He liked feeling safe.
He hadn’t realized that he’d missed music until he had it again. Practice for these kids wasn’t a chore at all, it was more like the reward for getting the chores done, something they looked forward to every day. Hank’s oboe dipped and soared, and Dana’s flute and Kimberly’s piccolo were like silver lines traced in the air. Even Crash played the glockenspiel with such delicacy it sounded like tinkling bells. Kimberly wrote music, too, so there was always new stuff to practice.
He could get used to this. Maybe their plan to get to the end of the valley was dangerous and bound to fail. Maybe if they stayed put, whoever was building this place would just get tired and leave them alone. Or lift the mist and allow a plane to drift into the airspace and not destroy it. Allow it to see them.
Javi had been the one to push to get to the end of the valley. He’d thought it would save Molly, save all of them.
Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe they had more options than they knew.
Maybe nobody else had to die.
Molly sat down next to him as he tried to master the stitch Dana had taught him. The curtains on the lean-tos needed to be replaced. He had trouble getting the material to cooperate. It kept bunching and twisting. Dana had made it look so easy. It had taken him forever just to do one row.
“Yoshi thinks we should leave right away,” Molly murmured. “He thinks he and Anna were caught in a time warp yesterday out in the woods.”
“Yesterday?” Javi suddenly felt confused for a second. Hadn’t Anna gone missing a couple of days earlier?
“Whenever,” Molly said. She looked confused for a minute, too, but then the expression passed. There were small beads of sweat on her collarbone, and she yanked at her shirt collar. “Anyway, Hank tried to talk me into staying. I said yes, but … I don’t know, I keep thinking about what Yoshi said.”
“It does feel safe here,” Javi said, jabbing at the material. Oh, if he just held the cloth taut, then went in at an angle, it worked perfectly, just as Dana had said. He let out a sigh of satisfaction.
“Hey, I hate to interrupt your sewing, but we have decisions to make.”
Javi looked up and met Molly’s impatient gaze. “You can mock it, but I’m learning a useful skill. Look around. These guys really made something here.”
“Sure,” Molly said. “I give them that. But they’re not any closer to getting out.”
Javi bent over his work again. “I’m just saying Hank has a point. We don’t know for sure what’s at the end of the valley. We only know what zombie-Oliver told us. It’s not like there was a box on the map that said, Rescue is here. What if that weird nightmare alien lives there?”
“There are a thousand what-ifs,” Molly argued. “If we looked at all of them, we’d never move.”
“But that’s my point,” Javi said. “The one option we didn’t consider was not moving at all. Remember when we were little and our moms told us that if we ever got separated, just stay put? That it was the best way to find us again?”
“You can’t compare all this to getting lost in Target!”
“I’m not! I’m just saying! Every time we go to a new biome, we lose someone!”
Molly stood, her fists clenched. There was something wild in her eyes that he didn’t understand. “What about Oliver? He told us he’d meet us there!”
“That wasn’t Oliver!” Javi felt his throat burn with unshed tears. He knew, right then, that he’d lost hope. “Oliver is dead. He was sucked under the sand, and you made the decision not to go after him until it was too late.”
It was the worst thing he could have said to her. It was like something terrible inside him, all his fear and anger and grief, had packed inside the words and sent them shooting out of his mouth.
Funny thing about words. Once they’re in the air, they’re gone.
They stared at each other, shocked. They’d never spoken to each other this way. Javi could feel the strong base of their friendship splinter into cracks as Molly stalked off.
She felt Javi’s words like a bruise. Like he had punched her.
Her fault Oliver was dead.
But he’s not! her heart cried.
He was alive; she knew he was. He had to be!
“Hey!” Kimberly broke into her thoughts. “The idea is to pull the weeds, not the crops.”
Molly looked down at the green shoot in her hand. She’d left Javi and spotted Kimberly working in the tuber patch. She offered to help, even though the last time she’d interacted with a plant was during her second-grade cabbage project. “Oh. Sorry!”
