Skylark (20 page)

I had no idea what that meant. “Um. A map?”

“Yes. No.”

“But you can’t find your way back without it?” 

“Can’t,”
it agreed.

“I should just smash you,” I said, my fist tightening around the cube. “To be safe.”

“No.”
The pixie did not beg; the word was as calm as when I had spoken it.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? You’re just one of their machines, and all they ever did was lie to me. You’re no different from them, just programmed to hunt me down.” 

“Machines. Don’t. Lie.”

I bit my lip, rattling the tiny cube around in my hand, the little piece that was, apparently, all that stood in the way of this pixie telling the Institute exactly where I was. “Just as I was about to step on you, you made a sound,” I found myself saying. “How did you make that sound, if you can only repeat sounds you’ve heard?”

“What sound?”

“It sounded like a bird.”

“Bird. No bird.”

“But I heard it!”

“No bird,”
it repeated.

Stalemate. It was unlikely anyway that it could lead me to the Iron Wood. If the Institute knew such a place existed, they would have found it and harvested all the people long ago. I tucked the metal cube into my pocket. Hearing the pixie speaking my own voice—however warped—made it hard to decide to destroy it, but I had little choice. I couldn’t trust it. I gathered up my power, trying to ignore the ravenous, gnawing pit of hunger in my stomach caused by the first blow. 

“Stop that!”
cried the pixie, in my voice.
“Don’t.”
 

“Quit talking to me,” I said, frowning. “You’re making it harder. You’re just a thing, it’s not like pixies have a sense of self-preservation.”

“I have,”
said the pixie.
“Not a thing. Programmed me different.”

The gathered power faltered and slipped, and I lost some of it around the edges of my concentration. It was true that I had never seen a pixie like this, with eyes, with speech. “There’s no reason for me to keep you alive.” As I said it, I cursed myself. The thing wasn’t alive. Just a collection of gears and magical programming.

“Bird,”
it said.

“You said it wasn’t a bird. If it’s not a bird call then you can’t help me.”

“Wasn’t a bird,”
it agreed. But then, infuriatingly, added,
“Bird. Location. Answer.”

Suddenly, I understood. “You can take me to where you heard that sound?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know where the Institute is, but you know where you heard the bird call?”

“Bird sound alive, different. Can’t sense the Institute.”

“You can track living things, if they’re close enough.” Could it sense my excitement? “Why would you help me?”

“To keep me alive.”
Its speech was getting better, more complete, with every sentence I spoke.

“If you could, would you turn me in?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t as long as I have that cube?” I put a protective hand over my pocket.

“Yes.”
The thrum of its wings sped and slowed again. Irritation? From a machine?

I could destroy the pixie, here, now, with a moment of concentration. But then I would be stuck drifting aimlessly across an unfamiliar world. As long as I kept the cube in my pocket, I was safe.

“How do I know you’re not leading me off a cliff or straight into a forest of carnivorous trees or any one of a thousand dangers I haven’t discovered yet?”

The color left the pixie’s eyes, leaving them glowing an empty white, and its mouth opened wide. The voice that emerged was not mine—and not Gloriette’s. A man’s voice.
“First directive: Keep Lark alive.”
Its mouth closed again, and the blue of its eyes returned.

I recognized that voice. Even tinny, warped, miles away from the source, it made my heart pound painfully. “Kris.” I was seized with such a sudden, intense longing to see him that it nearly brought me to my knees.

“Kris,”
it repeated.
“Keep Lark alive.”

“So as long as I don’t let you figure out how to get back, you’re harmless. Right?”

The pixie did not respond at first, hovering calmly in front of my face.

“Are you safe?” I pressed.

The pixie blinked slowly, lazily.
“What is safe?”

I swallowed. The thing couldn’t form its own words, but it could equivocate. I tried to ignore the shiver that crept down my spine. “But you can take me to the bird sound.”

“Take you to the bird sound?”
it said, and paused. All I could hear was the mad turning of its gears.
“Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

•  •  •

I had expected the pixie to lead me back the way I had come. Either it would betray me and lead me toward the Institute, or it would be retracing its steps to where it had heard the bird. Instead, the pixie headed away, toward the wilderness.

It said little when I spoke to it, unless I pressed for answers. At some point in the one-sided conversation, I had uttered the phrase, “I’m not certain,” and it had become the pixie’s favorite way of dodging my questions. The pixie couldn’t lie—or, at least, it certainly seemed that way—but it could avoid answering truthfully.

“Was it a recording of a bird?” I trudged along, trying to keep up despite the way my feet ached. The pixie kept to a faster pace than I would have done on my own, forcing me to move quickly or lose sight of it.

“I’m not certain.”

“A phonograph, inside one of the pockets?”

“I’m not certain.”

“A bird that’s not a bird,” I muttered. I had run out of

ideas, and fell silent.

