Pretties

  She sighed. Even back in her Smokey days, she’d never gotten used to the leaf thing.

  Tally found her pitiful pile of twigs, and remembered trying to light a fire the night before, too delirious to realize how stupid that would have been. The Special Circumstances hovercars that had come after the balloon would have easily spotted a fire in the darkness.

  There was no evidence of pursuit in the sky this morning, but Tally decided to put some distance between herself and the river. Without a working heater in her jacket, she would need to build a fire that night.

  But first things first, which meant food.

  She trudged down to the river to fill the purifier, dried mud crumbling from her skin and clothing with every step. Tally had never been so dirty in her life, but she wasn’t up to bathing in the freezing water, not without a fire to warm her up afterward. Last night’s fever might have passed, thanks to her new-pretty immune system kicking in, but she didn’t want to take any risks with her health out here.

  Of course, Tally realized, it wasn’t her own health she should be worrying about. Zane was somewhere out here too, maybe just as alone as she was. He and Fausto had jumped almost at the same moment, but they might have landed kilometers apart. If Zane had one of his attacks on the way to the ruins, with no one to help him . . .

  Tally shook the thought from her head. All she could do right now for Zane or anyone else was get to the ruins herself. And that meant making food, not worrying about things she couldn’t control.

  The purifier took two fillings before it had strained enough pure water from the silty inlet to make a meal. She chose a packet of PadThai and set the purifier to boil; the smell of reconstituting noodles and spices soon rose from the gurgling water.

  By the time the meal pinged that it was ready, Tally was ravenous.

  As she reached the end of the PadThai, she realized there was no longer any point in going hungry, and immediately boiled up a packet of CurryNoods. Starvation might have been useful for getting off the cuffs and staying bubbly, but her cuff was gone, and Tally now had the whole of the wild, dangerous and cold, to keep her bubbly. Not much chance of sinking into a pretty haze out here.

  After breakfast, the position-finder offered up its bad news. Tally had to check her calculations twice before she believed the distance she’d traveled the night before. The winds from off the ocean had pushed the balloon a long way east, in the opposite direction from the Rusty Ruins, and then the river’s current had carried her another long distance southward. She was more than a week’s journey by foot to the ruins, if she went in a straight line. And straight lines wouldn’t come into it: She had to go the long way around the city, staying in the forest to hide herself from searchers in the air.

  Tally wondered how long the Specials would bother to keep looking for her. Luckily, they didn’t know that her hoverboard had disappeared into the river, so they would assume she was flying, not trudging along on foot. As far as they knew, Tally would have to stay near the river or some other natural vein of mineral deposits.

  The sooner she got away from the riverbank, the better.

  Tally packed up her pitiful camp unhappily. Her backpack held more than enough food for the journey, and the hills would be full of ready water after the long rains, but she felt defeated already. From what Sussy and Dex had said, the New Smokies hadn’t set up a permanent camp in the ruins. They might leave any day now, and she was a week away.

  Her only hope was that Zane and Fausto would stay behind, waiting for her to show up. Unless they thought that she had been captured, or killed by the fall, or had simply chickened out.

  No, she told herself, Zane wouldn’t think that last one of her. He might be worried, but Tally knew that he would wait for her, however long it took.

  She sighed as she tied the still-damp coat around her waist and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. There was no point wondering about where the others were; her only choice was to hike toward the ruins and trust that someone would be waiting when she arrived.

  Tally had nowhere else to go.

  • • •

  The way through the forest was rugged, every step a battle. Back in the Smoke, Tally had mostly traveled by hoverboard. When she had been forced to hike cross-country, it had been on paths hacked through the trees. But this was nature in the raw, hostile and unrelenting. The dense undergrowth tugged at her feet, trying to trip her, throwing up thick bushes and ankle-twisting roots and impenetrable walls of thorn.

  Among the trees, the downpour still echoed. Pine needles sparkled with frost, which the day’s heat was slowly changing to water, generating a constant rain of chill, sparkling mist. It was like a magnificent ice palace, with spears of sunlight shooting between the trees, visible in the mist like lasers through smoke. But every time Tally dared disturb a branch, it unloaded its freight of freezing water onto her head.

  She remembered traveling to the Smoke through the ancient forest that had been devastated by the Rusties’ biologically engineered weeds. At least walking through that flattened landscape had been easier than this dense growth. Sometimes, you could almost see why the Rusties had tried so hard to destroy nature.

  Nature could be a pain.

  As she walked, the struggle between the forest and Tally began to feel more and more personal. The grasping brambles seemed almost conscious of her, corralling Tally the way they wanted her to go, no matter what her direction-finder said. The dense undergrowth would split open welcomingly, offering easy paths that wound pointlessly off her course. Hiking in a straight line was impossible. This was nature, not some Rusty superhighway cutting through mountains and across deserts without any regard for the terrain.

  But as the afternoon progressed, Tally slowly became convinced that she was following an actual path, like the nature trails that the pre-Rusties had used a millennium before.

