The whole structure of his face collapses, his pallor washing out. He drops into a crouch.
“Epap?” I say, stepping out from the shadows.
He jumps at the sound of my voice. But instead of scolding me, he presses his index finger against his lips. Then flicks his chin in the direction of the window. Staying low, I sidle over to him.
Somebody is standing in the clearing outside.
A dark lithe figure cut in the white snow. A girl.
Staring right at us.
13
SHE IS AS stationary as we are.
A young girl; I put her at thirteen or fourteen. She looks like a wood elf with her pixie-cut bleach-white hair and waifish figure. A black scarf is cinched around her neck, dark like the shell of a black scorpion. She’s expressionless as her eyes swivel from Epap to me and back to Epap again.
“No sudden moves,” I whisper to Epap, trying to keep my lips as still as possible.
“The shutters, we need to close them.”
“No time. She’ll be on us in two seconds. If we give her a reason.”
We stay very, very still.
“What now?” Epap asks.
“I don’t know.”
She takes a step toward us. Pauses. Lifts an arm, slowly, until a finger points directly at me. Then descends down again.
“I’m going out to her,” I say.
“No!”
“Have to. This cabin offers as much protection as a paper lantern. If she wants us, she’ll have us.”
“No—”
“She doesn’t know what we are. Otherwise she’d be at us already. I go out, lure her in. Then we pounce on her.”
“That’s not going to—”
“It’s the only play we have. Now go wake Sissy. Quietly.” I push through the front door.
I have lived among them my whole life. I know their mannerisms, can ape them down to their smallest nuances. I walk out calmly, without betraying a trace of fear. As I step off the front porch, I pause at the rim of darkness before stepping into the moonlight, my eyes half-lidded for effect. I let my steps flow smoothly, gliding through the snow, trying not to kick up any puffs of snow. I layer on my face an expression as bland as the moon. My arms hang at my sides without swinging.
And then I remember.
The blood on my hand.
She twitches spasmodically. She is looking at me anew with fervent interest. Her arms crook, her head tilts to the side, her eyes narrowing then widening.
She takes a step toward me, then another, and another, until her legs become a blur.
She comes at me, face beaming brightly, knifing through the snow, through the night air, like a whispered curse.
I steady myself, readying for the pounce. At my neck. They always go for the neck first.
From behind me, through the open door, I hear Epap—“Sissy, wake up wake up wake up!”—his voice as distant as the stars.
And the girl—
Something’s off.
She’s still running. Hasn’t even covered half the distance yet. Her arms still pumping the air, instead of pawing the ground on all fours. Her chest is heaving from exertion, clouds of snow kicking up around her.
And then it hits me all at once. I study her even as she draws closer, my suspicions being confirmed.
But not yet. There’s one last test. And it’s an all or nothing.
I raise my finger, the one dappled in blood.
Her eyes flick to my hand, halting there for one endless second. Then shift back to my face, unmoved.
She’s not one of them. She’s one of us.
“Hey!” I shout, not sure what to say next. “Hey!”
And still she keeps running at me. From behind, I hear the clocking of feet on floorboards, drawing closer.
I spin around, arms raised high. Sissy is sprinting down the hallway; I see her dim shadow, one arm raised, the glint of a dagger about to be unleashed. “Sissy, wait!”
But I’m too late. As she clears the threshold, one foot planting on the front porch, she hurls the dagger. Because I’m standing in the direct path, she has to throw it off to the side, boomeranging the dagger toward the target.
I don’t wait—there’s no time. The boomerang trajectory has bought me three seconds.
I leap forward, start tearing toward the girl. She’s coming at me, I’m going at her. I hear a whirring sound, fading, then growing stronger.
The dagger. It’s arcing back toward her. Toward us.
I fling my body at the girl, my arm catching her across the chest. We go crashing into the snow. Not a microsecond later, the dagger sails over us.
I don’t waste any time. “Sissy! No!”
Sissy’s arm is already rearing back, another dagger perched in her hand.
“She’s like us! She’s like us!” I yell.
The dagger, gripped above Sissy’s head, freezes. Then slowly drifts down. The boys emerge from the darkness of the cabin. Their eyes wide, their foreheads creased with confusion.
The girl gets up, dusting off snow. “Where’s the Origin?” She stares at me, then at the others. Her eyes are a piercing ice blue, bereft of even an iota of warmth.
