A sound woke Glenn late that night. Her eyes snapped open, but she lay still. The fire had fallen to a reddish glow, barely illuminating the cave. Tommy and his parents were asleep in their places, but Margaret was gone.
Glenn sat up in time to see a figure slip toward the mouth of the cave.
“Margaret?” she whispered.
The dark form paused, then stepped out of the cave and vanished.
Glenn forced herself up. She was hungry and tired, and her body ached from lying on the rock, but she dug her feet into her boots and pulled on her coat before stumbling outside.
As soon as Glenn left the halo of the fire, the cold rushed at her.
She jerked her coat closed and buttoned it up, cursing as she squinted into the dark for some sign of movement.
A jumble of black on black hills was crowded all around, like a surrounding army. The canyon floor, hundreds of feet below, was invisible.
“Margaret!” Glenn called.
Nothing.
Glenn was about to turn back. If Margaret couldn’t sleep and needed to get out, so be it, but then there was a tumble of rocks and dirt above her head. Glenn saw Margaret’s leg slip up over the edge of the hill, onto the stone landing they’d been on earlier that night. There was a glimmer of moonlight, but a girl like Margaret, as confused as she was, shouldn’t be stumbling around up there, no matter how used to it she might be.
Glenn found the narrow path up the hill and stayed low, feeling her way along as it snaked up the cliff face. After several minutes of painful climbing, Glenn threw her arms over the top.
She was at the turn of the path that led to where they had first encountered Margaret and her family. Now, higher up, the wind swirled around her, cold and knifelike. She couldn’t stay up here long.
“Margaret!” she called, but her voice was scattered in the wind, disappearing inches from her mouth.
Glenn hunched over, hands crammed deep in her pockets, and
started down the path, following it until the low rock walls at her sides fell away. The gusts were even greater once she was out in the open.
Glenn raised the flat of her hand to shield her eyes from the wind as she scanned the hilltop.
“Margaret! Margaret, where are you? You have to come down!”
Glenn swept her eyes across the plain. A figure stood dead center on the hill out by the edge. Great, Glenn thought. I’m going to freeze to death because she misses the view.
As Glenn fought her way forward, she could see it was definitely Margaret, standing with her back to Glenn, her arms hanging limp at her sides.
“Hey, it’s freezing out here! We have to go back. We — ”
Glenn took another step and was starting to reach out when she saw that Margaret was standing with her toes at the very knife’s edge of the cliff. There was nothing in front of her but air. A bad turn of the wind and she’d be gone. Vertigo swam through Glenn, imagining it, and she eased back.
“Margaret? You have to take a step back, okay? It’s not safe.”
Margaret just stared out into the dark air. Glenn wanted to reach out to her but was too afraid she might startle her and send her over.
“Look,” Glenn said, doing everything she could to calm the
shakes in her voice. “Listen to me. Okay? You can’t be up here now.
You have to take a step back, for me. Just a little one.”
Margaret didn’t say anything. She didn’t move.
“Margaret …” Glenn said, softening. “I know … I know it seems like things are all messed up right now, but you need some time.
Things will get back to the way they were before this all happened.
23
Okay? Things will be fine.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Of course they will!” Glenn said, fighting the rising gusts of wind. “Look, your parents are down below. And your brother. Why don’t we go sit in front of the fire. We’ll get you something to eat and we’ll all talk. We’ll talk all night if you want, until things are better.
Then tomorrow you guys will head home and this will all be over.
Would you like that? Margaret? Things will be back the way they were.”
Margaret turned so that her profile was etched across the starry night behind her.
“You can’t make a tree not a tree,” she said. “You can’t take it back.”
Glenn swallowed hard. Her heart was racing now, but she had to keep calm. She took a half step, slow, and reached out to the girl.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But take a step back and we’ll get you on the road home.”
There was a gust of wind and Margaret’s hair snapped like a flag.
Her eyes were dark and huge and clear.
“There is no road home.”
Glenn made a grab for Margaret’s shoulder, but the girl took a single step forward and it was as if the darkness and the earth below reached up, desperate to snatch her away.
Margaret didn’t make a sound as she fell.
As the night deepened, the cold and the wind took Glenn in both hands and shook, but she didn’t leave her place at the edge of the cliff.
She imagined she was an outcropping of rock or a lone growth of mountain pine, twisted and hard, invisible amongst the others.
The moon led the stars down into the horizon, and then the first watery traces of sunlight spread across the mountains. At some point that morning, Margaret’s parents and brother appeared on the cliff behind her. They stood there a long time, their ragged clothes flapping in the wind. Their bodies gray and indistinct, like ghostly smudges on a pane of glass.
Glenn told them what Margaret had done, then turned away and watched the sun rise. They said nothing. Eventually, there was a sound behind her like dry leaves skittering across the rock and they were gone.
There was a flash of green as the sun crested the forest in the distance and for a moment Glenn imagined she was on 813, millions of miles away from the Magisterium and the Colloquium. Alone in the quiet. Her heart longed for it, missing another distant place she had never been.
As the sun crept up into the mountains, a winding path, lighter gray than the rock around it, shone. And at the vanishing end of her vision sat a jumble of small red-roofed buildings. Bethany. The name had once echoed in her head like a wish. Get there and this would all be over. Get there and things could go back to the way they were.
Glenn shook her head, disgusted with herself at the thought.
Whatever else Kevin said, she knew he was right about that. The idea that she could destroy the bracelet and they would all waltz into their old life was a fantasy. Go back to school? To the Academy? Free her father? It was laughable. Sturges would never allow it.
Unless …
Bethany was a small collection of buildings and streets, and on the other side of it, towering like a dark green castle wall, was the edge of the border forest. She could be in Bethany by that afternoon; walking straight through it and coming out the other side would be the work of a few minutes. And then …
Glenn pulled her sleeve aside, exposing the dull gray of the bracelet. It was true that Sturges would never give Glenn her old life back. But maybe she could purchase it.
The pieces of a plan began to snap together. The bracelet for her life. After all, who was she protecting? Her mother? A monster who had abandoned her years ago? Kevin, who was so transformed she barely recognized him anymore?
Aamon?
Glenn’s heart ached at the thought of him. But no matter what else Aamon had done, no matter who he had been, he had been lying to her this whole time. Without him her mother never would have left, never would have become what she was now. Glenn had to face it. Just like Kevin and her mother, Hopkins was gone, swallowed up by the Magisterium.