After we’ve changed, she gathers us in the column of sunlight and points up. For a moment, I don’t see anything unusual. Just the single beam shining down like a spotlight from a ceiling overrun with dangling vines. Then I see it: lost among the vines, barely noticeable, a rope ladder.
It’s inside the column of sunlight. In the one place hunters would never think—or dare—to glance up. Yet another lock and bolt.
Using Epap’s clasped hands as a foothold, Sissy hoists herself up. She’s able to grab the lowest rung on the ladder, then swing her feet upward, flipping upside down, her ankles twisting and securing themselves around higher rungs. Her body dangling down, arms outreached, she grabs Ben, now sitting on Epap’s shoulders. It’s not easy, but Sissy is able to heave him up. And in like fashion, we launch ourselves onto the ladder and start ascending, without an inkling of how long and arduous a climb it’ll turn out to be. Had we known, we’d not have set off at so quick a pace.
Only half an hour later, our excitement flagging, our exhaustion gaining, the tubelike walls close in on us. Claustrophobia comes thick and fast. I, being broad shouldered, feel it most keenly. My elbows jab the jagged walls, and even my deltoids get scuffed up. It’s such a tight fit, we’re tempted to jettison our bags. In one particularly narrow spot, I get stuck; even with my arms raised above my head, I can’t squeeze through the funnel. Epap has to push from below, his hands on my buttocks, a supremely awkward moment.
Sunlight in this narrow, vertical tunnel is short-lived, lasting only a half hour longer. The light recedes upward on one side of the tunnel, curved and slow at first; then, with a sudden acceleration of speed, it catapults up and away. Visibility gone, we’re plunged into a heavy grayness. And with the dark comes a precipitous drop in temperature. It’s a strange sensation; the increasing darkness and cold make it feel as if we’re descending into the earth, and not climbing upward, out of it.
“Sissy, can you see an opening from where you are?” Epap asks from below me.
“All I see is a dot of light. A pinprick. Too small to be able to accurately judge distance. But it looks really far away.”
After a few hours of climbing, we take a long break. We loop our limbs in and out of the ropes, securing ourselves. Arms ready to drop off, hands rubbed raw by the coarse ropes, we carefully pass the remaining berries up and down. Ben, above me, can’t still his arms. “They keep shaking,” he tells me, “I can’t make them stop.” His elbows are sandpapered into bloody gashes.
Our bodies are broken, our spirits are down.
Ten minutes later, we start climbing again. After only five seconds, all the searing pain rushes back. It doesn’t feel like we’d rested at all.
9
NIGHTTIME. FRIGID AIR flows down the narrow well. I’m sick. My head is clogged with phlegm. Heat hums off my forehead, melting the ice on the walls into rivulets, like the inside of my drippy nose. We’re paired off, Ben with Sissy, Jacob with me below them, and David and Epap below us. Jacob snores away in front of me, on the other side of the rope ladder, secured by rope, my arms slinked under his armpits. Our bodies are further secured in place by our snug fit against the walls of the well.
“You okay?” Sissy whispers. A long moment of silence passes. “Psst. Gene. You awake?”
“I am. Thought you were talking to Ben.”
“Nah. He’s knocked out. Like a baby. How’s Jacob?”
“Fast asleep. Epap and David, too.”
“That’s good. Are they secure enough?”
“Yeah. Checked them twice.”
“Good,” she says. “Good.” The rope creaks slightly as she adjusts her position. “Tomorrow we’ll be out of here.”
“Think so?”
“Pretty sure,” she whispers. “I know something you don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“Snowflakes.”
“Naw. Really?”
“Yeah. Started about ten minutes ago. Just a few flakes. Felt them on my face, prickling my nose. We must be closer to the top than we think. Snow can’t drift too far down.”
“I haven’t seen or felt anything.”
“I think I’m blocking most of it.”
“Yeah, your hippo butt is kind of blocking the way.”
“Ha ha, so funny.”
“I mean, from down here, your hip is so big, it’s, like, caused this total and complete eclipse.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Any bigger, it’d cut off air circulation,” I add.
The rope ladder shakes a little. Finally, she busts out, unable to contain herself. “Stop,” she pleads, giggling. “You should talk. Your butt is so huge down there, it’s like its own entity.”
“That’s Jacob you’re looking at.”
