reached through and climbed out. For him to fit
through, the opening must have been much larger than it appeared, which meant
it was dizzyingly high. How were we ever going to reach all the way up there?

“Sera, stay there,” he called down to me. “I’m going to look
for something I can lower down to you!”

Moments passed in silence. Nothing but the splashing of the
rushing water against the cave walls filled the space. Lock’s breathing
deepened as he slumped in my arms. I held him up completely as his body gave
out.

~
Why did you save him?
~ Mintoch asked, eying Lock’s
drenched hair with interest.

~
He’s my friend.
~

~
He betrayed you. He’s just another Erdlander. I can tell
the monkey-man is different and cares about you, but that one....
~

~
Think what you want.
~ I turned away, knowing the boy’s
hatred was ingrained by his upbringing and justified by the way Vaughn and the
others had treated him. Lock was my friend. At least he had been, at one point.
What changed that was as much the Erdlanders’ doing as what Mintoch, my mother,
or I had suffered. Elle and Lace had shown me that the cruelty of the
Erdlanders wasn’t limited to the Sualwet. Maybe Lock actually had a reason for
what he’d done.

Mintoch dove beneath the surface, leaving me alone with a
passed-out Lock to carry and nothing but my thoughts to entertain me.

“Sera!” Tor’s voice boomed through the darkness. Something
splashed in the water near me.

“I’m here!”

Lock bobbed under the waves in my arms.

“I dropped down your bag. Elle, Traz, and Lace aren’t far
from here. Put Lock’s arms in the bag’s straps, and Traz and I will pull him
up.”

“They’re here?”

“Just do it!”

I shook the Erdlander’s limp form. “Lock! Wake up!”

He moaned but raised his head, looking at me through
exhausted lids.

“Tor’s getting us out. Come on.”

After swimming us over to the bag, I saw that Tor had
attached a rope from Elgon’s pack to the back of it. It would certainly get
Lock out, but I wasn’t sure it was strong enough for Mintoch and me.

Lock clumsily treaded water as I worked to help him put his
arms through the straps. “I’m sorry,” he muttered over and over, his mind in a
haze of exhaustion and guilt.

Once he was secured as much as I could, I wrapped the rope
around his chest and back. Then I tied it to the bag so the straps wouldn’t be
the only thing bearing his weight. “Okay! Pull him up!”

The rope tightened and strained against Lock’s drenched
form. The straps of my bag stretched tight. It was one of the only things I
owned. I knew it was wrong for me to worry more about the bag breaking than
Lock falling, but I did.

As they hauled him up through the cavern, Lock held onto the
rope like an oversized drooping rat. I dove back under the black water.

~
Mintoch! They’ve come to get us,
~ I called out,
knowing my voice would carry.

~
Coming!
~

Above me, Lock disappeared through the opening, and then Tor
lowered the bag again. Mintoch crested the surface as the satchel fell.

~
They got him out?
~

~
Yes.
~ I reached out for the bag, preparing to put it
on.

~
Serafay, let’s keep going. We’ll find another opening,
and then we won’t have to worry about the Erdlanders. You can come back with
me. We can find the others.
~

~
I belong with them. Tor and I, we’re all we have. We’re
more alike than anyone else. The Sualwet will never accept me, no matter what I
do.
~ Strings of matted wet hair hung in my face, accentuating my point.

Mintoch nodded but made no move toward the bag.

~
Come with us. We’ll find a safe way for you to get back
to the ocean. I promise.
~

The boy smiled as age settled along his features.

~
You don’t have to be alone,
~ I said.

~
Go on. Go above ground, into the sunlight where you
belong. It’ll just burn me. I don’t belong up there. I’m better off alone down
here, even if I never find the others.
~

If Sualwets could cry without opening their second lids, I’d
think he was. Without warning, he dove underwater again, for the last time.

A sense of loss tried to pull me under, threatened to tie me
to a boy I didn’t know and a family I never had. Mintoch was the only Sualwet
other than my mother I had ever known, and he’d left without even a smile or a
real goodbye. The sadness that welled up only proved further that I would never
be one of them.

After wrapping the rope around my waist, I twisted it back
through the loop to tighten it. With my arms secured in the bag’s straps, I
took a deep breath and called up for Tor to lift me out.

According to Traz, Lace and Elle were huddling in a cave
about a mile from where Tor had pulled me from the underground river. Our
clothes dried during the walk, but my hair still hung damp around my shoulders.

Traz had been patrolling to see if they’d been followed when
he and Tor met up. Fortune favors the brave or some such nonsense. Seemed to me
it was only fair that one thing had gone right.

Elgon lay outside the cave opening, his fur spiked up in
warning as he surveyed the land for any threat to his new pack. As we
approached, Tor whistled and Elgon’s ears perked. When we were within sight of
the cave, the oversized beast bounded toward us, a thrumming purr emanating
from the back of his throat.