“It’s okay.” Kimberly held up a fistful of green. “Weeds.” She pointed to the ground. “Tubers.”
“Got it.” Molly crouched down and pulled a weed from the tuber plot. Kimberly had been surprised to hear that Molly didn’t have a garden at home. The fact that they could pull tubers from under the ground instead of out of a produce bin was still remarkable to Molly.
Oliver was a city kid, too. He lived only a few blocks from Molly. She knew his mom and dad. Molly willed herself not to think of Oliver’s red-haired little brother and his cat, Zazie.
Then the world dropped away and she felt memory take her over.
Summer. She sat on Oliver’s front stoop, the stone warm against her legs. Oliver grinned at her. There was juice from a grape ice pop on his chin. She could feel the sun on her back. Her hands were sticky, and her mouth felt full of cherry flavor from the ice pop she was devouring. A woman walking by smiled at her and said, “That looks good.”
Molly could hear it, she could feel it, she could taste it. A summer day in Brooklyn.
She shook her head to make the memory go away. She didn’t want to remember Oliver like that, happy and alive. She didn’t want to think about the decision she’d made at that horrible moment.
Yoshi had tried to save Oliver, had allowed himself to get sucked underneath the sand, had groped for him, had searched until his air ran out and his heart had almost burst. He’d come up again, taken a breath, gone down again, and when he came up again without Oliver, gasping, worn out …
In a flash, Molly had decided that Yoshi could not try again. They would lose him, too. There was a monster under the sand, a beast that could have taken Yoshi or any one of them at any moment. They were weak from the lack of water and food.
She had said no. No more rescue attempts.
They had moved on, they had found water, and then Molly made the decision to go back. Instead, Oliver had found them. The robotic Oliver with the dead eyes and voice.
Molly tried to push it all out of her brain. Concentrate on weeds.
Everything was peaceful in the compound. Musical instruments were lined up on the table, and Stu and Drew were busy polishing and blowing into them, not making music, just checking stops and keys.
Hank sat with his back to the big flat log that served as a seating area for the group, teaching Akiko a song. He played the tune and waited for her to repeat it on her flute. It was a complicated melody and she kept getting it wrong, but they would both laugh and she would try to follow him again.
Javi and Dana had finished hanging all the new vine curtains for the lean-tos. Everyone had eaten lunch. For some reason Molly couldn’t remember what she’d had, but her belly felt full and she was almost drowsy.
“I think we got them all,” Kimberly said, standing up and dusting off her hands. “Thanks for the help.”
“When will these tubers be ready to eat?” Molly asked.
“Maybe another two weeks,” Kimberly answered. “Don’t worry, we have plenty in storage.”
As they walked up to the others, Hank was showing Akiko the different handmade reeds he’d fashioned. He played his oboe and the sound came out high and sharp. Molly didn’t know music, but even she knew he wasn’t making those sounds on purpose.
“Hey, daddy-o, can you cool it? That noise is gonna break my glasses!” Crash called. “And I’m not wearing any!”
Molly did
n’t think it was so bad. There was something different and interesting about the sound.
Akiko examined Cal’s half-broken clarinet. She put it to her mouth and tried to mimic the sound that Hank was making. Kira laughed and clapped her hands over her ears. Hank grinned and kept going. The music skittered and jumped. It didn’t so much swell in sound as punctuate the air like raindrops. Or shredder bird beaks. Peck, peck, peck. Swoop, swoop, swoop. Kimberly put her fingers in her ears.
Molly’s head filled with the notes. It was like staring at a math test she hadn’t studied for, and yet the numbers almost made sense. It was the song she couldn’t get out of her head, but couldn’t remember the words to.
It was familiar and it was strange, all at once.
“I’m losing it,” Molly muttered.
Cal emerged from the hut and stared at Hank and Akiko.
“Significant shift!” he suddenly shouted.
The notes arranged themselves into something new. Molly didn’t hear strange, scratchy music anymore. She was on the edge of grasping something. Not music, but … concepts. Not notes, but meaning.
