None of us speaks of Travis, or of the fire, or of our dwindling supplies pilfered from the platform along with weapons before it was consumed. None of us wonders aloud about how the fire is impacting the fences, if the metal is melting or becoming weak. If Unconsecrated are pouring slowly down the path behind us, slipping through breaches where the fences are falling to the heat.
We all release sighs of relief with each gate we come across and close behind us. But then the fire catches up when we sleep and we're forced to press on. Hot, tired, drained, hungry, thirsty.
One foot and then the next. Trying to keep our eyes on each other in the smoke. Trying not to smell how the air is tinged with burned, desiccated flesh. Only surviving. Existing. Not wanting to be the first in our group to give up.
Sometimes, when my feet refuse to move and my legs tremble with fatigue, I will wipe the sweat from my neck with a finger and write Travis's name in the ash coating my arms. I know that I can't let him down by stopping. He's dead because of me and I can't dishonor his sacrifice by refusing to move forward.
One night, when the dreams of Travis threaten to drown me with tears and rage, I walk away from the group craving air and solitude. The night glows orange on the horizon and my body shudders, knowing that the fire creeps steadily toward us and that tomorrow will be another long chase.
I hear sniffles in the dark and I look around until I see a small form huddled in a ball staring at the flames in the distance. It's Jacob. I go to him, sit down next to him and pull him, resisting, into my lap. Argos, who hasn't left Jacob's side since the fire, nudges his cold nose against my hand.
“I didn't mean to,” he tells me, again. Since we escaped he has done nothing but apologize for starting the fire on the platforms and I shush him, my lips against his hair. “I'm sorry,” he says through a sob and I hold him tighter. Regret washes over us both and I hate the thought of him carrying this guilt throughout his life.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I whisper.
His sobs quiet to sniffles and I feel his head nod.
“My mother used to tell me stories about the ocean, and about buildings taller than trees that touched the sky and how men used to walk on the moon.”
He giggles. “You're making up stories, Aunt Mary,” he says. But I can tell that he wants to believe me.
I lean in toward him and whisper, “It's true, and I have proof.”
I take the small book with the photograph of New York City from my blouse and hand the picture to him. He holds it close to his face, squinting. There's just enough light in the air from the fire to show the outlines of the buildings. I hear his breath catch and hold. “What is it?” he asks. He runs his fingers over it tracing the letters.
“It's a picture of a place that existed before the Return. That may still exist.”
“How do you know it's still there?”
I shrug. “Faith. Hope,” I tell him. “And that's why I am giving it to you. So that you have stories to keep you going. Something to believe in other than this path.” I smooth his hair off his forehead the way my mother used to do for me.
After a while I stand, tugging him to his feet, and lead him back to where the others sleep. For the first time I slip easily into my dreams and they don't cause me pain.
The next morning we continue to trudge down the path and I notice that Jacob holds his head a little higher, his shoulders a little straighter, and I smile for it.
But the days continue to be long and hard and unending. The meager supplies Harry and Jed rescued from the platforms are dwindling to nothing. And then finally, when I think I can go no farther, the first drop of rain slips across my forehead. Thunder echoes around us and lightning flashes. Thick drops of water begin to fall like pebbles, almost painful as they strike.
As we continue to trudge down the path I'm sure we all think the same thing: will this be the rain that quenches the fire? That allows us to slow our pace? That will allow us some rest, relief, reprieve?
I turn my face to the sky as the drops increase. I let the water slide down my face and mix with my tears and wash away my anger. Wash away the ash on my body, blurring where Travis's name was written on my arm until it's gone. I spread my arms wide, letting the water deluge me.
Cass and Harry scurry down the path, Jacob cradled between them, looking for shelter. Looking for a branch, a bush, anything to slow the sting of the punishing rain.
I allow myself to collapse, to fall to the ground while the water washes over me. Jed comes to kneel by me. He lays a hand on my cheek, asks me what I'm doing.
