Skylark Read online

  The pace he set was even more grueling than it had been before. Perhaps he knew that I couldn’t really talk if I was moving so fast I could barely breathe. Every now and then he’d dig in his pocket for that strip of smoked meat and tear a mouthful off with his teeth, causing me to shudder and look away.

  He didn’t stop often, and when he did stop he never spoke, just tossed me the canteen of water and moved away to scan the woods around us. During one of these breaks, the pixie hovered closer. “You should’ve eaten the meat he offered.”

  “A machine is giving me advice on how to make friends?” I gritted my teeth, closing my eyes. “Just don’t talk to me. Why are you even still following me?”

  The pixie said nothing, but I heard the sound of its wings darting away from me again. After a few moments I cracked an eyelid briefly to see it sitting on a nearby shrub, its back to me, unconcerned.

  The machine had said it brought the boy to me. How else would he have found me, just in time to prevent me from drowning? Or worse—being attacked by the shadow people? The shape it had changed into, just before the water closed over my head, was long and slim, built for speed.

  Could it have really been trying to help me?

  I watched it, where it sat looking for all the world as if it was sulking. I felt something in me relent a little.

  “Nix,” I muttered, closing my eyes again and leaning back against a tree.

  The pixie buzzed, sounding almost quizzical.

  “Nixies. They were these creatures from mythology. I remember reading about them. Shapeshifters.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you said you couldn’t name yourself. Will that do?”

  Silence but for the breeze stirring the leaves overhead, and the tiny noise of the pixie’s mechanisms.

  “That will do.”

  I took a long, slow breath, trying to marshal my strength. I knew Oren would be back soon, ready to move again.

  “You know, in stories, shapeshifters are never to be trusted.”

  “No,” agreed the pixie calmly, and returned to its meticulous grooming.

  •  •  •

  We walked into the night. I fell asleep during one of Oren’s pauses for water, but I don’t think I slept long before he nudged me awake with the toe of his shoe.

  “Time to go.” His voice was hoarse, as though the habit of silence was easier than speech.

  I picked myself up and we set off. The pixie—Nix—acted as sleepy as I felt, and settled on my shoulder. I thought about swatting it away, but I was too tired to summon the energy.

  In the dark I couldn’t see Oren, and he moved so silently that I often lost track of where he was. What little noise he made was drowned out by my own crashing and rustling as I stumbled through the undergrowth.

  He moved like an animal, with an unconscious, unstudied grace, as if he’d been living out here his whole life.

  But that was impossible. Unless—my heart seized—he was like me. The Renewable had said there were others like us, after all. She had said to follow the birds to find the Iron Wood, whatever that was. I hadn’t seen the slightest glimpse of a feather, but this boy had spouted a torrent of birdsong like I’d never imagined.

  “Oren,” I said, trying out his name for the first time. “You can do magic, right? Like me?”

  “Magic?” His voice emerged from the darkness ahead, ghostly and disembodied.

  “Yes, like . . . doing things by thinking it. Magical power. It’s what they use to power machines, you know? In cities?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. I strained through the darkness, but heard only the humming of the pixie. Finally he said, “No. Never heard of it.”

  “But how are you out here?” I blurted. “And not dead? Or twisted like the shadow people?”

  “Who are these shadow people you keep talking about?” he asked abruptly.

  “Those—things. I heard them coming for me when I was sinking in the bog. I saw them eating each other the other day. They’re—twisted. From the absence of magic.”

  “I don’t know any magical anything,” he said, the words clearly unfamiliar in his mouth, “but the others have always been like that. The dark ones.”

  “But how are you—” I struggled to articulate the question, but my exhaustion was like a dark fog in my mind, preventing me from thinking. “Are there others like you?”

  “Depends what you mean,” came the reply.

  “I mean like—living out here, like this. Do you have a family? People you live with?” My hand crept into my pocket for the paper bird, but I’d put it into my pack to dry after my dip in the marsh, and my fingers closed around nothing.

  There was no reply.

  “Look, you’re the first person I’ve seen since I’ve been out here that hasn’t tried to eat someone,” I said. Why was he so determined to move in absolute silence?

  “Do you never stop talking?” he asked tightly, as a twig cracked just in front of me. He’d stopped. It was just enough warning to keep me from walking straight into him in the dark. “What do you want? I’m keeping you alive, aren’t I?”

  “But why?” I felt that familiar sinking in my stomach. The Institute wanted me alive, after all.

  His voice was clipped but quiet. “There aren’t so many of us left. You were different. So I followed you.”

  “You were the one who left me the shoes!” I gasped, realization spreading like ice water.

  “Shoes?” In the dark, he wouldn’t be able to see the nowfilthy shoes in question.

  “I needed them and suddenly they were just sitting there,” I said. “You were the one who left them for me, weren’t you?”

  Oren hesitated, and the uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty gave me the strangest impulse to reach out to him in the darkness, decipher his expression through touch. Eventually he grunted, the only reply I was going to get.

  “And the bloody corpse?” I asked, as my toes tingled inside their stolen shoes. “Why leave me that if not to scare me?”

