by Traci Chee
“Why? If you knew it wasn’t true?” said the boy.
“It’s not really a matter of doing better, is it?” answered the father. “It’s a matter of doing the best you can and believing you can keep improving.”
Their voices faded as they took the bend in the path and vanished among the brittle vines and green ferns. They must have been heading home.
While she waited for the father and son to gain a little distance on them, Sefia pecked at the ground with her fingertips, plucking up twigs and brown leaves. Something about the boy unsettled her—maybe his small hands or the way he tilted his head when he was listening to his father’s stories—and she glanced at Archer again, but he was watching her fingers hop and dance in the mulch, and he didn’t seem at all disturbed by seeing the boy and his father, so she didn’t say anything.
• • •
As the afternoon stretched toward dusk, Sefia and Archer reached the top of a ridge overlooking a small round lake. The water was green with plant life, and the trees hung over its glassy surface. From the crooked stone ridge, they could see for miles.
They sat on some rocks, dangling their legs over the edge, and shared a few sips from the canteen while the sun sank closer to the mountaintops and the clouds turned from white to pink. An orange light flickered to life at the northern end of the lake. Hatchet’s camp. Sefia narrowed her eyes.
In the east, a few miles down the ridge, a trail of smoke drifted out of the canopy. Archer pointed at it and tilted his head, touching his temple with the fingers of his other hand.
“Probably that father and son we saw earlier,” she said.
Archer nodded. The light caught in his eyes, turning them warm and golden. A faint smile passed over his face.
As the shadows lengthened across the water, Sefia sighed and stood, hefting the pack onto her shoulders again. “Come on. We need to find a place to camp.”
Archer tapped her on the arm.
“What is it?”
Squinting, she caught a flicker of movement in and out of the trees—figures stalking along the lake’s shore. Burrowing into her pack, she grabbed Nin’s old spyglass. “Get down.”
They dropped to their bellies on the ground.
Sefia propped herself up on her elbows and peered out over the lake again, putting the glass to her eye. Six people were heading east through the jungle. Her breathing quickened. She recognized that heavy walk. Five carried rifles, but the last held a long pair of tongs with tips that formed a large black circle at the end.
“Hatchet’s men,” she muttered, passing the spyglass to Archer. “Where are they going? Are they hunting?”
Without warning Archer dropped the spyglass and scrambled backward. His hands dug into the dirt, pulling at roots and handfuls of earth.
“What’s wrong?”
He backed into a tree. The whites of his eyes flared in the low light.
Sefia scanned the valley again. “What did you see?”
Archer brought up his shaking hands and put his fingers to the base of his throat, where his scar began, and spread them around his neck like claws.
The tongs.
Big enough to encircle a boy’s throat. Hot enough to burn him.
“The boy,” Sefia muttered. She sprang to her feet and searched the valley. The cabin was two miles from Hatchet’s camp at the lake, but three from the ridge. They would have to run.
Sefia snatched up the spyglass, pulled on her pack, and returned to Archer’s side. He hadn’t moved.
“Get up,” she said. “We’re going to warn them.”
Still he could not stand. He was pressed so hard against the tree that the rough bark tore his shirt, the skin beneath.
Sefia knelt at his side and laid her hand on his shoulder. It was the first time she’d tried to touch him since she’d cleaned his wounds two weeks before, and his shirt was damp with sweat, his skin hot under her palm. She held up her other hand. Deliberately, making sure he saw, she crossed her middle and index fingers.
A sign.
Their sign.
“You won’t ever have to do that again,” she said, locking eyes with him.
Archer watched her, wide-eyed.
She was with him.
“I promise.”
He shuddered once more and then was calm. His mouth closed. He pushed himself to his feet.
Then they were running. The sky had turned to fire, smoky and orange. In the darkness, the trees loomed close and menacing. Bats flitted through the canopy, and the night birds screamed.
They ran. Skidding down the slick slope and leaping sharp switchbacks that twisted among the trees. The ridge disappeared in darkness behind them as the terrain flattened out.
Along the trail, the moon rose round and pale through the leaves. The trees shone silver where the light struck and the ground was as blue as water.
Still they ran. Their legs burned. Their feet throbbed. They ran faster. Arms pumping, feet pulling at the ground. Their lungs ached.
At an intersection, they took the eastern trail. Hoping it was the right one. Knowing they wouldn’t get a second chance if they were wrong. Shadows raked their arms and faces. They were running so fast they seemed about to explode. Even the air in their chests was full of fire.
They burst into a clearing with a cabin at the center, surrounded by drying racks and clotheslines that made strange cobwebbed formations in the yard, where the glow from the windows touched the tips of the tools and the stretched hides. A rack of antlers adorned the apex of the roof, and smoke rose from the chimney like a signal tower. Sefia and Archer stumbled to the door, doubled over, breath squeezing in and out of their beaten lungs.
Sefia knocked. The hollow sound of her knuckles on wood echoed in the clearing, but the cabin was silent. She knocked again.
There was a scraping sound inside, like the dragging of a chair across the floor, followed by a scuffling. The curtains twitched in the window.
