by Terry Brooks
But her grandfather was wary.
“You must never go out alone,” he would tell her, even though the others said it was safe and nothing would happen to her.
He didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. She believed what he told her, and so she was careful not to go anywhere by herself. She was reminded of the disappearance of her father, even though she did not believe anything bad had happened to him. But when her youngest brother vanished one sunny afternoon without even the smallest trace, she knew that it was because he had ignored her grandfather’s warning. The others laughed, but she knew.
Then, two months later, when the red haze passed overhead, even though it was gone in less than a day, he told her not to eat or drink anything taken from the earth. She did as he said, but the others didn’t listen. When they began to get sick and die, he warned them they would have to leave, but they didn’t listen to him then, either. They refused to leave their home, insisting that things would get better, that the sickness would pass. They believed themselves protected in their sheltered enclave, so far removed from the rest of the world. They believed themselves safe from its horrors.
Even though she was only nine by then, she knew they were wrong in the same way they had been wrong every time before.
It was only after all but fifty of them had died, her mother and brothers included, that they acknowledged that her grandfather was right and made preparations to leave. They built rafts to ferry themselves down the waters of Puget Sound in search of a new place to live. There were islands all along the western shoreline; one of them would provide them with a safe haven to disembark and start over.
They set out in good weather, four rafts in all. Within twenty-four hours, a storm caught up with them. Winds reached fifty miles an hour on the open water in a matter of minutes. The trailing raft was lost, capsized with all its goods sunk and its passengers swept away. Plague surfaced on the second raft a day later, and the passengers on the other two made the decision to abandon it, leaving those aboard to fend for themselves. Some talked afterward about the need for sacrificing the few for the good of the many. Fear set in as the journey wore on, and everyone began to realize how much danger they were in. It was going to get much worse, her grandfather told her privately. Bad enough that they were going to have to leave the others because sooner or later their behavior would turn irrational and everyone left alive would be at risk.
Two nights later, while the rafts were tied up in a small cove and the others were sleeping, her grandfather woke her, held his finger to his lips, and led her into the dark. She looked back once or twice as they slipped away, but no one saw them go. They walked inland through forests and fields, past empty farms and houses, skirting the towns and keeping to the countryside. They foraged for food, which her grandfather seemed to know something about. Most of what they found was bottled or packaged, so they were not afraid to consume it. They slept in empty buildings when they could and outside when there was nothing else. Her grandfather had stuffed blankets and medicines and changes of clothes into a backpack, and they were able to get by.
Then, five days into their journey, somewhere west of the islands that dotted the waters across from Seattle, her grandfather came down with plague. He turned hot and feverish, and his skin darkened in broad purplish patches all over his body. She didn’t know which form of plague he had contracted, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had because she was too little to understand which of the medicines would help. She tried them all, one at a time, but none of them seemed to make any difference. She washed him with cool water to help keep his temperature down and tried to make him drink so that he wouldn’t become dehydrated. For a time he tried to coach her by telling her what he thought would help, suggesting what she might do for him. But his sickness turned worse, and he became incoherent. He raved as if he had lost all reason, and she became afraid that someone—or something—would overhear. She gave him sleeping medication because she didn’t know what else to do. She kept bathing him in an effort to lower his fever, kept trying to get liquids into him, and waited for him to die.
But, against all odds, he recovered. It took weeks, and it was a slow, torturous process. Afterward, he was never the same. His hair had gone white. His face was marked by the struggle he had endured, his once strong visage lined and pinched and gaunt. He was frail and gnarled in a way old men become when all of their youth has been bled out of them. It happened in the span of about four weeks, and even after he was sitting up and eating and drinking again, he was only a ghost of himself.
She looked at him warily and tried to hide how afraid she was for him. But she could tell by the way he looked back that he knew.
They set out again, but he was no longer her grandfather of old. He sang ditties and spoke in odd rhymes. He talked incessantly about the weather, about forecasts, storms, fronts and pressure ridges, and things she had never heard him speak of before. None of it made much sense; it frightened her in a way even the ravings hadn’t. He only rarely spoke of anything besides the weather. Nothing else seemed to matter to him.
At night, he would wake her sometimes with his muttering, talking in his sleep of black, evil things coming to get them. She would wake him, and he would look at her as if she were a stranger.
When they reached the shores of Puget Sound, they began walking south until they found a rowboat. Without so much as a word about what he intended, her grandfather loaded their few possessions, placed her aboard at the stern, climbed in after her, and pushed off. It was nearing sunset, and darkness was almost upon them. He didn’t seem to notice. He rowed them toward the islands, seated with his back to them, facing her, his haunted eyes fixed on her face. He rowed all night without stopping, and even though it was black all around them, the weather stayed calm. They reached an island sometime just before dawn, pulled the boat ashore, and slept. When they woke, her grandfather rowed them around to the other side of the island, where they stopped again. The following day, he rowed them all the way across the channel to the city.
She could have run from him at any time while they were on the island. She was quicker than he was; she was probably stronger and possessed of more endurance. She could have slipped away while he was sleeping, as well. But she never considered leaving him. He was her grandfather, and she would stay with him no matter what.
