A History of Wild Places(89)

I drop the poker to the ground and press a hand against my eyes. The afterimage was from years ago, when I first arrived and Levi tried to convince me to stay. I swallow and take a deep breath, letting the image recede. In my other life, as Travis Wren, I would see glimpses of the past in the objects I touched—but that talent has gone dormant, forgotten, along with everything else. But now perhaps it’s stirring awake, a creature blinking its eyes open after years of hibernation. First, I saw Maggie moving through the house and out to the pond when I held the Foxtail book, and now the metal poker.

Slowly, I bend and pick up the poker from the floor, but when the image of Levi starts sparking across my eyes, I blink and stuff it back down. When I can feel it fading like shadows on a cloudy day, I open my eyes and head for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

I don’t tell Calla what I saw—there’s no time—instead, I wedge the sharp end of the poker into the space between the door and the frame, and pull. Surprisingly, the wood begins to crack and separate as soon as I apply force, prying the door free. One more good shove and the lock mechanism breaks and the door pops open.

Bee tumbles out as though she’d been leaning against the door, blinking wildly, blood along her cheek and dripping down her shins to her feet. Calla grabs Bee by the arm and holds her steady. “I heard you,” Bee says, breathing deeply, eyes too wide—like a terrified animal whose heart is about to burst. “I heard you downstairs. I knew it was you.”

“What are you doing here?” Calla asks. “You were supposed to go get Colette and the baby.”

Bee draws her arms away from Calla and wipes the hair back from her face, stained red with blood, and stands up straight. “I know,” she answers, blinking, blinking. “He lied,” she chokes out. “He lied about everything.”

“Who?”

“Levi.” She looks down the hallway, to the stairs. Looks down the hallway—as if she can actually see the hall and the stairwell. Her pupils narrow and contract, skipping from Calla’s face to mine. “I don’t think there is a disease,” she says. “There never was. We could always leave Pastoral.”

Calla moves closer to Bee. “But Ash and Turk were sick, their blood was black.”

Bee shakes her head. “He made us see what he wanted us to see. He’s been lying all this time, hypnotizing us. The pox, the border trees, none of it’s real.”

Calla flashes me a look, and I know she’s thinking the same as I am: Was it Levi who made us forget who we used to be? Erased our old lives and replaced them with something else. Lies woven into more lies.

“We have to go,” Calla says, grabbing Bee by the arm and tugging her toward the stairs. “We have to get out of Pastoral.”

We scramble down the stairs and flee out through the back door, into the dark—three figures moving among the tall, shadowed pines. Three figures who are starting to remember who we really are. And one who might be able to see when yesterday she could not.





CALLA


We have the key to the truck.

Theo is ahead of me, his dark shirt swaying in and out of focus in the dull moonlight, while Bee moves beside me. We make our way around the back of the community, along the garden fence where the pale-yellow stalks of corn are now taller than our heads—reaching toward the scattered night sky. We won’t be here for the harvest; we won’t peel back the husks and taste the sweetness of corn when the kernels pop on our tongues.

My heart burns at the thought of it, the lost moments we will never have, but we keep going.

My throat burns too—strangely—the night air cutting like glass in my lungs, the taste of smoke on my tongue. Of ash.

Something is burning.

The fire comes into view like a bloodshot sunrise just breaking through the trees, all crimson and violent.

The birthing hut is on fire.

“Holy shit!” Bee screeches, her voice a metallic, half hiss. Her legs kick into a run, and she moves with an odd sureness, as if she can see the uneven ground ahead of her.

At the door into the birthing hut, she stops, a hand reaching forward, but Theo is there and yanks her back before she can touch the handle.

“They’re inside,” she breathes, flashing a panicked look up at Theo. “They were waiting for me to come back.”

The wail of a baby rises above the growl of the fire—a terrifying sound. And above us, sparks wheel up through the trees, embers disappearing into the dark. A loud crack shudders through the air, and I jerk my gaze back to the hut.

Theo rams his shoulder into the door, but it doesn’t open. He breathes, chest expanding, then throws his body against the door once more, and this time it breaks free and he tumbles inside.

The wind changes direction, turning the air thick and ashy, and I think: This fire didn’t happen by accident. Someone set it ablaze. Someone who wanted a problem to go away.

Theo disappears into the birthing hut, and I stop breathing, stop blinking.

The baby has gone quiet.

Gray smoke spills out through the doorway; embers sail among the treetops, greedy for more tinder, anything that will satisfy its hunger, while Bee fidgets a few paces back from the door, hands twitching at her sides.

Too much time passes. Too many minutes.

I look behind me, and think of running back through the trees to Pastoral, yelling for someone to help. Wake the others. My bandaged arm throbs, my panicked heart pumping blood too quickly through my body.