Paul and I ride in the back of the truck with our belongings. Our route takes us along roads that haven’t been used in years. Trees reach out toward us, snatching at my hair, at Paul’s arms, as my father drives over the potholes faster than he should, forcing us to cling to each other as much as to the truck. We are running, and every time I look up, I expect to see the sleek silver searchcraft bearing down on us.
Only a few Others taken by searchers have ever survived the rescue missions staged by the Band, and the tales they tell are harrowing-wards where row upon row of Others are hooked to harvesting machines to be drained of their blood. For some reason, the powers that be can’t manufacture a vaccine. We’re it. Our blood is injected into Plague victims, who cross their fingers and hope to survive. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t, but it works often enough that they keep using us, even though they can’t keep us alive.
But consider, the UA government says, the greater good. What is the loss of one when that person can help so many?
When my father finally stops the truck at the end of the road where a trail cuts into the brush, I allow myself to breathe. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we can still go back. Maybe this has all been a mistake.
But the aching wound on my arm reminds me there is no going back. Removal of a chip without UA consent is punishable by law. Like it or not, we are now fugitives.
We work quickly, unloading our boxes and lugging them down to a sheltered cove where a weather-beaten herring skiff rests in the shallows. Madda hops into it, taking our belongings from us until there’s none left. She then begins the careful task of moving the stuff around, adjusting the boxes until she’s happy with the balance, leaving us with nothing to do but fret. I sit on a nearby rock, watching her work, wishing I had something to do with my hands. I’ve always known that belongings are expendable, that stories and memories are the true treasures we carry with us, but seeing what little we have loaded onto the boat leaves me feeling very poor. Paul stands beside me, his rifle resting in the crook of his arm, staring out across the expanse of ocean. I can sense he feels the same way.
It’s some time before my father returns. He took the truck deep into the forest to be reclaimed by the land, but not before draining the fuel tanks. Fuel is too precious to sacrifice, even to the earth.
No one speaks.
Silence is our talisman.
It takes time for the tide to rise, but once the skiff is floating we climb aboard. The sun descends behind the thunderheads hugging the western horizon. Behind us, to the east, mountains rear up, demanding that we return home. There is no coming back once you cross to the west, they say. We will remember that you abandoned us, and we will exact revenge if you return. Their peaks are blackened maws stretching skyward to snap at the stars. As fearsome as they are, I can’t help staring at them. This may be the last time I look at those mountains, those peaks I’ve looked up at every day of my life. I wish I could say good-bye, but even if I did, I don’t think the mountains would listen.
My father and Paul use oars to pole the skiff out into deeper water. It’s hard work. My father’s breath comes fast and heavy as he fights against the tide.
Once we’re far enough out for Madda to risk starting the motor, Paul takes a seat beside me on the cold metal hull, and reaches out to take my hand. He knows I don’t like the ocean. The first time spirit took me was while I was swimming not far from here. If it weren’t for Paul hauling me to the surface and dragging me back to the beach, I would still be there. Even though that day was years ago, when we were only six, I can’t shake the feeling that if I touch the water, I’ll be drawn back down into the shadows of the old cities below. They aren’t friendly, those places: Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Los Angeles. Their deaths were sudden and painful, shaken loose from the land by terrible earthquakes. Below, in the inky fathoms, they’re reaching toward me, raking the water with their gridiron hands.
One look at Paul tells me he remembers too. The buildings aren’t all that lurk below. The lost live amid the barnacles and sea wrack, and they, too, seek a new home. That day, when he swam into the dark water to save me, was the first time he encountered the lost. That was the price of my life, that Paul be haunted by those who have died and yet not passed over, and that price is something I will try to repay for as long as I live.
Our father turns from his watch at the stern. “Is it bad, Cass?”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“It’ll be better when we’re out a bit farther,” he says.
I smile and nod, because that will make him feel better. My father has enough to worry about already.
Once it’s dark, Madda flicks on a single red light on the port side of the boat. “There’s still some traffic out here,” she whispers, “so I’ve got to put it on, but if you need to say something, keep your voice down. The ocean does strange things to sound, especially on a night like this.”
I know what she means. The water is glassy smooth, and as the boat slices through it, the ripples turn red around us. My mind swims as spirit pulls at me, demanding I give in. Look, it whispers. Remember. You’ve seen this before. And I have, this red flame surrounding a boat plying a dark ocean. But when? I’ve never been to the Island before, but that’s not it, exactly. There’s something deeper to this feeling.
Paul sets his hand on my arm and gives me a questioning look. I shake my head. No, I’m not going under. I’m still here, but that doesn’t mean I’ll watch the bloodred wake anymore. I train my gaze on the darkness to the west, where the Island looms. My father lived there once, long ago. He doesn’t talk about it much. My mother used to, though. She said it’s beautiful there, peaceful, a haven from the Corridor and its smoke and noise. But there’s trouble on the Island too. Back then, the Band ran wild, until Arthur Eagleson got them organized, but that was after my parents returned to my grandfather’s farm, and now Arthur Eagleson is gone as well. He disappeared two years ago, and it didn’t take long for some of the Band to revert to their old ways, ways that prize violence over temperance, ways that mirror the UA tactics more than they’d care to admit.