Significant shift. The thought buzzed around in her mind. Which was strange, because she had no idea what it meant.
She stood stock-still while Cal looked across the compound at her. Their eyes met, and his were strange and alien, and she was so afraid her whole body began to shake.
Hank played another burst, and the gel cubes around the fire flared with light, then dimmed.
Molly swallowed, but her voice was still a croak. “Hank? Can you play those notes again?”
“Not really notes,” Hank said. “More like a series of glissandos.”
“Whatever!”
Hank blew into the oboe. The sound wasn’t the same, but it was close to what it had been. Akiko picked up the pitch and blew into the broken clarinet, trying to match it.
The cubes flared again, a bit lower this time. On the log beside Hank, the Cub-Tones’ alien device also came to life. The glowing symbols along the ring pulsed in strange rhythms.
“Did you see that?” Molly asked. “The music … ”
“It’s not music,” Kimberly said with a laugh. “It’s noise.”
Dana looked over at Molly, her gaze sharp. “Cal says that. Music noise music noise. All the time.”
“He’s trying to tell you something,” Molly said. “All of us. The music affects the devices somehow. Maybe other things. Maybe we don’t know everything the devices do.” She reached into her pocket for the Killbots’ device. It wasn’t there.
“Omoshiroi,” Akiko said.
“Interesting,” Kira translated for the Cubs.
“I can’t find the device I was holding,” Molly said. “Does anyone have it?
“Countdown,” Cal said. “Four five six is not the frequency.”
Hank spun around. “What is the frequency, Cal?”
Cal didn’t look at Hank. He looked up at the sky. “Four five six is not the frequency.”
Hank spun back in frustration. “Why are you so useless?”
“Stop it!” Kimberly stepped forward. Her face was flushed. “Stop punishing him! He can’t help it! You were his best friend!”
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Molly had never seen Kimberly snap at anyone like that. Especially Hank. She snuck a look at Javi. Her own feelings were still smarting from their argument earlier that … morning? Afternoon?
Funny, she couldn’t remember how long it had been. Molly glanced up at the treetops, hoping to glean some sense of the time. All she could see was an endless ceiling of mist.
Akiko murmured something. Javi turned to her. “What did you say?”
“Yoshi,” Akiko said. “Where did he go?”
“Not again,” Hank said with a groan. “Doesn’t that guy ever stay put?”
“He’s probably hunting,” Javi said.
Kira shook her head sadly. “Or gone,” she said. “Maybe for good.”
The way to defeat the sense of being lost is to not feel lost.
Anna wasn’t lost. She was just … discovering new ways to get where she was going.
Kimberly hadn’t been exaggerating when she said the rust-colored moss was hard to spot. Anna kept getting turned around, and she was already going in circles. When she saw the moss, she went in the opposite direction. She knew Yoshi would keep heading away from the compound.
She had to find him. Kira had warned the others with her few English words and a lot of pantomime that Yoshi had likely headed off on his own. And he’d taken the Killbots’ device. Kira was afraid he would simply keep going. Get to the end of the valley by himself.
That couldn’t happen. He’d never make it.
Hopefully Molly, Hank, and the others wouldn’t notice she was gone for a while. It shouldn’t take long. She knew where Yoshi was headed. She had to talk to him, had to convince him not to leave.
At last she arrived at the bramble bushes she’d plunged into to get away from the snakehog. That meant the stream was close, and the ridge was beyond the stream. Anna wrapped the ends of her shirt around her hands and tried to push her way through. They seemed to have grown thicker and taller since the last time, or maybe panic had made her not notice how sharp the barbs were. Eventually, she dropped to her knees, where the twisting trunks were free of thorns. She had to practically crawl on her belly.
She heard a strange noise, a clicking, scratching noise. It seemed to rise from beneath the earth. A burrowing creature? She moved faster, grabbing the ground to propel herself along. Chunks of dirt flew into her face as she scrabbled forward. Finally, she rolled out onto the clearing. She looked behind her quickly, but no creature had followed her.
