“So she’s got a new family now, I guess.”
“Like all of us.” Tessa looked away. “I miss my mother. I know I don’t have any reason to, not after what she did to me. But I do. I wish I could have done something to help her.”
“Everyone wishes that about someone,” he said, thinking suddenly of Chalk. “But regrets don’t help. We have to forget about what we couldn’t do and concentrate on what we can.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I just wish I could do more to help you. I don’t like not being able to do anything more than this.”
“Than this?”
“This. Walking with you. Keeping you company. Giving you a chance to talk with someone who won’t judge or criticize or demand anything.”
He smiled. “Because you love me.”
She smiled back. “Because I do. Very much.”
“I liked it when you had to sneak out of the compound to meet me. Not putting you in danger like that, but the adventure of it. It was exciting.”
“Everything we did was exciting,” she said. “I liked it, too.”
They walked in silence for a time, their boots scuffing up clouds of dust on the dry flats, their faces streaked with dirt and sweat. Hawk felt the heat of the day bearing down on him, a great weight that reflected accurately the weight of his self–doubt. In the distance, gusts of wind blew up dust devils, their funnels churning through the hazy air in wild bursts. The sun had crested the mountains and flooded the sky with a panoramic wash of blinding white light.
“Is it a long way to where we have to go?” she asked him after a while.
He shrugged. “Couldn’t say. I don’t know yet.”
She grinned. “Do you even know where we are?”
“Not really. Do you?”
She brushed at her curly dark hair and frowned. “I think so. I was talking about it with Owl. We both remember this country as being a part of an Indian reservation in the old days. Long time ago, when there was a government. Not much to look at now, is it?”
He shook his head. “I wonder if they’re still holding the bridge against that army. I wonder if they’ve been able to keep them from crossing.”
Tessa didn’t say anything. They walked on, and he found himself listening to the soft drone of the Lightning following several dozen yards behind. He glanced over his shoulder at the caravan, stretched out behind him for almost a mile, a jumble of vehicles and figures, shrouded in dust and sweltering heat. Behind them, the Cascade Mountains were a strange gray–blue smudge against the horizon, jagged peaks stretching north and south for as far as the eye could see.
“I don’t think they can hold that bridge for long,” he said, dark eyes intense as he studied the land ahead again. “I don’t think anyone could. Not against what’s coming.” He shook his head. “It’s odd, but I can see the shape of it, can sense its power, even without knowing what it is exactly. I can make out just enough, in my mind’s eye, to know that it’s too much for anyone.” He paused, looked at her again. “I really can, Tessa.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“I wish things could go back to the way they were,” he said softly.
She reached over for his hand and placed it against her stomach. “Everything?”
He smiled. “Okay, maybe not everything.”
She hooked her arm through his and pressed against him.
At MIDDAY, when they stopped to eat, Owl joined them. She wheeled herself over from the AV to where Hawk and Tessa sat apart from the other Ghosts in the dappled shadow of a skeletal tree stripped of leaves and life alike. She handed each a small hunk of cheese she had been saving, her face lined with worry.
“Are you all right?” she asked them. “You look tired.”
They were, of course. Everyone was. But Owl wasn’t looking for an answer; she was trying to give them a chance to talk about it.
“We’re okay,” Tessa assured her, a smile brightening her dark face. She patted the soft swell of her belly. “Baby says to tell you not to worry.”
“Maybe you should ride with us after we eat,” Owl suggested.
“She should.” Hawk pounced on the suggestion. When Tessa started to object, he shook his head. “You should, Tessa.”
They ate in silence, concentrating on the food and trying to ignore the heat. The rest of the caravan had stopped as well, strung out for more than a mile behind them, the vehicles halted, the children and their caregivers and the others who had come with them taking a small rest before continuing on. Hawk was thinking that Helen Rice was right, that if this heat continued they would have to think about traveling at night. It was too hard on the children to keep going like this during the day.
“Do you think we have much farther to go?” Owl asked him after she had finished her meal.
He hesitated before answering. She was trying to hide it, but he could hear the concern in her voice, a ragged, furtive thing. Normally, Owl was the steady, optimistic one. She was the center of their family; she held them all together. He didn’t like what he was thinking.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted finally.
No one said anything. The midday heat beat down on them, baking their bodies within the oven of clothes long since gone stiff with sweat and dirt, their minds as tired as their expectations. Hawk couldn’t remember his last real bath. None of them had done more than wash off a little dirt and cool down their faces at the end of each day’s trek since they had set out. Before that, things hadn’t been much better. Food was growing scarce, too.
Time was as thin as hope.
“Will the King of the Silver River help you?” she pressed.
He shook his head and shrugged.
“Has he spoken to you since we set out?”
He shook his head again.
“Then how do you … ?”
“Owl, I don’t know!” he snapped, silencing her. He regretted his anger at once. He gave her an apologetic smile. “I wish I did know. I wish I knew everything about what we are doing instead of nothing. I think about it every day, all day, and then at night I lie awake and I think about it some more. I hate it that so much depends on me. But I don’t know what else to do other than what I’m doing–to just keep going.”
“Faith has gotten us this far,” Tessa offered quietly.
“Faith is pretty much all we have,” Owl agreed.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ll tell you something. The truth? Faith isn’t what keeps me going.
It isn’t what drives me. Fear does. I have faith, but it’s the fear that won’t let me give up. Fear that if I fail, everyone will die. I can’t deal with it. I’m running all the time. Not to the King of the Silver River so much as away from the fear.”
Owl reached over and touched his cheek. “I shouldn’t be asking you questions,” she told him. “I know better. I know you are doing the best you can. I can’t help myself. I’m afraid, too. I want our family to be safe. I want all of them to be safe.”
“We just have to keep going,” Tessa declared firmly. “We just have to remind ourselves not to lose hope.” She took Hawk’s hand and squeezed. “The King of the Silver River said you would find him, didn’t he? He said you would reach him if you followed your instincts, if you did what they told you. And that’s what you’ve done.”
“But I can’t help wondering how all this will end,” he replied, squeezing her hand in response. “Even if we find him, how will he protect us? If the world really is about to be destroyed, how can we be safe anywhere? Besides, what’s the point? The world’s destroyed–what’s left for us?”
“A new world,” Owl said at once. “Even if the old is gone, there will be a new one born of it. That’s the lesson of life. New replaces old. It will be like that here, too, don’t you think? We are staying alive so that new generations can be born. Like your baby.”