And the Band has already stolen so much from our family-our two uncles, for one, and our safety, for another. Two years ago, the Band signed the treaty land surrounding our house back to the UA, and left for the Island. Since then, they just showed up whenever they wanted, marching into our house, taking it over like they owned the place, and while I retreated upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom, my brother and father sat with them, drank with them, listened to their stories about how, one day, the Band would overthrow the UA and take back the land that was once ours to begin with.
It’s not the boasting, or the drinking, or even the guns they brought into our house, though I hate all of them, too. It’s that the Band men filled my brother’s head with dreams, dreams of being a warrior of the Old Way, when what they really want is to use my brother as cannon fodder. They don’t tell him about the boys who die when they raid the facilities where they hook us Others up to machines and drain us of our blood. They don’t tell him about those who return home broken, those who take to drinking rather than face a day sober. But I know. My mother told me.
What would she say if she were here right now? Does she know how much it hurts to leave her behind, sleeping beneath the apple tree at the house? Sometimes when I close my eyes I think I hear her talking to me, but I’m too scared to believe that might be true. I wonder if she speaks to Paul. If she does, he’s never said. Would he keep something like that from me? I wish I knew. Sitting here in the boat, holding hands, it’s like we’re children again. When we were little, we were inseparable. I kept my hair short so I’d look just like Paul, because back then, I wanted to be him, the funny one, the happy one. I didn’t want to have seizures. I didn’t want to cross into the spirit world and see the things I saw, things I don’t truly remember.
But now, my seizures have all but left me behind and sometimes I find myself wanting to walk those spirit paths, if only they didn’t scare me so badly. But I don’t tell Paul that. Paul thinks I’m brave. I let him. One of us has to be strong, and Paul doesn’t believe it’s him.
As I think this, I look up and find Madda watching me. She’s frowning. If I closed my eyes and allowed my spirit sight to come, I think I’d find her looking for my shade too, and that frown tells me she’s just as puzzled as I am about why it’s missing.
Sometime later, just as I’m about to doze off, Madda kills the engines. We float, helpless under the watchful eye of the waning moon, as something pricks at my temples. We are crossing the boundary.
In the old times, sailors used to tell tales of sirens. My mother told me about them, the women who sang songs to lure men to their deaths. Perhaps the boundary is part of that, a siren of sorts; for if I was on my own, I’m not sure I’d be able to leave. Spirit is thick here, calling to me, blinding my eyes, whispering words that my mother once used: My gentle girl. My starshine child. Stay with me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me behind.
When Madda starts the engines again, I almost weep. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and listen to my mother’s voice, even though part of me knows it’s not really her. I’m only hearing what I want to hear. It’s the boundary, I think. It’s lonely. I would be too, if I were out here all by myself, waiting, watching people pass by, never to stay.
My father takes the helm as Madda sits beside me, watching me with night-dark eyes. Paul snores, his head leaning against my shoulder.
“You felt it, did you?” Madda whispers.
I nod.
“Ah. I should have known.” She looks back toward the boundary. A glimmer of phosphorescence marks our wake. “Non-Others can float right up to it and never know it exists, you know, unless they try to pass through. Then the boundary pushes them away, although to them it feels like the current, or the wind. Well, that’s the way it used to be. Not quite like that anymore-there are gaps now that didn’t used to be there. But our blood has always allowed us to pass through, and that permits us to bring non-Others across if we want to. But to feel it, to hear it, that’s something a little different.”
“How?” I whisper.
She looks as if she won’t answer but then changes her mind. “The boundary is made of spirit, and if you feel it, that means you’ve got a strong connection to the spirit world. Sometimes, the spirits of the ones we love, the ones who have passed on, can come through here. But you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you?”
She makes her way back to the wheel before I can answer, because I don’t need to. I see the pinch of her mouth, the way she’s holding her breath, the shadow of loss in her eyes.
She’s heard the siren’s call too.
Dawn rises like a gray dove. The air is cold and I haven’t slept at all.
The Island looms before us. As the sun rises, its mountains ripple with golden light, with crimson, like a christening, a great homecoming. I wish it was both, but I know it’s neither.
There are five treaty territories, established more than two hundred years ago, before the world fell apart. All of them are protected by the Band. The Pueblos far to the south still grow food by dry-till methods. The eastern Mohawk Nation is the oldest, and the most militant. They always have been, those Mohawk warriors. They were the ones who created the Band to begin with, and it was their idea to negotiate the treaty territories before it was too late.
The third is the Shu, in the heart of what once was British Columbia. Far to the north is the fourth, the Bix’iula. Some wonder if it still exists. No one has heard from the Bix’iula in years.