I grin, wide and strong. I tell him to leave me be.
He looks at me for a long moment, the water dripping from his hair and nose and chin.
And then he leaves me alone, for he understands my loss.
Water pools around me; I become part of the flow. I imagine myself in the ocean, every breath of air tinged with water. My lungs revolting as if I'm drowning.
The path beneath me softens into mud and I roll, allowing it to coat me, thrashing in the water and muck and tears.
I yell at the thunder. Shout at the lightning. I scream at the Unconsecrated, demanding to know why they have taken everything from me.
But the Unconsecrated only moan and paw at the fences.
I stand, race up and down the path, waving my fists. Baiting them. But they drop their hands. They wander away, shuffling down to taunt Harry and Jacob and Jed with their hunger.
Angry, I race to the fences, thrust my fingers through the links and shake with all my might. I bang against the metal.
But they leave me be. The Unconsecrated slip past me as if I'm not even there. The water and mud masking my scent.
Finally, Harry braves the rain again and comes to me where I'm slumped against the fence. He pulls me back just as Unconsecrated fingers slip through my hair like a fleeting memory.
With gentle movements he wipes the mud from my face. And then he pulls me to his chest and as the storm rages around us and the Unconsecrated beat at the fences he whispers in my ear, “I miss him too.”
For a moment we are one in our grief, and then we hear the shouts.
I look up to see Jed skidding down the path, waving his scythe in the air above his head. When my eyes meet his he stops and motions us forward. I can't hear what he is shouting.
Harry and I stand, find our footing and follow.
We pass Cass and Jacob shivering under a wide bush. Argos begins to trail after me and I hesitate and then push him back toward Jacob. The little boy grasps at the dog's scruff, burying his head in the fur at his neck. Argos looks up at me and whimpers slightly. I flip one of his ears through my fingers, scratching the tip, and his eyes relax into contented slits as he slides to the ground against Jacob. Absently the little boy rests a hand on the dog's tummy, fingers drumming, causing Argos's left hind leg to twitch. Cass glances up and mouths “Thank you” and keeps her arms tight around Jacob, returning her lips to his ears as if recounting some secret story.
I run to catch up with Harry and Jed where they wait still and silent. Here the path is wide enough for us to stand shoulder to shoulder all in a row, Jed taking center position.
He lifts the scythe, pointing down the path, and then lets it drop as if the effort is too much.
I take a step closer, not sure of what I am seeing, not sure if my eyes betray me. I can hear Harry's breathing, ragged from running all the way down here.
I sink to my knees; the sharp sting of a rock digs into my flesh, causing a small trickle of blood to mix with the rain slipping down my shin.
It's the end of the fence. The end of the path. There's nothing beyond but Forest. Another dead end.
My shoulders slump, my fingers trailing in the mud.
“I'm sorry, Mary,” Jed says. Because he knows that this was my hope.
“I guess we wait through the rain,” Harry says. “Hope that it kills off the fire. And then retrace our steps, go back to where the path splits and take another route.?
??
I shake my head, drops of water falling from the ends of my hair and my ears.
“This was the path,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“We will find another one,” Harry says, trying to calm me. Trying to make me feel better. But it doesn't help.
I believed so strongly that this was the correct path. That this would lead me out of the Forest and to the ocean.
“Maybe …,” I say, standing and wincing as the pain from my knee slices up my leg. I take a step forward.
“Don't do anything stupid, Mary,” Harry says. “This is just another dead end. We've encountered them before. No doubt we will again. This path wasn't anything special. None of them is.”
I shake my head again. There is something about this path that's different—something about this dead end that looks different from the rest.
I trace my fingers around the edges of the fence until they brush against the metal bar. “It's a gate,” I say as thunder booms overhead. I turn back to Harry and Jed, their figures obscured by the thick rain.
