I explain what I know about the mountains from the lessons Mom passed on that she learned from Mistress Melrose, the Noble who taught her Modern History in the Barrens.
Hundreds of years ago, Phangloria and its surroundings were mostly wasteland. Rising sea levels swallowed the east coast of our continent, and one side of the Great Smoky Mountains crumbled into the ocean. The erosion continued for decades until the ground cover and legume crops the early Phanglorians planted fixed the soil with their extensive roots.
Afterward, they planted fruit trees and fruiting shrubs to create Gaia’s Food Forest. It was supposed to be a second Eden, where food would grow on every tree and shrub and the ground would be covered in plants. When the wild men attacked the new country and its inhabitants, the Phanglorians switched their energies into constructing the Great Wall, and non-food-producing species took over the forest.
Vitelotte munches a handful of blueberries. “Somewhere along the centuries, those ideals twisted into Echelons.”
I nod but don’t comment. This is the Princess Trials, where anything can be twisted out of context.
After eating, we head toward the hill to find shelter. A breeze rustles through the overhead leaves, and the gentle chirp of cicadas fills the air. An owl hoots in the distance, and the melody reassures me that we’re the only people traveling through this part of the forest.
The trees end at the hill, and we follow its vertical edge toward the other side of the meadow. With the bison lying hundreds of feet away and the forest at our backs, nobody can sneak up on us in the dark.
After several minutes, I find a dark spot about six feet off the ground. I nudge Vitelotte and motion that I’m going to climb up. She drops to her knees and holds out her laced fingers to create a step-up, but I shake my head and place my foot on a bulge. There are enough footholds in this landform to help me reach the hollow, and I’ve had years of climbing trees to train my feet to curl around nearly flat surfaces such as trunks.
I place my hands on the floor of a four-foot-high hollow with an area about the size of my bed. One leg rises to its surface and then another. Once I’m fully encased, I lie on my belly and poke out my head. Outside, a cloud covers the moon, casting Vitelotte in shadow, but I think she’s looking up.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“What did you find?”
“Enough space for two.” I stretch out my hand. “Come up.”
It takes my new friend several tries to scale high enough for our hands to meet, as she’s not used to climbing. By the time I’ve helped her into our hideout, she’s out of breath and falls straight onto her back with several huffing laughs.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
“I should be thanking you for saving my life.” I rest my head by her feet so we’re lying top to tail.
Unease about the dead girls stirs in my chest. Before I can rationalize that it was self-defense and they would have killed me, fatigue sweeps over my senses.
As a yawn pushes its way out of my lungs, I murmur, “Let’s get some rest.”
Hours later, a distant voice pulls me out of slumber. Sunlight shines through my eyelids, and I raise my hand to my brow. It no longer throbs from the air rifle, and the pain in the back of my head from being shoved to the ground has gone.
I twist around and squint into the dawn. The sun rises above the trees, casting a haze of orange across the horizon and coloring the thin streaks of clouds candle-flame yellow.
Rolling grunts sound across the meadow, and I realize that our safe sleeping nook comes with a cost. How on earth are we going to get past hundreds of bison without creating a stampede?
The voice sounds again. I stick my head out of the hideout and peer into the sky.
A passenger drone hovers several feet above, its blaring what I hope is the end of this challenge. The wind and sounds of the bison mean that I can’t hear the message, but Guardians only ever send these vehicles in emergencies. I’m too drowsy to panic, but I wrap a hand around Vitelotte’s ankle and shake.
She raises her head and stares at me through bleary eyes. “Good morning.”
“Time to go,” I say.
A moan sounds in the back of her throat. “We’ve got to discard the guns and packs.”
Vitelotte doesn’t need to explain why. Even if the QuickBurn doesn’t reduce the girls’ bodies to ash, the fact that anyone burned them at all indicates foul play. If we arrive with their stolen backpacks, it won’t take a trial to work out their murderers.
A cool wind swirls into our nook, removing all remnants of warmth. Cold fear seeps through my jumpsuit and penetrates my bones. The muscles of my chest tighten around my lungs like a dozen hangman’s nooses. I bolt upright with a pained gasp.
“What’s wrong?” asks Vitelotte.
“What if the producers find the computer and work out that the girls were tracking me?” My words tumble over each other.
It was bad enough last night to see the blood seep from one girl’s throat and to watch Vitelotte bury the blade of her ax into another. It was self-defense. No, she was protecting me from Ingrid’s assassins. But in the harsh light of the day, nobody’s going to believe us. They’ll just see that two Harvesters killed two Guardians, and they’ll extract every punishment from our bodies before they let us die.
Vitelotte doesn’t answer at first. And as the silence stretches between us, the pressure squeezing my lungs tightens. We’re both guilty. She may have killed those girls, she may have poured the QuickBurn over their corpses, but it was me who set them alight.
Finally, she exhales
