The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (5 page)

“It’s just a dream,”
he murmurs.

“No, it’s not.” I
shake my head, ignoring how weak my words come out. Yosiah’s eyes
are steady, dim light catching his golden irises. Looking into them
calms me. I speak the next words without a sob. “It’s not just a
dream. It happened.”

His fingers run over
my cheeks, my jaw; my eyes close. “Tell me.”

“The train … when you
jumped.”

“I’m not there
anymore. I’m here.”

“I thought you were
gonna die.”

“I know.”

It’s quiet for a long
time. I use the silence to sort out my thoughts, to line them up in
some kind of order. Ten minutes could have passed before I speak
again. I make fists of Siah’s shirt and say in a voice stronger
than I feel, “You cannot. Do that. Again. You can’t just run off
and risk your life. I know you’ll want to and I know you’ll try,
but if you ever feel like doing anything as fucking stupid as that
again I’ll kill you. We’re supposed to be friends, Siah. We tell
each other things like that. We don’t hide them. But if you ever do
anything so suicidal again—”

“I won’t.” I can hear
the promise in his voice. He slides his hands over my shoulders and
down my spine to press me against him. I expect the usual sick
nervousness to come, the urge to get away from his smothering
touch, but it doesn’t. Siah’s closeness is welcome. Right now I
need it. The nightmare made every emotion in me turn to fear, and I
don’t want to lose the bit of comfort his arms give me.

“What happens when you
want to do something like that again?” I murmur, looking down at my
hands. “What’s gonna happen when you leave again?”

He goes perfectly
still. “I’ll take you with me.”

“Why didn’t you take
me with you before?”

“There wasn’t
time.”

A flash of irritation
makes me want to argue, to shout, to shove him away, but I daren’t.
I press my face hard against his shoulder. “What if there isn’t
time again?”

He tightens his hold
on me, his palms hot against the small of my back. “I’ll make
time”

“What if—”

“Miya.” He kisses my
hair and all my arguments turn to ash. “I’m not leaving. I learned
my lesson; I’m meant to be with you. I won’t separate us
again.”

I close my eyes,
inching my arms around his waist until I’m flush against him. He’s
too warm but I don’t want to move. I say, “You’d better not.”

After a while of
nothing being said and of neither of us moving, I detangle my limbs
from his. A note of unease has worked its way into me now my fear
has receded. “This is supremely fucked up.”

He watches me closely,
his hands now pressed together in his lap. “What is?”

“How dependant I am on
you. I’m supposed to be tough and independent and scared of nothing
but …” I turn my face out of the light, move out of reach. “The
thought of losing you rips me apart.”

I feel equal parts
shame and dread, hearing it said out loud.

“Miya. Do you think I can survive without you? Do you think
I’m not the exact same? When I jumped, when I went to help those
people I knew exactly what I was doing and I knew what to do. But
as soon as we were out of immediate danger, I fell apart. I didn’t
know what to do, how to do anything without you beside me.
You’re
always
with me, and that’s the way I want it, the way I
need
it.” He takes an
unsteady breath. The bed dips as he crosses the space I put between
us to touch my shoulder. This time it does make me uneasy, but
comfort like this, touching, is something Siah needs. And he hates
talking about things this way, all deep and devastating. If he can
bear the words for me, I can bear the touch for him.

“
I’m
not leaving you again,” he says, “because I can’t. I don’t function
without you and I’m too selfish to want to. So you don’t have to
worry.”

It takes a minute of
listening to the night, of focusing on my breathing, for me to calm
down enough to think a single clear thought. Relief and heartache
is all tied up in me, and I can’t explain either of them to
myself.

“Wow,” I whisper.
“Glad you got that out?”

His laughter sighs
over the back of my neck. “Yes, actually.”

I hide a tiny smile in
the dark, my fears put to rest by his desperate rant.

He asks, “Do you think
you can sleep again?”

“Probably.” I don’t
think I’ll have another nightmare tonight. I think Yosiah has
chased them away. I stretch my arms to kill the stiffness in them
and crack my knuckles before lying back down on my side, snickering
at Siah’s disgusted groan.

“Why do you do that?”
he grumbles, lying beside me.

“Because you hate it
so much.”

He closes a hand
around my hip and pulls my back against his chest. “Well, stop
it.”

That’s asking for it.
He knows he’s asking for it. I crack my fingers, slowly, drawing
out every tiny pop so it pisses him off even more.

“Go to sleep.”

“Why? The night is
young, Yosiah.”

The hard point of his
chin prods my shoulder blade. “Are you scared to go back to sleep?
I’ll wake you if you have another nightmare. If you want, I can
stay awake just in case.”

“It’s fine, Siah.”
It’s not a hundred percent fine but I’m not freaking out anymore. I
still feel like he might disappear any minute but it doesn’t feel
like someone’s squeezing the life out of my heart. I’m about to
tell him this when he wraps an arm around my middle. My body
prickles with discomfort and awareness.