We stare back at her, speechless.
“The Origin, where is the Origin?”
Finally, after another moment of silence, Ben speaks. “What are you talking about?”
And now it is her turn to look at us with utter confusion. “The Origin. You’re supposed to have the Origin.”
Finally, Ben asks the question weighing on all of us.
“Who are you?”
14
ONLY AFTER WE’RE back inside the cabin, standing awkwardly around the table, does she tell us.
“Clair,” she says. “Like the air.”
Sissy, regarding her with undisguised suspicion, asks. “Do you live here? Is this your home?”
The girl shakes her head. “Nayden, nark,” she says.
We stare at her. “Excuse me?” Sissy says.
But Clair disregards her, turns to me. “Do you have the Origin?”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “What’s this about the Origin?”
The girl’s small chin quivers. She blinks, runs out of the room. She heads down the hallway, her eyes scanning about, and into the bedroom. By the time we catch up, she is upending Epap’s bag, spilling items of clothing and his sketchbook onto the bed.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Sissy demands, snatching the bag out of her hands.
“Tell me where the Origin is!” the girl says.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” Epap says.
“You do! Krugman said you were coming. Said you’d have the Origin.”
“Who said this?” Epap asks. “Who’s Krugman?”
They continue to pepper the girl with questions. But not me. My heart in my throat, I grab the sketchbook off the bed, flip the pages to the portrait of my father. I thrust the page in front of the girl.
“Is this who?” I shout. Everyone stops speaking, turns to me. “Is this Krugman?”
The girl peers at the drawing. Her eyes widen as if with recognition. But she only says, “No, it is not him.”
My heart falls.
“This man who told you about us,” Sissy says. “Krugman. Does he live here?”
She shakes her head. “He lives far away.”
“Then take us to him,” I say.
“Show me the Origin first.” The girl’s voice, though light and airy, hints of stubbornness within. “Then I will take you to him.”
“Take us to him first,” I say, “and then we’ll show it to you.” Ben looks at me quizzically.
She pauses. “Okay,” she replies, but with suspicion in her eyes. “We leave at sunrise.”
“Nayden, nark,” I say. “We leave now.”
Clair studies my face. There are thoughts going on behind her perceptive eyes, mysterious and indecipherable. For a brief second, something like recognition seems to shine in them. “Okay. Get your things. It’s a ways.”
We’re filled with questions as we follow her, but the exertion required to keep up makes it nearly impossible to talk. I can see why she wanted to wait until sunrise. The journey is much longer than I’d anticipated. We hike in darkness past a gurgling stream, then out of the forest. Ascending, we leave the tree line far below, and traverse across a seemingly endless stretch of barren granite. We’re hours on these undulating granite domes, their surprisingly smooth surface shimmering under the moonlight like a crowd of bald heads. The view is glorious up here, with waterfalls cascading out of the sheer cliffs and lush coniferous forests cushioning the valley floor, but I’m too fatigued to appreciate it. And sick. My head spins, hot with fever, even as the cold wind shoots shivers through my body. The high altitude does me no favors, either, making me light-headed and dizzy.
At one point, the path hits a steep mountain face. There’s a pair of metal cables drilled into the granite face, which we use to ascend. We pause halfway up to catch our breaths. From our vertigo-inducing vantage point, I see the distant Nede River, gleaming like a silver thread far below us, impossibly small and insignificant. We push on, reaching the top in a state of utter exhaustion. Clair seems unaffected; she stands impatiently while the rest of us suck air. She kicks at loose rocks, her eyes roaming over the satchel bags worn between us. No doubt looking for the Origin, whatever that might be.
Finally, with dawn approaching and our legs shellacked from a long descent, Clair cuts a sudden left, whisking through a narrow slit between large boulders. When we exit the other side, it’s as if we’ve stepped onto a wholly different planet.
Instead of the harsh wind of the mountain face, the tranquility of a redwood forest greets us. We step gladly into it, the green of the grass underfoot, the proud brown of the redwood trees, a dotting here and there of a burst of chrysanthemum flowers. A gentle brooking sound grows louder; when we eventually come across its source—a mountain stream—Clair tells us to drink. The water is amazing: sweet and filled with a crystalline freshness. Our thirst slaked, we push on with eagerness, our feet moving at a faster clip.