“Who’s there?” a woman demanded, her voice harsh and suspicious.
“Open the door.” The words rushed out of Sefia like water. “You’re all in danger.”
The latch clicked and the door creaked open. A woman in high-waisted trousers and suspenders stood in the doorway. She held a rifle, her finger resting next to the trigger. She had small, delicate hands, like the boy’s.
Behind her, a woodstove crackled merrily, and through the doorway Sefia could see the corner of a dining table stacked with plates, cups, and a steaming pot of stew, but there was no one else in sight.
“What sort of danger?” the woman asked. The tip of her rifle rose a few inches.
Sefia brushed her hair out of her face impatiently. Her hand came away wet with sweat. “Impressors!” she snapped.
The woman staggered back as the door was thrust open. The round-faced man they’d seen earlier that day stood there, framed by the doorway. He squinted at them, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes.
“Impressors?” His voice was deep and full of questions.
“Just a story,” the woman said.
“No.” Sefia pointed at Archer’s throat. “Real.”
The boy crept up behind his parents. “Look at his neck, Mom.”
Archer feathered the edge of his scar with his fingertips.
“Come into the light, boy,” said the woman.
Sefia held her breath as Archer took a step forward. He raised his chin so the firelight reached his scars. Instinctively, the woman hefted her rifle. The man cursed.
The boy paled. Sefia could read the thought on his face as plainly as if it’d been written there: That could be me. She glared at him. He was so small. Nervous. Soft. He wouldn’t survive a day if their places were switched, if she got a nice comfortable cottage and two loving parents, and he had to fend for himself in the wilderness. For a second she ha
ted him.
Archer stared at the boy and extended his hands, palms up. The boy’s eyelid twitched.
“He wants to help you,” Sefia said.
“Help him what?” the woman asked. She still hadn’t lowered her weapon.
“The people who did this to him are coming here. Right now. They’re going to kill you and take your son unless you leave.”
The man pulled a rifle from behind the door. “This cabin’s been in my family for generations,” he said.
“Six impressors are coming for you,” Sefia snapped. “You won’t have any family left if you stay.”
“And if we leave, who’s to say we won’t be robbed?” The woman looked her up and down: the pack on her back, her dirty sweaty face, her wild black hair.
For a moment, Sefia was speechless. She felt like she’d been slapped. Archer kept making that gesture, with more and more urgency. But no one moved.
Then the boy patted his father’s elbow. “Pop . . .”
The man ignored him. “Even if they do come, we’re not scared of a little bloodshed.”
Sefia found her voice again. “It won’t be a little bloodshed. It’ll be yours, and hers, and his.” She pointed at each one of them in turn, her finger landing at last on the teenage boy, who gaped at her. “Is that what you want?”
She glanced over her shoulder into the silver woods. How much time had they lost, standing here arguing?
Slowly—much too slowly—the woman lowered her rifle. “How far behind you?”
Relief spread through Sefia like ink in water. “They’ll be here any second.”
The man and woman stared at each other. Sefia could almost see their conversation passing between them like arrows.
How far would they get if they ran?
What should they take?
Did they trust the girl?
The boy stared at Archer, taking in the size of his arms, the set of his feet, the scar at his neck. Archer fingered the hilt of his hunting knife and cocked an ear toward the jungle.
The moon rose higher. Sefia fidgeted with the straps of her pack. Hatchet’s men were coming. They would arrive soon.
Finally, the man and woman began opening wardrobes and pulling on coats. The whole family was a flurry of movement, grabbing jackets, guns, cartridges.
“We have a hunting blind in the mountains. Hard to find.” The woman stuffed a revolver in the band of her pants. “What are you two doing?” There was no invitation in her voice.
Sefia hadn’t expected them to take her and Archer along. She wouldn’t have gone even if they had invited her. But venom crept into her words anyway. “Saving your family. Then running too.”
The woman looked at them pityingly, but didn’t say anything more.
The man was the last one out of the cabin. He locked the door behind him and pressed a leather-wrapped package into Sefia’s hands. “My knives,” he said quietly, with a glance at Archer. “Good balance. Good for throwing.”
They nodded.
The man tugged at the short bill of his cap so only the lower half of his face was visible, like a crescent moon, and he turned away.
As she followed him around the side of the cabin, she deeply missed her own father. He would have taken two stray kids with him to safety. She shook her head, thinking of their house, its secret rooms, its isolated location on the top of the hill, the way they never had company. My father would have taken us, wouldn’t he . . . ?
Behind the cabin, the woman was already passing into the forest, but the boy paused. He waited for Sefia and Archer, fretfully drumming the barrel of his rifle.
“Clovis,” the woman hissed from the shadows.
The boy took Archer’s hand. Archer was so anxious that he nearly recoiled, but the boy held on, his small fingers tightening over Archer’s. He tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. “Thank you.”
Archer swallowed, making his scar shift over the motion of his throat.
The boy dropped his hand and followed his mother into the jungle. The man went last, and he didn’t look back when he melted into the darkness.