“Elgon!” I hollered as he nuzzled me gruffly, practically
knocking me down with his excitement.

His musty animal smell was strong and comforting. I hadn’t
expected to miss him, but now that we were reunited, I felt like our family was
back together again.

“Hey, what about me?” Tor laughed as Elgon licked the entire
length of my arm, leaving me covered in mountain hound slobber.

“Oh my gods!” I complained.

Elgon trotted over to Tor for a rowdier reunion.

“This is the cave.” Traz directed us toward a rocky incline
covered in moss and vines. “We figured it best to stay here for the day, in
case anyone is searching for us. Then tonight I’ll go back and you guys can
disappear.”

“You know you can stay with us,” I offered, hoping again he
would reconsider. “There’s no reason for you to go back. Who knows what they’ll
do if they know you helped us?”

“No, I have to go back. I have to talk to my parents and
find out more about Tor’s people. If anyone asks where I was, I’ll just say I
was looking at the Match books all day. They love it when people get excited
about finding a Match.”

“Be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.” I imagined Traz
stuck in a cage like Mintoch—Erdlander scientists poking and prodding him to
try decoding his genetics. I slowed my pace, wanting time to convince him to
stay with us before we reached the others.

“I will, Sera. But you needed to find your answers; now I
need to find mine. Lace and I have been talking all night. There’s more here
than we know, something... older going on. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but
I’m going to find out.”

“You told her about me?” Tor accused, standing to his full
height.

“She did just break out of the camp and run away with you in
the middle of the night. I think it’s fair she knows what’s going on.” Traz
kept walking, his soft voice unfazed by Tor’s aggression.

Tor caught up to him with three long steps and placed a hand
on the Erdlander’s chest. “That’s none of her business!”

“Everything is everyone’s business now,” I interrupted. “This
is all we have now; this is our family, our people. We aren’t Sualwet or
Erdlander or A’aihea anymore. All their deceptions and hatreds don’t matter. It’s
just
us
. And Traz is right. Lace has the right to know what she’s gotten
into.” I placed a hand on Tor’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get to the cave.”

“Huh,” he replied without looking at me, but he pulled back
from Traz and kept walking, slow enough for me to stay by his side, my hand
wrapped around his bicep.

Elgon ran ahead to the cave entrance to show us the way. We
strode through a small clearing before reaching the cave entrance. Our trek
from the underground river had gone quickly, but the terrain was anything but
easy. I found it so much easier to walk now that I didn’t have shoes pinching
my webbed feet, but the rocky ground and steep inclines wore on my soles.

There was no trace of water nearby—no streams or springs
that led to where we had emerged from the river. Our trail was hidden, and
wherever Mintoch had gone was beyond our reach now. The farther we walked, the
closer we came to the base of the Nalastran Mountain Ridge. Another day of
travel would get us there, and we’d be well beyond the perimeter of Erdlander
land.

Now and then Tor peered up at the snowy peaks, and his pace
slowed. For him this was more than escape: this was hope of finding a future.
For the rest of us, we simply had nowhere else to go.

Lace’s voice broke the serene landscape. “So, you didn’t
drown?”

“Shut up, Lace,” I said.

“Why’s everyone always saying that?” she replied with a
smile, lifting an eyebrow in my direction. “So what’s with the extra weight?”
She inclined her head toward Lock as she pulled aside the hanging vines to let
us into the hidden cave. Elgon remained outside to stand sentinel over our
temporary home.

“Later,” I replied, exhaling into the darkness, thankful for
the cover.

We hadn’t talked much during the walk back to the cave, and
Lock hadn’t spoken at all. Traz had told us about their uneventful stroll through
camp and the north gate. Other than letting us know Elle was still not talking,
we knew little more than we had yesterday. Our story was probably more
adventurous, but right then, all I wanted to do was sleep.

In the dank cave, Elle lay curled up on the pile of duffel
bags and knapsacks they had brought with them. Her kinked hair hung over her
face, arms still squeezed around her middle.

“How is she?” I asked Lace.

“The same, mostly. She’ll walk on her own now but still won’t
talk.” Lace’s voice was thick with pain, and the sound made my chest tighten.

This loss felt like something beyond agony. I didn’t
understand it, but its claws raked at my insides. Had Mother felt like this at
the thought of giving me up? For the first time, I understood why she had kept
me instead of choosing a life with her own people. I would do anything to avoid
the heartache I saw in Elle’s face.

Fighting tears, I sat next to the small fire Lace had set.
The flames barely produced any warmth, but they sufficed.

“I didn’t want to smoke us out.” Her tone was apologetic, as
if she hadn’t done enough to welcome us to this makeshift home.

The cave was cool but dry, and despite its size, the fire
brought comfort.

“It’s perfect.” I smiled as she sat next to me—close, like a
friend.

