This stupid world keeps spinning and there’s nothing I can do. And so I sit in the middle of the path and sob while the Mudo push against the fences moaning at me.
“Catcher says the Recruiters are still following us,” I say as I approach the others. Harry and my mother stand in the middle of the path talking, my mother’s hand resting on Odys’s head. He leans against her leg with his tongue lolling. “So we should keep moving,” I add. I don’t tell them anything else about our encounter but Elias tilts his head and narrows his gaze at my red and puffy eyes.
He kneels on the ground sorting through supplies and I walk past him, leaning down and grabbing my pack. He starts to reach a hand toward me but I sling the bag over my shoulder and evade his grasp. I don’t want him to see me like this: hurt and raw.
“Gabry?” my mother asks, her voice filled with concern. But I just shake my head and keep going, needing to be alone inside myself. I don’t bother to wait for them to follow me. The morning sky breaks overcast, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. It doesn’t take long before the rain starts, turning the path to mud and causing the rocks to become slippery.
I welcome the drudgery of it, the pinprick stings of raindrops on my face. It seeps through my clothes, trickles down my back like sweat. I wish it would wash me away. During the heavier spots of rain the Mudo wander away from the fences, their senses dulled by the water-laden air. I breathe a sigh of relief, not caring about the mud and the slosh of it so long as I get a reprieve from the endless moans.
During the morning Elias tries to offer small kindnesses and I rebuff them all. He holds out his canteen when I reach for mine and I ignore it. When I stumble over a fallen branch in the middle of the path he holds out his hand to steady me and I don’t thank him. I can’t look at him or anyone else. I just focus on my feet, on moving forward. I try not to let the waves of desolation from this morning pull me under.
The path begins to steepen as we near mountains and we slip in the mud as we climb our way up, always looking over our shoulders wondering how far behind the Recruiters are. How soon until they’ll catch up. Odys presses tight against my mother’s legs, his head hunched and coat dripping.
We reach the top of the mountain only to find another, the path splitting and breaking and us pushing farther and farther. The dull afternoon turns dark early, the rain pounding harder and making it even more difficult to navigate. We slide down the hill and start climbing again. Gradually the rain slows and clears, the clouds drifting apart to show stars. With the rain stopped, around us the Mudo moan and wander back to the fences. Thick rivulets of water trickle down the path.
The tenth time I trip over roots hidden by the dark and fall on my hands and knees in the mud, I don’t get up. Elias reaches to help me and I swat his hand away.
“Gabry,” he says. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, damp hair clinging to my cheeks. I’m exhausted. Emotionally and physically.
He reaches for me again. “We have to keep moving.”
“Why?” I demand, so tired of caring.
“The Recruiters, they’re still back there and—”
“So what?” I’m still staring at the ground, at my fingers clinging to the muck. I want to give up. “Let them find us and take us. We can’t just keep running, following this path forever. We don’t know where it goes. We don’t even know if this path leads anywhere at all.”
Elias starts to say something but then I hear him shift away. And I realize that a small part of me wanted him to demand that I push harder. Hoped that he’d give me a reason to keep going. I wonder numbly if he’s stopped caring about me as well. If today both men who meant something to me have decided I’m not worth it.
Elias and Harry continue up the path a bit and my mother kneels next to me. “Come on, Gabrielle,” she says softly. “Elias is right, we should keep moving forward.” She places a hand over mine. “Trust me, we’ll be okay. We’ll find a way out of this.”
I turn to look at her. “I’m not like you,” I tell her. “I can’t just keep going not knowing. I can’t just take it on faith like you did.”
She opens her mouth to protest but I cut her off. I need her to know this about me. I need her to stop thinking of me as something I’m not. I’m tired of her thinking the best of me when I’ve done nothing to deserve it. “No,” I tell her. “You’ve always been like that. You’ve always known what you wanted.”
I take a deep breath. “And I haven’t,” I finish weakly. I feel the tears pushing behind my eyes and I let them drip down my face, fall from my nose and chin. “I don’t know anything,” I tell her. “I used to know and then it all changed and you left me and I couldn’t figure it out.”
I turn away, squeezing my eyes closed. “I wish I were like that,” I whisper. “I wish I could be like you.”
She pulls me to her and I resist until she pulls harder and I fall into her lap, her arms tight around me. “I never knew,” she says, her lips moving against my temple. “I never knew what I wanted. I was always terrified.” I feel her body shudder as she draws in a shaky breath. “I was always confused and my mother was gone too and I didn’t know what to do without her.”
“Then why did you leave me?” I ask. “If you knew what it was like why did you leave?” I pull my legs to my body, curling into a tight ball.
She’s silent for a long time. Around us water drips from branches and slides down leaves. On the other side of the fence Mudo slip through the night, their moans heavy. “Because I’m not perfect, Gabrielle,” she finally says. “I make mistakes too. I made the mistake of leaving my friends behind in the Forest. I made the mistake of being selfish. I should have gone back for them earlier. I should have fought harder to find out where you came from.” She shrugs and I realize that I’m holding my breath.
“You don’t have to try to be perfect, Gabrielle. And you need to stop thinking that I can’t make mistakes either. It’s exhausting to have everyone around you expecting you to be perfect. And it’s not fair that you put that pressure on yourself.” She reaches out and grabs my head in her hands. “You’re human, Gabry. We’re both just human. Nothing more. But also nothing less.”
I nod, letting her words sink in. It’s as if she’s somehow given me permission to forgive myself, let go of my mistakes and fears. It’s a terrifying thought—I’ve held on to them for so long that it feels like a part of who I am.
