Last Star Burning

by Caitlin Sangster

  My head is swimming with information, all of it glassy and distorted, as if I’m peering through murky water. “Why were we so worried about June’s family, then? Why don’t all of them just go to the Mountain?

  “You can’t just walk in. They’ll let anyone in who’s willing to help with a war. Plenty of Wood Rats are content to scavenge on the edges where they don’t have to fight. I don’t understand what was going on in that family. Liming could have found a Mountain patrol and asked for a guide in.”

  Why didn’t Liming come with us, then? I glance back up toward June, though I can’t see her sleeping form from where I sit. “How long did you live out here?”

  “Two years. A little more.”

  “How is it . . .” I shrug. “I never heard anything about you being gone.”

  Howl looks down at his hands, and suddenly I’m uncomfortable, seeing things on his face that no one ever should feel. He can’t even call his father anything but “the Chairman.” Was it more important for the Chairman to save face, to keep it quiet that Howl was gone, than to mobilize Seconds to get his son back?

  “What did you ever hear about me?” he finally asks, still staring at the ground.

  I cock my head to the side, bending so he has to look at me. “I heard at least one pretty little girl from the orphanage wish Third boys were as nice-looking as your portrait. Maybe she meant she wished they were cleaner?” Looking him up and down, I give a mock frown. “Not really sure I agree.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Well, there you have it. I lived out here. That’s how I know where we’re going.”

  “And what tubers are?”

  The lighthearted question almost makes him smile. “Right. Tubers.”

  His hand finds mine again, and the tightness in my chest eases. No more fighting, no more anger. No lying or withholding information. We’re friends again. More than that. We could be partners, part of this cause, if it’s real. I could help people like June.

  People who have no chance, like my sister, Aya, before she was shot down in the street.

  People like me.

  The City, no matter how I feel about it, isn’t an option anymore. Neither is Tai-ge. He never was. And, just like the rest of the City, Tai-ge never could completely forget my brand. No matter what he felt or thought about me, my past was a wall that we both knew he wouldn’t try to climb. He never tried to hold my hand. No one ever even noticed that I had hands at all in the City, except to crush them while checking my traitor star. And Howl is right here in front of me, asking me to listen, just to think it through. That maybe I’m worth more than a messy burn. That there’s more to life than Yuan Zhiwei and rows and rows of canning jars, and the pieces on the weiqi board numbered from one to four.

  Hand-holding has nothing to do with it. I want to believe him.

  I do believe him.

  • • •

  That night, I dream of Zhinu and Niulang. Except when Niulang first sees Zhinu, his teeth stretch out over his lips, jagged and sharp. Morphed into one of the monster qilin, he chases her back to his den, where the other snarling creatures wait. Her cries surround me, choke me, as her eyes open—deep brown. My eyes.

  I wake to find myself precariously balanced against a tree branch on the edge of our rock, slick with sweat. Zhinu’s sobs ring in my ears, echoing against the night sky, moon covered by a sea of clouds. My heart drums against my chest as if it’s trying to escape its bloody prison.

  Howl climbs up from the ground, perching next to me. “What’s wrong, Sev?” His eyes wash over June before flicking back to me.

  I take a deep breath, trying to erase the image of Niulang’s long, sharp teeth tearing through. . . . “Nothing. I just had a bad dream.”

  He sits for a second, peering at me through the darkness. I can’t look at him, as if my dream could somehow reach out and destroy Howl, too, giving the one person I’ve decided to trust sharp teeth and an appetite for flesh. His hand brushes my cheek, and the awful image goes away, leaving only my friend. Howl is safe.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asks.

  I shake my head, taking a deep, shuddering breath that sends darts of pain through ribs I thought were starting to mend. “No. I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Okay.” He doesn’t climb back down, tracing the pattern quilted into my sleeping bag with one finger. “Do you need anything?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ll come up.” He climbs over me and slips in between me and June. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and June will fall off.” He smiles to belie the joke.

