Nightfall

by Jake Halpern

  Kana took a step away from Line.

  “Why not?” demanded Line. He watched Kana closely, searching for a clue in his body language, anything that might help him understand what was going on. Honestly, Line wanted to grab him and shake him. Instead, he waited.

  “Listen,” said Kana finally. “The two of you need to get off this island.”

  “Huh?” said Line. “You mean the three of us.”

  “Right,” said Kana. And without another word, he started up the path after Marin.

  CHAPTER 40

  They walked single file along the narrow path that hugged the cliff walls and meandered into open meadows. They went through thickets of waist-high undergrowth—hedgerows and bushes interspersed with prickly vines. Marin and Line were able to see fairly well here. Clouds dotted the sky, but the moon emitted enough light for them to discern the rough contours of the landscape.

  It was easy enough for Kana to follow the trail, but he also followed the scent. He had first picked it up back in the gully, and it had been growing steadily stronger. It kindled a hunger that was so strong, he feared what he might do to satiate it. Careful. Don’t give yourself away. Not yet. He thought about his outburst at Line. Where did that come from? It felt like he was losing control—of his body and his emotions. He needed to be the old Kana for just a little longer. Get to the boat. That’s the goal. The boat. Get there before the others wake.

  After an hour of steady walking, the rain returned. At first it was soft enough to ignore. Soon it increased in volume and power, and the raindrops themselves grew colder and colder until they changed into slush. The three of them were drenched and shivering, eyes fixed on the ground as they looked for obstacles that would trip them up. The meager consolation was that the rain washed away their footprints, and hopefully the smell of their bodies, which might make it easier to escape detection.

  They stopped for a minute to regroup, crouching beneath some large glacial rocks. The rocks provided scant protection from the rain, but it was something. In front of them, the trail continued down a steep dip in the landscape. From their vantage point, it looked like a giant bowl depressed into the earth. Kana could see straight lines—walls—arranged in a grid. They were close.

  He looked at Line and Marin. They were a sorry sight: bruised, cold, and hungry. Then something farther away caught his attention. He stood up. Marin started to rise as well, but Kana put out his hand to stop her.

  “Wait,” he said. He stared at the forest’s edge, several hundred yards distant. After a long pause, he shook his head. “I guess it was nothing.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Marin. “We shouldn’t move until you’re positive.”

  Kana continued to gaze into the woods, but nothing stirred. They continued slowly along the path, which led down toward the bottom of the bowl. The area here was more overgrown, with thick knots of twisted underbrush. Puddles of water and mud filled the path. Water dripped everywhere—from leaves, branches, and razor-sharp thorns. As the path made a final descent into the bowl, they came upon a fork. The main trail continued down, while a smaller path veered back up toward the cliffs and the old seabed.

  Line stopped. “I’d rather go up than down into this mess,” he shouted into the rain.

  Marin nodded. She felt the same way but was reluctant to leave the main path. She looked at Kana. “What do you think?”

  “The cemetery is down that way,” he said, pointing into the bowl. “Those must be the old walls the woman was talking about. If we’re following her instructions, then we have to go past the cemetery.”

  Marin turned to Line. “Are you okay with this?”

  He shrugged wearily. “I guess I don’t have a choice.” Rain dripped all over his face—his chin, ears, even his eyebrows.

  Within a few minutes, they arrived at the bottom of the bowl. Kana was right. The cemetery walls. They were set in an orderly grid, like a giant, sprawling maze that kept on going and going. Only certain sections were used as the cemetery; others were beginning to decay. Weathered but imposing porticos served as entrances to different parts of the grid.

  “This is it,” said Line grimly. He had last been here two years ago, at his mother’s funeral. Those were the Evening years, with the sun low in the western sky. He remembered it vividly—the long shadows, the chill in the air, the sound of shovels scraping the earth, and the smell of burning incense. The vicar who gave the eulogy had carried a torch to shed light on her gravestone. Line remembered little of what the vicar had said. He had been focused almost entirely on Francis, who had sobbed unrelentingly.

  Line carefully made his way through the dripping underbrush. He approached a portico that led into the grid, but stopped short of entering. Marin walked to where Line was standing. Despite the rain, she could still see the familiar contours of gravestones in a series of rows. She and Kana had been at the funeral, too. The entire town of Bliss had been there. She could still picture Line, wearing his black dress coat, holding his brother’s hand. Her heart broke for him.

  Kana joined them. He felt slightly faint, but he forced himself to focus on the walls themselves. They were roughly twice the height of a grown man and thick, strong enough to support a hefty roof or to hold off an attack. And they certainly weren’t the sort of stone structures built merely to enclose a graveyard.

  “They use this place,” said Kana softly.

  Line frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We use this place during the Day and they use it at Night. It’s a cycle. It’s the same with the houses, the woods, everything.”

  Line stared at the gravestones. “But what would they want with this place? This is our graveyard.”