And then, there’s the Island.
My father moved to the Island when he was a child, after my grandmother left my grandfather. When my father went back to the farm in the Corridor, his brothers, my uncles, decided to stay on the Island. One day they disappeared. Just like that-gone, without any explanation from the Band. Once in a while, I think I can feel their totems following me, but when I look back, nothing’s there.
I sometimes wonder if the Island took them, for it is an angry land. Once, ages ago, a great tsunami swept its lower half into the sea. The Island has never forgiven the ocean for this, and eventually she’ll seek retribution.
Paul wakes as Madda guides the boat into an estuary. He’s always wanted to come here. “Told you it would be beautiful,” he says, as a heron, startled by the engines, takes to wing. “Told you.”
A wharf looms out of the morning mist. Boats flank it, rocking at our approach. The jangling of their rigging breaks the eerie silence.
Madda pilots the skiff into a berth as my father jumps onto the wharf, catching the mooring line as Paul throws it to him, and tows the skiff into place. “Start unloading,” he says to me once the skiff is moored. “I’ll be right back.” He jogs up the ramp and vanishes into the mist.
I climb over the gunwales to take a box from Madda. “I knew you a long time ago, when you were a little girl,” she says as she hands it to me.
Paul catches my eye as I bite my tongue. Meeting me as a child hardly constitutes knowing me, but I swallow those words. It’s been a long night, and we’re all a little owly.
Once everything’s unloaded, my father reappears and helps move it all up the ramp. There’s a truck waiting there. A white man is at the steering wheel, and beside him, a girl about my age, with long blond hair woven into braids. Neither of them gets out. They just watch us load our belongings into the back, making it clear that they think they’re better than us, and when I notice the scar on the girl’s arm, it’s all I can do not to give in to my anger. That scar tells me she lived in the Corridor once, so she knows what it’s like to lose your belongings, your home, your everything, and she doesn’t even have the decency to say hello?
When we finally have the truck loaded, we climb into the back with our boxes. Madda tells us she’ll see us in town, and heads back down to her boat. The man turns the key. The engine chugs a few times, and then coughs. He turns the key again, with the same results. Chug, chug, cough, nothing.
“Want me to take a look?” my father says.
“Nope. It does this sometimes,” the man replies, but it’s not long before they’ve got the hood up and they’re both bent over the engine.
I wander back toward the wharf, picking up an old piece of salt-crusted rope that someone’s tossed away as I go. The rope’s stiff, but with a little work, I unravel it into strands and start to knot it into a chain.
On the beach a short ways down, something catches my eye as I work-a blur of black against the thick, dark firs. I squint. It’s a raven. He’s tugging something from under a rock. He cackles and hops, dancing his awkward, funny jig, until he finally pulls his prize out. Then he rises in the air, a black arrow, and drops something small, something white, to its death. An oyster, I think.
“Paul,” I say. He’s talking to the girl, and looks annoyed that I’ve interrupted him, but strolls over anyhow, the girl sliding out of the truck to trail after him. “What?” he says.
“Look at that raven,” I say.
“Raven?” Paul tips his head to the side. “What raven?”
I look again. It’s not there. “It must have flown away,” I say quickly, though Paul narrows his eyes. He knows I’m lying, but to admit I’m seeing shades in front of this girl that neither of us knows is a bad idea. Strangers don’t always take kindly to someone who sees things that aren’t there, and there’s something about this girl, now that she’s close to me, that strikes me wrong.
But the girl didn’t hear my slip. Her attention is focused on the chain of knots in my hand. “What’s that?” she says.
“Oh.” I hold it up. “A necklace, maybe? I think it might be long enough.” I smile and hold it out to her. “If you like it you can have it when I’m done.”
She pulls a green stone on a leather thread out from under her shirt and dangles it for me to see. It’s beautiful, and she knows it. “I’ve already got one. I don’t need another,” she says. She tucks the stone back in place and strolls off to the truck.
My brother follows her, casting me a glance that says, Oh well.
My hand forms a fist around the knotwork, and when I’m sure no one is looking, I throw it as far as I can. It floats on the water for a brief moment before it starts to sink. Madda, who’s still down on the docks, notices and fishes it out. She tucks it into her pocket and then turns back to her work.
I ball my hands into fists. Why should I care if the girl didn’t want the necklace? But it wasn’t the refusal. It was the way she refused it that’s left me feeling hollow inside. She’s back in the truck now, the door open. Paul leans against it, smiling. I should be happy that he’s making a friend, but I’m not, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s that she didn’t help us. Maybe it’s the look in my brother’s eyes, the one that says he’s smitten. Maybe it’s the look in her eyes, the one that says she knows.
The engine finally roars to life. “All right, everyone back in,” my father says as he slams the hood down.
I cast one more look at the estuary. The ebbing tide has created ripples of green water that look like a humpbacked monster, and a seal floats away on the current.
But no raven. Maybe there never was.
I turn away and refuse to think about what that might mean.