“Don’t change the subject. You knew the council would never have helped you with only the turtle,” Tye said.
Hansa watched them, her gaze flicking back and forth as they spoke.
“What about now?” Milly said.
Tye didn’t like her prissy little tone one bit. “Now I’m more pissed that you didn’t say anything before we came into town. You should have said something when you first saw the symbol of the turtle. I put my life on the line and you didn’t give me the full story.” He stopped whipping his bolas and placed it on his belt.
Milly’s face twisted as she prepared a return strike, but her expression softened as she processed what he’d told her and realized she was wrong. “I’m sorry, but nobody knows. Can we keep it that way for now?”
Tye stayed quiet.
“Hansa can tell them about the turtle, and nothing else,” Milly said.
“Fine.” Now he understood. She hadn’t told Peter. “For now.”
“I won’t say anything, but he knows,” Hansa said.
Tye and Milly stared at the child. Another heavy thump against the church, and the wall mounted candleholders shook, their light flickering. A few candles winked out as wax washed over wicks, and the fire beneath the T with the headless skeleton nailed to it dimmed, as if the candles going out had somehow lessened the flames.
“Peter knows you lied about the message,” Hansa said.
“How? How do you…”
“Milly, he knows you better than anyone. He can tell when you’re lying.”
Milly looked Tye’s way, but he couldn’t help her. The odd relationship of Milly and Peter was as clear as the sea after a storm, but who was he to judge? He knew Milly’s husband, Curso and he seemed like a good guy and appeared to treat Milly and Randy right. He didn’t deserve whatever Peter and Milly were, which in his opinion wasn’t much at all. Peter chased, and she ran, except when she stopped to use him. Everyone except Peter understood this, including his wife, Tris and their daughter, Hazel.
Tye snuck a peek through a clear portion of stained-glass. More orc-men encircled the church. Tye tried to look at the creatures with different eyes since the kid confirmed they were people, or more likely the descendants of people. It surprised him how he accepted everything the child said as fact without question. In the gone world he accepted nothing until verified, and he had lessened his burden of proof only slightly while on Respite, but Hansa was different. When she spoke, Tye believed.
“We’re never going to get out of here,” Tye said.
“Hansa, will they leave when the sun comes up?” Milly said.
“No. They will never leave until they have me.”
“Then why did you stay here?” Tye asked.
“I was waiting.”
“Waiting? For us?” Milly said.
“I’m coming with you,” Hansa said. The silver in her eyes twinkled in the firelight and her irises smoldered. She smiled, and Tye knew everything would be all right.
“Unless you know something we don’t, I don’t see how we’re getting out of here,” Milly said.
“I know many things you don’t. I am reborn. Did I not tell you this in the dream?” the girl said.
Outside, the virals had worked themselves into a fever pitch.
“You want to tell us your plan?” Tye said. Whoever this girl was, and why she’d been waiting for them, would have to wait.
An Uruk threw a torch onto the roof, and the old wood caught. Smoke leaked in, and flames lashed through a blackened hole. More torches struck the building, setting it ablaze. Still Hansa seemed unmoved.
“Shit don’t mean shit,” Milly said. She shifted from foot to foot and bit her nails.
“But shit does mean shit. Some shit, anyway,” Hansa said.
Those words coming from her innocent face made something twist inside Tye. He grabbed the child’s shoulders and turned her toward him. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Screw off.” Hansa smiled, and said, “That’s what you tell people, isn’t it?”
It unnerved him when she saw things she had no business seeing. “Still, that don’t make it right. You’re a young girl and you shouldn’t…”
She ignored him and headed for the front of the church. “Follow me,” she said, as she disappeared behind the altar into the sacristy.
Milly looked at Tye, laughed and followed.
Tye stood there for several seconds, rooted in stubbornness. Had that little shit just ignored him? Some things never change. He looked up at the widening hole in the roof, flames licking the inside of the church. But some things do change.
He chased after Hansa and Milly and found them in the sacristy kneeling before an open trap door in the floor. Hansa said, “It leads to a tunnel which dumps out on the side of a hill to the east.”
“What does a church need this for?” Milly said.
“Same reason we need it. The church wasn’t always popular. They were blamed for many things down in these parts over the centuries,” Hansa said.
Tye still had trouble processing her child-like voice with her sophisticated speech. Almost like a robot. That made Tye pause, and he laughed aloud.
“You all right? Don’t go cracking on me now,” Milly said.
Tye jumped into the tunnel and helped Milly and Hansa down into the blackness. He prepared to light a torch when a cellphone beeped. He froze, unable to process a sound he hadn’t heard since before The Day. Another beep, but this time it elongated into a squeal, and Hansa’s hand filled with white light. She had just turned on a flashlight app.
Milly reached out her hand, transfixed in the glow.
“Where did you get that?” Tye said.
“It was my mom’s. They said I could keep it,” Hansa said.
“How does the battery still