In Seattle, they lived in derelict buildings on the waterfront, scavenging supplies and foraging for food. She waited for him to tell her it was time for them to leave, but he seemed to have lost interest. He barely acknowledged her presence now, growing more distant by the day. He never spoke her name, even when she called him Grandfather. He would wander the waterfront for hours and sometimes days before returning. She tried to go with him, but he refused to let her, telling her there was a storm coming or a change in the weather and she needed to stay close to home. Their home was an old container down by the cranes. Her life had turned to ashes.
Then, one day, when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, he went out and didn’t come back. She waited for a week for his return, but there was no sign of him. In desperation, she went looking for him and was still searching ten days later when Sparrow found her and brought her home to live with the Ghosts.
“THREE MONTHS AFTER he disappeared, I found him down by the docks. He looked at me and didn’t say anything. I could tell he didn’t know who I was. I spoke to him, but he just smiled and said something about the weather.”
River looked away from Hawk to her grandfather. His breathing was ragged, and sweat soaked his clothing. She moved over to a bucket of water, wet a rag, and wiped his brow carefully.
“I know the rules,” she said. “No adults can be Ghosts. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but I didn’t want to leave the Ghosts, either. I didn’t know what to do. I went back to check on him when I could, but sometimes I couldn’t even find him. Sometimes I thought he was dead. He wasn’t, but I thought so. It was okay until now. It was a little like ha
ving him live next door. I could still go see him. I could pretend he was still a part of my family.”
“You should have told me, River,” Hawk said softly. “You should have told someone.”
She shook her head, her lips compressing into a tight line. “No adults, you said. Only kids could be members of our family. Ever.”
The words felt like a condemnation. He had said it because he blamed adults for so much, said it because he didn’t want the Ghosts ever to be dependent on adults again, said it to keep them from even thinking that adults had a place in their life. It was easy to say it when they were all orphans and street kids and there wasn’t any real family left and no one wanted anything to do with them anyway.
“I found him two days ago, lying in his bed here in the shed. He’d been well for three years, but the sickness has returned, same as before. I still didn’t know what to do.” She looked at him, her eyes solemn and depthless. “What if he dies?”
“We won’t let him die,” Hawk said at once, even knowing it was a promise he could not keep.
“In a way, he already has,” she whispered. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she wiped them away quickly.
“I said no adults in the Ghosts, but I didn’t say we wouldn’t ever help an adult if one needed it. I didn’t say that.” He tried to think of what to tell her. “River, remember when I went down to the docks maybe a week ago? I went down to speak to your grandfather about the dead Lizard, to see if maybe he knew something. You know what he did? He asked me to take him with us when we left the city. Like he knew we were going.” He hesitated. “I told him I would.”
She stared. “You did? You said that? Did you mean it?”
Did he? He couldn’t remember for sure. He thought about the way the Weatherman had asked him, almost as if it was an afterthought, a throwaway. He lifted one eyebrow at River. “Sure, I meant it. I was thinking, though. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, he still knows who you are. Otherwise, why would he have asked to go with us?”
She seemed doubtful, but didn’t disagree. “Can we give him some medicine?”
He nodded. “But we have to ask Owl what to do for him. Maybe one of her books will tell us what sort of sickness this is and how to treat it. She knows a lot. Let’s go ask her.”
But River shook her head. “You go, Hawk. I don’t want to leave him all alone.”
Hawk considered arguing the matter, then decided against it. Instead, he reached into his pocket and handed her one of the precious viper-pricks. He left his prod leaning against the shed wall as he moved to the doorway.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. He gave her grandfather a final glance as he went out. The old man looked like a bundle of sticks lying beneath the thin blanket. “It will be all right,” he said.
But in his heart he felt that maybe it wouldn’t.
WHEN HE GOT back to the underground, he told Owl what he had discovered about River and the Weatherman. Owl did not recognize the form of plague that the old man had contracted, but she began searching her medical books immediately to see if she could find a sickness that matched what he was describing. He watched her from across the room, absorbed in her work. They had medicines for some plagues, he thought. Or they could get others from Tessa, just as they had done for Persia.
Thinking of Persia, he was reminded that Panther had not yet returned. Leaving Owl to her reading and Cheney to his nap, he went back up the stairs and outside into the streets to wait. Soon Panther reappeared with Chalk and Fixit, his dark face radiating anger that Hawk could detect from fifty feet away.
“What happened?” he asked as the other came up to him.
“Didn’t nothin’ happen, Bird-Man. We got there like we was supposed to, stood around waiting for those pussycats to appear, and no one showed. We waited more than an hour ’cause I knew you’d say we didn’t wait long enough otherwise. Whole thing was a frickin’ waste of time.”
Hawk blinked. Tiger wouldn’t have missed this meeting unless he physically couldn’t come. Even then, he would have sent one of the others. Persia was too important to him. He would do anything to protect her.
Something was wrong.
“Wait here while I get Cheney,” he said. “We’re going back out.”
