Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  I shrug, the word still spinning around me in a drunken swirl, words limping along inside my mind when I need them to run. Now that there’s water right in front of me, all I can think is how dry my throat feels. “I… didn’t like what the soldiers were doing. It was my first trip here, and I didn’t realize…”

  “If you lie to me”—she interrupts the translation with a flood of Port Northian, the translator licking his lips as he switches from Port Northian to my language. The old woman leans forward to press the point of the knife to my sternum with a little smile—“I will split your heart in two and make Song Jie eat it.”

  I look away from the knife to eye the interpreter, the knife’s pressure too soft to be much of a threat. “Song Jie? Is that you?”

  He keeps his eyes down as if looking at me while also listening and speaking simultaneously would make something in his head explode.

  The knife creeps back to my collarbone, pain twinging through me as she once again examines the red, raised skin. Song Jie takes a moment to listen to what she’s saying before passing it on to me. “She wants to know what you’re running from.”

  “I’m not running from anything. I’m trying to get back to the mountains.” Why didn’t I walk into the camp first? Luokai said they’d welcome me if they knew I wasn’t on the Reds’ side. That they needed help… Scrunching my eyes together doesn’t help dispel the way everything seems to be out of focus.

  But there’s something else funny happening in my head. A crackling sound, like boots on grass. The guards outside? Suddenly, as Song Jie begins to speak again, a sound I know all too well clicks through my brain, all of my muscles tensing in response.

  The metal click of a soldier pulling open the slide on his weapon to check there’s a bullet in the chamber. It takes only a second to skip through all the members of the group. The only gun is the old woman’s, and she’s sitting right here in front of me.

  “Run.” I look at Song Jie. “We all have to run.”

  Song Jie blinks, his mouth hanging open midsentence, as if he can’t quite process what I’m saying.

  “They’re outside. They’re coming in right now.” I pull against the ties the Baohujia used to restrain me. “Untie me. They’ll probably concentrate fire on the south side because your tents are—”

  “Who is outside?” Song Jie cuts in.

  The old woman looks from me to the interpreter, her brow drawing down farther every moment Song Jie doesn’t translate.

  “Your guys outside might already be down.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “Maybe not if they’re trying to cart you off to a farm. Maybe they’ll try to take us alive.” Pulling against the ties sends stabs of pain through my shoulder. I can’t move. Can’t fight. Can’t run. My eyes go to the hint of metal in the old woman’s sash, the gun just out of reach. “Untie me now.”

  Song Jie says something to the woman, who goes to the tent door and peers out at their bright fire, smoke like a signal in the trees. Panic sweats out of me every moment they stand here doing nothing.

  This can’t be how I finally go. With my head down and my hands bound.

  Wrenching up from the ground with a gasp, I barrel into the tent’s central pole, pushing until the stakes wrench up from the ground and the whole thing tumbles over. Toward the spot the stupid smoking campfire should be.

  Song Jie, so reedy and small, slams into me as the canvas falls down over all of us, taking me to the ground. Pain strips me down to the basics, nothing left inside but needing to escape. My elbow jams into Song Jie’s chest, and even though it isn’t a good hit, he recoils.

  A shout sounds from out in the trees. I squirm free of the tent’s folds just as flames begin to lick at the canvas. The old woman and Song Jie are yelling to each other as they extract themselves. Charred canvas smell chokes my throat. Fire might be distracting enough for the Reds to miss one or two of us running free. Frantically pulling at my bootlaces, I curve on the ground and loosen the ties as best I can with my one good hand, but I can’t slip my feet out. “Untie me,” I wheeze. “If it was a scout, then the rest will be here soon.” My brain goes to where it’s most comfortable, the many times I’ve seen Reds attack, the times I’ve attacked Reds. “We have maybe a minute. They’ll hit this side of your camp, circle around if they haven’t already…” My eyes are dimming again, my balance all off, nothing but pain inside me. “Please, cut me loose.”

