Nightfall

by Jake Halpern

  A rising swell of noise filled the forest. It was a deep, bass pounding, as if drums were being played all around them. The trees beyond the cover of shoreline vegetation began to sway. Kana recalled Soraya’s final warning: The woods along the river are waking.

  “We have to flip the boat!” said Kana.

  “WHAT?” shouted Marin. She stared at Kana as if he were insane. “We’ll freeze to death.”

  The thrumming continued to rise from the riverbanks, as if the entire forest was converging on them.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Kana yelled. “We have to get under the hull—it’s our only protection.”

  Dark objects began whizzing past. The sounds of the forest rose from every direction.

  “Lean to starboard!” yelled Kana.

  Together, they lurched to starboard. The port gunwale rose up out of the water, wobbled precariously for a moment or two, and then flipped. Marin, Line, and Kana plunged into the water. Moments later, they resurfaced, grabbed for the hull of the boat, and hid underneath.

  “W-where are you?” Marin sobbed. The cold was deadening her senses. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Here,” shouted Line. “KANA?”

  “HERE!”

  “Grab the wooden slats and hold,” Line ordered. “Hold on tight.”

  On the other side of the hull, they could hear the sounds of bodies—large and small—thudding against the hull. The onslaught continued over the course of several minutes; it sounded, at times, as if it was being pelted with stones. They clung tightly to the boat, their arm muscles frozen into position.

  It was hard to gauge time, but eventually Line realized that the outside world had grown quiet and the boat was no longer being bombarded. And then his feet began to drag along the river bottom. It was running shallow. A jolt of water splashed onto his lips, and it no longer tasted like freshwater.

  “It’s brackish,” he called out. “We’re probably near the old seabed. Marin, Kana—hold on a little longer. We’re almost out.”

  They floated downstream in silence for several more minutes, until the cold numbed Marin’s arms so completely that, without warning, she lost her grip and sank down into the water. It happened in an instant, and it took Line several seconds to realize she had disappeared.

  “MARIN!” screamed Line. “Quick, Kana—beach the boat.”

  Line let go as well, leaving Kana alone underneath the boat. Kana dug into the riverbed, and slowly, the boat turned. A moment later, he heard the overturned hull grate against rock. Kana swam out from under the boat and looked around. The island was behind them. They were situated on the edge of the Coil as it cut across the old seabed. Line had found Marin about twenty yards upstream and was struggling to get her out of the water. Kana shoved the boat farther onto shore and ran to them.

  Marin lay on her back, her arms and legs covered in mud. Her eyes were closed and her face was as pale as the moon. Only the glow from her skin markings seemed alive.

  “Marin!” shouted Kana. “Marin!”

  Her lips pursed and shifted, as if she was trying to speak. An arm twitched, then Marin’s body began to tremble all over. With great effort, she opened her eyes. Line helped her to a sitting position. He was trembling, too—the cold had seeped into every pore of his skin and sapped away his last reserves of energy.

  Kana was far less affected by the cold. Marin and Line huddled on the rocks while snowflakes landed steadily on their hair and shoulders. Then he remembered the flint. It was still there, in his pocket. It took only a few minutes to build a small pile of driftwood and pine needles for kindling. Soon, the sparks and smoke turned to fire. Kana and Line carried Marin as close to the fire as they dared and set her on the ground.

  It was risky, building a fire this close to the island, but Marin would die of hypothermia if she didn’t get warm. Once the fire was going strong, Kana searched the boat from top to bottom. In a small, inset compartment, he found an empty leather flask and two wool blankets. He draped the blankets around Marin and Line. With the blankets and the fire, they finally stopped shivering. Soon, they were warm enough to proceed. Line made sure to apply more lekar, and afterward, he and Kana pushed the boat back into the water.

  They floated downstream through the darkness. There was little work or steering involved. The current would carry them to the sea, and only then would they need to worry about which way to go.

  An hour passed and then another. Marin had been huddled on the boat’s floor, drifting in and out of sleep, when suddenly she stirred to life with an awareness of something she needed to do. She crept to the bow of the boat, where Kana was perched, looking downstream. He had been studying the river ahead and occasionally warning Line of obstacles in their way.

  “Are you all right?” asked Marin. She placed a tentative hand on his knee.

  Kana shrugged. His mind had been churning—with thoughts about Soraya, Anton, Tarae, Marin, Line, the sea voyage, life in the Desert Lands, and countless other things. “Honestly,” he said, “I’m not sure how I feel.”

  Marin put her hand on his arm. They sat like this, motionless, for a while.

  At one point, Kana turned to look at Marin’s luminescent markings. The blanket had loosened, baring her arms.

  “You did that?” he asked.

  Marin nodded, and briefly described the climb up the cliff. Kana leaned in to study her markings. After a moment’s reflection, he sat back.

  “They suit you,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER 58

  They floated through the Night, as if riding the current of an endless dream. To slake their thirst, they collected melted snow and rainwater in the leather flask. For food, Line tore off a slat of wood from the boat and made a rudimentary harpoon; it was good enough to catch migrating eels. Thanks to the lekar, Line’s arm healed steadily. The swelling subsided and his fevers ceased.