  Kana had a hunch, but he didn’t dare say. Instead, he walked underneath the portico and approached the nearest wall. Despite the rain, the scent was so strong, it made his head spin with hunger.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Kana. He grabbed hold of the pebble- and moss-covered wall and began to climb. He had to see. Seconds later, he heard someone right behind him. It was Marin. She had that look of determination on her face. I’m coming with you. I want to see, too. Line remained where he was, staring at the gravestones.

  Upon reaching the top, Marin and Kana looked down into the grid of stone walls. They formed square sections about twenty feet in length and width. The nearest sections were filled with gravestones. Nothing seemed unusual here. But something was happening in the more distant sections. They were filled with a milky liquid whose surface was bubbling, heaving, and undulating. Twice, Kana caught a glimpse of something humpbacked and fairly large breaking the surface. He could smell their fat and muscle. What are they? Food. That much was certain. And he couldn’t put off eating. Not forever.

  He glanced at Marin. Does she know? Sensing that he was looking at her, she turned to him.

  She squinted and pointed to the distant sections of the grid. “Kana, what’s in there?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even in order to conceal the lie. “It’s hard to tell.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Kana approached the edge of the wall and stared at the creatures in the watery sections of the grid. He had their sour-ripe scent in his nostrils, and it took all of his self-control to stand on the wall and pretend to be revolted.

  Luckily, Marin’s attention was drawn by something else. She clutched his arm and pointed into the far distance, toward the forest. The rain had lessened and the moon had emerged. At the edge of the woods stood a stone archway.

  “There it is,” whispered Marin.

  “Let’s go,” said Kana. “They’ll be here soon enough.”

  They climbed down the wall to where Line was waiting for them. “What’d you see up there?”

  “Graves,” said Kana. “And beyond that, the grid was filled with water.”

  Line accepted this, in large part because
of his eagerness to leave this place. They continued on the main path, heading toward the arch.

  Heavy rains combined with the temperature drop had turned the path into a thick, muddy ramp. Pools of water lay everywhere, and around the edges Kana could see ice beginning to form. Fat worms wriggled from the earth. They were longer than usual, with divots and protrusions running along their segments.

  They pressed on, with Kana in the lead. In places they had to claw their way up, sinking their fingers into the mud. As they emerged from the valley, Kana stopped so Line and Marin could catch their breath. It was still scrubland, a mixture of thorny bushes and windswept grass. The forest began a stone’s throw away. The trees here were shrouded in vines.

  “Get down!” hissed Kana.

  They dropped into a crouch to avoid lying on the ground, which was covered with thorns.

  “What is it?” whispered Marin.

  “There,” said Kana, pointing to several older trees growing on the hillside, no more than fifty feet away. They were small and scraggly, unprotected by the forest and therefore exposed to the constant wind from the cliffs. In the darkness it was impossible to see stationary objects, but movement was easier to track. Something was creeping through the trees, and as they watched, one movement became many. Several dozen tall, thin shapes were gliding down the hill, heading for the grid of stone walls.

  “They’re coming out of the woods,” Line whispered. In a panic, he hugged the ground and felt the cold numbing his skin.

  Kana grabbed Line’s sweater and pulled. “Get up. We have to go,” he whispered. Kana looked behind at Marin. She nodded.

  They crept along the trail for several minutes, and began to run when they were safely away from the area. The trail curved back toward the cliffs, then turned again in the direction of the forest. Up ahead stood the arch. It was roughly twenty feet high and appeared to be made of a single piece of stone that had been carved into a perfect semicircle. It stood ominously at the very edge of the forest, a clear gateway into the woods beyond. They approached the arch, standing in its moon shadow, and eyed it warily. The trees beyond the arch parted and a narrow trail wound into the darkness.

  Line peered into the forest and then looked back at the cliffs. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  Marin followed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “The trail seems to head due north, away from the Coil, more into the center of the island.”

  Kana shook his head. “We don’t know that,” he said, sounding both patient and exasperated. “It’s just the beginning of the trail.”

  Line’s eyes flicked wildly to the left and right. “The point is—we start down that trail and we’ll be walking into the thick of it.” He held his injured arm out as if it were made of wood. “That’s where those things are coming from.”

  “Line, we can’t keep second-guessing ourselves,” said Marin with a heavy sigh. “If the trail doesn’t hit the Coil, we can always turn around.”

  Line squinted into the forest, willing himself to see even a little bit more. “This seems suicidal. We don’t even have a candle.”

  Marin nodded at her brother. “Kana can see.”

  “But you and I will be blind,” countered Line.

  “So far, everything that woman has told us has been true,” said Marin. “She said to follow the river, up the gully, past the walls, and through the arch. And there’ll be a boat in that cave—I know it.”

  “Even if there is a boat, it won’t do us any good without a sunstone,” said Line. “I don’t know the sky well enough to go by the stars. And with all this rain and the clouds . . .” He gestured up toward the sky but didn’t bother to finish his thought.

  “Let’s get to the boat first,” said Marin. “Then we can worry about the sunstone.”

  Line shifted his wounded arm—and instantly regretted it. The arm felt raw, as if the skin had been flayed off. His neck and shoulders ached, too, and pain radiated down his back.

