near the old highway leading inland. They waited in the sudden night breezes that swept the southern bay for the scent of campfires. But there were no camps to be found and no trails to be followed on this windy night.
‘They have gone south across the mountains and into the ruins of Santa Cruz,’ thought Shao Fan. ‘We will not find them tonight.’
They will try for the village at Moss Landing.
He called for a halt and the men turned to their packs seeking food and hot tea.
We’ll halt for an hour and march hard for Moss Landing through the night.
Chapter 47
The village lay on the far side of a muddy estuary. They passed long-gone fields that had lingered through a hard winter. A cemetery of wrecked boats wallowed near the entrance to the estuary.
They crossed a small road leading to a wide bridge.
The village was little more than a line of warehouses from Before, arranged along a narrow road running the length of the islet. An ancient and rusting large commercial fishing boat, now rigged with a mast and furled sail, had come into port to unload the night’s catch. Villagers flocked to its side as the fish were unloaded in great netted bundles.
“Where do we go?” asked the Boy. He was leading Horse while Jin rode.
“Take us to that long hall there. We should be able to… purchase there. Remember… say nothing. Otherwise they will think you are more than just… my servant.”
The Boy led them onto the street and they passed down its length until they reached the parking lot of an old warehouse. Fish were being trundled within by handcart.
The Boy helped Jin down from Horse. She adjusted her robe, ensuring the bag of silver coins was tucked within her sleeve.
Then they wandered the stalls.
There was little they needed to purchase beyond a large, wide wok made by a local blacksmith. At another stall she purchased oil and spices. Later they found a few more blankets of good quality and some rice. Finally they decided upon two large bags to carry their purchases.
The sun was high overhead when they exited the warehouse. They smelled frying oil and saw the villagers gathered around a large fire where a bubbling cauldron seethed and hissed. Strips of fish were being fried and quickly eaten.
A villager, jolly and smiling, waved them over.
The villagers talked with Jin in animated Chinese. The Boy held Horse and shortly Jin returned with a woven grass plate of fried fish and a small shell full of dark sauce.
The jolly villager smiled at them as they stood in the warm sunshine eating the fish, dipping it in the pungent, salty sauce.
“I do not… think… they care…”
“Care for what?”
“Care that we… we are together.”
“We could stay and join their village?”
“No… that will never be possible. In time the leaders will send someone to look for me… they will find us here. And then it does not matter what the villagers care for. Still… all the same it is nice that they do not care. Maybe one day things will change.”
The Boy said nothing.
If he had to mark this place on Sergeant Presley’s map he would write, the Village of Happy People.
They mounted Horse and turned toward the south.
It was bright and hazy with mist.
“What lies that way is unknown,” she said. “We are at… the edge.”
Then, my whole life has been at the edge.
He turned to her.
She looked up at him. Her eyes shone darkly in the bright sunlight.
“I hope things change for… all people… one day. I hope they will have then the happiness we have now,” he said.
“Me too.”
They rode south onto a long beach where the surf thundered against the shore and white sandy cliffs rose above them.
In the afternoon, the sky turned gray and the wind was whipped with salt and water.
“A storm is coming on shore,” she said.
In time, while there was still light in the sky, they came upon old wooden buildings surrounded by drifting dunes. The wood was gray with salt and sun and age. Bone-white fingers of driftwood poked through the sand.
“We’ll camp here tonight.”
Chapter 48
In the night, surrounded by the warm silence of the dunes, the Boy heard the breaking waves beyond their camp rolling hard onto the beach.
‘We will continue straight into the south,’ he thought. ‘According to the map there was an old highway that ran along the coast there.’
He thought of the map in his mind. He saw Monterey south of where they were now, a place called Carmel and the old highway south to Los Angeles.
Everyone knew Los Angeles was destroyed. Sergeant Presley always said so.
On the map there was a large red X across Los Angeles.
They will not follow us there.
You would say,
And
I am doing the best I can, Sergeant.
And
I know. You would say that to me. You would tell me to be both cautious and sure at once.
The breaking waves pounded the shore beyond the silence of the dunes.
If we could live here…
When he returned to their fire, Jin had reorganized their packs.
Sergeant Presley’s lay open.
There was the knife.
The flannel shirt.
And the gray feather with the broken spine.
“I have… never seen a feather like this… before,” she said, holding it up, inspecting it. “Where did it come from?”
The Boy knelt down beside her.
“I don’t know.”
But why then did you keep the feather, Sergeant? Why is its touch almost familiar? As though it meant