A S HE WENT back down into the underground, he made a quick series of decisions. He was going to find out what had happened to Tiger, but he had to be careful how he went about it. Finding Tiger probably meant finding where the Cats laired, and all of the tribes were very territorial. If the Ghosts went uninvited into Cat country, even for what they deemed a good cause, they could expect an unfriendly reception. Still, the larger problem was in finding where Cat country was. He knew it was in an abandoned condo building somewhere north of midtown, but he didn’t know the exact location. He would need help from Cheney.
By the same token, he had to make certain that Owl and Squirrel, who would remain behind, were sufficiently protected against anything that might threaten them in his absence. Since Cheney would be with him, he guessed he would have to give the job to Bear.
He was almost to the steel door when he realized that someone was following him. He wheeled back to find Panther right behind him.
“Wait up, Bird-Man,” the other boy told him, the expression on his dark face reflecting irritation and impatience. “Talk to me. What you plannin’ to do? Go lookin’ for the pussycats?”
“I told you to wait upstairs.”
Panther snorted. “You not the boss of me, Bird-Man. So tell me. This your plan? Huntin’ for the Cats?”
Hawk glared. “Cheney can find them.”
“How he gonna do that? Don’t he need their scent? You got that? You got a piece of clothing or something?”
Hawk just stared. He didn’t, of course.
“Tole you before. This ain’t none of our business.”
Hawk took a deep breath. “Not everything we do in this world is about us, Panther. Sometimes we have do things for other reasons. Sometimes we’ve got to forget about ourselves and help others. If not, what’s the point?”
“The point, man, is that we get to stay alive! You don’t think that’s what we supposed to be doin’ with ourselves?”
“I think that’s the point. I just don’t think that’s the only point.”
“Huh! Well, it is for me!”
They were nose-to-nose now, and seconds away from a fight. It had never happened before, although Hawk had suspected for a long time that Panther wanted it. If they fought and Panther won, he would have proved something to himself, although Hawk didn’t know exactly what.
He straightened. “Okay, you think what you want. You got the right. But it doesn’t matter what you think. I got the pleneten for Persia, and I’m going to find her and give it to her. She’s just a little girl and she needs help. You don’t want to help her, then don’t. Stay here and watch Owl and Squirrel, and I’ll take Bear.”
“Hey, no one said nuthin’ about not goin’ with you,” Panther said quickly, serious now, no messing around.
“Well, it sounded like it to me.” Hawk refused to back off. “You said the Cats weren’t any of our concern. You said you didn’t care about anything but staying alive. So, fine. You do what you have to do, and I’ll do the same.”
“I just don’t like takin’ chances when it ain’t necessary. Dangerous enough out there without that.” Panther sighed. “Look, you don’t need Cheney, but you do need me. I know where they is.”
Hawk frowned. “You know where the Cats live? You know how to find them? How do you know that?”
“Tracked ’em. How you think? Look, you might honor that territorial code crap, but it don’t mean nuthin’ to me. I never did like the way they talked to us, so I waited for my chance one day a few months back and I tracked ’em. Found their little hidey-hole. It ain’t far from where we went for the purification tablets a few days back.”
Hawk felt a chill run down his spine at mention of the warehouse with its dark corners and sense
of evil. “They’ll have seen you. They’ll have moved on.”
Panther grinned broadly and shook his head. “Uh-uh. No one sees me if I don’t want it. They still where they was. I can show you.”
Hawk hesitated. That would save them all a lot of time. It also meant he could leave Cheney with Owl and Squirrel and take Bear, which he wanted to do. Bear was the biggest and strongest, and he wanted him along. They would be all right without Cheney if they had Bear. Of course, he would take Candle, too, as an added precaution.
He took a deep breath. “Look, you did good.” He brought up his fist and Panther rapped it with his own. “We’re family, agree or disagree. Nothing changes that.”
“I ain’t forgot.” Panther scowled. “But it don’t change how I see things, either.”
Hawk dropped the matter, rapped on the door, and was admitted by Bear. He sent him with Panther to collect additional weapons for the outing and went over to where Owl sat watching.
“Tiger didn’t show. I think something is wrong. I’m taking the others to see if we can find out what it is.”
She nodded slowly, her calm eyes studying him. “Be careful, Hawk. If something has happened to Tiger, it could happen to you, too. Take Cheney.”
He shook his head. “No, Cheney stays here with you and Squirrel. I’ll take Candle. She’ll know if there’s danger. We’ll be fine.” He hesitated, and then added, almost as an afterthought, “I’ll leave Sparrow, too. Just so you have another pair of hands.”
Without waiting for her response, he called out to Sparrow to stay with Owl, then summoned Panther, Bear, and Candle and went out the door, waiting only long enough to hear the locks click into place before climbing the stairs to the streets.
Once outside, he gathered his little company about him. “Okay, this is what we are going to do,” he said. He looked from face to face. “We’re going to find out why Tiger didn’t come to today’s meeting to get the pleneten for Persia. Maybe there’s a good reason, but maybe something has happened to him. Panther knows where the Cats make their home, and that’s where we’re going.”
