by Carrie Ryan
“Maybe we should scout for water,” Travis suggests.
“What we need to do is go back,” Cass responds. Her words are tightly coiled, as if she has played out this conversation in her head many times before.
“Cass, dear, I don't think …,” Travis says, and I feel my stomach clench at the word dear. I turn my head away from the group, staring out at the Unconsecrated that are gathered at the fence, trying to see beyond them into the Forest.
“I don't care what you think,” Cass says to him, cutting him off. I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I'm not used to this stern Cass. It feels unnatural, strange and for some reason suddenly very funny.
“What I care about is that we are almost out of water.” She stands and thrusts the empty bladder in his face, forcing him to lean back on his elbows. “We'll be out of food in a few days. What I care about is not wasting away out here in the Forest because we were too scared to go back to our village,” she says. She taps one foot on the ground vigorously, as if she can't control her own body.
“There is nothing to go back to,” Jed says, his voice the tone of finality.
“You don't know that,” Cass says. Her voice is growing higher-pitched, more desperate. “You can't know that. You only know that things were going badly when you left. You can't say that they didn't get better. That they weren't able to push back against the breach.”
Jed says nothing, his expression indicating that he has retreated back into his mind, back into his memories of Beth.
Cass begins to pace around us. “Aren't you able to see what's going to happen here? The way this will end? We will follow these paths until we're too weak to move and then we will die out here.” She waves her hands around as she speaks and she is so caught up in her own fervor that she doesn't see the tears in Jacob's eyes, that she is terrifying him.
“What is the point of wandering around out here like that?” she screams.
“There is something out there,” I finally say.
She laughs, her eyes wide and wicked. “What's out there, Mary? Do you mean your ocean?” She places her hands on her knees and bends over until her face is level with mine. “Can we drink the ocean, Mary? Will your precious ocean save us when we're dying here on this path?”
Straightening back up, she announces, “I am going back.” She looks around at us before adding, “And I'm taking Jacob with me.” She holds her hand out to him but he just whimpers and backs away—afraid of the insanity glinting in her eyes, afraid of the death he witnessed at the village.
Cass goes over to where Jacob sits and grasps his hand, pulls him to his feet, but he will not stand. His whimpers turn to full sobs that shake his little body but Cass won't let him go. Finally he cries out, “Ow, that hurts!” and Harry goes to her and pulls her away.
She whirls on Harry, grasps him by the upper arms. I can see where her fingers dig into the skin.
“Come with me,” she tells him, practically begs him. She's panting now, her whole body taut and trembling as if she would combust with the slightest breath. “Jacob can be ours. You and I. We can change all this. We can make it right—make all of it right. The way it should have been.” She speaks fast, her words falling into one another as if she will forget them or lose the will to say them at any moment.
None of us moves, none of us breathes as we watch Cass fall apart.
“Just think of it, Harry,” she says. Her voice is softer now. “It would be like it was before. When Travis was sick and it was just you and me.”
In this moment I'm reminded of Cass as a child. Of her white-yellow hair and her innocent eyes. How she would listen to me recount my mother's stories even though she never cared for them. She never understood about the world before the Return. Her life was always in the here and now. In the bliss of a village permanently protected from the Unconsecrated and anything else that may have once existed past the fences.
“What if we are the only ones left,” she says, turning to us all, waving her hand over us. “What if we are all that is left of the world? We can't let ourselves die. We can't be the end of everything.”
Harry looks around at us, his eyes wide, his cheeks flushed. His gaze lingers on me last, as if he's sending out a silent plea for help. As if somehow I know what to do.
“The paths are marked,” I finally say, looking down at my hands. “Down at the bottom, where they split. There is a bar of metal that's inscribed with letters. There were the same letters on the gate from our village. The same on the trunk we found.”
Harry's eyes widen and then he wrenches free of Cass and kneels at the point where the paths split and pushes aside the overgrown grass until he finds the little metal tag. He reads out the letters: “I-V and V-I-I.”
I fiddle with the dirty Binding rope still circling my wrist. I don't want to share with them the letters that Gabrielle left on the window for me. It's the last connection between us. The last secret we share. “These letters, they have to mean something,” I say instead. “I think that if we follow them we may be able to figure out an order to them. Figure out the pattern and where they lead.”
Cass growls low in her throat. “So what,” she says. “We followed one of those paths and it led us to a dead end; it led us nowhere. It's like we were told growing up—there is no end to the Forest of Hands and Teeth!”
“What if they lied to us?” Travis asks, his voice calm and measured. He looks at us each in turn. “Clearly they lied to us about the path. The Guardians placed supplies out here even when we were told the path was off-limits. Permanently off-limits. What if there is an end to the Forest?”
“We need to go back,” Cass says again. But this time her shoulders slump, her face slack with exhaustion and her voice empty. “Please,” she adds. She turns to Harry and says again, “Please.” But no one moves to join her and finally she turns and stumbles down the path away from us.
