Mira sighed. Why did it have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t Holt have been completely appalling like most everyone else? Why did he have to have that subtle sense of kindness, those annoying heroic impulses? Why did he have to have such strong hands, such a crooked smile?
From nowhere, the Tone swelled up from her subconscious and pushed to the forefront. The whispering, the voices, the static—they all began to press in on her. Mira groaned, gripped the tree for support, fought against the sounds, trying to push them back.
“Are you okay?” Mira barely heard Holt’s voice as the incessant, swirling whispers overpowered her. “Mira?”
The static hiss in her mind slowly dissolved, and she managed to push it down to the edge of her awareness, keeping it at bay. She took a long, deep breath, steadying herself. It was over. For now.
“Mira?”
Holt asked more firmly. She felt his hand on her arm. When she looked up at him, there was genuine concern in his eyes. But something else, too. Fear, it almost seemed like. An old fear. She wondered, yet again, just whom he had lost.…
“I’m fine,” she said. “Think I’m getting better at fighting it, like you said. How often will it do that?”
“It’s different for everyone,” he answered. “But it’s usually when you’re the weakest, when you’re hurt or … worried or frightened or sick. Times like that are when it can get the upper hand. It’s always looking for the upper hand.”
He was still looking at her with worry, and she almost smiled, felt the initial tinglings of warmth beginning to spread through her.
Then she saw the rope in his hands, and reality came flooding back.
Mira’s stomach knotted. She quickly looked back down to the trading post on the river. She couldn’t believe he was really going to do it. But here they were, back where they’d started. She felt his silent, uncomfortable gaze.
“My dad told me once how you could tell which things in life were real,” Mira said. Without looking at him, she put her hands behind her, so that he could tie them. She felt Holt step close.
“And how’s that?” Holt asked.
“When you stop believing in them … they don’t go away. I wonder which one last night was?”
She kept waiting for the soft rope to circle her hands. Instead, Holt gently pried open one of her palms and set something in it. Mira couldn’t identify it at first. It was dusty, wrapped in some kind of thin plastic wrap, and spongy.
There was a slight smile in his voice. “Don’t squeeze, you’ll crush it.”
He didn’t try to stop her as she brought the mystery slowly around from behind her. In her hand were two black cupcakes resting inside clear plastic packaging. Each was topped with black frosting and a zigzag of white trailed down their centers.
A smile grew on Mira’s face. She couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t just that he had actually found them … it was also that he had remembered.
Hostess CupCakes. Just as she’d described.
Mira turned slowly around and looked at Holt. He stared back. She didn’t know what this gesture meant, but all the same, there was no rope on her hands yet.
“Where did you find them?” she asked.
“Back in the Drowning Plains, before the Forsaken tried to kill us. I got more at first, but that was all I could save.”
Mira looked at the package in her hands. It had been so long since she’d seen one, they looked like something out of a fairy tale now. “So … what is this?” Mira looked back up at Holt, searching for a sign of his intentions. “Final meal for the accused?”
“Is that the tradition?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“If it was, it would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it?” Holt gazed at her with his clear brown eyes, made no move to use the rope. He studied Mira, weighing his thoughts, like he was trying to put words to some foreign concept he’d never expressed before.
“I think,” he began, “I held on as long as I could to the way things were, you know? Telling myself the same answers to the same questions. I held on until … I don’t know, about an hour ago, I guess, when we got here, and I knew we’d made it and things could go back to how they were.”
Mira’s heart beat loudly in her chest. She was sure even Holt could hear it.
“I realized I just … didn’t want things to go back to how they were,” he said, looking down, embarrassed almost. “Not now. You’re … a friend. You saved my life, even. And you’re not worth sacrificing just to solve my own stupid problems. I’ll figure out some other way to deal with them.”
At the words, Mira felt hope welling up inside her. “Are you saying … you’re letting me go?”
Holt was silent a moment, then he just nodded.