She smiles, the lines around her eyes crinkling. “Sometimes it’s the mistakes that turn out to be the best parts of life,” she says. “If I hadn’t made mistakes I would have stayed in the village when I was your age, I would have married Harry. I would have never found the ocean or traveled.”
“Was it worth it?” I ask. “Was it worth leaving to find the ocean? Wouldn’t you have been happy if you’d stayed in the village? If you’d had your mother and been with Harry?”
“Oh honey,” she says, her voice sounding desperate. “I can’t compare the lives I could have lived. One would have been comfort and security. But the other …” She sighs. “It was the most love and the most pain and the most wonder I could have ever known.”
“But nothing changed in the end,” I protest, twisting until I can see her face. “You’re still here in the Forest. You’re still with Harry. It’s as if everything else—the ocean and me—never happened.”
She smiles. “I used to think the ocean would be this untouched place,” she says, a note of regret in her voice. “Where there wouldn’t be death or Unconsecrated. And then when I got there and saw the dead on the beach …”
She lifts one shoulder. “I realized that I had to accept the world the way it was. I realized that I had to move on.”
“Did you?” I ask.
She’s quiet a moment, thinking. “I don’t know. Eventually I did. Sometimes I still think back to that feeling, seeing the ocean spread out before me that first time. Knowing it was real and that I’d believed and it was true.
“It changed everything, Gabrielle. Who I am changed. Who Harry is. If we had been together from the beginning … it would be different. I don’t need Harry to complete me anymore, I just need him to be with me.”
I turn my head until I can see the stars through a gap in the clouds, not sure I understand the difference.
“You can’t give up, Gabrielle,” she says, her voice softer than the air. “Not on any of it. The path, your friends.” She pauses. “Your family.”
I pull away from her, wrapping my arms around my legs and squeezing them against me. “You mean Annah,” I say.
She leans forward. “I mean me,” she says. “I’m not a perfect person, Gabry. I’ve made mistakes and I’ll keep making them. Just like you’ll make mistakes. And so will Harry and Elias and Catcher.”
I stare at my fingers, twisting them around each other, pushing at my nails and watching them turn white. I think about Elias and how he still blames himself for losing me. How he blames himself for losing Annah. How he seems so afraid of messing up with me again. And how I’ve been afraid to really let myself go with him. Terrified of making the wrong decision.
My mother places her palm flat against mine. “It’s never been a perfect world. It’s never going to be. It’s going to be hard and scary and, if you’re lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring. But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good.”
“What if there aren’t good parts?” I ask her, the tears creeping back up my throat. “What if I’ve already lived the good parts and there’s nothing left?”
She laughs, throaty and deep. “Trust me when I tell you that there is plenty left,” she says. “You just have to take the risk sometimes in order to find them. Step outside what’s comfortable and safe.”
I swallow, feeling my pulse flutter at the possibility of her words. “What if I’m too scared?”
She looks at me for a long time. “I grew up hemmed in by fences. Everything we learned and knew was restricted. The Sisterhood knew there was a world outside our village but made us believe we were the last ones. They regimented every part of our lives—convincing us that to believe anything different from what they taught was to endanger our very existence.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s never told me any of this before. She’s told me stories about growing up in the Forest but never what it was like to be raised in it. I feel as though I’m catching a secret glimpse of her, not as my mother but as a girl who was once my age. Who faced the same fears that I do.
“I wanted you to have a different life, Gabrielle,” she says. “I felt danger every day, terror and fear, and I wanted you to grow up knowing nothing but safety and security. I thought that raising you in the lighthouse, where you could see past the Barrier—see that there was a world out there—would make you want more. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just taught you to be scared of anything that wasn’t safe.
“Maybe we’ll always live in a world of fences,” she says, waving her hand at the chain links on either side of the path. “But they’re to keep the Unconsecrated out. Not to keep you in.”
I let her words roll through my head and nod. And we sit together for a while listening to the Mudo thrash against the fences and the water drip through the night and then finally she stands and pulls me to my feet and we push on up the path toward morning.
Chapter 44
It’s the middle of the next day when we first catch a glimpse of how close the Recruiters are behind us. We’ve pushed ourselves up another peak and look back to see them weaving down the mountain across the valley.
By the time the evening edges around us we can sometimes hear them. Their shouts threading through the air, mingling with the sound of the Mudo.
There’s been no sight of Catcher since he left me the morning before. I’m worried that he’s hurt worse than I thought and isn’t taking care of himself. That he might be out in the Forest alone and dying. I dig my nails into my palms trying to drive my thoughts away from him but I can’t.
“Maybe we should split up,” Harry suggests as darkness presses in and we’re forced to slow down. He looks down the mountain where we can see a line of torches marching steadily along the valley. Odys leans against his leg, a soft whine escaping him as if he can smell our fear.
“No,” my mother says, and we keep walking, exhaustion in every step.
Elias takes the lead and my mother and Harry trail behind us a ways. I feel awkward around Elias, as if suddenly I don’t know what to say to him. As if I’ve ever known what to say to him. He glances back at me as he walks and when he hears me stumble he’s always there with a strong hand offered. He steadies me but then turns back to the path. I feel awful for having pushed him away so many times before and I wonder if I’ve messed things up beyond repair. But then I remember all the times he’s pushed me away as well and I purse my lips and keep walking.
And then one time he doesn’t turn away. He stands facing me, his fingers still cupping my elbow. His touch tingles up my arm. “Gabry,” he says. I can barely see him in the night, I can just feel him, feel the heat outline of his body, the blurry edges of where his skin fades to darkness. He leans closer. I can feel him struggling for words and I hold my breath, waiting.