  She remembered what David had told her out in the Smoke, that most of the pre-Rusty trails had originally been made by animals. Even deer, wolves, and wild dogs didn’t want to fight their way through virgin growth. Just like people, animals stuck to the same paths for generation after generation, forging tracks through the forest.

  Of course, Tally had always imagined that animal trails were something that only David could see. Having grown up in the wild, he was practically a pre-Rusty himself. But as the shadows lengthened around her, Tally found her path becoming easier and straighter, as if she had stumbled onto some uncanny fissure in the wild.

  A gnawing feeling started in her stomach. The random sounds of dripping trees began to play with her mind, and Tally’s nerves began to twitch, as if she was being watched.

  It was probably just her perfect new-pretty eyesight helping her spot the subtle marks of animal passage. She must have picked up more skills than she knew out in the Smoke. This was an animal path. Certainly, no people could live out here. Not this close to the city, where they would have been detected by the Specials decades ago. Even out in the Smoke, no one knew of any other communities living outside the cities. Humanity had decided two centuries ago to leave nature alone.

  Alone, Tally kept reminding herself. No one else was out here. Though, oddly, she couldn’t decide whether being the only person in the forest made it feel less creepy, or more.

  Finally, as the sky was fading to pink, Tally decided to come to a halt. She found an open clearing where the sun had beaten down all day, maybe drying out enough wood for a fire. The brutal hike had raised a sweat—Tally’s shirt clung to her, and she’d never once worn her coat—but once the sun set, she knew the air would turn freezing cold again.

  Finding dry twigs was easy, and Tally weighed a few small logs in her hand to find the lightest, which would contain the least water. All her Smokey knowledge seemed to have come back, with no scraps of pretty-mindedness remaining after the escape. Now that she was out of the city, the cure had settled over Tally’s mind for good.

  But she hesitated before putting the firestarter to the pi
le, paranoia staying her hand. The forest still made its sounds—dripping water, bird cries, the skitterings of small animals among the wet leaves—and it was easy to imagine something watching her from the darkened spaces between the trees.

  Tally sighed. Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.

  Well, Tally didn’t believe in spirits. The only things she had to worry about were Specials, and they would be looking along the river, kilometers behind her. Darkness had fallen as she built the fire, and it was already halfway to freezing. She couldn’t risk another fever out here in the wild, alone.

  The firestarter flicked to life in her hand, and Tally held it to the twigs until a blaze erupted. She nursed the fire along with larger and larger branches until it was strong enough to ignite the lightest of her logs, then banked it with the others to dry them out.

  Soon, the blaze was hot enough to push her back on her heels, and Tally felt warmth stealing into her bones for what seemed like the first time in days.

  She smiled as she stared into the flames. Nature was tough, it could be dangerous, but unlike Dr. Cable or Shay or Peris—unlike people in general—it made sense. The problems it threw at you could be solved rationally. Get cold, build a fire. Need to get somewhere, walk there. Tally knew she could make it to the ruins, with or without a hoverboard under her. And from there she would eventually find Zane and the New Smoke, and everything would be all right.

  Tonight, Tally realized happily, she was going to sleep well. Even without Zane beside her, she had made it through her first day of freedom in the wild, still bubbly and still in one piece.

  She lay down, watching the fire’s embers pulsing beside her, warm as old friends. After a while, her eyelids began to flicker, then to fall.

  Tally was deep in pleasant dreams when the shrieking woke her.

  HUNT

  At first, she thought the forest was on fire.

  There were flames moving through the trees, casting jittering shadows across the clearing, darting through the air like wild, burning insects. Shrieks rose up from every side, inhuman calls strung with meaningless words.

  Tally staggered to her feet and stumbled straight into the remains of her fire. Kicked embers flared to life in all directions. She felt hot needles through the soles of her boots, and almost fell to her hands and knees among the glowing coals. Another shriek came from close by—a high-pitched cry of anger. A human form ran toward her, a torch raised in one hand. The torch hissed and sparked with every step, as if the flame were a living thing impelling its carrier onward.

  The figure was swinging something across its path—a long, polished stick, gleaming in the firelight. Tally leaped back just in time, and the weapon whistled through empty air. She rolled backward on the ground, feeling the sting of the scattered embers in the middle of her back. Jumping to her feet, she spun away, dashing toward the trees. Another figure blocked her path, also brandishing a club.

  His face was obscured by a beard, but even in the jittering torchlight Tally could see that he was an ugly—fat and with a bloated nose, the pale skin of his forehead pocked with disease. He had ugly reflexes, too: The swing of the club was slow and predictable. Tally rolled under the flailing weapon, lashing out with her feet to take his knees out from under him.

  By the time she heard the thump of his body hitting the earth, Tally was up and running again, slashing through branches, angling toward the darkest part of the forest.

  Another chorus of shrieks rose up behind her, the pursuers’ torches casting flickering shadows onto the trees ahead. Tally crashed through the undergrowth almost blind, half-falling as she ran, wet branches whipping her face. A vine grasped her ankle, jerking Tally off-balance and throwing her to the ground. She stretched out both hands to catch herself, and felt one wrist bend too far backward with a wrenching burst of pain.

