I broke into a meadow full of tall grass, a barn at the far end. Two ravens sailed through the air. I ran into the meadow but felt like I was sailing, my arms out skimming the top of the grass like it was water. The sun came through the clouds, and it seemed much lower in the sky than it ought to be, lighting up silver cumulus with dirty yellow rims. The sea beyond, down the hill past the trees. I could see all the islands — every one of them — from this place. There were so many of them, teeming with life. I could feel everything the islands felt. Every drop of rain, every footfall, every car and bike wheel, every bird landing, every insect crawling.
I fell down in the grass and stared at the clouds. I heard Katie calling me. I heard the trees calling me. The ravens inscribed a circle in the sky above me. Everything, they said, back and forth to each other.
“Everything,” I said. “Everything.”
Katie lay down beside me in the grass.
“Do you hear them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, because I was sure I had.
“This is the way they go,” she was saying, or maybe “This is the way you’ll go.”
I looked at her freckled nose, her eyes closed. I closed my eyes and reached for her, that soft spot on her hip where her sweater fell away. I felt her warm skin and the beating of her blood, the movement of her bowels, the growth of tumors on her ovaries, clustering out like fungi, like witch’s butter, in clumps of yellow and orange, feeding on her, eating her away from within, hastening her decay.
“They’re the ones we picked from the babies’ graves,” I heard her say.
I sat up. Was I dreaming? I was sweating. It was so humid, this weather. I threw off my sweater. I struggled to get out of the sleeves, yanked free and dropped it in the grass where Katie had been laying. Where was Katie? I hadn’t felt her leave. I hadn’t heard her go.
I called her. The ravens called back.
I looked again at the spot where she had been lying, the grass pressed in the shape of her body. I looked off across the field toward the trees, but there was nothing. Only the trees, sparking and dancing. Then my knees buckled as if I’d been struck, as if I had been standing on the shore, struck by a sneaker wave. I could hear it, like an earthquake, rolling toward me. I threw up in the grass. The mussels, the bread, the wine, the honey cake — I tasted it all, coming back up. I heaved so hard it came out my sinuses. I coughed and spit and gasped between waves, one after another, until everything was out.
It was suddenly much darker but lit up by lightning. I wiped my mouth on my sweater. Then the thunder cracked above, and I saw the rain falling out over the water.
I called for Katie again. She was gone.
The rain started down in fat droplets, then harder. I ran for the barn at the far side of the field. I cranked open the old door and took a breath of the air. It was heady with the remnants of animal droppings and hay, the way that musk never leaves a barn. I felt all the energy drain out of me. I lay down near the doors, where there was some light, on a soft pile of dirt and bark, thinking, This is where the bark lives, and listening to rain shattering over the roof, dripping to the earthen floor.
I felt the storm pass above for hours, or minutes. A steady rain began to fall. Time moved in and out like a telescope. Sometimes I felt the presence of animals, breathing in the dark, their white globes of eyes fixed on me. Then I realized there were white globes at the back of the barn, in the shadows, but not eyes. Not eyes, I told myself. Or maybe I spoke. I crawled over the floor slowly, trying to get a better look at the glowing orbs, floating all over the ground. Closer and closer, but it was so dark. Cracks in the walls of the barn let in just enough steely light, just enough to set the orbs alight. They weren’t floating, I could see, but coming out of the bark and dirt, bubbling out over a pile of earth and bark like the one I had been lying on. But this one had more contour. Parts of it had fallen, causing little avalanches of mycelia and soil, uncovering long pale bundles of sticks, like fingers. I caught sight of a swatch of plaid flannel. I’m hallucinating, I told myself. So I crawled closer, reached out my hand to the swatch of plaid, and tugged until the dirt gave way to reveal buttons, and a cluster of white mushrooms tumbled down and maggots and beetles went scattering over the hand and fleeing across the barn floor.
