the people of the Corridors.
Our path snakes through dark woods. Nature has reclaimed this place, burrowing her roots through the burned-out shells of houses, ripping through asphalt. No one speaks, but it’s not from a need for stealth. Our silence is an offering to the spirits that live here, a sign of respect, a way to say that we will not stay.
We stop well after nightfall. Madda is summoned to a meeting with the Elders, leaving me to sit beside our packs and wait. For the first time, I notice Cedar. He’s knee-deep in ferns, looking for a place on the forest floor to sleep. The other men do the same, but all of us keep an ear turned to what’s going on with Madda and the Elders. They argue late into the night. I can’t make out their words, but the tone of their voices makes it clear that Madda’s not happy about something and the men don’t want to listen to her.
I clutch my knees to my chest and think of Bran and Paul. Where are they sleeping tonight? Are they together? Are they safe? For a moment I consider closing my eyes and reaching out to whatever seized me on the road. Perhaps the raven might tell me what I want to know. But I change my mind. It’s been only half a day since I saw them leave in the canoes. What could have happened to them in that time? Not a whole lot.
Madda stomps back just as sleep is settling over me. I blink myself awake.
“Bloody pig-headed men,” she fumes as she pulls her bedroll out from the top of her pack.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she grumbles. “Just go to sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
But now that I’m awake, sleep is the furthest thing from my mind. I watch the midnight sky, where stars appear, one by one. The big bear, and the little one, chasing each other through time. The Milky Way, a wash of white. Serpens, his sinuous form bending through the darkness. Paul taught me the names of these constellations. I wonder,
“You’re thinking too loud,” Madda says as she rolls over. “Stop it. You’re keeping me awake.”
“Sorry.” I force myself to close my eyes. “Where are we going, Madda?”
“The boundary.” Her voice is raspy and sounds tired. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but I feel like there’s something else going on that no one’s telling me.”
“Honey, that’s life.” She draws her blanket up over her shoulders and closes her eyes. “Get used to it.”
It starts to rain sometime during the night. I wake shivering. It might be summer, but under the trees the world is cold.
We pack our sodden blankets and eat hard, dry strips of oolichan. The oily smell makes me gag, but I force the fish down my throat. Madda pushes a canteen of water at me and I take a long swallow. Water mixes with the fish oil until all I can taste is wet dog, and then I really do gag.
Someone pauses beside me. Cedar. “You’re wet,” he says.
“So?”
He hands me a blanket. “I’m used to this. You aren’t. Put the blanket over your pack. It’ll help.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But we did get rain in the Corridor, you know.”
“Nothing like the rain here,” he says with a shrug.
“That’s true.” This rain is thick and healthy, if cold. I drape the blanket around my shoulders. It feels like a peace offering, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Cedar takes a seat beside me-close enough to talk, but not so close that I’m uncomfortable.
“Did you like it there?” he asks.
“What? The Corridor?” I consider his question. Had he asked me this when I first arrived, my answer would have been very different, but now I can’t believe I ever saw my future there. What was it I was going to be? What hope for my future have I forgotten? “Life was different there-easier, I guess. But not by much.” I shrug.
“Hmm.” He shifts his rifle from one shoulder to the other and looks like he’s going to ask another question just as Henry Crawford shouts that it’s time to move out. Cedar goes to take his place near the head of the line.
I’m struggling with my pack when he makes his way back toward me.
“You ever seen a searchcraft before?” he says.
“Once. Why?”
“If we see them, stay close to a man. They look for women first, but then, you’re a half-breed. Your blood’s diluted. Maybe that’ll make a difference.” He stalks off, his muskrat scampering at his shoulder, leaving me to wonder what that was all about.
Madda arrives back just as I’m hauling Cedar’s blanket over the top of the pack. I’m not so sure I want it anymore. She eyes it. “Where did you get that?”
“Cedar,” I say, nodding toward him. “Weird, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says, narrowing her eyes as the first of the men head out. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She twitches the edge of the blanket so it drapes over my shoulders to keep me dry. “Still, it was a nice thing for him to do.” She pulls her knife from her belt, digging a fern from the moss on a maple before setting off. “Licorice root,” she says. “Gather anything you think might be useful along the way.” She cuts off the frond and starts to chew on the rhizome. “What’s Cedar’s shade?” she asks suddenly.
“A muskrat.”
She nods. “And Henry Crawford’s?”
I stare ahead at the man with the scarred face. “A weasel.”
“And mine?”
“I still don’t know.” I feel my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. That’s what I hoped you’d say. So,” she says with a deliberate pause, “have you seen yours yet?”
“No.”
“Figured,” she says. “We might have to address that while we’re out here. There’s not enough time to do everything in the proper way, you know.” She stops to draw breath and then heaves herself over a fallen log. “Never enough time to do anything properly anymore.”
Her voice disappears as a hemlock groans and topples to the forest floor before us, taking a man down with it. We both stand there, frozen in shock, until Madda comes to her senses and pushes me down into the ferns. Above us, wind parts the cedars and the sleek, bipod body of a searchcraft hovers over us like a great silver wasp, waiting to sting.
Madda drops down beside me. “Your gun,” she says. “Get your gun!”
I fumble for it while the men start shooting at the searchcraft, though as soon as I’ve dug the pistol out of my pack, I drop it. My breath comes in short, rasping snatches as I fish for the gun, and when my hand finally falls on the grip, I shoot at the sky, hoping I don’t hit anyone.
The sound of gunfire rips through the air, hissing and screaming as the searchcraft fires back, its energy weapons cutting across the forest, slicing trees in two. This isn’t what I was told about searches. My father said they didn’t want to hurt us, that they only wanted to stun us because a dead Other is no good to them, but now I see that’s not true. I watch a man fall to the ground a short ways away, one leg severed from his body, his precious blood spilling on moss.
Madda scrambles past me, rushing over to the man, dropping down beside him, the blanket Cedar gave me pressed to the man’s wound. She thinks she can save him, but she can’t. Even through the smoke and the gunfire, I can see he is fading. “Madda!” I scream as sparks begin to block my vision. Still, I grope for her, to draw her down to hide in the ferns. She’s going to get killed. The only way to survive is to get down low, hide, become a stone, a worm, a root…
And then the searchcraft’s engine starts to whine, and thick black smoke billows into the air. A cry goes up from the men as the searchcraft banks and vanishes from sight. A few moments later, the sound of its impact