Yoshi was standing yards away. He looked at her and raised one eyebrow, a skill Anna had always wanted to have.
“Nice entrance. You’re looking good.”
“Thanks.” Anna sprang to her feet and dusted off her knees. She walked over to join Yoshi, who was standing by the skeleton of the snakehog.
“Wow, his bones are picked clean already,” Anna said.
Yoshi seemed skeptical. “Well, it’s been a couple of days,” he said. “Plenty of predators out here.”
Days? Anna tried to remember. Meanwhile, Yoshi went back to what he was doing, poking his katana into the tree grove, then quickly sliding it back out.
“What are you doing?”
“Stirring a wasp’s nest.”
“And this is a good idea because … ?”
“Don’t worry, the jawbugs aren’t leaving the grove. They perceive the threat, then adjust when it leaves. I think there’s a giant nest in the cave.”
“There’s a cave?”
“You can see it when they come out of it. I’m just trying to figure it out. I think this might be where ‘the Thing’ that the Cub-Tones are so afraid of is.”
“Oh, it makes total sense that you’re trying to provoke an apex predator so it will get angry and eat us,” Anna said.
“I’m not an idiot,” Yoshi said. “Obviously, I’m not going in there until I know what I’m dealing with.”
“You shouldn’t go in there at all,” Anna said.
“Listen to this.” Yoshi rapped the hilt of his sword against the ground. “Do you hear that? It’s metal. There’s something under the dirt. I think it’s a tunnel.” Yoshi squatted close to the ground and put his hand down. “You can feel vibrations, like something big is moving down there.”
Anna knelt to feel the ground. “I thought I heard something belowground when I was crawling before. Maybe we should come back with the others.”
“That could be a plan if the Cubs weren’t all basically useless.”
“That’s not fair,” Anna said. “Is that why you want to leave?”
“Who said I was leaving? Kira?” Yoshi’s face darkened with anger. “She talks too much.”
“She was worried. Why did you take the device?” she asked.
“Because I wanted to test a theory.”
br /> Anna shot to her feet. “But you’re leaving! You’re going on without us! How could you do that to us?”
“What?” Yoshi looked up at her. “Is that what you think I’m like? That I’d steal something that helps us survive?”
“How am I supposed to know what you’d do?” Anna demanded. “You’re so angry all the time! Don’t you ever just talk to people?”
“We’re talking right now!”
“No, we’re not. We’re arguing!”
Anna wanted to howl in frustration. How could she tell this angry boy that they needed him? In a way that wouldn’t embarrass him? That was the trick.
The breeze lifted Anna’s hair. The evening wind was coming.
No. It was too early for the yokaze. It was early afternoon. Wasn’t it?
The wind was rhythmic. It beat against her ears.
“ANNA!” Yoshi bellowed, and started to rise, already reaching for his sword.
She felt a shadow on her and had only a split second to look up and see the raptor bearing down on her. She saw a bright green eye shot with yellow, and sharp claws extended from a powerful body the size of a large dog.
Anna screamed. She saw Yoshi’s desperate face as he strained to reach her, but it was too late. The raptor plucked her off the forest floor.
Anna watched in disbelief as the ground receded. Yoshi was just a dot, his katana in a backswing, aiming for a target that was already several hundred feet in the air and rising higher.
It had happened so fast! Adrenaline flooded her body as the bird’s talons dug into her shoulders. She was afraid to twist or beat her fists against it. What if it dropped her?
The huge beating wings were like drumbeats. They weaved through the topmost branches at high speed. Anna hugged her legs against her chest, afraid they’d slam against a branch. Then they burst through the top of the canopy into gray formless sky. Anna blinked, trying to get her bearings. From here she could see through occasional breaks in the canopy. She saw the compound in the middle of the forest. She glimpsed the thin ribbon of the stream. Away in the distance, the ridge. And as the raptor rose she saw beyond the ridge … more forest. Acres and acres of forest. And maybe, at the very end … something gray? Something that moved? What moved and shimmered like that?