“It's a gate!” I shout. I feel for the metal bar to find the letters and turn it until I can read what it says: I for the number one. This is the first gate.
They glance at each other and then come to stand beside me.
“But the fences don't continue past the gate,” Harry says. “It just opens into the Forest—why would there be a gate if this is the end of the path?”
My heart hammers hard in my chest, thumping so fiercely that my breath comes out in puffs at the same rhythm. If this is the first gate it has to be the beginning and the end.
“Because we're supposed to go out into the Forest,” I say. With every beat of my heart I know this to be true.
But Harry just laughs. “How ridiculous,” he says. And then he sees my face. Sees me calculating the Forest past the fences. He grabs me by the shoulders. “You don't honestly believe that, do you?”
My breaths come rapidly now and I nod my head.
Jed steps in at that moment. “Mary, you cannot be serious!” He pulls me away from Harry. “Why would anyone expect someone to go out into that?” he says, waving a hand at the deep dark Forest.
“I don't know,” I tell him. “But it does not matter. This is the gate that will take us to the ocean. To the end of the Forest.” I point to the metal bar. “It's marked with the number one. The letters correspond with numbers and this is the first gate. This has to be the way.”
Hearing me, Harry throws his hands into the air and turns his back, his fingers massaging his temples as if that will help him control his apparent anger.
“Mary,” he says. He turns back to me and places his hand against my cheek and it slips down my face in the slick rain. He then takes my hand in his. I look at our twined fingers and it reminds me of the day down by the river when all of this first started.
Of the time we held hands under the water of the stream and he asked me to be his. All at once I realize all the pain I have caused him since then. The betrayal, the uncertainty.
“I'm sorry,” I tell him. The rain drips into my mouth as I talk. “I am so sorry for everything.”
He tilts his head. “Why would you be sorry?” he asks.
“You would have been a good husband to me,” I tell him.
The truth dawns on him that I plan to go through the gate and leave him and his grip on my hand tightens. “I always cared for you, Mary.”
I smile then, just a little. I wonder for a moment what my life would have been like if I had never held Harry's hand under the water that day. If I had finished the laundry on time, joined my mother on the hill while she looked for my father. Kept her from straying too close to the fences and getting infected.
I never would have joined the Sisters, I never would have fallen in love with Travis or met Gabrielle. I never would have learned their secrets and pined for a life outside the fences. I would have married Harry; our children would have grown up knowing Cass and Travis's children, Jed and Beth's.
I could have been content. Maybe even happy.
But fulfilled?
Harry drops my arm from his grasp. “But we both know you didn't want to be with me.”
I open my mouth to protest but he shakes his head. “You never did,” he adds.
I shake my head to clear it. “That world no longer exists,” I tell him. “We have to find our own way now. And for me that means going through the gate.” I glance over at Jed before continuing. “Please,” I tell Harry. “Go back to Cass. Stay with her and Jacob now. You know she hates the thunder.”
“But what if we're the last people?” he asks. “What if we are all that's left? If you leave us you aren't just damning us but all of humanity.”
“If we are all that is left,” I tell him, “then maybe we weren't meant to survive. Maybe we've only been postponing the inevitable by staying trapped in our village.”
“Cass was right—you're only chasing stupid bedtime stories and it's selfish,” he says as he throws his double-bladed ax to the ground and turns on his heel and walks away from me, back down the path into the damp darkness.
I pick up the ax, test its heft in my hand, the handle slippery with rain and mud.
“There's another way,” Jed says as soon as Harry is out of earshot. “There are other paths, probably other villages. This can't be the only way to the ocean, if it even exists.”
I watch the water trail down his cheeks and drip from his jaw. “No, this is the one.”
Again I see Jed's irritation flash across his face. “But how can you know, Mary?” he shouts. His muscles seem tight with frustration.