  I smile back, glad that he doesn’t mean it. It’s odd, but having Howl right beside me does make things seem less frightening. I sleep, and this time the dreams stay far away.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE MORNING FEELS MUCH LIGHTER. Howl shoots me a smile before climbing a tree to gauge how close we are to our mountain destination. He doesn’t mind when I follow him up, noting that the craggy, sheer side of the mountain we’ve been crawling toward is no more than a two-day walk away if we go fast. When I smile back, it’s genuine.

  Unzipping a side pocket on my pack, I extract three packets of powdered purifier for our water. Two lychee, one strawberry. Groping around, I count only five more, all lychee-flavored. I have been purposely giving Howl the lychee ones in retribution for the poison scare. Looks like I’ll have to grimace along with him after today.

  We’re so far down now that the trees are different, the land immediately next to the river thick with long, skinny plants that I hesitate to even call trees. They are thin and dull green in the cold, growing together in clumps to make a bushy taillike burst of leaves far over our heads. The river flows only a few feet deep by the river’s shore, water-smoothed rocks sticking up from the calm surface every few feet. I perch on a white boulder that kisses land, half in, half out of the water, a crooked old tree perched next to it on the shore twining snakelike roots around its base.

  The water skin comes up cloudy and brown. Odd. I must have kicked up some dirt when I put it under. My second try is also unsuccessful. Confused, I look more closely at the river. Instead of being clear to the bottom, the water is murky.

  “Howl!” I yell. “Something is off down here.”

  June strolls down, kicking at rocks and taking her time. But when she sees the muddy water, she’s off like a shot, back toward our camp. Howl is on his way toward me, looking back over his shoulder after June. She throws dirt over the ashes from our fire from last night and begins frantically stuffing our food and utensils into the packs.

  “What’s her problem?” I ask.

  He shrugs, still watching her. “What do you need?”

  I hold up the bag of water, the dirt slowly settling to the bottom. “The water is . . . weird here.”

  Howl jumps back like I’ve come at him with a knife. His head jerks back and forth between the cloudy water skin and the muddy river. “We have to go. Now.”

  He snatches the other water skin off the ground and grabs my arm, the two of us running back toward the camp. June already has my pack put together and holds it up for me.

  Howl kicks dirt and dry leaves across the campsite, trying to obscure our footprints. June grabs his arm, pulling him away. “We don’t have time. Run.”

  He nods, barely taking the time to buckle his pack across his shoulders before taking off under the umbrella trees, June and me following.

  The trees are smaller here, with huge, open, grassy meadows in between thickets. Howl ducks down as he runs to keep under as much cover as possible. June scampers right behind him, pushing to go even faster. Low branches snap across my face and chest, but keeping up is so difficult that I hardly notice. After fifteen minutes of dodging branches and barely keeping sight of the black and golden heads bobbing ahead of me, I’m determined not to be the one who slows us. Unfortunately, a tree root decides differently.

  I go down with a clatter. June is on me in seconds, pulling me up and towing me along like a puppy
tugging on its leash. Howl slows and lets us pass him, choking down heavy breaths. I’m sullenly glad that he is out of breath too.

  “Tell me what we’re running away from, please!” I gasp.

  Howl coughs, his voice coming out in a growl. “There are Reds here. Using growth regulators.”

  “Growth regulators?” I ask, looking at June.

  She shrugs.

  “They accelerate plant growth so much that they die. Makes it easy to clear land for crops.” Howl swears as his toe catches on a rock. “When the compounds mix with water, it creates a gas cloud. You have about fifteen minutes to get out.”

  My eyes find the water skins hanging from the back of Howl’s pack, still dripping. “It just hurts plants? Why are we running?”

  “It has the added benefit of killing any Outsiders crowding up the land the City wants to use. If you aren’t wearing a gas mask, the chemicals will have you vomiting within an hour. By ten, swallowing is a stretch. After a day, your muscles all start to seize up. Then it moves to your lungs. You suffocate. And it probably means there are Reds crawling all over the place through here.”

