Then it hits me. She wasn’t sure I’d come after her, unless she had my prized belongings with her.
Half-formed words gather in my throat, but she won’t even look at me, and I don’t know what to say.
When I curl up behind her to sleep, the curve of her spine says everything she doesn’t. Tense and unhappy, she only barely tolerates our proximity. If it were warmer, if we had our blankets, if she had a choice, she’d be on the other side of the fire. For a moment it seems like she’s about to say something, her breath hitching with intention, but she remains silent.
Neither of us has spoken a word all day. It’s a long time before we sleep.
We wake a little later than usual in the morning, paying the price for the night before. One of the many prices. It doesn’t take long to clear up the camp—stretch, pack up our supplies, split one of the last few ration bars.
I stretch again as she tightens the laces on her boots, and when we set out it’s clear she’s determined to keep to the pace I set. But by the time we reach the crest of the pass she’s breathing fast, lagging behind despite her best efforts, her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her.
The view of the rolling hills before us is spectacular. They stretch out for klicks before they level off and reach a forest that’s only a dark line from this distance. Between the base of the mountain and the start of the forest lies the Icarus.
She’s strewn out over a huge distance, ripped apart by her descent. Though sections of it have collapsed in the unfamiliar gravity, a large part of her hull is intact, with her trail showing where she came skidding in over the ground. My heart thumps in my chest as I run my gaze along the trail of debris—ruined escape pods that didn’t detach until the ship broke apart, chunks of metal, burned streaks along the hillsides, half-melted things I can’t begin to identify.
The Icarus held fifty thousand souls. I wish I could believe that any of them have survived this charred disaster. Not a single pod that I can see is intact, and the ship herself is beyond all redemption.
But it’s what’s not there that nearly drives me to my knees.
There should be rescue craft buzzing around the ship’s carcass. There should be crews climbing all over her like so many ants. There should be people, life, salvation. But what lies before us looks like nothing more than a graveyard. I’ve been holding on to the hope that we could have somehow missed their approach, that if we could get as far as the crash site, rescue would be waiting for us there. But there’s not even a hint of other survivors.
After everything we’ve been through, I finally admit to myself what I’ve been avoiding since we landed.
I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.
And I don’t know what to do, except try to stay alive. The wreck and the broken pods below us must hold the soldiers I sparred with, the folks I met on the lower decks. The man who conned his way into the first-class salon to petition Lilac. Her gaggle of friends, her bodyguard, her cousin.
I take a breath, and turn to begin making my way down the mountain.
“Just—just stop.” Lilac’s voice cracks behind me, hoarse from dehydration and ragged with emotion.
She’s staring down at the wreckage, stuck in place. She’s flushed, or burned from the glare of the snow, more likely, her hair curling across her forehead, damp with sweat. When she turns her burning gaze on me, I flinch. “I need you to look. Look at me; look at that, Tarver.”
“I see it.” My own voice sounds nearly as bad, unused for so long. “But we can’t stay here. We need to keep walking. There might be supplies in the wreck, some kind of communications equipment we can salvage.”
She sways, then sinks to the ground in utter exhaustion. “When are you going to stop punishing me for not being crazy after all? I saved your life. We’d never have survived the cave-in.”
Lilac, I know. I know we’d never have survived it. I know you heard or saw something before you ran, I watched it happen. I know you saw something real by the river. I know.
But I can’t let myself admit it out loud. This goes so far beyond anything I’ve been trained for, and my training is all I have. I’m better equipped to drag a crazy person across a wilderness than cope with the possibility that she’s receiving communications from—what? Ghosts? The thought is more than absurd; it’s impossible.
If I let myself believe her, then everything I know goes out the window. And what I know has kept us alive this far.
She’s still looking at me wearily, pain written clearly in her expression. “I’m not trying to punish you,” I say finally. “But I can only work from what we know. I don’t think I know everything, and in a place like this, I know even less than usual. But what I do know is that we need to keep moving.”
She slumps over to rest her forehead against her knees, and my heart groans under the pressure. I wish I knew what to do, or even what to say. I wish I knew anything useful at all.
“So you’re going to shrug it off again,” she mumbles, fixing her tired glare on me. “I’ve been struggling for anything I could find to show you I’m not crazy, even when my own logic told me I must be, even when you lied to me outright. And now that we both know I’m not, you’re just going to dismiss this?” She’s crying, but the harsh edge to her voice is anger. “Just once, Tarver, just once, I wish you could see what I see.”
She speaks the words like a witch in an old story, laying a curse on me. I look away, down the mountain at the wreckage below us.
“I’m sorry, Lilac. I don’t know what you see. I only know how to keep us moving. I’m just a soldier. Once we get out of this place, you won’t ever have to see me again. But I can’t make myself see what you do.”
She starts climbing to her feet, slow and painful, and if looks could kill I’d be dead and buried. “I hope that one day you’re forced to believe in something for which you haven’t got a shred of proof.” Her voice is taut like wire. “And I hope someone you care about laughs in your face for it.”
She stalks off down the mountain, and I wonder which one of her fancy tutors taught her this—the ability to make an exit without a door to slam, picking her way down the snowy path with her back ramrod straight in furious indignation. I wonder where she finds the strength for it.
“I’m not laughing at you,” I whisper. I adjust the pack and start to make my way down the mountain after her.
She’s learned a thing or two about trailblazing in the time she’s spent following me, and she makes good time at first, though eventually she starts to slow from exhaustion.
I can almost see my younger self, marching along, trying to keep up with his big brother as we trekked near home. I think of my parents, and my throat closes as I conjure up our cottage in my mind’s eye. My sanctuary, the place that’s always safe. No matter how I try to stay focused on what’s real, what’s in front of us, I can’t resist the thought of home.
The path—maybe a path, anyway—that we’re following curves around the side of the mountain. As we clear an outcropping and a secluded valley becomes visible below, Lilac’s head snaps up. She draws breath to speak, her eyes widening. Then it’s gone, stamped out, and she’s quiet again as she turns away to start working her way around a boulder. She has one last longing glance over her shoulder, as if whatever she sees, it’s something far preferable to our reality. On cue I see her start to shake, shivering as though cold, fingers twitching before she shoves them into her pockets.