And his words are so perfect and so beautiful that I want to grab ’em and bring ’em to my chest and never let ’em go…but instead they slice through me ’cause…

“You weren’t there,” I say, my words numb. “You didn’t hafta watch ’em die. You don’t know.”

There’s fire running through my belly and suddenly it’s like I wanna be somewhere else, anywhere else, but I know there’s no place I can hide from the past. From the truth.

Circ kisses me so suddenly I don’t have time to take a breath, but then I’m kissing back and breathing when I can, and realizing this is a place I can go, ’cause when we’re doing this I’m far, far away and maybe I don’t ever hafta come back.

His hand’s on my back, in my hair, tugging at my hips: they’re everywhere at the same time, like he’s got more’n two. He’s all I need.

How can one person, whether male or female, or young or old, or friend or family or lover, make you feel so good, send sparks dancing through your very being? It’s a question only a heart can answer.

His lips, painting a picture on mine. And I’m gone, gone, gone, drifting away…

…finding a better place.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tristan

Where the hell am I? What the hell am I doing?

I watched those people die today, and I knew I was watching the hand of evil. It cracked my bones, splintered my soul, shattered my heart. I didn’t know any of them, but I didn’t have to, because they were mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, friends. Like Adele and Roc and Tawni and Elsey and no different than the ones I love down below. They were people—slaughtered like animals.

If the Glassy soldiers doing the killing are the hand of evil, then Borg Lecter is the face, the mouth, the one giving the orders. And I’ve pushed Adele right into his gaping maw to be crushed with a single bite.

She could be dead already. But I’d feel it, wouldn’t I? Instead I feel nothing, empty. Is that because of what I saw today, or because she’s gone? No. No, I felt something completely different when my mom disappeared, when my father admitted—bragged even—that he’d killed her. Sadness and rage and loss. I don’t feel any of that. So that means Adele’s still alive, right?

“Yes,” I whisper under my breath. Even if I’m lying to myself, I feel better having said it out loud.

“What’s that?” the tattooed guy, Feve, asks. His wife took one of the babies he was holding, but he’s still got the other one tucked under his arm like a package. When I first met him, all dark and tatted up and ripped like he spends every day, all day lifting stones, working out, I’d never have guessed he was a family man. And yet somehow…it suits him.

“Uh, nothing,” I grunt, my voice coming out raspy, phlegm in my throat.

New Wildetown stands before us, the towering, sheer cliffs of the canyon rising up on either side, framing a long line of tents and shelters, constructed of a combination of wood and thick animal skins. Activity buzzes through the village. Talking, laughing, shouts of mothers and fathers disciplining their children. It’s all so…normal. Like there aren’t people killing each other less than a day’s journey from here. Like there’s no war, no evil. They might not have a towering glass dome, or the technology to raise it, but the people of the Tri-Tribes have created a bubble of their own. Even being a foreigner, a stranger, I already feel safe here.

My gut clenches. Adele should be here.

“There was another Wildetown,” Feve says, leading me between the rows of tents, past a young boy (clothed in just a tiny skin around his torso) chasing an even younger boy (buck naked). Their mother is chasing both of them, a tub of water standing nearby. I guess kids run from bath time here, too.

“What happened to it?” I ask through my mask.

“Nothing,” Feve says, using his non-baby arm to help a struggling old man to his feet. The man nods at Feve and we keep walking. “The Wildes abandoned it when we formed the Tri-Tribes.”

“The all-girl tribe,” I say.

Feve looks at me curiously. “They’ve told you about our history?”

“As much as they could,” I say. “But it’s easier to understand now that I’m seeing it in real life.”

He nods, swings the child into both arms in front of him, rocks it gently. “The first Wildetown wasn’t as well-hidden or well-protected. This place is almost impossible to find, even if you know where to look.”

I remember how my jaw dropped when we squeezed through what looked like an impossibly small opening in the rocks that surely led to nowhere, only to find a canyon so large it could, apparently, fit the peoples of three tribes in it.

“This canyon is much larger than the one the Wildes used to live in. There are almost three thousand of us.”

“Is that enough to win the war?” I ask, ignoring the stares of a group of children who are laughing and pointing at me. Then, just as we pass them, I crouch down with my hands held out like claws and go, “Rawr!” and they run away shrieking.

Feve raises an eyebrow. “Get the children on your side and you’ll do quite well here,” he says, before going back to my question. “Not nearly enough,” he says. “Not with the firepower the Glassies have. Do you know anything about those weapons they have? The fire sticks?”

I almost laugh, but I don’t want to insult him, nor do I mean to. It’s just crazy that these people are living so primitively they don’t even have a basic understanding of guns or electricity or any of the things I always took for granted. Heck, even the moon and star dwellers understood technology, even if it wasn’t always readily available to them. But these people, they’re happy if they have food and water and each other. Is that so wrong? Is that a reason to kill them?

My almost-laugh turns into a clenched jaw. If anyone can get to Lecter, it’s Adele.

I slip a hand under my mask and massage the tension out of my face, answer the question. “We call them guns,” I say. “They shoot small pods of metal—we call them bullets”—I raise my thumb and forefinger to show him the approximate size—“at speeds so fast they’re invisible to the human eye.”

“Are they magic?” Feve asks, and I think he’s joking, but his eyes are dark and serious.

“Uh, no. Just technology. Like the glass dome. Like the trucks—I mean, fire chariots.”

Feve stops. “This girl, Adele…will she be able to help us?”

I want to believe. I have to believe. “Yes,” I say. “She will help you.”

~~~

I’ll be staying with Feve’s family until they can find me something more suitable. I feel awkward at first, as his wife, Hela, prepares a bed for me, but soon I’m holding his kids and they’re grabbing at my mask, playing with it, and I feel right at home.

It’s the safest I’ve felt since arriving on the surface.

After a day that was longer and more traumatic than most, the soft skins and blankets suck me in, and, hoping Adele’s found a place to sleep, too, I drift away to the muted coughs and babies’ cries and whispers of a camp at rest.

~~~

Shouts shatter the night. I claw at the blankets, drowning in them, trying to get to the air. A sliver of light flashes into the tent and I remember where I am. New Wildetown. Guest of the Tri-Tribes and Feve’s family.

Did I dream the shouts?

One of Feve’s babies starts crying, and I catch a glimpse of Hela picking him up, bringing him to her breast to feed. “Shhh,” she whispers.

“What happened?” I say.

“Feve went to find out,” she says, her eyes barely visible in the dark.

I scramble to my feet and out the door, into a brighter night, the stars twinkling through the top of the canyon, a long rectangle of glittering night sky. The clouds have moved on.