“I said stop,” she says, laughing quietly.
We fall into an easy silence. Ben and Epap snore in rhythm with Jacob’s breathy puffs on my shoulder.
“Hey,” Sissy whispers a few minutes later.
“Yeah?”
“I think we’re getting more light.”
“It’s morning already?”
“No. The light’s silvery. Must be moonlight.”
She’s silent for a few minutes. When I glance upward, all I see is darkness.
“It’s really coming down now,” she says.
“The light or snow?”
“Both. Hold on.” The rope shifts slightly as she moves into a different position. “Okay, now look up, tell me if you can see anything.”
I see the silhouette of her legs pushing against the wall, allowing a faint rim of silver light to filter through. Through that small opening, snowflakes drift down. One lands on my cheekbone. It pricks my skin; I touch it, feel a small dab of water. Minutes pass. More flakes fall through, dreamily, like silver shavings of the moon. A weight lifts off my chest. The space around me expands, slows. The world purer, the angles cleaner.
“Hey, can you tell me something?” Sissy asks. Her voice is as soft as moonlight.
“Go ahead.”
“When we were attacked at the river, one of the hunters mentioned a girl.” She pauses.
For a long time, I’m quiet.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s not that. Just trying to find the words.”
“I shouldn’t have, it’s your—”
“Her name was Ashley June. Like me, she survived in the metropolis by pretending to be one of them.” The words flow out quickly as if pent up for too long. “We’d known each other many years without realizing we were both the same. Until a few days ago, that is, while we were both at the Institute. When our true natures were discovered, she gave her life to save me.”
“I’m so sorry, Gene. I don’t know what to say.”
“I didn’t want to leave her. I tried to go back for her. But I had no choice, there was nothing I could do. There were too many of them; it would have been suicide to go back…”
“And that’s the truth,” Sissy says softly. “There was nothing you could do. I was there, Gene. I saw the waves of people coming out for us. You did the only thing you could have done, which was to flee.”
Jacob moans loudly in my ear. I realize I’ve been squeezing him too tightly. I ease my grip around his chest.
After a long moment, Sissy says gently, “There was nothing you could do, Gene.”
“I know.”
“I’m truly sorry.”
We’re quiet for a long time after that. The rope creaks, stills.
“Sissy.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to tell you something now. Okay?”
A pause. “What is it?” she says.
“It’s about the Scientist.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve been keeping something from you.”
“I think I know what it is,” she says after a moment.
“No, I don’t think so. Not this.”
“He’s your father, right?”
My jaw goes slack, dropping down to the bottom of the well. “How did you … what?!”
“Shh … you’ll wake the others,” she says.
“Did he tell you about me?”
“No. He never did.”
“Then how did you—”
“It’s the way you move. So much like him. How you sit on the ground, one leg stretched out, the other bent, your chin resting on your kneecap. The color and shape of your eyes. The expression on your face when you’re deep in thought. Even the way you speak.”
“Do the others suspect?”
“Ha. They guessed it the second we first saw you.”
“No way.”
She laughs a little. “We might have led sheltered lives, but we’re not blind to the obvious.” The rope sways a little as she shifts position. “Do you think … he’s above us?”
“You mean in heaven?”
“No. Above, as in wherever this well opens up to.”
“He better be. Nothing means more to me than finding him.” I pause, surprised myself by this unexpected disclosure. But it’s true. Ever since finding the tablet, since seeing my name engraved in stone, I can think of little else. I glance up, then softly say, “I’d walk to the ends of this world to find him, Sissy.”
She’s quiet, as if waiting for me to continue.
“Can you tell me something?” she asks.
“What’s that?”
She hesitates. “Tell me what it was like. Your life together. Did you have any siblings? Was your mother alive? Were you a happy family? Tell me about your life in the midst of all those monsters.”
A minute passes in silence.
“My sister and mother died when I was young. They went out one morning with my father and, hours later, only my father returned. They were eaten. People talked about it for years, about the extraordinary, miraculous discovery of a heper girl and mother right there on the city streets at the crack of dusk. They spoke of how the girl’s legs were broken when she was hit by a carriage, how her mother stupidly stayed by her side, refusing to leave her. And of how, when the mob reached them, the mother covered the girl with her own body. It was over in seconds. The eating, anyway.”