She doesn't get too far before she drops to her knees and begins to sob, great heaving wails that seem to be echoed by the Unconsecrated pushing against the fences surrounding us. Finally, Jed stands and walks to her. At first she holds a hand up as if to push him away but he doesn't allow it.
Instead, he sits next to her and pulls her into his lap and wraps his arms around her shoulders. I remember how he used to hold me like that when we were children and I woke up whimpering from a nightmare. I have to turn my head away from the way Jed rocks Cass, my eyes stinging, longing for those days. When all I worried about were monsters in dreams. When my brother was always there to comfort me.
We sit, each in our own world. “What if she's right,” Travis finally asks. “What if we are the last people? The only survivors?”
None of us answers.
We spend most of the day backtracking, not making any real headway on the new path we've chosen. We decide to camp early, everyone exhausted. That evening I slip away from the group and go back down the path, back toward our village to where we split from Gabrielle. It's only been a day since I last saw her, since I found the tags labeling the paths, but when I step up to the fence and search the Forest I do not see her, do not glimpse that strange shade of red.
I sit down with my knees tucked to my chest and enjoy the solitude. That too-brief moment when it's quiet before the Unconsecrated scent me and come to pound at the fences for me. It's rare to sit near the fences without the Unconsecrated, to have a small glimpse into what life must have been like before the Return, before the constant moans.
My skin prickles and then I hear the sound of feet shuffling behind me. I crouch and turn, but it's only Travis limping toward me down the path. Neither of us says a word as he sits next to me, his bad leg jutting out straight, his hands massaging the area where the bone once protruded.
I lean my head on his shoulder and he turns to kiss my forehead. It's meant, I'm sure, as a tender gesture. To let me know that he's still here for me. But the feel of his lips pounds in my body, throbbing everywhere. It combines with the silence so that it's
only us, no death, no responsibility.
I am past desire. I need Travis with a fierceness I have never known. Except with him.
My skirt swishes as I sit up and pivot on one knee until I'm facing him. His eyes wide, he glances down the path. I grab his chin in my fingers to force his gaze back to me.
The air is musty as I breathe it in and grasp his shoulders, press myself as close as I can and then press more and more and more. There are too many layers of clothing between us and I am angry at all that separates us and that I can't consume all of him at once, his whole being. For a moment I understand the craving of the Unconsecrated, the need for the flesh of a living soul.
His hands slip through my hair and his lips are close, oh so close to mine. Memories and doubts and fears flood through me and I push them all away so that I'm only here and only now.
We breathe each other, gasp for more air, for more of each other. And then his lips brush mine. Gentle, soft, like a leaf falling on water.
He takes my hands and then I feel his hesitation. Feel his fingers running over the Binding rope that still dangles from my wrist.
He lets go of me, his lips leave mine and I feel tears hot on my cheeks. I can't bear to meet his eyes. To know that he wonders.
He pulls away from me, like ripping my own flesh from my body, and stands. His eyes glisten, and then he turns and shuffles back down the path. I want to run after him, to throw him against the fence and demand him to tell me why he did not come for me before the Binding. I want to blame him for these ropes around my wrist.
I want to explain that I never would have done it if I'd known he would come. I want to beg him to forgive me for doubting him, for doubting that he would have claimed me before we had uttered the Vows of Eternal Constancy. I want to believe that he never would have allowed me to marry his brother but that his plans were lost to the breach.
But then I'm distracted by movement in the Forest, a glimpse of red at the edge of my vision. She's no longer running, no longer even walking or standing, but crawling now. Dragging her broken body across the ground toward me, her fingers clawing at the dirt. Gabrielle's progress is slow, unbearably so. Such that it's almost sad to see her reduced to this. Her body has used up its stores of energy and has begun collapsing in on itself.
As long as we have ever known, the Unconsecrated don't die, don't perish, unless decapitated or burned to ash. They do not rot, do not decay, only slowly pull themselves apart, a process made slower when they down themselves like hibernating animals. And it's strange to see Gabrielle like this, so helpless. Her arms stretch toward me, almost begging. Her moans now soft and high like a baby's last gasping cry for comfort.
But her eyes are the same. Her need the same.
I ache for her nonetheless. At what her dreams have now become. I try to remember her standing in the Cathedral window and I wonder if her life ever held complications such as mine. I wonder if she ever felt torn between duty and love. I wonder if her existence is simpler now that it's only about one need, one desire.
I think about Travis and Harry and this endless path and I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets.
I storm down the path, tears blinding me. When I rejoin the others I go straight to Harry and hold out my arm, the Binding rope dingy and dangling. “Cut it,” I tell him. “With the ax.”
He takes my hand in his, lifts the rope away from the delicate white skin of the inside of my wrist. The blade of the ax is cold and sharp and slices easily through the thin rope.
He still grasps my forearm in his hand while the tatters of the delicate Bindings float to the ground. I feel him tug at me slightly but I resist. He then raises my wrist to his mouth and kisses the raw skin chafed by the rope. Harry's eyes are not on me but on his brother as he lets me go, a small possessive smile on his face.