Archer closed his fingers over his palm where the boy had touched him. His mouth twisted.
Sefia slipped the package of knives to him. “We did a good thing,” she said. She meant it, but she also felt angry and hollow inside, with this hot buzzing like bees. No one had warned Archer. No one had warned her.
Voices from the trail dragged her out of her anger. She and Archer ducked. The yard blazed with light from the cabin. You could see everything. They scrambled behind a woodpile at the far end of the clearing and breathed quiet.
She tugged at his arm and pointed into the woods. They could still get away.
Archer ignored her. He was already taking out the knives, testing their weight. The moonlight glanced off their polished bone handles.
Maybe he hadn’t understood. She pulled at his arm again, but he shrugged her off. His hands flashed through a series of signs: the collar he’d made on the ridge; his sign for hunting; three fingers for the family. He was going to fight. He was going to give the family time to get away.
Sefia was about to protest when Hatchet’s men reached the clearing.
There was a sudden crash as the door of the cabin broke in. Boots beat on the floorboards like drums.
“No one’s here!” A few seconds later: “Food’s still warm. They can’t have been gone long.”
Another voice answered, deep and gravelly. Sefia remembered that voice. It belonged to Redbeard, the one who loved violence, the one carrying the tongs. “Check the woods,” he growled.
Shadows shifted across the ground as two figures appeared around the side of the cabin. They carried rifles.
Archer looked back at her. His eyes seemed to glow eerily in the darkness, like those of an animal. He pointed into the woods, away from the clearing, and he didn’t need words to communicate what he meant.
Hide.
Sefia scrambled away into the trees, dirt flying from beneath her hands and feet. She found a small hollow in a stump and squeezed inside. Rotten pieces of wood crumbled around her ears and shoulders, into the collar of her shirt. Spiders or beetles crawled over her skin. She’d barely gotten herself inside when she heard the first scream, cut off at the end. It came from her left, closer to the clearing.
She listened hard in the dark.
“What was that?”
Muffled cursing. “It’s Landin. Throat’s been cut.”
She tried to calm her breathing. The seconds lengthened into minutes. She heard the rustling of clothing and the quiet creaking of leather. Someone pulled back the hammer of a revolver. She cursed herself for picking a hiding spot with such terrible visibility. She could only imagine what was happening.
Where was Archer?
Her legs were cramping, begging to be moved. Sefia switched positions as quietly as she could, but her bow and quiver rubbed against the inside of the stump. She winced as the log crumbled around her, sounding like an avalanche to her heightened senses.
She paused. She had her bow.
She slid out of the stump and unhooked the bow and quiver from her pack. She listened for any change in her surroundings, but the nearby trees were silent, their leaves motionless.
Nocking an arrow to her bow, she peered over the stump. The orange glow from the clearing silhouetted a man at the edge of the yard, searching the trees with a rifle at his shoulder. After a few seconds, he pivoted away from her and began pacing the perimeter of the clearing.
When she was certain he wasn’t looking, Sefia stalked forward, keeping low, like she would if she were hunting. She hardened her jaw. She was hunting.
Silently, she crept forward, pausing outside the ring of light. The man was rounding the drying racks on the opposite side of the clearing. As Sefia raised the bow, she reco
gnized him: it was One-Eye, who’d built a stretcher for his dead friends and carried them away into the jungle to be burned. If she loosed the arrow now, it would strike him. She’d hit birds at farther distances than this. But she hesitated. The string cut into her fingers.
Do it, she told herself. He was an impressor. He deserved it, for what he’d done to Archer.
You can’t fail again.
Her fingers twitched. Across the clearing, One-Eye circled around to the front of the cabin and disappeared.
A heavy hand descended on her shoulder and yanked her off her feet.
Her body left the ground and collapsed in the clearing. The impact knocked the bow and arrow from her hands. Her head spun. She tried to sit up.
A huge, hulking man stood over her; he was so big the revolver in his hands looked like a toy. Catching sight of her red-fletched arrows, the man grinned, stretching the crooked scar on his bottom lip. That scar. She recognized him from the first night—the man who’d had to remove the remains of the impressors’ meal.
“So you’re the one who caused all this trouble.” His voice was hot and dry as embers, but it made her shiver.
A gunshot rang out from the other side of the cabin. No screams. She twisted, trying to see what had happened. She kept picturing Archer lying on the ground. Archer motionless. Archer dead. She glared at the impressor in front of her. “Yeah,” she spat. “I’m the one.”
The man cocked his pistol.
A round black eye and the moonlight on a silver barrel.
A smile warped by a scar.
Sefia took one last breath. The sound was sucked out of the clearing. She didn’t even hear the dirt scatter beneath her as she scrabbled backward.
She blinked.
Then her vision took over.
The man’s lips parted, and his mouth, his chin, the veins in his neck, the joining of his bones, his shoulder and arm and wrist all turned into light. Bands of it flooded his body, twisting around his torso and crossing his limbs, spiraling down his legs and over his boots.
He pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t a bullet that came out at her. It was a band of light.
