She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s never told me any of this before. She’s told me stories about growing up in the Forest but never what it was like to be raised in it. I feel as though I’m catching a secret glimpse of her, not as my mother but as a girl who was once my age. Who faced the same fears that I do.
“I wanted you to have a different life, Gabrielle,” she says. “I felt danger every day, terror and fear, and I wanted you to grow up knowing nothing but safety and security. I thought that raising you in the lighthouse, where you could see past the Barrier—see that there was a world out there—would make you want more. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just taught you to be scared of anything that wasn’t safe.
“Maybe we’ll always live in a world of fences,” she says, waving her hand at the chain links on either side of the path. “But they’re to keep the Unconsecrated out. Not to keep you in.”
I let her words roll through my head and nod. And we sit together for a while listening to the Mudo thrash against the fences and the water drip through the night and then finally she stands and pulls me to my feet and we push on up the path toward morning.
It’s the middle of the next day when we first catch a glimpse of how close the Recruiters are behind us. We’ve pushed ourselves up another peak and look back to see them weaving down the mountain across the valley.
By the time the evening edges around us we can sometimes hear them. Their shouts threading through the air, mingling with the sound of the Mudo.
There’s been no sight of Catcher since he left me the morning before. I’m worried that he’s hurt worse than I thought and isn’t taking care of himself. That he might be out in the Forest alone and dying. I dig my nails into my palms trying to drive my thoughts away from him but I can’t.
“Maybe we should split up,” Harry suggests as darkness presses in and we’re forced to slow down. He looks down the mountain where we can see a line of torches marching steadily along the valley. Odys leans against his leg, a soft whine escaping him as if he can smell our fear.
“No,” my mother says, and we keep walking, exhaustion in every step.
Elias takes the lead and my mother and Harry trail behind us a ways. I feel awkward around Elias, as if suddenly I don’t know what to say to him. As if I’ve ever known what to say to him. He glances back at me as he walks and when he hears me stumble he’s always there with a strong hand offered. He steadies me but then turns back to the path. I feel awful for having pushed him away so many times before and I wonder if I’ve messed things up beyond repair. But then I remember all the times he’s pushed me away as well and I purse my lips and keep walking.
And then one time he doesn’t turn away. He stands facing me, his fingers still cupping my elbow. His touch tingles up my arm. “Gabry,” he says. I can barely see him in the night, I can just feel him, feel the heat outline of his body, the blurry edges of where his skin fades to darkness. He leans closer. I can feel him struggling for words and I hold my breath, waiting.
But he just shakes his head and backs away from me, his grip sliding slowly from my arm. I want to call him back. To tell him not to go. He stands still for a moment, just staring at me. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have ….”
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just wait. And hope.
Something changes in his face; the hesitancy slips away. He strides over to me and wraps a hand at the back of my neck. I gasp. His face is inches from mine. “I’m not Catcher,” he says. His fingers press into my skin. “I’m never going to know you like he does. I wasn’t there all those years. I’m never going to know the you before all this as well as he does.”
His thumb traces behind my ear and my chest flutters at the touch. “But you’re not the same either. You’re not the same girl you were before and he’s not the same boy. We’ve all changed. Everything in our world has changed. It’s never going to be the same again.”
He hesitates. My entire body tingles with anticipation. “I’m sorry I left you in the woods when we were kids,” he says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there all those years. I’m sorry I missed growing up with you and that I made you miss growing up with your family. I was supposed to take care of you and I didn’t. I failed. But I’m here now. I know who you are now. I know who you’ve become. You’re not Annah. You’re not even Abigail—you’re Gabrielle.”
All I can think about is what my mother said the night before about how none of us is perfect. How we all make mistakes. And how sometimes those mistakes make our life richer. I’d have never seen the ocean if I’d never been lost in the Forest as a child. I’d have never grown up with my mother or known Cira and Catcher. I’m who I am today because of Elias.
He presses on, the heat of his breath on my face. “And you’re the one I want,” he whispers. As he talks his lips skim over my own.
Before I can say anything, before I can even react, he pushes his hand into my hair. “I know that to you everything has changed for the worse over the last weeks. But for me …” He pauses, rests his forehead into the curve of my neck. “Before you my life was nothing but wandering and solitude and death. Now with you there’s possibility.”
He pulls back until we’re looking into each other’s eyes. “I’m falling in love with you, Gabrielle. Not with the person you used to be, but you.” He touches the center of my chest, his palm spreading flat against me. His words explode inside me, touching fire along my veins and spiraling into my heart. I can’t help but lean in to him, feeling the weight of his touch.
“We spend so much time worrying about the Unconsecrated and the fences and wondering about the before time,” he says, his voice soft and urgent, full of excitement. “We never build anything new. We just watch everything old crumble around us.”
His eyes are so light in the darkness, so bright that I feel as if I’m enveloped in the blaze of the lighthouse. I nod because I do understand what he’s saying; I’ve felt it too.
“I want more than that,” he whispers. He leans toward me and I hold my breath.
I feel something building and growing inside me. A desire to be something, do something great. The possibility that I could be someone better than I am.
“We can be so much more,” he adds, his mouth against mine.
