Skylark (23 page)

Chewy, extremely tough—my jaw popped as I tore off a bite-sized piece. It certainly resembled nothing we ate in the city, oddly rich and flavorful. I was about to ask what it was when my eyes fell on the pelts dangling from his belt.

Meat.

I gagged and threw the rest away, spitting out my mouthful and trying not to retch. Leaning against a tree for support, I spat again, trying to rid my mouth of the rich, meaty texture. Animal flesh, stripped and cooked—I shuddered and summoned every inch of willpower to prevent myself from throwing up.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the wild boy crouch to retrieve the strip of meat and sniff at it himself.

“I can’t,” I managed, shaking my head violently. “It’s—it’s awful.”

He was eyeing me flatly when the sound of magic, dizzying and light, pulled my attention away. The Institute.

Before I could panic, the pixie general came whirring out of the forest, making straight for me. It was aiming for my shoulder—I swatted it away, and it instead alighted on a fallen log, wings buzzing madly.

“Where have
you
been?” My throat was working better after having had some water.

The pixie shuffled its wings, turning its head on one side.
“I got help,”
it said after a long silence, as if it had been hunting for the proper vocabulary.

I knew my own voice had never possessed such a quiet dignity as that. “You can’t mean you brought him here,” I said, glancing at the wild boy, who had dropped into a half-crouch, ready to flee—or strike. “You and I are going to have to have a serious talk about what you did back there,” I added. “I didn’t know you could change shapes.”

“Neither did I,”
it said, and began its habitual meticulous grooming routine.

The wild boy made a disgusted sound and turned away to leave.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I murmured, trying to summon the strength to leave the solid support of the tree I was leaning against and follow him. All the rescuing in the world did no good if I collapsed from exhaustion while hiking through the forest.

The pixie flew from the log to hover not far from my face. There was urgency in the buzz of its wings, the same urgency shown by the wild boy as he started making his way back through the woods. Uneasily, I remembered the shadows flickering across the surface of the water as I sank in the bog. Were they coming after us?

“Follow him,”
the pixie said.
“This is what you were looking for.”

“What?” I felt the anger rise in me; anger that I was the last to understand everything, anger that I had required rescuing
again
, anger at my own inability to put all the pieces together. “Have you been leading me nowhere this whole time?”

The pixie flew after the boy as he left, then returned to me, every movement betraying impatience.
“This is your bird sound.”

I stared at it stupidly.

With an exasperated grinding of mechanisms, the pixie let out a piercing version of the bird call it sang to stop me from destroying it.

The wild boy stopped, going still. Then, slowly, he turned and moved back toward me, his eyes on the pixie, glinting gold in the last of the sun as it set.

All this time, the pixie had been lying to me. Leading me to this boy, instead of to the birds I was supposed to find. How could I have trusted it? For all I knew, this boy was working for the Institute as well, ready to lead me right back to the cold glass arms of my cage.

Just as I felt tears sting at my eyes, the wild boy cupped his hands around his mouth. I thought for a moment he was about to shout, but then, instead, the most unimaginable trill emerged. Birdsong.

Silence stretched for long moments as I tried to understand. “What
are
you?” I gasped.

“You ask too many questions,” he hissed. “You should be quiet. It isn’t safe.” The boy licked his lips, gazing at me with his animal eyes. “My name is Oren.”

Chapter 19

His voice was quiet and a little rough, but very human. How long since I’d heard another person speak, who wasn’t a machine or a ghost or a dream?

Oren—it could have been the name of any of my classmates back in the city. And yet it took only one look at him, the finely muscled shoulders, the wild eyes, the ill-kempt hair and dirty skin, to know he could never be mistaken for one of them.

“You said it isn’t safe,” I managed. “Is it the shadow people?”

“If you must talk,” he said in a low voice, “talk while you’re moving.”

The pace he set was even more grueling than it had been before. Perhaps he knew that I couldn’t really talk if I was moving so fast I could barely breathe. Every now and then he’d dig in his pocket for that strip of smoked meat and tear a mouthful off with his teeth, causing me to shudder and look away.

He didn’t stop often, and when he did stop he never spoke, just tossed me the canteen of water and moved away to scan the woods around us. During one of these breaks, the pixie hovered closer.
“You should’ve eaten the meat he offered.”

“A machine is giving me advice on how to make friends?” I gritted my teeth, closing my eyes. “Just don’t talk to me. Why are you even still following me?”

The pixie said nothing, but I heard the sound of its wings darting away from me again. After a few moments I cracked an eyelid briefly to see it sitting on a nearby shrub, its back to me, unconcerned.

The machine had said it brought the boy to me. How else would he have found me, just in time to prevent me from drowning? Or worse—being attacked by the shadow people? The shape it had changed into, just before the water closed over my head, was long and slim, built for speed.

Could it have really been trying to help me?

I watched it, where it sat looking for all the world as if it was sulking. I felt something in me relent a little.

“Nix,” I muttered, closing my eyes again and leaning back against a tree.

The pixie buzzed, sounding almost quizzical.