I clambered to my feet and ran. I left the barn, the rain coming down in a light sheet, soaking me through until I reached the woods. It was getting dark. I cowered under the skirt of a cedar and shivered. I didn’t know where I was, but the island was only six square miles. As long as I kept the sea to my left, I would come to the Colony eventually. But I didn’t want to find them. What had they done to me? What would they do if they found me? How could Katie do this to me? If I stayed under that tree all night, I would be safe. I could wait till morning. The trees all around had light trails like comets when I moved my head from side to side.
I lay down on the needles and felt something hard against my collarbone. I felt for my shirt pocket. It was my phone. I turned it on. It was seven-thirty. If I could find a signal, I could call Carey, but I would have to walk. I would have to leave the safety of the cedar. Eleven hours till daylight.
I sat in a timeless fog, trying to figure out what to do. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw tumors growing out of them. I saw my eyelashes covered in them. I could feel them over my face, through my airways, creeping up my sinuses to the inner rim of my skull, down into my bronchi and the fat red slabs of my lungs.
Despite it all, there was still one separate channel of my brain that seemed outside the sensory chaos, where logical thoughts occasionally surfaced. I realized that I was going to get cold, and that I had thrown up my last meal, and that I had had maybe an ounce of water in the last several hours.
I also knew they were looking for me. I could hear voices in the trees, far off, maybe across the field. They would look for me in the barn. I didn’t know if this was real, but it felt real. I could hear Katie calling me, and Sister. I could hear them both, first one, then the other. Singing. But maybe it wasn’t them at all. Maybe it was the shrike, calling me out of my hiding place.
I heard a clear call — my name. It was closer. I crept out of my den and made my way from tree to tree. One at a time, away from the voices. Sometimes arms reached out for me, but they were only branches. Sometimes I picked a tree that was across a great expanse that I was sure was full of fox dens. It stopped raining, but I was wet and shivering, teeth chattering. At every tree I wanted to stop, to climb up into its branches and hide above, wait for them to pass. But I kept moving to keep warm.
The sound of the water echoed in my ears, was getting closer, and the voices had ceased. I waded through high grass at the edge of the trees and ran into a chain-link fence. Beyond, the sky, though dark, seemed to open up. I saw great expanses of cloud reflecting light from some source I couldn’t see. I walked along the fence until I found a place where a tree had fallen into it, bending it down to the ground. It was an old tree, long stubs of thick, bark-stripped dead wood jutting out of it. I held on to one, then another, slowly negotiating my way over the tree and the fence. My feet touched the gravel field on the other side of the fence, and I ran toward a red glow in the distance. Rocks jabbed my soles, wedged themselves between my toes. The air whirred with insects I couldn’t see.
The red glow became a fire, set back against a wall. A bonfire. Or bigger. A pyre. Something to burn witches on. But it was so far away. There were hulking shadows to my right and left, the ruins of tanks; water tanks, fuel tanks. Piles of concrete and rebar overgrown with weeds. The sound of the sea echoed off the wall and all around. It could be a trap, I thought. They knew I’d be attracted by the warmth of the fire. And it was warm. I could feel it. I became aware of asphalt under my feet, somehow hot, though wet. I walked toward it, wary of the shadows. The fire moved when I moved. It was always just a bit farther away. Though it flickered and charred the walls wherever it went. I saw shapes in it. Arms reaching out, legs beneath, dangling out like logs. My father’s voice came floating out among the echoes of waves, singing “O My Stars,” just like he did walking up from the shore, climbing the ladder to my room, the crackle under his voice like the needle on the vinyl record, but the crackle of a fire, of limbs, charring, the water left in them steaming out, blistering and popping, the flesh bursting. Farther and farther into the ruins, through the naked steel skeleton of the cooling pipes, the empty metal vats the size of small houses, right up to the base of the tallest of the smokestacks I followed it, till it shimmied away into the wet dark cavern of night and was snuffed out.