Page 85 of Fable for the End of the World

Even through the tree canopy, the sunrise is brilliant. Between the leaves are mottled bands of pink and gold, orange and purple, all radioactively bright. Melinoë stirs and blinks, raising a hand to shield her eyes. It’s the most vivid the light has been since the start of my Gauntlet, and I feel my heart patter hopefully at the sight of it. A sunny day in New Amsterdam is as good an omen as there could be.

“Oh,” Melinoë says. “That’s beautiful.”

“It’s because of air pollution,” I say. “Doesn’t the sunrise look this way in the City, too?”

“No. The lights from the buildings and the holoboards are too bright. They dim everything else in the sky. But the window in my bedroom had different settings, so I could change my view. I could make a sunrise like this, but it wasn’t real.”

I bite my lip. With this image in my mind, I see Luka again, in a room just like Mel’s, flipping through the settings on his window. I wonder what he would choose to look at. I wonder if he’d find comfort in seeing something beautiful—even if it was artificial.

Melinoë gets to her feet, then offers a hand to pull me up. Thesunlight trickles through the branches and warms my cheeks, my fingers, the tip of my nose. I brush dirt off the white dress, which doesn’t look quite so immaculate anymore, and then take out the map.

I bend my head over it, and Mel does the same. After a few moments, I lift my gaze to meet hers. My chest squeezes.

“We’re close,” I whisper.

She nods.

Only a few hours left, if we keep up a brisk pace. Energized by the thought, I draw in a breath, inhaling the cool, damp air. Melinoë slides her rifle onto her back, and then we’re off.

As we walk, the forest around us begins to change. The bright green deciduous trees bleed into dark, spiny conifers. The ground is littered with dead needles that crunch beneath our feet. And then, slowly, the damp, soft earth hardens, bristling with the finest layer of frost. Mel and I exchange glances. Her gaze is half fear, half hope. A new world is hanging before us, almost within reach of our fingers.

The frost means we’re nearing the border with New England. I soften my footsteps and slow my breathing, listening for signs of life. Human life, that is. But the longer I listen, the more I realize, with a jolt of panic, that I can’t hear any animal life, either. There are no birds flitting from branch to branch, no scuffling in the underbrush. I sniff the air, searching for the rotting smell that always precedes the Wends, but I can’t find it. Instead the air has a strange, tinny odor, almost like blood on my tongue.

I look at Melinoë, hoping that with her enhanced senses, she’ll be able to pick up on something I can’t. But her expression is as bereft as mine.

“Maybe we read the map wrong,” I say. “Maybe it’s a bit further. Let’s keep going.”

We walk on, and the metallic smell grows stronger, mixed with something denser and fouler. Smog or smoke. I strain my ears. I’m listening for the hum of an electric fence, the most basic and fundamental sign of civilization. Everyone needs a way to keep the Wends out.

The snow on the ground is getting thicker, but also grittier. Stained, as if with ash. I don’t want to speak my fear aloud; I’m not even sure I could articulate it, if I tried. The fear is more somatic than anything, a twinging in my chest and a roiling in my gut. I reach out for Mel’s hand.

The trees grow sparse and thin, and eventually, the path we’re taking deposits us in a large clearing. There are only a few deep-green pines dotting the perimeter, stark against the whitening sky. The sun has all but vanished beneath a swaddling of gauzy clouds, and what little light leaks through is a blanched, sickish gray color. A wind picks up, snapping the hem of my dress and blowing my hair around my face. It lifts Mel’s hair, too, and fans it out into the otherwise unnaturally still air.

We pause for a moment, facing each other, both of us working up the courage to speak. Melinoë swallows hard, a muscle feathering in her jaw.

“Something isn’t right,” I whisper at last. “We might have to double back. Maybe—”

My voice breaks off, my throat growing impossibly tight. I squeeze her hand tighter and I think I realize, then, why most people are too afraid to hope. The stronger your faith, the more brutal its shattering. The more vivid your dreams, the more agonizing the knife-twist of reality. It’s a privilege, really, to desire, to imagine, to believe.

With my free hand, the one that isn’t holding Mel’s, I reach into my pocket, curling my fingers around the scrap of paper and the case of Dad’s compass. Whatever warmth I managed to impart it with before is gone. The paper is flimsy and cold.

I thought it was cruel of him, to leave us only this. Now I understand that he left us with hope, too, and that’s so much worse.

I’m going to tell Melinoë that there’s still a chance. That I’m not ready to give up. But before I can open my mouth, there’s a sound—at last. It descends on us, deafeningly, horrifyingly, like the flocking of a hundred huge bird mutations.

The bleak and frenzied beating of helicopter blades.

Thirty-Four

Melinoë

All the color leaves Inesa’s face.

We both stand rooted to the ground in shock. The whirring of the helicopter blades is so loud and so familiar that it turns my skin to ice. Familiar, but impossible. Impossible, but real.

I want to shoutrun. I want to tear back through the trees, into the forest, dragging Inesa behind me. Yet I’m frozen with horror, and it’s too late. The belly of the helicopter lowers over us, parting the branches, snapping them against its metal hull. There’s an even larger breach in the tree canopy now, baring the entirety of the gray-white sky.

Wind blows back my hair, nearly tearing it from my scalp. Leaves and dirt and hard, sharp bits of frost are kicked up from the earth. I raise my arm to shield Inesa, pulling her against me. Her body is stiff, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide. She hardly even seems to register my actions.

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