“We should eat something and get some rest,” Tor said. “We
have to get moving as soon as the sun sets.” He approached Elle’s sleeping form
and examined the bags around her for one that contained food.

“First I want to know why
he’s
here.” Lace pointed to
Lock, who shivered just inside the cave entrance, his eyes downcast, shoulders
heavy.

Tor ignored her. He set four cans of food by the fire, pried
their tops off with a knife, and placed them directly into the flames with his
bare hands.

“Or you could start with
that
.” She gawked at him
with wide eyes, earning herself nothing but a grunt.

Traz took Lock by the arm, pulled him to the circle, and
pointed to where he should sit. “Someone spill,” Traz commanded, his voice
unusually stern.

“Lock...,” I began. “He told Vaughn we were coming. They
were waiting when we got to the Hub.”

Lace stood up, fire lighting her stern features and
transforming her into the image of a goddess wronged. “You did
what
?”

“I didn’t mean for them to get hurt,” Lock said in defense.

“They knew we were coming,” I continued, ignoring him. “But
they didn’t know about Tor.”

Lock flinched as Tor’s fingers threw a spark into the fire.

“
Freaky
.” Lace dropped back down, eyes now on Tor.

“Vaughn knew what I am”—I wiggled my toes self-consciously at
the admission—”and thought he’d put me in one of their testing labs. Traz, you
were right. They do tests on Sualwets, and not just the kind they were doing to
Mintoch. The kind of medical experiments they did to my mother... they’re still
doing that, too.”

My words hung above the fire, choking on the smoke.

“Vaughn thought he was going to have me as a lab rat, and he
promised Lock he’d be allowed to remain unMatched and live in the City.”

“Yeah, right,” Lace snorted. “No one gets to do that.”

“He
promised
,” Lock whispered from beneath downcast
eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like to be different.”

“You’re more of an idiot than I thought,” she hissed. “Let
me guess, Vaughn reneged.”

He nodded.

“They were going to take both of us to the lab,” I
explained. “Vaughn wanted to study why Lock couldn’t be Matched.”

“
Jikmae,
” Traz breathed.

The group sat silently for a moment. Erdlanders were
experimenting on live subjects, even their own kind. The enormity of what that
meant for their society was deafening. No ethics, no boundaries—only the drive
to procreate and destroy. Perhaps it was best if the Erdlanders did die out.

“So, how’d you get out?” Lace asked.

“I set them on fire and blew up the wall,” Tor said in his
blunt and concise way. The morbidity of the statement didn’t stop me from
smiling at him. His gruff outside didn’t fool what I knew of his gentle touch.

“But you saved this slug
why
?” Lace insisted.

“He’s my friend,” I said. No matter what Lock had done, he
still meant something to me. I couldn’t have just left him to die.

His head hung impossibly low as the group eyed him, waiting
for some kind of explanation, anything that would excuse what he had done. But
he remained in silent remorse.

“Well, I’m not sleeping without someone making sure he doesn’t
run right back and tell them where we are.” Lace, always the practical one.

“I won’t do that,” Lock said.

“Why not? You turned on your friend, gave her up to a
monster. You knew what they were doing, and you still led him to her. You were
willing to let Traz, Elle, and I wait out here forever, never knowing what
happened to them, and with no idea how to live on our own! All for what? So you
could avoid Matching?
Everyone
Matches. What makes you so special that
you don’t have to?” Lace was yelling now, Elle’s slumber forgotten in her fury.

“I... I
can’t
,” Lock admitted.” I don’t know why, but
I just
can’t
.” He sent a pleading gaze in my direction.

“Why?” Lace demanded. “I did, Elle did, everyone does. And
all we get from it is pain, but we have no choice. Why do you get to be above
it while Elle has to suffer?”

“I just
can’t
!” Lock yelled back. “I
tried
. I
did! I was medically Matched once, remember? It was a disaster! I tried to feel
the way I was supposed to, but I just didn’t!” He covered his face with his hands
and sobbed. Once the first hiccup broke free, the oncoming deluge rained down,
leaving him hunched forward, hands grasping his head.

Tor placed a warm hand on my back as Lock’s diminishing
gasps surrounded us.

“I’m sorry, Sera,” Lock sobbed. “I really am. I didn’t think
Vaughn would.... I’m so sorry.”

I nodded in response, not quite able to forgive him yet.

“I’m not going to go back,” he went on. “I
can’t
go
back. You can tie me up if you want, Lace, but I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

“I think we should push him back into the river,” she
grunted without passion. They had been friends too, in their own way. “I know
things were hard for you, Lock, but
damn it
.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

Tor reached into the fire and plucked out the heated cans. “We
should eat.”

He placed a can—too hot for anyone but him to touch—in front
of each of us, before producing four forks. We ate in silence. Vegetables and
protein chunks mixed together slid down my throat. Either the food was bland or
exhaustion and sorrow were too all-consuming for any flavor to reach me.