Harry comes to grab me, to urge me down the path. Argos spins around us both, barking and growling at the Unconsecrated that pulse against the fences on either side of us. But I refuse to move, to go any farther. Instead, I lace my fingers through the mesh of the gate where Gabrielle just stood and look through the early morning haze back toward our home.
“It was her,” I whisper. My body is beginning to go numb, as if it can't take any more and it's shutting down.
Harry tugs at my arm, tries to pull me away from staring at the carnage swirling in the mist. “What are you talking about, Mary?”
“The one I was telling you about last night.” I start to beat at the gate, wanting to feel as many emotions as possible to prove that I am still alive. “Gabrielle. The girl who came down the path. She was the one who caused this. She was the reason …”
“Mary, what are you talking about?” His voice is sharp around the edges, as if he will shatter at any moment.
I feel as if I'm ripping apart inside, everything fragmenting at once. “Don't you see? They did this to her! The Sisters, they caused this and—”
Harry pries my fingers from the fence and pulls me against his body. “That doesn't matter anymore.”
I struggle against him, not wanting comfort as fury and terror mix in the pit of my stomach. “But what if the Guardians had something to do with—”
“I said it does not matter, Mary!” His voice rumbles through my chest, vibrating my entire body. “What is done is done and now is not the time to speak of it!”
I bow my head. I know I shouldn't press him and yet I can't help it. “But it proves—”
“No!” he shouts. His nostrils flare and he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, shakes his head. When he speaks again his words are carefully measured, barely contained. “It proves nothing. Only that the fences have been breached and that our village is under attack and that we are not there to help them.”
Looking back at the village, I see figures moving but I can't tell if they are living or Unconsecrated. I can't tell if it is a skirmish, a battle or a war. I think I see that flash of red again but I can't be sure that it isn't my mind playing tricks on me. Telling me what I want to see.
But then there is someone coming toward us out of the fog. Two people approaching. I take a step back, wondering if it's more Unconsecrated. Wondering how I have now found myself on the side of the Forest fearing what is in my village.
Their features begin to crystallize and I recognize the limp of Travis.
Chapter 16
The path just on the other side of the gate is wide enough for the four of us to stand in a row—me and Harry, Travis and Cass—our shoulders sometimes touching as we watch the fog lift and understand fully the chaos that's taking place in our village.
The oddest thing about an Unconsecrated invasion is that no dead litter the ground; they all rise and join ranks with the enemy or are devoured. Again and again we see friends and neighbors felled, only to return and fell more friends and neighbors in time.
I stand between Harry and Travis. Cass is on the other side of Harry. Behind us Jacob lies wrapped up tightly like a roly-poly, his arms around his knees. I can hear his body jerk as he struggles to contain his sobs. Occasionally Argos goes to Jacob's side, whimpers and licks his face. But Jacob doesn't notice and Argos returns to place his muzzle in my hand and whine.
Next to me I feel Travis shift and the skin of his knuckles skims my hand. I twitch my fingers in response, and we link our pinkies. He pulls my hand into his and I sway with relief. With this simple gesture that he is safe. That we are still okay. I tamp down the thoughts that had crept through my dreams the night before: that Travis never came for me. That he never cared for me. That he did not want me.
His thumb glides over the pulse in my wrist and then I feel his body stiffen. His fingers trace along the rope still tied to me, frayed and dingy now. It's the rope that bound Harry and me together the night before.
Travis's hand slips away from mine. I feel its absence the way it must feel to lose a limb. Desperate, the ghost of its presence still taunting me.
I want to turn to him, to talk to him. But I can't force the words from my mouth with Harry standing so close. With our village dying before us.
“Do you think we should go help them?” Harry asks.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see his hand clenching and unclenching from the ax he brought from our cottage. His voice is flooded with the same hopelessness we all feel.
None of us moves. Instead, we simply stand and stare. Unable to fully comprehend what is happening. That the world we have always known is crumbling.
That such a thing would occur must have been inevitable and yet none of us ever believed it would happen. Never really thought it could happen. Of course we have known breaches and have lived always with the threat of the Unconsecrated. But it's been generations since the Return. We were surviving. Our village is a testament to life constantly surrounded by the threat of death.
And now that is gone. Everyone we have ever known, the only place we have ever been, every possession: gone.
Soon enough the dead shuffle through the village and one by one they approach the gate. As if we are the last of the living for them to hunger after. While the day wears on we stand and watch the Unconsecrated gather on the other side, watch as they push against the fencing. Listen to the shouts of the survivors as they try in vain to beat them back, as they fight from the platforms to recapture the village.
I begin to recognize those clawing at the gates. Some of them are—were—my neighbors. Were my friends and classmates. Some were their parents. Fresh blood still stains their clothes, in some cases drips from their mouths.
I wonder about those left on the platforms, fighting against these newly turned Unconsecrated. I wonder if they realize that by pulling the ladders up in their panic, they have only added to the chaos, only added more victims for the Unconsecrated to turn. Only created more enemies—hundreds of them.
After a while it becomes too much for Cass to bear and she breaks away from our group, goes to Jacob, who has been lying comatose on the ground, and pulls him into her lap. I can hear her singing lullabies, humming where she forgets the words.
In some small way it's a comfort to hear her voice. To be reminded that there can be normalcy. Even as everything else in our world slips away.
“I worry about the latch on the gate holding,” Harry says as the sun begins to slip away at the end of the day. “It wasn't meant to keep back the Unconsecrated. Only to guard this path.”
I shudder as I look at the metal latch that is all that protects us from the ravenous horde. I look at the fence on either side of us, at how it's wide here but narrows as it leads away from the village. Its links are red with rust and vines twine through them. Because the path is off-limits, the fences have never been cared for and I wonder how many Unconsecrated pushing against it would bring it down.