  “You were supposed to eat it,” he said, a hint of impatience coloring his voice.

  “Oh.” I felt my cheeks warming with embarrassment, grateful for the cover of night. “I thought it was a threat.”

  “What would I have to threaten you about?” Oren said. “If I wanted you dead I’d just kill you. It wouldn’t be hard.”

  Oh. “Yes, but—” I struggled to explain the terror of those first few days. I wished I could explain the terror that still ruled me. “Never mind.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What do you want? You’re fed now. Probably strong enough to move on by tomorrow.”

  “Those bird sounds you made.” I took a deep breath. “I’m looking for a place called the Iron Wood. And I think you might know something about how to find it.”

  I hadn’t realized how close he was standing until he leaped back, barely more than a shadow darting away. I felt the wind of his movement as he staggered, snapping leaves and twigs in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness.

  “No,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t.”

  “You do,” I argued. For once, my voice didn’t shake. “Why else would you react like that? I need you to take me there.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I’ll take you to a place where you can find food, water, rest. No further.”

  “But—”

  “It’s a bad place.” His voice emerged through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “That’s where I’m going.” I tried to ignore the way my heart surged. He did know where it was. I’d be able to find others like me. I’d be able to stop running. Sleep in the same place for more than one night, eat a meal that didn’t leave me aching for more. Talk to people who actually wanted to talk back.

  “You don’t understand,” said Oren. Something in the coldness of his voice made my excitement falter. “I won’t take you there. I can’t. It’s a terrible place. If you go there, you die.”


  Before I could even absorb what he’d just said, an unnatural howl rose some distance behind us, no less terrifying for its remoteness.

  I staggered—the darkness was suddenly more terrifying than the sky had been. Anything could be concealed in it, just a few feet away.

  A hand emerged from the darkness and closed around my wrist. As I opened my mouth to scream, another hand clapped over my lips.

  “We have time,” Oren breathed, his lips not far from my ear. “But we have to move quickly. Nod if you understand.”

  My skin tingled unnaturally where he touched me, despite the frantic pounding of my heart. I nodded. The grip of his fingers over my mouth relaxed.

  “This way.”

  Chapter 20

  Though we heard the howls of the shadow men twice more, each time they were more distant. In the pitch-black of the night forest it was impossible to tell the passage of time, but it wasn’t long before I realized I could make out Oren in front of me. The trees thinned, and soon we broke out of the forest at the edge of a broad plain.

  Despite the lightening indigo sky to the southeast— Oren must have let me sleep for longer than I’d thought—a few stars were still visible overhead. I leaned against a tree, trying not to show my exhaustion, and looked up. There had been a moment, in the bog, where I thought I’d never see the sky again. Troubled, I looked away, toward the wild boy at my side.

  Oren’s gaze swept the hills rolling away ahead of us. Clumps of forest and the occasional patch of magic scattered the plains, which stretched up toward a ridge of wooded mountains that loomed blue and misty in the distance.

  “How much further?” I asked, breaking the silence that had stretched since we began our headlong dash through the night.

  He didn’t answer my question, only grunted, “Wait here.” In a manner that was rapidly becoming familiar, Oren disappeared into the forest the way we’d come.

  “And you claim I am difficult to talk to,” said the pixie from my shoulder, in the unnaturally tiny voice that passed for a whisper. It was gaining more personality all the time. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  “Is Oren from the Institute?” I asked, not sure what I expected the pixie to say.

  “No.”

  I scrubbed at my face with my hand, as if I could wipe away the exhaustion that made it hard to think. I didn’t want the wild boy to be a spy. Incomprehensible as he was, I felt better with him nearby.

  “But you could be lying.”

  “Yes, but I’m not.”

  I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach, resting my forehead on my hands.

  “If he were from the Institute,” said Nix, “then surely they would have given him a bath.”

  He didn’t act like he was from the Institute. Dirty, wild, stronger than any of the architects, skilled in ways no citydwelling citizen would have reason to be. I pushed away thoughts of Institute spies and turned to the other mystery. “Nix, how is it that he’s not twisted like the others?”

  “I do not understand the question.”

  “Why isn’t he a monster? Like the ones we saw a couple of days ago?”

  The pixie ruffled its wings. “I don’t see any difference between them.”

  I grimaced. The idea that it couldn’t tell the difference between slavering, cannibalistic monsters and people like Oren and me was ludicrous. Before I could retort, I began hearing the subtle signs that Oren was returning. Already I was adjusting to the sound of another person existing around me.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said, moving past me and on out of the forest.

  “What were you doing back there?”

  “Laying a false trail.”

  “What?” I scrambled to catch up with him, summoning the energy from somewhere to get to my feet. “A false trail for what?”

  “For whatever might want to follow us. It’s a hungry world. And you don’t walk very quietly.”

  I glanced over my shoulder before I could stop myself, half-expecting to see shadowy faces and teeth between the thinning trees.

  “It looks like a storm is coming,” he said, tilting his chin briefly toward the sky. “We don’t want to be stuck out in these hills when it hits.