  She cradled the injured hand for a moment, glancing back at the ugly hunters. They weren’t as fast as Tally, but they ducked and weaved through the forest skillfully, knowing the way through the trees even in darkness. The hovering lights of their torches flowed into place around where Tally lay, the racket from their reedy cries surrounding her once more.

  But what were they? They looked small in stature, and they yelled back and forth in some language she didn’t recognize. Like pre-Rusty ghosts risen from the grave . . .

  Whatever they were, there wasn’t time to ponder the question. Tally rose to her feet and made another dash for the darkness, aiming for the gap between two torches.

  The two hunters closed on her as she approached: bearded men, their ugly faces marked with scars and sores. Tally crashed between them, close enough to feel the heat of the torches. A wildly swung club caught her shoulder with a glancing blow, but Tally managed to keep her feet, and found herself stumbling down a hill into blackness.

  The two cried out as they followed her, and more shrieks came from up ahead. How many of them were there? They seemed to be rising up from the ground itself.

  Suddenly, her feet splashed into cold water, and Tally found herself slipping, falling into a shallow creek. Behind, her two closest pursuers tumbled down the slope, their torches spitting out sparks as they bumped trees and branches. It was a wonder the whole forest wasn’t aflame.

  Tally got to her feet and dashed down the streambed, thankful for the route it cut through the undergrowth. She stumbled on the slick, rocky bottom, but found herself outpacing the burning eyes that darted along either bank. If she could only reach some sort of open ground, Tally knew that she could outrun the smaller, slower uglies.

  The sound of splashing feet came from behind her, and then a grunt and a stream of curses in their unknown tongue. One of them had fallen. Maybe she was going to make it.

  Of course, her food and water purifier were in her backpack in the clearing, back among the shrieking, club-wielding uglies. Lost.

  She forced the thought from her mind and kept running. Her wrist still throbbed from the fall, and she wondered if it was broken.

  A loud roar rose up before Tally, the stream boiling around her ankles, the ground rumbling. Then suddenly the earth seemed to disappear from under her feet as she ran. . . .

  Flailing through the air, Tally realized too late that the roar was behind her now—she’d run straight off the top of a waterfall. Her flight through emptiness lasted only a moment, then she hit water, a deep, churning pool that wrapped its chill around her, sound suddenly reduced to a low rumble in her ears. She felt herself hurtling downward into darkness and silence, slowly turning head over heels.

  One shoulder brushed the bottom, and Tally pushed herself upward. She came up gasping, clawing at the water until her fingers found a rocky edge. Clinging to it, she pulled herself up into the shallows, on hands and knees, coughing and trembling.

  Caught.

  Torches hovered all around her, reflected in the churning water like swarms of fireflies. Tally raised her eyes and found at least a dozen pursuers glowering down from the stream’s steep banks, their pale and ugly faces made even more hideous by the torchlight.

  A man was standing in the stream in front of her—his fat belly and big nose marking him as the hunter she’d knocked over at the clearing. His bare knee was bleeding where she’d kicked it. He bellowed a wordless cry, raising his crude club high into the air.

  Tally stared up at him in disbelief. Was he really going to hit her? Did these people murder total strangers for no reason at all?

  But no blow came. As he stared down at her, fear gradually filled the man’s expression. He thrust his torch toward her, and Tally shrank back, covering her face. The man sank to one knee before her, taking a closer look. She dropped her hands.

  His milky eyes squinted in the torchlight, staring in confusion.

&
nbsp; Did he recognize her?

  Warily, Tally watched the thoughts racing across his exaggerated features: growing fear and doubt, and then a sudden realization that something terrible had happened . . .

  The torch fell from his hand and into the stream, where it was extinguished with a strangled hiss and a puff of foul smoke. The man bellowed once more, this time as if in pain, the same word repeated again and again. He pitched forward, lowering his face almost into the water.

  The others followed, dropping to their hands and knees, their torches falling to sputter against the ground. They all set up the same wailing cry, almost drowning out the roar of the waterfall.

  Tally rose to her knees, coughing a little and wondering what the hell was going on.

  Looking around, she noticed for the first time that all the hunters were men. Their clothes were irregular, far cruder than the Smokies’ handmade clothing. They all had unhealthy marks on their faces and arms, and long beards that were matted and tangled. Their hair looked as if they’d never combed it in their lives. They were paler than pretty average, with the sort of freckly, pinkish skin of those occasional littlies born extra sensitive to the sun.

  None of them stared back at her. Their faces were buried in their hands or pressed to the ground.

  Finally, one of them crawled forward. He was thin and horribly wrinkled, his hair and beard white, and Tally remembered from her time in the Smoke that this was what old uglies looked like. Without the operation, their bodies grew decrepit, like ancient ruins abandoned by their builders. He trembled as he moved, either from fear or ill health, and stared closely at her for what seemed an endless time.

  At last he spoke, his wavering voice barely audible above the waterfall. “I know little the gods’ tongue.”

  Tally blinked. “You what?”