  A blast of light ignites off in the trees, the sound of gunfire like nails pounding into my ears. The old woman yells something, and someone—the big Baohujia?—hefts me over one shoulder. Bones press painfully into my stomach as he runs, and all I can see is fire, impressions of the Islanders scurrying to grab things like shadows lurking at the corners of my eyes.

  My collarbone is a solid white light of blinding agony, and it isn’t long before even those last shadows fade to nothing.

  * * *

  When I wake, my body is cocooned in fabric. The hammock—long bamboo poles thrust through the fabric on either side of me to hold it aloft—bobs and sways sickeningly, a figure shouldering the two poles just behind me as he walks. There must be someone in front, too, but I can’t muster the energy to look. My eyes drift closed again. Every part of me aches and my mouth tastes of sick, like acid and decay both at once.

  A creaky old voice speaking nonsense eases the silence, the old woman’s shadow falling across me as she walks alongside me. “You’re awake,” a lower voice interprets. Song Jie. He’s the one carrying the back half of this makeshift litter.

  I groan, holding my arm close to my chest, though no matter how I adjust, the persistent ache in my shoulder won’t quiet as she continues to speak. When Song Jie translates, his voice is flat. “You saved us.”

  Opening my eyes hurts, but I do it, straining to look up at her. “If they find me, they’ll…” Kill me probably. If Dr. Yang or the Chairman haven’t ordered their soldiers to torture me first. But I can’t tell these people that. It’s like Luokai said—this old lady is interested in my First marks. “If they find me they’ll take me back to the City. There’s someone who needs help far away from there, and if I don’t get to her…” The words boil in my throat, too desperate, too sick. Sev’s face is like a stone in my head, weighing me down. “I need to get back to the mountains.”

  “She says the medicine you brought with you is making you sick.” Song Jie grumbles it, adjusting the pole on his shoulders. “That it’s poison. Enough to kill the bacteria the gore left in you, but only barely enough not to kill you. Whoever gave it to you didn’t expect you to run away. Or meant for you not to.”

  I twist to the side, some choice words brewing in my mouth. Seph-eaten Luokai. The cure, Sole’s life, June’s life, his life are all riding on whether I can get the cure from Dr. Yang, and Luokai gives me poison? What a complete—

  “Reifa says we need your help. Maybe as much as you need ours right now.” A frown touches his mouth, and for a moment I think he’s going to go back to fingering the slit I made in his coat.

  Reifa. That’s what Luokai called the leader of this group. I try to raise my head to look at her. “Unless you can get me back to the mountains within a few days, I’m not sure you can help me.” I let my head sag back against the hammock, too tired to continue thrashing. “What were you hoping I could help you with that was worth carting my dead weight away from that camp?”

  “I don’t think it was worth it to carry you.…” Song Jie’s mouth presses into an ugly line as Reifa hisses something in his direction, but after a moment, he translates what I’ve said. I think. Reifa laughs, skimming a hand across the hammock as if she’d like to pat me on the head and can’t reach. I count myself lucky she isn’t still clutching that knife.

  “We know how to get to the mountains,” Song Jie translates. “But not what lies inside them. We need help filling in the blank spots on our map. Where the farms are. The City itself.” He pauses, grimacing over my weight.

  “And… you want me to tell you
where to find the best grub?” I snort, wondering if it would even hurt anyone to give up that information to this crew. That’s what Jiang Gui-hua was supposed to have done—given up the City’s coordinates to Kamar, that nonexistent enemy the City’s been using as a scapegoat for the horrors necessary to keep their workers in line.

  Only… Kamar is a story. The island, Port North, where Sev’s mother was born, is real enough. Just without the teeth and claws the First Circle wrote in. I attempt to focus on Reifa, wondering what she is even trying to accomplish.

  Reifa speaks again, Song Jie listening very carefully, his face a little too blank when he finally translates. “We don’t just need help filling in our maps. You’re highly ranked. You’ll be able to show us how to get into the City. Smuggle us in, even.”

  The beginnings of curiosity bud up inside me. “Why would you need to get inside the City?”

  Song Jie stalls over this answer for a moment, finally contenting himself with, “We need a miracle. We need to find your Chairman’s son.”