  Each of them took shifts at the rudder, guiding the small boat along the river’s serpentine bends and between the many gravel shoals that emerged. In places, the Coil itself widened enormously, fanning out to cover great expanses, so that it was just several inches deep. On these occasions, they hoisted up the keel and the rudder, and pushed the boat across the rocks and dried kelp. Elsewhere, the river narrowed into tight chutes and then dropped down into craters where river water had pooled to form small lakes. It didn’t matter—they simply followed the current.

  Marin spent hours staring at the horizon, which seemed to be growing lighter. The air warmed to the point where fog was common. Oddly enough, she didn’t worry about all the things that could still go wrong. She was too tired and too numb to worry. Right now she was safe and she needed to rest. Her thoughts wandered, to the desert camp and the two-humped horses from the storybooks. She pictured the sand dunes, and the mountains, and the warmth of the sun on her face.

  If they made it to the Desert Lands, they would remain there for fourteen years. Marin would spend the rest of her childhood there, would become an adult there, would get married there, might even have a child there. She tried to envision Line as her husband but couldn’t quite see it. And then she imagined Kana in the blinding sunlight—and the thought filled her with sorrow. Of course he had to leave the island, but still, life in the desert would not be easy for him.

  Marin would be twenty-eight years old when she returned to the island. Twenty-eight. It was hard to fathom. Back before all of this happened—before she knew what lurked deep in the woods of the island—she had loved this place. But how could she sleep in her bed, walk by the edge of the woods, visit the old cemetery, and sail to the Dwarf Oak Islands without feeling a current of fear? Could these places possibly feel like home again? The dark would be with them forever—even in the brightest hours of Day.

  As Marin considered this, she was suddenly more sympathetic to the possibility that her parents—and other adults—may have chosen wisely
not to know what lurked in the woods.

  Not that any of this mattered now. Those worries were years away. When—or if—she returned, she vowed to do so only if Line and Kana were with her. They knew the truth. And the knowing bound them together.

  At one point, when the Coil poured into a newly formed lake along the seabed, they stopped for several hours. Kana and Line worked together to chase fish into the shallow areas, where they caught half a dozen flatheads with the makeshift harpoon. The boat was several hundred feet away, and they walked slowly, pleased with their catch. Walking together like that reminded Line of the times when he and Kana were in the forest together. They had been such good friends then.

  As they walked back to Marin, Line turned to Kana and smiled. “You still have that flint, right?” he said. “I’m getting tired of eating stuff raw.”

  “Sure,” Kana said. “We’ll just grab some driftwood and dried seaweed. It’ll smoke a bit, but that might make it taste better.”

  Line took in Kana’s features—his body somehow seemed smaller, leaner, and frailer. Is he already changing back? It’s hard to tell.

  He clasped Kana’s shoulder. “You’re a good man to have around.”

  Kana stood there awkwardly.

  “Line,” said Kana finally, with a trace of a stammer in his throat. “Back there in the forest—for a long time—I wasn’t myself.” He paused, trying and failing to find the right words to describe the way his mind had transformed. “Something was pulling at me . . .”

  “It’s okay,” said Line. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “But I want to.”

  “And you can,” said Line. “Sometimes it takes time, though, to figure things out. It was like that after my mom died.” He paused and smiled. “You know—you were there.”

  Kana nodded.

  “Are you . . . back to the way you were?” asked Line. As he said this, he glanced at Kana’s feet.

  “Kind of,” replied Kana. “Physically I’m pretty close to how I was before . . . but I don’t think I’ll ever really be the same. Truth is—I don’t know if I’d want to go back to being that person. Maybe I knew, even back then, that something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what.”

  Line looked toward the horizon, where they could see the sky lightening. “What happens next, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Kana.

  “Well,” said Line with a determined nod, “some cooked flatheads will help.”

  Kana nodded. “Sounds good.”

  An hour later, they were on their way, continuing down the now wide and slow-moving Coil River. Kana saw a deep purple on the far western sky. It might be a while yet before they saw the sun, but if they made it, Kana knew it would mark a shift within himself. He had told Line the truth. He was changing. As time passed, his eyes weren’t quite as sharp as they had been and his breathing was less rapid. More strikingly, his feet seemed smaller—as did his talons—and the skin along his ankles and lower calves began to grow back while his greenish scales dried and peeled off. To Kana, these changes were bittersweet. He remembered the exhilaration of speeding through the treetops, alive with powers he never imagined he might possess. That strength was fading now, and he hated to lose it. Perhaps in the Desert Lands, during the three days of Night, he’d get some of it back.

  They continued downstream, past great, twisting chimneys of dying coral that had been abandoned by the sea. Once they saw the skeleton of a massive whale, propped up vertically on a series of boulders. Its rib cage looked like the scaffolding of a great, half-built tower. Later, they saw an old barnacle-covered shipwreck that had probably been on the floor of the sea for centuries.

  In idle moments, Marin speculated about the life that was waiting in the Desert Lands. It made Kana uneasy. Even before Nightfall he’d been an outsider among what Soraya had called “the Day-dwellers.”

  Soraya.