By the time the sun dipped down toward the hills to the west, we had covered more ground than I ever would have done on my own. The ruins gave way to a broad sea of waisthigh grass, spotted with trees and skirted on either side by dense woods. The pixie turned abruptly west, leading the way into a much thicker forest, something that had clearly been forest long before the wars. An old forest—a hungry forest. I hung back.

“No forests.” I searched each tree for the telltale lines of mouths, the unnatural shiver of leaves. “Let’s stop here for the night.”

The pixie paused, hovering.
“No,”
said the pixie. My own voice, echoed back to me, sounded far more firm and confident than it ever did coming out of my own mouth.
“To keep Lark alive. Let’s stop for the night. Forests.”

I groaned. “Of course you would say that. Are you trying to imply that it’s more dangerous out here than in there?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why?”

“I’m not certain.”

“How much further until the bird?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Well, are there more machines from the Institute coming after me?”

“I’m not—”

“Never mind.” Empty as my pack was, my weary shoulders felt its slight weight as if it were full of rocks. “Look, I don’t like forests, okay?”

“Okay.”
The pixie darted around and sped off, vanishing into the gloom.

“Hey!” I shoved aside my exhaustion to jump after it. It occurred to me again that this could be an elaborate trap, but I chased it anyway.

I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had run through the forest. Although these trees gave no sign of being animate, there were still plenty of roots to trip me and branches to claw at my face. I ducked underneath them and kept on, listening for the thrum of magic that told me where the pixie had gone.

And then, abruptly, it was there, hovering a few feet away. Still. Calm.

“You’re
not
allowed to do that anymore,” I gasped, slipping in the leaf mould as I skidded to a stop. “You hear me?”

“Okay,”
said the pixie. Then:
“Look.”

The pixie drifted past me, crystalline eyes directed back the way we had come.

I turned, wondering again if I’d made a horrible miscalculation in allowing the pixie to live. No, not live. Exist. It wasn’t alive.

I could still see a good portion of the field across which we’d been walking. At first I saw nothing, and started to say as much, when the pixie buzzed impatiently, interrupting me.

Then, all at once, I saw them.

A chain of six figures, low to the ground, moving fast. Heading north. There were no details in the gathering dusk. They were darker than the oncoming night, no more than shadows slipping between the tall grasses, silhouetted by the setting sun. Another day I might have marveled at the sunset, the first I’d seen out in the open, but I was too fixated upon the shadows in the grass.

While I watched, the one in front straightened, becoming a silhouette so familiar I nearly darted out of hiding. A human.

The pixie hummed low, gears growling and grinding. A warning. I kept back, wondering how it had sensed my eagerness. Not counting the wild boy, and the ghosts in the townhouse, when was the last time I’d seen another human face?

The silhouette dropped back down, and some of my exultation dimmed. I’d never seen anyone move with quite that strange, low gait. No
human
moved like that—did they? They kept to a loose formation, fanning out behind the leader, and moving fast.

I took a step back, wishing the tree I hid behind had a broader trunk. I let my eyes drift ahead of the shadows, trying to figure out where they were headed. And then I saw it: a seventh figure, similar in shape. Not moving so quickly, but with the same low, sinuous motion. Smooth, but for a slight hitch. It was limping.

I had barely time to realize this before the pack of six had caught up to the lone figure, speeding up as they caught sight of him. A guttural cry went up, echoing eerily across the plain, reverberating within the forest. Something—the seventh figure—screamed.

And then they were upon it, and I could hear the sounds of their slaughter as far away as I was. I stared, unable to look away, as all six people—but they could not be people, they could
not
be people—fell upon the wounded one. The clearing echoed with the sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bones interspersed with whoops and gurgles of delight.

The sunset blazed behind them on the plain. I saw one of the six rip an arm off of the corpse, the motion silhouetted against the bloody setting sun. I retched and covered my mouth with both hands.

Two of the figures lifted their heads. I couldn’t tell, in the deceptive light, whether they were looking in my direction. The pixie hummed another warning, but I didn’t need it this time. I held my breath until the two heads dropped back down, the monsters returning to their feast.

I tore my gaze from the sight and turned away, spine pressing against the tree at my back. The pixie drifted on into the gloom of the forest, and when it spoke, the sound was so slight as to be barely distinguishable over the continued sounds of carnage behind us.

“Let’s go. Keep Lark alive.”

Chapter 17

The next hour was a miserable haze of fear and exhaustion. My spine tingled constantly, expecting the monstrous creatures to leap at me at any moment. The pixie kept me marching through the darkening wood, staying just far enough ahead that I could still see and follow it.

The forest could not have been more different than the one in the pocket. There were old trees, yes, but in the deep of this forest, the trees stood tall and lean, with nary a branch between the canopy and the floor. Here, where the trees were thickest, the undergrowth was stunted and low, made up of tangled briar patches and broad-leafed iv y.