  CHAPTER 9 June

  WHEN I WAKE, MY WIND is holding me. She’s been with me since a heli came to take Mom. Maybe Mom sent me a little bit of herself so I’d have someone to hug me close after Dad couldn’t, to find me places to hide and to tell me when to run. Sometimes she even jabbed at me when my stomach was too empty for me to move so I’d get up to find food. Just now she’s a pillow, though, even if I can feel the stone under my head right through her. There’s blood on the rocks and scrapes across my arms and legs. My shoulders and left arm hurt, one knee bloodied. But my ribs obey when I breathe.

  My head’s the real problem. It’s still attached after jumping out the window and everything, I guess. But my head’s what made me jump. I should be dead. The fifty-foot drop is more of a fifty-foot steep hill now that I see it from the bottom, dotted with bushes that must have slowed me down. I didn’t know that when I was looking down, though, and still I jumped.

  I’m broken inside. Like Dad.

  No use crying, little girl. You have to take life or it will take you, just like Aunt Tian said. The gore. Awake and tearing at me even as my head spins. He’s speaking like Luokai now, tongue frayed into Port Northian. Like my dad when he still had a tongue to speak. Tears are for people who are already dead.

  I take one more breath, then wipe the wet off my cheeks. The bright drowns me as I try to take stock of my surroundings. All I can see are the outlines of bushes, a rough stone path. Shading my eyes helps a little, which is when I hear it.

  The rush of waves. Water.

  My insides dry out, the feel of fingers bruising my shoulder hot inside my head.

  Then a bigger problem. Footsteps coming my way.

  I roll over onto my side and push myself up from the ground. Here’s what I have to do:

  Step one, hide. My feet are silent, years of sneaking enough to make me invisible. I follow the path I fell onto, the way twisting back and forth down the rocks until it turns to steps, wall on one side and a cliff on the other. Pebbles stick in my feet as I turn the last switchback, only there’s no more path on the other side. My stomach flops as my feet say hello to a drop straight down to gray-blue water.

  Whoever those footsteps belong to, I don’t want to be found. They’ll probably drag me straight back to Luokai.

  Luckily, hiding is what I do best. There’s a little cave carved into the stone wall, a statue inside—a rock lady with rock clothes and rock hair. I duck behind her, accidentally tipping the plate at her feet, spilling rotted starfruit and pears and old incense onto the cave floor.

  Instead of running straight over the cliff like I almost did, the person following me stops inside the cave’s mouth, his long shadow creeping up to sit next to me on the floor.

  “June?”

  An erhu for a voice.

  “Are you hurt?”

  The words are like stones plunking into a river. An obstacle to flow around. Except I never did much like water after what happened with Dad. Fire was better, because it never looked safe. It never made promises about keeping you alive only to stick its slimy arm down your throat.

  “No one can survive compulsions alone, June.” Luokai’s voice sounds like Howl, but it’s not the same. With Howl, both of us understood that he was saying the right words—the words that would get us to where we needed to go—even if they weren’t the truest ones. The only thing I know Luokai wants is a hostage. Still, he talks, solemn and quiet like a prayer to the stone lady hiding me. Her hands stretch out toward him, a lantern hanging from one of them as if she means to use it to clock him over the head.

  I’d be okay with that.

  My wind brushes by me, pulling fingers through my hair just the way Mom used to. Shivers poke up like little barnacles on my skin. This cave is too much a memory—like those old temples Dad used to take me to, no matter how much Uncle Parhat complained about the climb. He’d leave fresh pears and water, kneeling in front of the statues inside as if they were made from more than rocks. Ask for help to find Mom. They never did make her appear. I’d much rather have eaten the pears.

  Parhat, Dad’s brother, didn’t have anything left to wish for, so when SS took him, it wasn’t hard for what was left of him to be pushed aside. Dad held tight to two things: finding Mom and protecting me.

  Until he didn’t anymore.

  I push away the memories, the things I can’t go back to change. Dad might have forgotten to protect me, but Sev and Howl never once did. They’re my family now.

