I can’t believe she’s never told me this before. I’m gaping at her, horrified for what comes next.
“The instant that guy reached for his belt, I kneed him in the gut, pulled a knife from my boot, and slit his throat. The second guy ran off as soon as I snatched up my rifle. I didn’t even bother following him because I was too busy crying like an idiot and staring at the man who was bleeding out at my feet.
“For weeks I kept blaming myself for being so careless, leaving my weapon in plain sight, not hearing them coming. I visited the hospital in Crevice Valley a couple times for meds; my headaches were so bad I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted a do-over. I wanted to repeat the whole day so it could turn out differently.”
“That creep had it coming, Bree,” I say firmly. “He deserved what he got.”
“So did the Forgery you killed, but that doesn’t mean you wanted it to happen.” She turns so that she is looking directly at me. Her blond hair is dark with sweat, her cheeks caked with dirt. She looks wild in the firelight. “I’m not happy you had to kill someone, Gray. But I am glad you did it before he killed Emma. Or worse, you.”
She stands up quickly, and before I can say another word, she is gone.
We’ve been keeping up a blistering pace since dawn, and it is at midafternoon the following day, when my feet feel as though they might dissolve to dust, that the land before us stops. We crest a bluff and the earth drops away, revealing pebbles and sand and blue. Blue, as far as the eye can see.
The New Gulf.
Its surface is darker than the sky and speckled with white rifts that build and surge and throw themselves at the shore as though they are alive.
“Waves.” Bree sighs, and she opens her arms to the wind. It is salty when I breathe and the air feels wrong against my skin, but Bree seems so at home in these elements.
“This is the best birthday present ever,” she says to no one in particular. I realize I have again lost track of the days. It is the twenty-third already, a year to the day after her Heist from Saltwater. Today she is seventeen.
“We’re only a few hours from Bone Harbor,” Owen announces, “but let’s set up camp for the night. We’ll head in tomorrow morning with the traders to draw less attention.”
By the time the tents have been raised and dinner eaten, the group is in nothing short of good spirits as we sit around a dying fire.
Sammy and September are singing in harmony from across camp, him tapping out a rhythm on a piece of driftwood while Emma bobs her head to the beat. Even Bree hums along as she cleans her rifle. To my left, Bo has fallen asleep with his feet dangerously close to the fire. Jackson gives Aiden a piece of tall grass to tickle Bo’s nose. Each time Bo bats at it like he’s swatting a fly, Aiden descends into a fit of giggles.
I catch myself smiling.
Because there’s a sense of tranquility among us, an optimistic current you can’t ignore.
We’ve almost made it. We’re nearly there.
Part Two: Of Oceans
NINE
AS THE TEAM BEGINS TO retire, Xavier takes his post for evening watch. Sammy guides Emma to her tent, his hand on the small of her back. She smiles, looking shy, but not trying to avoid the contact either.
I glance away and catch Bree stalking from camp. She slides down a bluff, disappearing from view as she makes for the ocean. I dart after her.
“And they say you’re a quiet tracker,” she says, turning on me almost instantly. “I heard you coming a mile off.”
“What are you doing? Everyone’s settling in for the night.”
“That’s exactly what I am doing.” I stand there, confused. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”
I scramble down the bluff. The moon is waning but the sky is cloudless, and being free of the forest, its light seems to go on forever. There’s a dark shadow on the beach. Bree’s tent. It’s facing the water, far enough back that the surf can’t swallow it, but close enough that the ocean is an endless roar that ebbs and flows.
“That’s your tent,” I say.
“Good work, genius.”
I’m about to ask her why she chose to set up camp so far from the others when something she admitted during a game of Bullshit hits me. “You haven’t been able to sleep well since your Heist,” I say. “You miss the sound of waves.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything you said that night.” Her lips press into a sly smile, like she’s impressed. Or amused. “So you’re planning on falling asleep with the ocean, then?” I add quickly.
“Yup.” She raises an eyebrow, jabs me in the chest. “You should stay with me.”
“Does this mean you’ll be sneaking out of your own tent before dawn, then? Or am I supposed to go back to mine after my watch?”
Bree frowns. “I really don’t want to argue tonight.”
But that’s what we do best, I feel like saying.
“Let’s just sit for a while,” she offers. “Deal?”
I have plenty of time before my watch and since I’m not terribly tired, I agree. We start a small fire and sit facing the ocean, the tent at our backs. The salt is strong on the air and the waves endless. They seem too restless to help a person sleep. Just when one has fully died out, a new one comes crashing against the land: a constant disruption.
Without warning, there is a noise out on the water, a mournful call. It is solitary and eerie, drawn out. And then there is another, in response. The two echo each other, wailing into the evening.
“Loons,” Bree says. I’m not familiar with the bird, but she identifies their call so surely I don’t question her judgment.
“They sound sad.”
“But a sort of peaceful sad, don’t you think?”
They call out again and I suppose I can see what she means. There is something bittersweet and melancholy to their cries.
“If a pair gets separated, they call for each other until they’re reunited,” she explains. “We had them during the summers in Saltwater. You could always hear them when dusk fell. Their songs helped me sleep, just like my waves, but the birds migrated away for the winter—warmer waters, I think. It doesn’t seem warm enough here, to be honest, but then again, this water didn’t always exist. Maybe the flooding changed their habits.”
The loons call out again. Bree clasps her hands together and blows on her thumbs. The whistle she produces is strikingly similar to the birds’ cries on the water. Beautiful and haunting and stark.
Bree shows me how to shape my hands, the way to bend my thumbs, where to place my lips. She makes it look so easy but after many attempts, I’ve done nothing but blow soundlessly into my palms.
“This is impossible.”
She shoots me an unforgiving look. “It took me almost a month to learn how to do it when I was a kid. If you picked it up after two minutes, I’d be furious.”
“Knowing how rare it is to see you angry about something, I don’t want to miss this opportunity.” I dramatically roll up my sleeves and cup my hands together. I blow on them without success, but a loon wails at the same exact moment. “Look at that! Perfection.”
I expect a snide comment but it never comes. I turn and find Bree staring at the burn scars on my left forearm. They look more pronounced in the firelight: the rippled portions of skin deeper, the slight discolorations more severe. I wonder what state my arm would be in if Bo hadn’t pulled me from the flaming platform as quickly as he did. When Emma first tended to me, she said I was lucky and that the scarring wouldn’t be too drastic. Even still, my arm has never looked the same.