“Nixies. They were these creatures from mythology. I remember reading about them. Shapeshifters.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you said you couldn’t name yourself. Will that do?”

Silence but for the breeze stirring the leaves overhead, and the tiny noise of the pixie’s mechanisms.

“That will do.”

I took a long, slow breath, trying to marshal my strength. I knew Oren would be back soon, ready to move again.

“You know, in stories, shapeshifters are never to be trusted.”

“No,”
agreed the pixie calmly, and returned to its meticulous grooming.

•  •  •

We walked into the night. I fell asleep during one of Oren’s pauses for water, but I don’t think I slept long before he nudged me awake with the toe of his shoe.

“Time to go.” His voice was hoarse, as though the habit of silence was easier than speech.

I picked myself up and we set off. The pixie—Nix—acted as sleepy as I felt, and settled on my shoulder. I thought about swatting it away, but I was too tired to summon the energy.

In the dark I couldn’t see Oren, and he moved so silently that I often lost track of where he was. What little noise he made was drowned out by my own crashing and rustling as I stumbled through the undergrowth.

He moved like an animal, with an unconscious, unstudied grace, as if he’d been living out here his whole life.

But that was impossible. Unless—my heart seized—he was like me. The Renewable had said there were others like us, after all. She had said to follow the birds to find the Iron Wood, whatever that was. I hadn’t seen the slightest glimpse of a feather, but this boy had spouted a torrent of birdsong like I’d never imagined.

“Oren,” I said, trying out his name for the first time. “You can do magic, right? Like me?”

“Magic?” His voice emerged from the darkness ahead, ghostly and disembodied.

“Yes, like . . . doing things by thinking it. Magical power. It’s what they use to power machines, you know? In cities?”

He didn’t answer immediately. I strained through the darkness, but heard only the humming of the pixie. Finally he said, “No. Never heard of it.”

“But how are you out here?” I blurted. “And not dead? Or twisted like the shadow people?”

“Who are these shadow people you keep talking about?” he asked abruptly.

“Those—things. I heard them coming for me when I was sinking in the bog. I saw them eating each other the other day. They’re—twisted. From the absence of magic.”

“I don’t know any magical anything,” he said, the words clearly unfamiliar in his mouth, “but the others have always been like that. The dark ones.”

“But how are you—” I struggled to articulate the question, but my exhaustion was like a dark fog in my mind, preventing me from thinking. “Are there others like you?”

“Depends what you mean,” came the reply.

“I mean like—living out here, like this. Do you have a family? People you live with?” My hand crept into my pocket for the paper bird, but I’d put it into my pack to dry after my dip in the marsh, and my fingers closed around nothing.

There was no reply.

“Look, you’re the first person I’ve seen since I’ve been out here that hasn’t tried to eat someone,” I said. Why was he so determined to move in absolute silence?

“Do you never stop talking?” he asked tightly, as a twig cracked just in front of me. He’d stopped. It was just enough warning to keep me from walking straight into him in the dark. “What do you want? I’m keeping you alive, aren’t I?”

“But why?” I felt that familiar sinking in my stomach. The Institute wanted me alive, after all.

His voice was clipped but quiet. “There aren’t so many of us left. You were different. So I followed you.”

“You were the one who left me the shoes!” I gasped, realization spreading like ice water.

“Shoes?” In the dark, he wouldn’t be able to see the nowfilthy shoes in question.

“I needed them and suddenly they were just sitting there,” I said. “You were the one who left them for me, weren’t you?”

Oren hesitated, and the uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty gave me the strangest impulse to reach out to him in the darkness, decipher his expression through touch. Eventually he grunted, the only reply I was going to get.

“And the bloody corpse?” I asked, as my toes tingled inside their stolen shoes. “Why leave me that if not to scare me?”

“You were supposed to eat it,” he said, a hint of impatience coloring his voice.

“Oh.” I felt my cheeks warming with embarrassment, grateful for the cover of night. “I thought it was a threat.”

“What would I have to threaten you about?” Oren said. “If I wanted you dead I’d just kill you. It wouldn’t be hard.”

Oh. “Yes, but—” I struggled to explain the terror of those first few days. I wished I could explain the terror that
still
ruled me. “Never mind.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What do you want? You’re fed now. Probably strong enough to move on by tomorrow.”

“Those bird sounds you made.” I took a deep breath. “I’m looking for a place called the Iron Wood. And I think you might know something about how to find it.”

I hadn’t realized how close he was standing until he leaped back, barely more than a shadow darting away. I felt the wind of his movement as he staggered, snapping leaves and twigs in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness.

“No,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t.”

“You do,” I argued. For once, my voice didn’t shake. “Why else would you react like that? I need you to take me there.”

He was silent for a moment. “I’ll take you to a place where you can find food, water, rest. No further.”

“But—”

“It’s a bad place.” His voice emerged through gritted teeth.

“I don’t care,” I said. “That’s where I’m going.” I tried to ignore the way my heart surged. He
did
know where it was. I’d be able to find others like me. I’d be able to stop running. Sleep in the same place for more than one night, eat a meal that didn’t leave me aching for more. Talk to people who actually wanted to talk back.