  Kana didn’t let himself contemplate what had happened to her—whether she was still alive. Everything was still so raw and unresolved in his own mind. However, he happily recalled the cave with the drawings on the wall. He pictured his father, standing there in the flickering light of a campfire, carefully etching the paint onto the slabs of smooth stone, and he imagined Soraya with him in the darkness.

  “You’ll see her again,” Marin said at one point, unprompted, as if she had been reading his thoughts. “She’s strong . . . she’ll survive.”

  Kana sighed heavily, obviously unconvinced.

  “Marin,” he said after some time. “You know who she is—right?”

  Marin nodded.

  “And that means that we’re not really . . .”

  Marin scoffed. “We’ll always be twins,” she said before he could finish. “Nothing can change that. You’re stuck with me.” She paused. “And at Dawn, when we return to the island, we’ll look for her.”

  Kana raised his eyebrows. “When we return to the island?”

  “Don’t,” said Marin with a smile.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t assume we’re never going back. Or that, if we do, nothing good will come from it,” said Marin.

  “What makes you so certain that’s what I’m thinking?” he asked.

  “Because I know you,” Marin replied. She reached through the darkness, and her arms—which still glowed from the markings of her hastily drawn tattoos—encircled him. “I know you better than anyone else in the world.”

  Kana said nothing, but he hugged her back. Line sat quietly in the stern of the boat and smiled.

  EPILOGUE

  They smelled the ocean before they saw it, and they felt the salt from the air on their faces. In time, they heard the distant caw of seagulls and the muted, far-off rumbling of the surf. Soon the boat began to accelerate. They could feel the pull of the sea as the vessel was buffeted by the chop. Seawater began to spray around them. Waves rocked the boat. And then, in an instant, the Coil had faded away and they were at sea—surrounded by an expanse of water that stretched toward the horizon.

  “We did it!” shouted Line above the noise of the surf. He was sitting in the stern of the boat with his hand on the tiller. “Kana!” he yelled. “We need to raise the mast and the sails!”

  “Got it!” Kana bellowed. Marin helped him, and within a few minutes, they had put up the mainsail and were moving at a steady clip, farther out to sea. As they sailed, Marin climbed back to the stern on the boat and sat down next to Line. She then reached into her shirt and took off the sunstone that hung around her neck. She felt its weight in the palm of her hand, and then handed it to Line.

  “It’s yours,” she said. “I want you to have it.”

  Line stared at the sunstone, then at her. A moment later, he grinned.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Marin. “Now use it.”

  Line nodded. “Take the tiller.”

  Marin grabbed it as Line climbed toward the bow. He passed Kana along the way, held up the sunstone, and smiled. Kana smiled back. When he reached the bow, Line raised the sunstone to the western sky, which was shimmering with the effervescence of Dawn. The stone glowed and cast a thin slice of light on one of the 360 hash marks that lined the circumference of the pendant.

  “We’re at two-oh-five,” Line called out. “Bring us slightly to port. We need to be at two twenty-one.” Marin nodded and turned the boat. Line studied the markings on the pendant as the stripe of light moved slowly, finally settling at 221. “All right!” hollered Line. He felt the wind at his back and pointed straight ahead.

  “Are we good?” asked Kana.

  “Yes,” said Line, gazing out across the trackless ocean. “I think so.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Before we had a title or characters for Nightfall, we talked about how it should feel. We talked at length about darkness and about night. There
was a time, not long ago, when darkness evoked a primal fear. Before the advent of electric lights, night was something very powerful for humankind. Crimes committed at night, for example, often carried stiffer penalties. In the evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a tinge of worry would creep up people’s spines. Night was something to fear. And this was the feeling that we hoped to conjure.

  This book was a powerful lesson in collaboration: despite throwing everything we had into it, the two of us still came up short. What pushed this book across the finish line was the help we received from so many. We shared our very first drafts of Nightfall with Tina Bennett and Svetlana Katz at WME, and our gratitude for Tina’s advocacy and advice, and to Svetlana for her wise counsel, is profound. They never, ever gave up on this book—or on us. We are grateful to others at WME who improved this book, especially Kathleen Nishimoto, as well as Laura Bonner and Janine Kamouh for their assistance on foreign rights. To Alicia Gordon and Erin Conroy, who represent the book for movie and television rights, we’re thrilled to be working with you!

  Family and a few closest friends gave crucial input as we prepared the book for submission. To Tamar Halpern, Micah Nathan, Dan Kujawinski, Nancy Kujawinski, Brian Zittel, and Paul Zuydhoek, thank you for being there at the beginning, and for your advice and help throughout. You were truly our first editors.

  It was an uncertain and turbulent road to publication, but that all changed when we signed with Penguin. From the very first phone call with Putnam publisher Jen Besser, we felt at home. Jen’s expertise and confidence was exactly what we needed—and what we continue to rely upon. As for our editor, Ari Lewin: WOW. You were exactly what we needed, at perhaps the most critical moment in the book’s evolution—your creativity, talent, and superb editing skills were a wonder to behold. We hit the jackpot with you as our editor, and we can’t imagine this book—or other future books—without you.