  “It matters,” he said softly. “I’d rather die here—on this island—than out in the ocean, slowly, of thirst. Here, we can throw ourselves off the cliffs if we need to. At least it’ll be our decision.” He turned toward the vanished seabed.

  “Line—NO!” Marin grabbed his good arm and drew close to him. “Why are you talking like that?”

  “Don’t you SEE?” he yelled. “Even if we make it through this forest and onto the boat, without a sunstone, we’ll just be sailing aimlessly. It’s not a plan—it’s just a different way to die.”

  Marin bit her lip. This is the moment, she thought. I can’t stall any longer.

  “Line—listen—this is crazy,” said Kana.

  “No,” said Line. He raised his good hand to cut off Kana. “I’m right—you know that. If I have to die, I want to control how and where.”

  “LINE!” yelled Marin. Line dropped his hand and turned to her. “Line,” she continued, more softly. “Listen! We have the bloody sunstone! I . . . have the bloody sunstone.”

  Kana and Line both leaned in slightly, staring. Marin reached into her pocket, pulled out the sunstone, and pressed it firmly into Line’s palm. The sunstone was a small oval set in a perfectly circular gold pendant, with 360 small hash marks along the circumference—one mark for each of the degrees on a compass.

  “I found it in my bag a few days after we got back from the woods and I was too embarrassed to say anything,” said Marin. “I know—it looks really bad.” She paused, and her voice became even softer. “But we have the sunstone now, so please—can we just go find the boat?”

  Line and Kana stared at Marin in disbelief.

  Line’s face remained blank for several seconds, then his whole body began to tremble. “I went back into the woods looking for that sunstone!” he snarled. “I abandoned my brother for that sunstone. And you had it all along!” He balled his hands into fists, clenching them so hard, the knuckles turned white.

  “I didn’t want you to do that,” said Marin. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “I never asked you to.”

  “You said nothing!” He paused, looked around, and lowered his voice. “And all this time, I’ve been blaming myself!”

  Kana put a hand on Line’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for this.” He spoke slowly and calmly, taking care with each word. “I’m not defending Marin. I’m just saying we need to go. We have the sunstone. Now we just need to find the boat.”

  “Right,” said Line. He took several deep breaths, as if to gather himself. Then he turned, spat violently on the ground, and began walking away from them into the forest.

  Marin chased after Line and reached out to touch him, but he just turned and thrust the necklace back at her. “Take it. I don’t want to be accused of losing it again.”

  His voice was so bitter—and in that instant, Marin wondered if things would ever be the same with them. She took the necklace and thrust it deep into the front pocket of her pants.

  Together the three of them passed through the white stone archway and into the woods. The wind picked up—they could hear it whistling through the branches and gusting over the treetops. At ground level, however, all was still.

  As he walked in furious silence, Line played over what had just happened. He should have trusted his memory of putting the necklace back in Marin’s bag. He should never have gone into the woods looking for it. He should have boarded the furrier boats with everybody else, and he should—at this very moment—be sailing to the desert camp with Francis.

  It was difficult to keep track of time while walking along the winding forest path. Line thought an hour had passed, then wondered if it was actually longer. His wounded arm was throbbing now.

  Kana stopped walking and gestured for them to stop.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Marin.

  “We’re being followed,” said Kana.


  Line turned around. “Where?”

  “It’s not behind us. It’s in front.”

  “What?” said Marin. She peered forward into the gloom. “How’s it following us, then?”

  “It’s pacing us—matching our speed and staying out of sight,” said Kana. “When we slow down, it slows down.”

  “What is it?” asked Line.

  “I don’t know,” said Kana. “I can’t tell.” He looked at Line and Marin standing there, breathing in shallow gasps. They were exhausted and cold, and Line was grimacing in pain as he held his injured arm. He needed more lekar—that was obvious.

  “I’m going to run up ahead,” declared Kana. “You two stay here and rest.”

  Marin shook her head. “It’s a bad idea to split up, especially since you’re the only one who can see.”

  “I won’t be gone long,” said Kana. “We need to know what’s ahead, and maybe I’ll find the Coil.” He nodded at Line’s arm. “And we’ll need more lekar before we go much farther—I want to look for some.”

  “You just want us to stand here, waiting for you?” asked Line. He was so tired that, unthinkingly, he began to lean against Marin, but then he remembered the sunstone and pulled away.

  “The trees around here are huge,” said Kana. “You can climb into the higher branches and rest until I come back.”

  “How is Line supposed to climb like that?” asked Marin, pointing to his bad arm. “It’s crazy.” They had come up with many different plans in the last forty-eight hours, but this one seemed to be the stupidest and most desperate.

  “I can climb,” said Line hotly. “That’s not the point. The point is we’ll be stuck here. Kana, what if something happens to you? What do we do then?”

  “I won’t be long,” Kana said. “Besides, if there’s trouble ahead, I don’t want us to just stumble into it.”

  Marin placed a hand on Line’s shoulder. “Can I have the vegetable sack?”