  A gunshot sounds over our heads. I flop to the ground. June is beside me, crawling fast toward a cluster of thick bushes. Howl pauses to let me follow her into the underbrush. June is still moving, hand over her mouth to block the sound of her breathing. Howl puts a hand on her ankle and she stops, all of us going still.

  Two sets of boots run past the bush we are hiding under, crashing through the trees. Howl grabs my hand and mouths, Don’t move.

  The boots come walking back, pausing in front of our bush. One set starts back up the path, but the other remains, scuffed toes pointed toward me.

  June worms her way deeper into the bush, away from the boots. Howl tries to stop her, but the soldier kicks at the bush, making Howl go still.

  We are close enough that I can see the sweat dripping down Howl’s face, streaking weeks’ worth of dirt into random stripes, indecision twisting his expression until the soldier calls for help. Howl grabs my hand and drags me after June, the soldier’s shouts hardly penetrating the sound of blood pounding against my eardrums as he tries to shove through the bushes after us. Worming our way along the ground is quicker than trying to cut through the undergrowth; the soldier punctuates every swipe with another yell of frustration.

  When we come out from under our bushes, June is nowhere in sight. Howl unbuckles his pack, throwing it to the ground, and before I realize what he is doing, he starts grappling with the clasps on mine, barely giving me time to wrench the straps from my shoulders. He swings it onto his back, grabs the waterskins with one hand, my hand with the other, and we sprint into the forest.

  My feet keep catching on fallen branches, but Howl’s grip on my hand keeps me upright and moving. My screaming lungs hardly even register as we duck behind a cluster of tightly knit trees. Our feet aren’t quiet, but the man following us doesn’t appear. The only sound I hear is my own gasping breaths. Howl lets go of me to stick his hand inside his coat, grasping something. Probably that stupid knife.

  We stop behind a cluster of boulders and wait for what seems like hours. Days. My ears strain toward the trail of destruction we just left for the Red to follow. Silence.

  When nothing happens, Howl uncurls from his crouch, stuffs the waterskins into the pack, and offers me a hand up. “We have to find June and get out of here.”

  “Why did you take my pack?”

  “Because I’m better at—”

  “No, why my pack?”

  “You have all the Mantis.”

  “Not all of it. You had that first package that was meant for me.”

  “But most of it is in your pack. The Mountain needs it.” He fiddles with the straps on the pack for a few minutes, adjusting them so they fit his wider frame, and I try not to think of what would have happened to me if we had somehow abandoned all of our Mantis on the forest floor.

  We backtrack a bit, keeping our heads down as we listen for soldiers, evidence from our sprint obvious even to me. The trees down here bare their roots from the ground, the ropy twists looping around one another across the top of the dirt. I carefully step over these, hoping a Red won’t jump out of the bushes and catch me with my foot trapped in the snakelike mess sprawled across the forest floor. Every time Howl stops to examine the ground for signs of June, my mind screams that standing still will kill us. That we need to move.

  “She wants us to find her,” he informs me. “She’s leaving marks for me.”

  “The rebels must have been pretty sure of your loyalty if they taught you how to find people in the forest.” I look at the tree he is examining and see a leaf pinned with sap to the branch that doesn’t match. A Junis leaf. Like June. Cute. “Won’t the soldiers see this? That man was calling for help,” I whisper.

  “Those Reds weren’t exactly being careful.” He grabs my arm to pull my head down as a branch in front of us starts to shake. But it’s just some kind of animal, scurrying away from us up through the trees. Howl takes a quiet breath. “And they weren’t wearing masks either, so I hope that means we’re out of the danger zone for the gas cloud. I think they were probably just scouting, scaring away anyone left. Not clear-cutting.”

  I nod, flinching as two birds take off from the tree next to us. We inch along through the forest until we come to a sunlit clearing, sudden brightness blinding me, the panic of suddenly not being able to see like a hand around my throat. But when the spots clear from my vision, it’s worse.

  “Howl . . . what does this mean?”