It’s as if everything shifts around me, the pieces that didn’t fit together finally twisting until they match. The terror that had been clouding and suffocating me begins to filter away, dissipating in the night. “I want something more too,” I whisper. “I want more than looking back and wishing for what was or what could have been. Who I was or could have been. I want …” I lick my lips, tasting him. “I want you.”
He smiles against my mouth. He kisses me in the darkness and I wrap my arms around him. I feel his desire to keep me safe, the curl of muscles along his shoulders, the way his hand presses against my back. But I also feel my own strength, my own determination. I finally feel as if I’ve found myself.
He steps away from me, his grin glowing in the night, and I can’t help but laugh because I know that my smile is as big as his. He starts walking down the path backward, his eyes shining as he looks at me, energy pulsing between us.
And suddenly I no longer care about that first kiss with Catcher. Suddenly everything is all about here and now with Elias and me and what we can be together.
I used to think that I would give anything to go back to that moment in the park. To save Catcher. To save us all. But now I’m not so sure.
“Gabry,” Elias says. He holds a hand out to me and I smile, anticipating the feel of his skin against mine. He walks away as I draw closer, laughing and smiling and teasing, waiting for me to chase him. And then he takes another step and is gone.
I stand there staring at nothing, not understanding how he suddenly disappeared. Then I hear the scream. I lunge forward, into the space his body just occupied. There’s nothing, my toes curling over emptiness. I almost slip into it before I’m able to fall backward and away.
“Elias!” I shriek. I crawl forward. My hands shake and then my fingers feel the end of the path where it suddenly drops away. Sound blurs, roaring one loud rush through my ears. The air tastes wrong, of salt and rot. I push my head out and look down, feeling the ground crumble away underneath me.
I swallow. “Elias!” My voice shakes and panic stretches around me. Closing me in, pulling me tight. The rushing grows too loud—I can’t hear anything. Not my own shouting, not my own heart, nothing.
I reach my hand out, terrified, feeling into the empty air. Grasping for him as if he could be just beyond my reach. I lean out farther into the void. “Elias!”
A hand grabs my ankle. Yanks me back. I scream and kick, the panic consuming me. Until I feel his heat, the sear of Catcher’s skin. His breathing comes in ragged gulps, his face white in the night. I try to roll away from him but he holds my legs pinned to the ground. “Don’t move,” he says.
I nod, my heart pounding. Wondering where he came from; how and why he’s here. If he’s been watching us this whole time, listening. He crawls out next to me until he can push his torso into the blackness. “Elias!” he calls out.
I sit up, scrambling back from the edge of the path. “You have to get him, Catcher. He has to be okay. You have to make sure he’s okay,” I beg. All I can see is Elias’s face just before he fell. If I’d reached out for him. If I’d said something. Anything. I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to force away the thought.
The same words roll repeatedly through my head: Elias is gone, Elias is gone, Elias is gone.
I grind my jaw, feeling the pain in my teeth. Elias is gone. He said he loved me and now he is gone.
And then I hear something. It’s not even a sound but I know it’s there. The same way you feel the buzz of a gnat before it bites in the evening. I scrabble back to the edge. “Elias!” I screech as Catcher throws out an arm to hold me back.
I dig my fingers into the ground and hold my breath. I wait. I hear him.
“Elias,” I call out again. “Elias, are you okay? Where are you? What happened?”
His voice is strained when he shouts back, “I’m caught on something. I can’t see anything.”
I choke on relief, swallowing back the desire to sob. “Are you okay?”
He hesitates. In the silence all I can hear are the moans of the Mudo on the other side of the fence bordering the path. “Elias!” I call out again in a panic, afraid that he’s fallen farther or passed out.
“I’m here, Gabry,” he says. He sounds weaker now. And I don’t know why he won’t tell me if he’s okay.
I turn to Catcher and grab his shirt. “You have to get him,” I say, desperate. I know what I’m asking him to do. I know I’m asking him to risk himself for someone else who loves me. For the man I’ve chosen over him. “Please, Catcher, please, you have to help me get him.”
Catcher doesn’t hesitate. He just nods and vaults the fence beside the path, running into the woods. I look around, searching the ground with my hands, trying to find something useful. Something that will help pull Elias up. But there’s nothing. On either side of me the fence just ends, the path falling away to emptiness.
Catcher returns with what little dry wood and leaves he could find. Harry and my mother finally catch up and they help him arrange it, trying desperately to start a small fire for light. Odys circles around them, trying to herd Catcher toward the fences until he finally comes to sit by me, whining and nudging my hand with his cold nose.
I lie at the edge of the path, my head over the nothingness. Wind blows my hair over my lips and around my neck. “Elias, can you hear me?” I ask him. I strain, hearing him grunt. Behind me I hear muttering as they try to strike the fire, try to coax it to life. But everything is soggy from the rain.
“Elias, you have to hold on,” I tell him. “Please, just listen to me. You have to hold on for me. Please, for me. I’m sorry.” I should have pulled him to me. I should have grabbed him and kissed him again. He wouldn’t have fallen otherwise.