  “A what?” The architects had spoken of this—theorized that while the majority of the postwar landscape was barren and empty of magic, storms of energy sometimes swept across the wilderness, obliterating everything in their path.

  “A storm. We’ll be fine if we get to the edge of the forest.” He stopped and looked back at me. Without input from my brain, my feet had stopped moving. His face changed, only a flicker, as he looked at me. “You’ve never been in a thunderstorm before?”

  I shook my head. It seemed I would spend my life trying, and failing, not to show how afraid I was. He’d mentioned thunder, not magic—but still, that sounded no safer.

  He watched me for several long moments and then jerked his head in the direction of the foothills. “Let’s keep going. Best thing to do is get to cover before it hits. We should get to a place where you can rest before nightfall.”

  Out on the plains, the clouds were unimaginably immense. As we walked, the old terrors began to catch up with me, the feeling that at any moment the vastness of the sky would suck me up into its depths and tear me apart. Each time I glanced up, I instantly wished I hadn’t. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the ground until the vertigo passed.

  We were maybe half an hour from the edge of the forest that dotted the base of the mountains like stitches along the hem of a skirt when the rain began. The moment I dared a peek at the sky, something splattered against my forehead. I stopped dead, reaching up with astonished fingers to feel the water dripping down my face.

  Oren stopped a couple steps ahead. “Best keep moving,” he said, without looking around.

  “Rain,” I said. Something in my voice must have struck him, for he turned around. I held out my wet fingers as proof.

  “Usually comes with thunderstorms,” agreed Oren. “You’d think you’d never been rained on before.”

  I tipped my face back again, a second drop and a third splattering against my muddy cheeks. “I haven’t.” Each drop brought a rush of adrenaline and fear, all coalescing into this moment.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  But my feet wouldn’t move; I stood there shivering, staring at him. What had once been unfounded fears of undefined space and horrible emptiness were now turned real. The sky became a vast sea overhead, and I struggled not to drown.

  He looked at me again and hesitated. “Just take one step,” he said quietly. “We’re almost there.”

  It was easier to do as he said than refuse. I was so unsteady when I lifted my foot that I slammed it back down, closing my eyes as the world spun. The rain was falling faster now, a chilly roaring in my ears as the pixie huddled against my neck, humming madly. For once, the sound was a comfort.

  Oren took a step toward me and then reached for my hand. My skin jolted the moment he touched it, every hair on my body standing on end. It was like the moment of static electricity when stepping through the barriers, only visceral and immediate as though I could feel energy flowing through each pore of our skin. I shuddered, but his expression gave no sign that he had noticed anything. He gave my hand a gentle tug, and I took another step, and another.

  Oren coaxed me to the edge of the wood. Once the branches overhead were thick enough to block out most of the rain, I found it easier to breathe, easier to move. I let go of his hand and held on to a tree for support, resting my forehead against its bark. My skin was damp from sweat and rain, my shirt sticking to my back.

  “Are you okay?” Oren was standing not far away, hands tucked into his pockets.

  “Fine,” I said. “Just—the sky scares me.” There was no point, now, in trying to pretend I was anything less than a coward.

  Oren frowned. “How can the sky possibly scare you? It’s just the sky. There’s nothing up there. Except water right now, I guess.”


  “That’s just it.” I shut my eyes and swallowed hard. “Nothing. I only saw the sky for the first time when I left the city.” I shook my head. “It’s huge, and empty, and awful.”

  “The sky is just a thing in the world. Like any other. Of all the things you have to be scared of, Lark, the sky’s the least of your worries.”

  Perhaps he meant it to be comforting, but his quiet voice triggered something in me that had been building since the first time we spoke. “Look, maybe you know everything there is to know about this place but I’m new to this! I’d never even seen the sun until I escaped. So stop treating me like a child!” My voice cracked on the last word.

  Oren waited until my breathing had calmed. His head was tipped lightly to one side, expression set in familiar neutral disinterest. “We’ve got another couple of hours to walk, and then we’ll be there. Let’s go.”

  He said nothing after that, although it wasn’t much of a change from the morning. Water dripped through the canopy, seeking out the collar of my shirt and the nape of my neck. I regretted my outburst—I’d told him to stop treating me like a child, in the midst of a tantrum so childish it was a wonder he stayed with me at all. I tried whispering once to the pixie, but it didn’t answer. I found myself missing my former solitude. At least then silence felt like a choice rather than a judgment.

  The sky grew darker as we walked, so much so that I felt we had to be inside another pocket. The only glimpses of the sky through the treetops were of a blue-gray so dark I felt it must be illusion.

  In the distance I heard the rumble of a machine. I stopped dead, my heart pounding. Oren kept walking, and my eyes fixed on his back as I stood waiting.

  There, again—the sound of something enormous stirring. The harvester I encountered on my way out of the city was huge but it didn’t sound nearly so loud. How much larger must something be to make a sound like that?

  Oren realized I was no longer behind him. He stopped and turned. “Still an hour yet,” he said, in that maddeningly even voice.

  I swallowed, throat so dry it felt like sandpaper. “You don’t hear that?”