  Deep scars sit fresh in the bright green of new grass, scuffed footprints everywhere. Howl kneels on the ground, brow furrowed. He picks up two fist-size rocks and hands them to me. “It means June put up a fight.”

  The rocks are covered in blood.

  CHAPTER 15

  HOWL DOESN’T BOTHER WITH CAUTION anymore, easily following the drag marks carved into the dirt. It only takes a few minutes before Howl slows to a walk and drops to the ground, peering through the scrub. I’m glad it isn’t a question of whether or not we help June, but how. Even if I hadn’t promised Liming to take care of his daughter, I wouldn’t leave her to the Reds, though it could mean more bullets coming our way, more blood on the rocks.

  It’s nice to know Howl feels the same.

  I drop next to him, catching my breath. He leans in close to me, whispering, “Do you know how to fire a gun?”

  “We don’t have a gun.”

  He pulls a handgun from his jacket and hands it to me, the magazine coming next. “Here’s another unspoken truth uncovered for you. Can you shoot it?”

  I narrow my eyes but save my questions for later as I fit the magazine into place. My parents both liked to shoot with the Reds for fun, but I haven’t touched a gun since they were alive. No threat, bribe, or pleading would convince any Red to let me within ten feet of any firearms unless they were pointed at me. I was a fair shot when I was younger, but I’ve never pointed a gun at another person. Guns are for people who aren’t concerned with killing, and I believe my family quota for destroying human life has been used up.

  Howl pulls a round, green ball from his coat. Black buttons protrude from each end and a finely etched silver design runs from top to bottom. Two pairs of waxy-looking cones come out next. “Here, put these in your ears. They’ll block out most of the sound.”

  “Is that a grenade? It could hurt June too.”

  “It’s a glorified firecracker. It could knock over the tent, but mostly it’ll just make enough noise to distract them. You get June. If things get hairy, use the gun.”

  We creep up to the campsite; just a camouflaged tent with two packs lying on the ground outside. June’s cracked leather boots peek out from the open tent flap.

  Howl inches into the clearing, grenade in hand. Pressing one of the black buttons, the ball breaks in half along the silver lines and he pitches the two pieces toward the tent, diving back behind the tree where I sit, wrap
ping his arms around me and pressing me into the rough bark.

  The ground pitches and rocks around us, sprawling both of us to the ground. A blast of hot air screams past us, ruffling the trees and bushes, a few branches crashing down around us. The roaring sound in my ears dampens the shouts coming from the tent.

  Howl rockets into the clearing, crashing into one of the Reds who is trying to extract himself from a tangle of fallen tent poles. I don’t pause to watch, pulling the earplugs out as I pick my way through the trees to the back side of the fallen tent. A man’s hand sticks through the ripped canvas, blood trickling down and dripping from his fingers. My heart stops. Howl said the grenade wouldn’t hurt June, but if this man was bleeding . . . I dart in and pull back the covering. The man stares up at me blankly, as if he can’t tell if he’s alive or not. A metal-framed pack lies on top of him, probably what knocked him over when the tent fell. There’s no sign of June.

  I point the gun at the Red, feeling a little awkward about it. “She’s not here, Howl.”

  The Red that Howl attacked is on the ground, Howl’s foot planted between his shoulder blades. He looks up from tearing strips of canvas from the tent to tie his hands. “Wasn’t she in the tent with that guy?”

  The man stuck inside the canvas grimaces and pushes the pack off him, starting to sit up.

  “Don’t move, please. I don’t want to shoot you,” I say. Not even in the arm, which is the best I can do as far as aiming the weapon at him. “Are you all right?”

  Howl steps in to tie his hands, looking at me oddly. “My, aren’t you polite. This guy would have shot you without blinking five minutes ago. And he has probably beaten June to a bloody pulp.”

  “Just because he’s forgotten that he’s human doesn’t mean I have.” The gun is steadier now, though still pointing at his arm. I don’t think I could miss with only feet between us. “Where is our friend? Tell me.”