I close my eyes and wish for the sun. All these times I’ve asked the earth to spin slower—to take me back—and now I will it toward dawn.
In the darkness below sounds begin to churn, something I didn’t hear until now. It’s as though a river is rushing at the bottom of the cliff. It fades and blends with the echo of the Mudo moans around us and causes Odys to skitter and pace. I can’t hear Elias anymore and my blood burns with panic.
It’s almost morning, I can taste it in the tang of the air, hear it in the stirring of birds in the trees. Any moment the day will break, giving us the light we need.
“We have to hurry,” I shout over my shoulder. I turn to the fire and see Catcher puffing at the embers. Already the sky is starting to blink awake. I strain to see Elias but still see nothing, only the blurry edge of the rocky cliff and the faint outline of my hands as I reach into the emptiness.
Catcher finally wraps two branches with a spare shirt from my mother’s bag and lights them in the fire. He carries one to the edge of the path and hands the other to Harry, who follows him.
I watch as Catcher lowers the flame into the semidarkness, sweeping it over the cliff. I catch my breath when I finally see Elias at the edge of the light. “I can get down to him,” I say, pulling my legs around to the emptiness. But Catcher holds me back.
Already the sky’s a glow surrounding the horizon. It oozes over the mountain across the valley from us, slowly filling it with light.
I look at Catcher, ready to tell him to let me go, but something in his face stops me. The fire jumps and trembles as he reaches for Harry’s torch with a shaking hand. He holds both torches out over the void and then he lets them go.
The flames look like broken birds as they flutter down. And just before they extinguish we can all see the movement. The flick of an arm, the edge of a jaw.
None of us moves, none of us breathes or says a word. Just below where Elias lies caught by a fragment of fence, Mudo reach for him, their fingers scraping the earth of the cliff for him. I don’t know how many there are but right now they still can’t get to him.
“Elias, don’t move,” I say, knowing my voice doesn’t have enough force to reach him. I see blood leaking through his shirt, trailing down his arm and dripping into the frenzied Mudo below him.
Without taking my eyes off Elias, as if my gaze can keep him safe, I grip Catcher’s arm, my fingertips biting into his skin. “You have to help him,” I say.
The world continues to spin us toward day, the light growing stronger as Catcher eases over the edge of the cliff. Already I can see more of our surroundings, see that the edge of the mountain’s washed away. Uprooted trees are twisted with what’s left of the fence that bordered the path, all of it strewn down the side of the mountain.
Elias lies against one of these sections of fence caught between two brittle-looking young trees about twenty feet down from where we are. Below him the Mudo struggle toward him, their fingers raw and bloody from trying to climb up the rocky dirt. I hold my breath, hoping the mountain’s too steep for the Mudo to reach him.
Catcher starts to make his way toward Elias, holding on to roots and bushes, when his feet slip out from underneath him. I press my hand to my mouth, wanting to call out for Catcher to be careful. Wanting to beg Elias to say something to let me know he’s okay. But as the sky lightens I can tell even from here that his face is white, his lips pressed together in pain and his leg cocked at an unnatural angle.
At that moment all I want in the world is for Elias to be okay. Rocks slide under Catcher’s feet, bouncing down the hill, a few striking the Mudo before falling into the darkness of the valley. Catcher slips again, stumbling down a few feet before he’s able to stop himself by grabbing on to a sapling.
I close my eyes. I can’t watch. I know that my heart will stop completely if something happens to Catcher or Elias. I hear more rocks and dirt tumble down the hill; I hear Odys whining and Harry whispering what sounds like a prayer. br />
But all I do is think about Elias, remember the touch of his lips on mine, focus on the sound of his voice when he told me he wanted to be with me. Feel in every part of myself how much I care for him—how much I desperately need him to be okay.
Finally I hear my mother sigh with relief and I open my eyes. Elias lies on the ground, Catcher standing over him panting and sweating from the effort of pulling him back up the cliff. All I can do is stare at Elias, afraid to move closer. At his leg, which doesn’t look right. Which is broken and twisted. At his face, which is ashen and washed with pain.
My mother pulls off his shirt, which is now stained with blood, and hands it to Catcher to hold against a wide gash in Elias’s side. Harry rummages through the packs for water and extra clothes to tear up for bandages. My mother runs to the dying fire and grabs two unused sticks. She lays them next to Elias’s leg, her face grim. She places one hand at the ankle and the other at the knee. She takes a deep breath and then I hear the snap. I see Elias’s eyes open wide, his body buck and stretch.
The Mudo push against the fence, smelling the blood, needing it. Their moans mingle with the echoes drifting over the cliff, surrounding us, making it difficult to think.
“Is he going to be okay?” I ask quietly, trying to stay out of the way while my mother works on his injuries.
No one looks up at me. No one answers. Elias pants loudly, grunting with pain.
I think about the cuts on Cira’s arms. How living on the path in the Forest caused the blood infection that would have killed her. That could kill Elias as well if he hasn’t already lost too much blood. I swallow again and again, trying to stop my mind from thinking such thoughts. Trying to concentrate on the here and now and not worry about what’s next. Because I don’t know what can be next for us. Not with his leg the way it is. Not with the Recruiters so close behind us.