  “Your friends will never find you if you run away,” Luokai says, as if reading my mind. “They wouldn’t even know where to look for your body.”

  There’s maybe something to what Luokai is saying. But not enough to listen, really. Sev’s too soft to make it back here alive anyway, and Howl’s too good at running. He’ll either run straight into something or run straight away, and neither of those things will bring him back, no matter how much he wants to come.

  They’re the rest of my list.

  Number one was hide. Done, but not really, since Luokai knows exactly where I am, even if he isn’t trying to grab me.

  Step two is get off the island. And step three is to find Sev and Howl before they get themselves killed because I’m not there to tell them to be less dumb. Step four is maybe to make sure that cure thing is real and then to stick it in my head before any more compulsions come.

  That’s the problem with all of these steps. I know what compulsions do to Sephs who don’t have any help. Closing my eyes tight, I press my fingers hard into my arms, the thought of compulsions shivering just under my skin.

  “June.” Luokai hasn’t come any closer. “I can help you. I know you’re scared of SS.”

  COMPULSIONS. THEY’RE INSIDE ME. My fingers are pressing so hard. It’s not the gore’s voice I hear now but a twisted version of my own. GET THEM OUT.

  You can’t get compulsions out, the gore hums. They’re in your blood now. I run a hand down my arm before I can stop myself. COMPULSIONS IN BLOOD. GET BLOOD OUT.

  The gore starts to howl in protest as my fingernails dig into my arms, looking for the sickness inside me. My wind swirls in close, frantic to stop what’s happening, but my muscles and skin and eyeballs—it’s like none of it belongs to me anymore. Like up on the window before I jumped. All I can see is my fingernails, raggedy like dandelions, my skin turning red as they press into my arms, the sound of my blood inside like a rumble in my ears.

  Hands jerk my jagged fingernails back from my arms, then pin them tight against me, arms holding me still as worms inside me try to squirm through my skin. SS. GET IT OUT. My heel slams into Luokai’s shin. I WANT IT OUT. I tear at his arms, slam my head into his chest. I’m watching from above, my body trying to escape so it can bleed the sickness away.

  Breaths coming quick, the voice in my head starts to sound more like a question. SS OUT? And then it only sounds like a horrible memory as my body lets me back in and I’m able to remind myself that my blood is bett
er inside me. My arms relax, my ribs feeling bruised from SS fighting against Luokai.

  Even after I go limp, Luokai doesn’t let go for a moment. But he doesn’t fight me when I squirm out of his grasp. Only, I can’t run away, because that’s when the shaking starts. Sinking to the floor, I wrap my arms tight around my ribs, shaking, shaking, shaking, until I’m afraid my body will break into little bits. A little pile of June.

  “It’s okay.” Luokai stays where he is, his arms limp as yesterday’s fish. “You’re okay.”

  CHAPTER 10 Sev

  “HERE AGAIN TO SEE YOU, Sev.” Dr. Yang’s light tenor voice. “Your color is good. Vitals are hard to read, but that’s normal for Suspended Sleep. You’re not going to be gaining any weight on liquid meals, but you haven’t lost too much yet.”

  His fingers press into my wrist, then fiddle with the tube biting my arm. I will everything inside me to jerk my arm away, to stop him touching my skin, but, as always, my body can’t hear me.

  “Things Outside are getting quite… interesting.” His voice sounds amused. “Refugees flooding in this direction are getting picked off by scavengers. SS is spreading nicely. It’ll only be a matter of time before the whole world just shrivels up. Except for me. The soldiers who follow me. The farms we’ve managed to keep control of. I think we could survive without the cure if we needed to.”

  Monster. The word tastes like gore teeth in my mind. Watching people die all around you.

  “That isn’t the ideal, though. I know there are people you care about out there. Tai-ge and his family. Howl, wherever he’s gotten to. The little Wood Rat girl the Menghu found prowling around Dazhai right before that map key disappeared. Your friend, I believe? I don’t know why I was surprised. Blind trust runs in your family.”