Val and I were bringing up the rear, Val so he could keep an eye on the sheep. I kept looking over my shoulder. I might have been looking for Mongo, but Mongo was more often to one side than behind us. I was looking for Takahiro.
Val was spinning the wool out roughly between his fingers in a long sort of whorl, longer, longer, longer, and then looping it around in a big circle. I could hear him muttering, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought there were some extra gruuaa draped over him—to the extent that I could see them in this light I thought most of them were clustered around Arnie. Val seemed to get what he wanted, and trotted after the devil sheep again—which was now trying to barge its way through the middle of the herd, like someone trying to jump the line. Val worked his way up beside it, pulled his loop over its head and let it fall around its neck.
It stopped barging. It dropped slowly to the back of the herd—Val was now walking with me at the rear again—and looked around, rather like someone who’s gone into a room and can’t remember why. It gave a forlorn little baaa, turned around, saw Val . . . and trotted happily toward him, clearly baaaing, Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you!
It sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. “I am sorry, you ugly creature,” he said. “I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.”
If it hadn’t been for Takahiro, I would have laughed.
There were no more bullets, no wicked little singing hums, and no sense of being followed.
And no Takahiro.
We walked on and on and on and on. I don’t know when Jill and Bella and Athena dropped back again to walk with me, and Val (and the devil sheep) went up ahead to walk with Arnie. The sheep (and Jonesie) had settled down, and Mongo was still on watch, and Casimir still had the other three dogs on leads. I don’t remember when or who told me that Val or Arnie or all the rest of them had decided that we couldn’t stop till we got past the fence around the Goat Creek camp, that while, thanks to Mongo, we weren’t leaving a blazing neon trail that said THIS WAY any more—and that thanks to Majid and the gruuaa Arnie thought they’d shut down most of the Goat Creek base’s ’tronics—Val and Arnie thought they could probably hide us long enough to get some sleep outside the compound, but not inside. I staggered on, thinking about Takahiro. I wanted to lie down and never move again. How many more times had they shot him as we ran away? Maybe bullets couldn’t kill a werewolf the way they could a human, but enough bullets would slow him down enough for them to . . .
Old stuff I hadn’t thought about in ages—stuff I hadn’t known I remembered—about Taks kept prodding me, sharply, like being stuck with pins. I remembered offering him a bite of my peanut butter sandwich—I’m not sure when, but it was pretty soon after I gave him the crane. He’d never had peanut butter before, and at first he thought I was playing a practical joke on him. (His mom had been pretty traditional. Lots of rice and tofu and adzuki beans.) But then I’d thought my first taste of wasabi was a really mean practical joke, although Taks had warned me to take only the littlest bit of little and a really big mouthful of rice. . . .
I remembered him and Jeremy and Gianni deciding when they were fourteen that Sworddaughter, everyone’s favorite TV series when we were all eleven and twelve, was only for babies who couldn’t see how old and pathetic it was. I’d been mad at him for months after that. I remembered him telling me that hating Mr. Denham was dumb—I had just failed another pre-algebra quiz. That’s because I’m dumb! I screamed at him, and ran away before he saw me burst into tears, because then I’d have to hate him too. I remembered winning first place in the summer reading challenge, the summer between ninth and tenth grades, and he was the only one of the people I thought were my friends who didn’t congratulate me, because he was in one of his moods. I’d been really proud of that award. I’d read twenty-three books over that summer, including some really long ones, like David Copperfield (good) and Anna Karenina (what a bunch of dead batteries).
I remembered him sitting at the table in our kitchen, wearing Val’s bathrobe and following me with his eyes.
I remembered kissing him. . . .
I was crying again. I seemed to be crying all the time. We’d been walking forever. I’d been crying forever. My head and my bones had ached forever.
Taks, where are you? You’d have caught up with us if you could.
A couple of times we paused for a handful each of chocolate and peanuts and a swallow of water. I didn’t know where any of it came from: maybe Val had made them out of mushrooms and dead leaves, like Cinderella’s godmother raids the vegetable patch for transportation. I love chocolate, but this chocolate tasted of nothing. I didn’t think anything would ever taste of anything again if Takahiro didn’t come back.
The fence, finally. It looked like any old stupid mean fence: plain chain link with a roll of barbed wire at the top. Not like the fence I’d stood staring at, clutching my algebra book, when Takahiro had kissed the top of my head, said, “Ganbatte,” and pretended to go with Jill and Casimir. A million years ago.
“I don’t suppose any of you thought to bring wire cutters?” said Arnie. Jill, Casimir, and I all shook our heads. Casimir was carrying my knapsack now: he’d managed to tie mine down over his somehow. It was the sort of plain practical thing I could never do, like I couldn’t do algebra. Casimir still moved like a panther too, even in the middle of the night on bad ground with army riflemen behind us, and a big lumpy heavy awkward bundle of knapsacks on his back.
I felt as if I was still carrying my knapsack, and it was full of bricks. I missed my algebra book.
I missed Takahiro worse.
“Hey,” said Arnie. “You still got those bullets?”
Val pulled them out of his pocket and held them out.
Arnie picked one up and looked at it. “You think you’re rusty, son,” he said to Val. “This may be gonna rain on the Fifth of July.” He closed his hands over it and blew, like you do before you roll dice, to make them lucky for you. Then he threw it at the fence, picked up the next bullet, blew, threw, picked up the next. . . . The bullets shone like bumblebees with the sun on them, black-and-gold-striped, even though it was full dark, and there were stars overhead and only a quarter moon. They buzzed rather like bumblebees too, and when they struck the fence, the wire they struck turned all gold. Arnie threw bullets till Val’s hand was empty, and when he was done there was a big almost-rectangle, about the size of a bedroom window, gleaming gold. He rubbed his hands on his pants and then stepped forward, hooked his fingers through some of the gold-edged holes, and pulled.
The whole golden panel fell out. “Ouch,” he said, and dropped it. “Hot.” It sizzled as it landed, and then turned black, like chain link that has been in a fire. He put his foot on the bottom edge of the hole in the fence and shoved it down a bit more so we could climb through easily. Val was moving among the sheep, touching them one after another, murmuring words . . . and they were trotting away. Mongo pressed up against me, watching. I curled my fingers through his collar, to make sure he understood that this was okay. The little broken cog that still hung there rubbed against my skin. It was good to be normal when you could. But sometimes you couldn’t afford normal. “You’re wonderful,” I said to him. I remembered him shoving Takahiro out of the way of one of the bullet storms. But Takahiro still hadn’t caught up with us.