When he did, a tidal wave of different emotions washed over Mira. This was more than she ever hoped. It was strange, like waking from a dream to be disappointed it wasn’t real. Only in this case, it was the opposite. She was waking from a nightmare to find the reality was far better. Her throat tightened; she felt her eyes glisten. Before Holt could see her cry, she grabbed his neck and pulled him close.
Holt went stiff as she hugged him. She could feel his discomfort, his uncertainty, but she didn’t care. She had no idea how much tension and worry she’d been carrying around with her until it was gone.
“Thank you, Holt,” she whispered, trying to hold it together. “Thank you.”
She felt his arms slowly encircle her, pull her even closer. One on her waist, the other resting on the back of her neck. His fingers stroked her red hair.
“Sorry, I … I haven’t hugged anyone in a while,” he said with a hint of nervousness.
“You’re a natural,” she said. And it was true. She very much liked being held by Holt; she seemed to fit perfectly in his arms. She let the moment last a little longer, and then pulled away and wiped her eyes quickly.
When she was done, she looked up at him. “I … don’t know what to say.”
“Well,” he said, his voice even more nervous now. As he talked, he rushed the words, like he was trying to get all his thoughts out before the moment passed them by. “I was thinking you could come with me. You know, if you wanted, of course. It makes sense, in a way, right? I mean, people are after you, people are after me. I think I’m going southeast, toward the Low Marshes, see if I can’t find someplace where no one knows who I am. Maybe that place is there for you, too.”
A mass of feelings rose up in her, most of them very pleasant. “That sounds amazing…,” she automatically said, without thinking. And it did. But it took the time for a smile to form on Holt’s face before she realized what she had almost done. “But … I
can’t
do that, Holt.”
God, she’d almost said yes! Almost threw away everything she’d worked for. Had she lost her mind? Mira watched the newly formed smile on Holt’s face dissolve, and instantly hated herself for giving in to her gut reaction. Holt had just made an incredible gesture, and she’d thrown it right back at him.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she continued quickly. “I’d … love to. It’s just I have things to fix in Midnight City.”
Holt looked puzzled. “But Midnight City is where you’re wanted. You’re going
back
there?”
“On my own terms, yes. I still have things to make right. And I left someone there, someone important, and I have to help him.”
Holt shuffled on his feet. “Him?”
Mira shut her eyes a moment. Why had she said that? Did she have to divulge every little piece of information? Did she have to keep on ruining the moment? Then again … wasn’t it the truth? Didn’t Holt deserve to know, after everything he was giving up for
her
?
“His name is Ben,” Mira said. “He was framed for the same thing I was, and when I had the chance to escape, it meant leaving him. They’ll kill him in my place unless I go back.”
“And the plutonium,” Holt said. “It’s for what? Trading for his life?”
Mira nodded. “More or less.”
“I see,” Holt said, remaining quiet. “Well, it’s probably best, anyway. It’s … harder for two people to survive than one. Besides, who knows, maybe we’ll see each other again.”
In that statement, Mira saw some of the walls Holt had knocked down over the last few days suddenly rebuild themselves. It hurt her. But what else could she do?
“Holt…,” she began gently.
Another voice cut her off before she could finish. Zoey’s voice, soft and young and incapable of grasping the emotional subtleties being displayed by the two older kids in front of her.
“I want to go to Midnight City too!” the little girl said, walking up with Max following behind.
“Maybe Mira will take you with her,” Holt said, “if you ask her nicely. But Max and I are headed in a different direction now.”
“But … you and the Max have to go.” Zoey’s face collapsed with disappointment. “It’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Listen, kiddo,” Holt kneeled down to her. “It’s been great traveling with you, and you’ve become a real friend, but Max and I have things we need to do.”
“But I need you to come,” Zoey said.
“I promise, you don’t,” Holt replied. “You’re gonna be okay. Had my doubts at first, but you’re a survivor, I can tell.”
“I
need
you to come, Holt,” Zoey pressed. “Please come, you
have
to.” Mira watched the little girl clutch Holt’s shirt in her hands, saw her eyes begin to tear up. Mira shook her head. How did you say no to that?
Holt sighed, clearly thinking the same thing. “We’ll … see how things shape up, okay? Maybe we can keep traveling together until you have to turn north. No promises, though, all right?”