“We should go down the path some,” Travis says. “Far enough that they lose interest and turn back toward the village. Stop pressing against the gate. Maybe …” He trails off and then seems to find his voice again. “Maybe during the night they can fight them off. Regain control of the village.” No one responds and it is as if he is compelled to add, “We should at least give them the night; see what it looks like in the morning.”
Harry nods, his hand still gripping the ax, his shoulders tense.
I say nothing. I can't trust my emotions, the tingle that vibrates up my arms and legs. I turn to look down the trail, the others still concentrating on the gate and Cass's attention fully on Jacob. I take a few steps, at once scared and thrilled.
The path here is overgrown and brambles tug at my skirt so that I have to fight against them with every step.
Behind me I can hear Travis and Harry arguing about food and weapons. About whether the village would be able to repel the breach or if the path is our only hope.
I am silent as I walk away from the village. Far enough away so that I am not a draw to the Unconsecrated at the gate. As the path begins to narrow I stretch my arms out wide and almost scrape the links of the fence with my fingertips. Here the Forest is clear of Unconsecrated and for a moment I imagine I can hear a bird chirp in the distance.
Finally, I make my own decision: I will give them the night to see if the village repels the breach. But then I will go down this path. Alone if I have to.
Sometime during the night it begins to rain. Taking Travis's advice, we've moved our little group down the path, and here it is too narrow for us to huddle together against the cold and the wet. Travis and Harry sit next to each other, Harry closest to the gate since he is the only one with a weapon.
I sit at the other end of the line, Argos with his head on my knee as I tug at his ears and press my hand against his smooth fur. Cass is between us with Jacob curled tightly in her lap. Her hair is scraggly, pulling from its braid to create a halo around her face in the darkness. Jacob drifted into limp-limbed sleep some time ago but Cass continues to rock and hum, as much for her own comfort as his.
Travis and Harry continue to murmur together, Travis's light head tilted toward Harry's dark one as they whisper, trying to determine what to do next. The rain throws off the Unconsecrated's ability to sense us—the air heavy with water, our scent dulled. Some have wandered away from the fence on either side, slipping back into the Forest. It's a welcome reprieve from the crushing sound of their moans, even though if the wind changes I can still hear the last gasps of the battle in the village just down the path.
The Unconsecrated are a determined foe that never sleeps. I know that the villagers must take advantage of the rain for their attack—the scent of human flesh deadened in the water-soaked air making it harder for the Unconsecrated to find them.
Every now and then Harry or Travis will raise his voice and the Unconsecrated will stir out in the Forest. Each time Cass hisses for them to be quiet and once, when one of the Unconsecrated curls his fingers through the fence behind her, rust flakes drifting to the ground, she begins to whimper.
I want to place my arm around her but the space here is too narrow, our bodies too awkwardly arranged with Jacob in her lap.
“There is an end to the Forest, Cass,” I tell her, trying to comfort her. “There's an Outside—there's more out there.”
“So what?” she says, her voice quivering.
“Don't you want to know what's on the other side?” I ask her. “To see the ocean? To know that there is more? To find a place that isn't touched by all this?” I wave my arms at a thin Unconsecrated man scraping at the fence but the night is so dark I doubt she can see me.
“The ocean has always been your dream, Mary, not mine.” She pauses for a moment and suddenly I feel a hand on my cheek. I flinch, not expecting it, but she keeps her chilled flesh against me. The rain has caused her fingertips to wrinkle.
“It's the only way for us to make it,” I say. “For Jacob to have a chance at a life.”
“Our place is in the village. Jacob's place is with his parents,” she says.
I want to shake her but instead keep my fingers in the fur of Argos's back.
“Don't you see? Everything has changed,” I say. “Jacob's parents may not have even survived. Nothing will be the same.”
She moves her hand from my cheek to cover my mouth. “I don't want to hear such things,” she says, her voice even and serious. “Don't you see that believing the village is gone means that everyone we have ever known is dead? I won't give up that easily on them. And neither should you.”
Her hand slips from my face. I can hear as she resettles the boy in her lap, hear him groan and then fall back into dreamless sleep. The rain barely dribbles now. Another Unconsecrated has joined the first at the fence next to us, summoned by the moans. It's too dark to see anything but I can hear them scrabbling against the metal. Hear their desperation.
I wonder who those hands belonged to. Which of those hands once stroked the head of a sick child, once touched the lips of a loved one, once clasped together in prayer. I wonder if any of those hands belong to my mother.
“Going down that path would kill us all, Mary,” Cass says. “You're selfish to want to sacrifice all of us for your own whims.”
Her words echo, crashing through my body. For a moment I imagine going back to the village to help beat back the breach. Of returning to the cottage with Harry and continuing our lives, finishing the ceremony, bearing his children instead of Travis's.
Trying to be content.
“Cass,” I whisper. Water slips down my face and into my mouth. “We're already dead. We're surrounded by it every day. And we shuffle along in our lives just like they shuffle along in theirs. It's inevitable that it invade our lives someday the way it invaded our village this morning. We aren't part of any cycle of life, Cass.”
She doesn't respond. Once I would have told Cass everything about Gabrielle. I would have shared my fears that the Sisters brought this destruction down on us all. I would have told Cass that I had proof of a world beyond the Forest.
But instead I stay silent. I peer out into the darkness, down the path that leads away from the village. Where Gabrielle came from. I place my hand against the damp ground, wondering if maybe Gabrielle paused here before entering the village. I wonder what made her choose to come down the path and if she started out alone or whether she had companions that died or left her along the way.
I want to tell Cass about Gabrielle so that she can feel the same hope I do. But I'm afraid that Cass will only speak aloud the dark fears that seep through my thoughts: that Gabrielle's story is not one of hope and that none of us can expect a happy ending.