I throw my hands in the air, equally frustrated. “Because I figured out the code and it works. Because according to the code this is the first gate,” I shout back. “Because They wouldn't have put a gate here for no reason—”
“We don't even know who They are, Mary! How can we trust that They put a gate there for a reason? They've built these fences, these paths everywhere. Don't you think that if there was something important out there that They wanted us to find They would have just built a path there?”
“Jed, all I know is that—”
“You don't know anything! You asked us to take it on faith that we were following the right path and it led us to that village—”
“But it was the right path. And it was not on faith. I knew where we were going, I knew how to read the signs on the path. It led us to Gabrielle's village.”
“It led us to a death trap, Mary.”
“We had no other options, Jed!” I am panting now, my chest heaving and hands clenched into fists. “Why do you even care if I go through that gate?” I ask him. I can see that he's taken aback by the question. “You turned me away after our mother died!”
He steps back, his shoulders slumping a bit. He looks off into the Forest and for a moment we listen to the rain crash down around us. “Because you are all I have left of family,” he says.
“Mary, we can still go back,” Jed says, rain flying from his fingers as he waves his hands. “We can let the rain douse the fire. Backtrack, take another path. The fire would have killed most of the Unconsecrated. We have a few weapons, we could get through it.”
I can see how his eyes shine with the possibility.
“We might find another village, a healthy one. We could have a life….” He lets his voice trail off. “It's what I have wanted.” He speaks so softly I almost miss his words as they slip under the thunder. “Mary, why chase old dreams? What can the ocean give you that we cannot?”
I wonder if he's right. If my dreams of the ocean are only that: childhood dreams. Fancies. I wonder how I could have ever believed there was a place untouched by the Return. A world alive outside the Forest.
I think about turning back, of sliding back down the path and following its twists and turns, never knowing if we are going in the right direction.
“At least wait until morning before making a decision,” Jed says, his voi
ce gentle, sensing my hesitation. I can feel his hands around my wrist, tugging me back down the path. And a part of me wants to give in.
I hear a moan; I hear the familiar sound of bones breaking as Unconsecrated force their fingers and hands through the fence links.
“But tomorrow will be too late,” I tell Jed, jerking my wrist free. “The Unconsecrated will surround us tomorrow. Will surround the gate.”
Jed sweeps a hand at the fence, water flinging from his fingers. “They surround us now and you want to go out there?”
“But it's raining now, Jed. It will throw off my scent. This is the only time I can go.”
I can already feel my limbs begin to shake in terror and so I place one fist on my hip, hoping he won't notice how the ax trembles in my free hand. I wonder if he thinks I don't have the courage to follow through. If I will go to the gate and hesitate. Lose my nerve, turn back.
“Mary, it won't work. I tried that with Beth in the rain but she was still attacked.”
“She was attacked by Gabrielle,” I counter. “And Gabrielle is gone.” I think of her desiccated body the last time I saw her. I wonder if she has finally found peace or if she lives on, unable to move, staring into the sky.
Jed still shakes his head no but I stand straight, throw back my shoulders. I resist the urge to close my eyes as I place my hand on the latch holding the gate locked.
“I promised Travis that I wouldn't give up hope,” I tell him. “I promised him that I wouldn't accept safe and calm. Not at the expense of my dreams.”
“What are your dreams worth if you're dead?” he asks, his voice soft.
In response I turn the latch and slip through the opening. I'm already a few paces away when I hear Jed call out to me but I don't stop.
I am in the Forest of Hands and Teeth now. No longer protected by fences. There are no Unconsecrated by the gate and none that I can see or hear anywhere in the immediate darkness.
For the first time in my life I am the one on the other side of the fence.
I'm running, my arms pumping, gripping the ax tightly. The storm rages around me and I can hear the crash of trees, the sound of branches being tossed in the wind. I can't tell if the noises surrounding me belong to Unconsecrated. I keep my eyes glued on the ground in front of me, trying to look through the shiny darkness for anything that will cause me to fall. That will make me weak. Or a target.