Zoey smiled, let Holt’s shirt free. “All right, Holt.”
Holt looked back up at Mira. “You going to eat those or what?”
Mira realized she was still holding the CupCakes. She looked down at the dusty packages.
“Are you … sure they’re edible?” she asked skeptically.
“Like I said, those things could outlast a nuclear winter. I’m not even sure they’re technically food.”
Mira laughed, and gingerly pried open the package. Then she closed her eyes as long-dormant parts of her memory recognized the scent of chocolate and moist cake that wafted up into the air. She remembered eating Hostess CupCakes in church. Her dad would slip them to her, out of sight, and she would eat them and giggle while her mom studied them both disapprovingly. But her dad always brought them, always passed them to her.
The memory wasn’t something she expected: she hadn’t thought of it in years. She stared down at the open package with an almost haunted look.
“Everything okay?” Holt asked.
Mira nodded. “They just … they just smell really good, is all. Share?”
Mira took a CupCake out of the pack, handed it to Holt. Then she broke her own CupCake in half, exposing the white creamy center, and handed a piece down to Zoey.
Mira took an experimental taste of her half. She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but it tasted just as moist as she remembered, the chocolate sweet and bitter at the same time. Either her memories of the CupCakes had faded enough that she didn’t notice how stale it was, or whoever had made these things put some really impressive preservatives in them. Either way, she was happy. She wasn’t sure anything had ever tasted so good.
Mira stuffed the rest of it in her mouth. Below her, Zoey laughed, did the same thing, getting chocolate all over her face, smiling as she chewed.
Holt took a bite of his … and then stopped as Max whined next to him. The dog stared up at the CupCake in Holt’s hand, his tail beating the ground.
“Fine, sure,” Holt said. He tossed the rest of the cake down to Max, who caught it in his mouth and swallowed it one giant snap.
Holt looked back at Mira. For her, the look was uncomfortable … and frustrating. She’d gotten everything she’d hoped for. She had the plutonium, she was no longer a prisoner, she was free to go where she wanted, and she could enact the plans she’d been making for months. So, with all that accounted for … why did it feel so empty? Why was this look between her and Holt laced with sadness?
She knew the answer. It was the same fear she had felt a minute ago, only now it had transformed. Everything was still going back to how it was, and this brief sidestep in her life was still nearing its end.
Below them came shouts from the trading post.
Mira and Holt looked down the hill and saw a group of kids leaving the structure of boats and vessels on the river and walking through the grass toward them. They’d finally been spotted.
“Welcoming party, I guess,” Holt said. He shouldered his pack and started down the hill. Max bounded after him.
Mira followed Holt with her eyes as he descended. The moment was officially over. Different paths that could have been taken had been passed by. But what else was there to do? Obligations could be a heavy thing, Mira thought.
She took Zoey’s hand and followed Holt down the hill.
25.
DOMINOES
HOLT AND MAX,
Mira and Zoey walked down the hill. Ahead of them, the sun had begun its final descent. Even now, the light was growing softer. Warily, Holt watched the kids below moving toward them. Even though it was just a trading post, they could still be dangerous. It was a dangerous world, after all.
When they reached the bottom of the hill, they were close enough to the river to hear bubbling as it flowed peacefully past. Five kids stood protectively between them and the trading post. Holt could see four more behind them, waiting at the entrance in case they were needed.
The group in front of them was made up of four boys (between thirteen and sixteen years old, Holt guessed) and one girl, petite and short, with a pocket vest full of items and a sextant hanging from her belt. She looked younger than the boys, but in spite of her age, she radiated confidence and cunning, and Holt could tell she was sizing them all up. Even before the girl stepped forward, Holt figured she would turn out to be the Trade Master.
In Holt’s experience, most River Rat boats navigated up and down a particular river, flowing with the current downstream during the fall and winter, trading for the fuel and supplies they would need to power back upstream during the spring and summer. The riverboat crews, though they were young, had become expert salvagers and traders, and often set up trading posts like this one.