There seems to be no end. In the mornings we lick dew from the leaves. We try to find shade in the heat of the day, sleep to conserve energy. But still we are slowly dying. Our steps have become shallow and lethargic. Travis's limp is more pronounced, as if he doesn't have energy except to simply drag his leg behind him. Argos trails along after us, no longer bounding ahead to explore but panting with the effort of existence.
One afternoon, two days after burying Beth and five days after the breach, a storm rolls around us and we are almost giddy with excitement. But it only drizzles, enough to dampen our clothes and tongues but not nearly enough to refill our water bladders.
We are barely living. With each step we mirror the Unconsecrated that pace along beside us on the other side of the fence. Some days I wonder what the difference between us really is.
As the days wear on I feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. Travis's question echoes in my mind: are we the only survivors? And if so, have I killed us by insisting we continue through the Forest? If we had returned to the village could we have made a difference in the fight against the Unconsecrated? Should we have turned back? Taken a different branch in the path?
Am I responsible for the final fall of mankind?
Ten days after the breach, as the morning sun burns away the fog, we come to another break in the path. This time, rather than two diverging paths, we come to a square clearing with a different gate on every side. Cass collapses, pulling Jacob to her and offering him the last of her rations—the food that she herself has not been eating but saving for him.
She closes her eyes and rests her sharp cheek on his head as he slips the small bit of dried meat past his lips.
I have lost count of the number of forks in the path we have traveled through. At first I tried to keep it all in my head like a map. Tried to remember which paths were marked with which letters. I would spend our days walking trying to puzzle it all together, trying to find the pattern.
But then I began to forget, the mental images I had preserved of each path and each metal bar began to grow hazy and fade so that sometimes I was sure that the letters were repeating themselves. That we would end up crossing paths we'd already come across, just like a true maze.
I am ready to give up. To admit defeat. To tell them about Gabrielle's letters and beg for forgiveness that I've brought us to this place when Harry reads off the letters from the bars attached to the gates as he has done at every branch we've come to.
“X-X-X-I,” he says, before dragging himself to the next. “X-I-X,” he says. “And finally, X-I-V.”
My head snaps up. My heart pounds in my chest as if I have come up for air after too long underwater. I scramble to where Harry leans against the last gate, looking down the path with his face pressed against the rusty links.
I run my hand over the metal bar and then trace my fingers over the letters: XIV. In my mind I'm tracing my fingers over a pane of glass in the Cathedral, following the path that Gabrielle laid out for me: XIV.
These are her letters. This is her path.
“We should rest before going farther,” Harry says, but already I'm tugging on the lever, pulling open the gate. I hear them protesting behind me but my ears rush with blood. I cannot wait for them. I can't rest.
I trip down the path, my legs still weak but my mind pushing them forward. I can hear the others behind me, hear Cass yelling that she doesn't want to keep going. To leave her alone.
But I do not wait.
The afternoon sun is slipping through the sky when I'm forced to my knees, my breath heavy in my chest—my body protesting, spent and exhausted. The others finally catch up, panting.
“It has to be here,” I tell them.
And that is when I see the village through the trees.
There are no people. No smoke rising from the houses. The elaborate platforms in the trees are empty, the ladders lying in the dirt, their rungs covered in weeds. The world here is silent. Still. Barren.
For as long as we've walke
d along the path the moans of the Unconsecrated have been constant. When the sound is that unceasing the mind must find a place to store the incessant reminder of death. And so the moans become nothing more than a hum, a background rhythm to life.
Perhaps that's why none of us notices when the tenor of that hum changes, intensifies, harmonizes. When it echoes around us and pushes in on us until we are surrounded by the noise.
Instead, we each go our own way, mesmerized by this new and yet empty place. “Food!” Jacob says, his voice tinged with ecstasy. He pulls away from Cass's starved hands and runs toward the nearest building. Cass calls weakly, her voice scratchy from dehydration, and stumbles after him.
No one stops her; the rest of us continue farther into the village. Even though it's empty this place seems more settled than our own village. Here the streets are wide and laid out in a grid. The buildings are larger and more solid. There's a street dedicated to commerce: signs announcing the wares inside hang over each opening, shifting in the breeze.
We walk down what looks to be the main street and Harry and Jed veer off toward a building ringed with weapons, leaving Travis and me alone to stare with wonder at our new surroundings.
I look up and notice that, like our village, this place has platforms in the trees as a refuge from breaches in the fence. But unlike our village, these platforms have structures built in: houses, pathways between platforms, ropes and pulleys. It's as though an echo of the village on the ground exists in the trees. Like a reflection in a pail of water.
I stand there, my head tipped back in wonder as sunlight shifts through the buds on the trees and dapples my face. Fills me with peace. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of air sifting through the branches, knocking knotted ropes against tree trunks and causing a door on a nearby house to bump against a wall ever so subtly.
Even with my senses trained on the world around me, I don't notice the crescendo of the moans.
