Lark has joined company with a young man named Oren, so far the only person she’s encountered who hasn’t been twisted into a monster by the magical vacuum and storms ravaging the wilderness. He’s unused to company and terse to the point of rudeness, but he knows how to find food and water, how stay ahead of the monsters, and when to seek shelter.
Lark has been struggling with fairly significant agoraphobia ever since setting foot outside her walled city. She grew up never having seen the sky, and now finds it overwhelming. Though she’s made significant progress over the past two weeks since her escape, the wilderness still has a few tricks up its sleeve.
“What were you doing just now?” I asked.
“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 who?”
“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 grey-skinned faces and teeth in the shadows. “Well, I don’t think you’d last ten minutes in the city,” I replied. It was a bald-faced lie, but he didn’t know that.
He only shrugged and quickened his pace. “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?” Any pleasure at having gotten in a dig, even a small one, vanished. I had seen pictures of thunderstorms. They were one part of living inside the city that I did not miss.
“A storm. We’ll be fine if we get into the hills to where the forest starts up again.” He stopped and looked back at me; somehow, without input from my brain, my feet had stopped moving. His face changed, just 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 shifted his weight from one foot to the other 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.”
Out on the plains, the clouds were unimaginably immense. The old terrors began to catch up with me as we walked, the feeling that at any moment the vastness of the sky would suck me up into its depths, and rend me apart. Though the darkest clouds were still far in the distance, the titanic bulbs of grey and ash cloud overhead kept me glancing nervously upward and then fixing my gaze on the grass until the dizziness passed.
We were maybe half an hour out from the start of the forest dotting the bases of the mountains, like stitches along the hem of a skirt, when the rain began. Coincidence had me tilting my head back for an ill-advised, panicked look at the sky when a raindrop struck me on the forehead. I stopped dead, reaching up with astonished fingers to feel the water dripping down my face.
Oren stopped not long after. “Best keep moving,” he said, without looking around.
“Rain,” I said. Something in my voice must have struck him, for he turned around to look at me. 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 cheeks, flushed from exertion. “I haven’t.” Each drop brought a rush of adrenalin, fears all coalescing into this moment.
“Come on, Lark, let’s go.”
“I can’t.” My feet wouldn’t move; I stood there shivering, staring now at him. What had once been unfounded fears of undefined space and horrible emptiness was now turned real. The sky became a vast sea overhead, and I struggled not to drown.
He looked at me again, and hesitated. It was the first time I’d ever seen him take a pause.
“Just take one step,” he said quietly. “We’re almost there.”
It was easier to do as he said than refuse. I knew he was half likely to sling me over his shoulder and carry me if I disobeyed. 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, even 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. It was not a pleasant sensation. 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.
Half-coaxing, half-cajoling, Oren got 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 onto 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?”
I turned my head; 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. I feel as though it’s going to sweep me up and crush me and drown me and tear me apart.”
“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 assurance and his quiet voice merely triggered something in me that had been building since his first words to me. “Look, I’m new to this! I hadn’t ever even seen the sun until what, two weeks ago? I left everything I’ve ever known to find a place that is now apparently going to kill me, and my only company is a machine I’m pretty sure is my enemy and a man who treats me like a child, and I’m just–I’m sick of it!”
Oren waited until my breathing had calmed somewhat, and the pounding in my ears had faded. His head was tipped lightly to one side, expression set in the familiar neutral disinterest. “We’ve got another couple of hours to walk, and then we’ll be there. Let’s go.”
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Click here for excerpt one.