He says, “So you’ll
know I’m here.”

“Okay.” It might help.
I don’t know. I don’t hate having Siah this close but at the same
time I want to shove him away. I’m getting sick of my feelings
making no sense. I breathe and breathe and breathe until I’m
steadier, then let my limbs relax. I can feel Yosiah’s chest
moving, hairs rising on the back of my neck with every breath. It’s
not comfortable, but I’ll get used to it.

I
lie awake with my eyes closed until Yosiah falls asleep. Then I
carefully turn around to watch him. If I can convince myself that
this is real and he didn’t die in the underground tunnels,
that
I
didn’t die
in the tunnels and everything since has been some kind of afterlife
dream, I’ll be able to sleep easier.

My eyes swallow
everything, crossing off some subconscious tick list. Skin that’s a
dark gold in the grey light. Veins that cover fragile eyelids. An
almost-healed scrape on his cheek from the jump in the Underground.
An age old dip in his chin. A groove bitten into his bottom lip. A
hooked scar on his jaw from a bar fight he lost a year ago. New
grazes on his neck and collarbone that I’ve not seen before.

A fake Yosiah would
never have this much detail. This could never be a dream.

I breathe him in,
matching his musky scent with days spent close to my best friend.
Everything about this Yosiah is the same as my Yosiah. I finally
allow myself to believe that it’s him. Something in the back of my
head argues that I must have believed it all along or I wouldn’t
have let him this close to me or Tom or Livy. I shrug off all my
inner voices, finally feeling tired again.

Careful not to disturb
Yosiah, I lie back. In this room in a lost town I start to feel
dangerously content.

Yosiah shifts in his
sleep until he’s flat on his back. I watch him a minute longer,
just to make sure he’s definitely asleep, before I curl up against
his side. This close he smells rank, days of sweat from walking and
limping and staggering layered on his skin. I press my face against
him, the last strings of tension releasing me. He smells like
nights spent dozing on the streets of Forgotten London, when I
discovered that a home is more than a thousand bricks stacked
together in a square, when I made Yosiah my home.

***

Branwell

08:04. 12.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Harwich.

Honour and I spend the
morning ransacking the sage-green house for anything that could be
useful. Being antiques of an abandoned world, everything is
predictably out of date, but some things are salvageable.
Everything we can make use of is thrown into Honour’s backpack and
my satchel—something Alba only returned to me two days ago when she
decided I was to be trusted. A half-used bar of soap wrapped in a
sheet of newspaper is nestled beside the bracelet that brought me
to this time, my father’s journals, and the Cure.

I wrap a shard of
glass from a broken photo frame in an orange scarf. We may have
reached this part of England without trouble but I expect it will
catch up with us at some point. There will be no such thing as too
many weapons when that time comes. I take everything I can imagine
doing damage and hope that preparation will save my life.

I reach for a metal
hip flask but Honour gives me a misshapen clear bottle instead,
saying it will hold more. He hands me another bottle and drops
three more into his own bag. No matter what the next part of our
journey throws at us, I’m glad we won’t have to keep scooping water
from rivers at least.

In the kitchen I find
a box of tools in a cluttered cupboard; I take four of them—the
only tools I recognise—because the future could hurl any number of
unknown tasks at me. A screwdriver never goes amiss. Honour
unearths a first aid kit and a dozen dull knives. He saves the
knives to give to the others.

With
my satchel stocked with improvised weapons, hygiene products,
shirtsleeves that look to be about my size, and a tattered copy
of
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
, I collapse into the arm chair in
the sitting room, wishing this house was bigger so I’d have more to
occupy myself with. I’m fine when I have something to keep my mind
busy but as soon as I have time to think, all my troubles and
terrors return to drown me.

Bennet is dead.

I have acknowledged
that now but it’s impossible for me to accept it.

12:17. 12.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Harwich.

Alba and the Guardians
have wrangled a ship from somewhere in the harbour. We are due to
sail to an abandoned town farther up the coast and then make our
way by foot to our true destination—the town of Manchester, where a
band of survivors have been living for years independent of the
Officials. This is news to even the people from Forgotten London,
who respond to the statement with disbelief and outrage.

“If people have been
living there all this time, why didn’t you take us to them
sooner?”

“There was no way past
the fence,” Alba answers coolly. “Once we were trapped inside the
only way to escape was to do what we did—destroy the town. If we’d
have attempted to escape before we did, even more people would have
been lost to the Fall—you perhaps.”

“We should still have
tried,” mutters a boy no older than me.

“You’re free now.”
Timofei’s sharp voice cuts through the muttering. “You should be
grateful for that.”

Another Guardian says
something but his words are blown into the sea. Others must have
heard him, however, because a ruckus rises. I strain to pick out
what they’re arguing about but until there’s a lull in the wind I
hear nothing. In the sudden quiet I catch a vicious string of words
that has me gasping.

“He’s not to blame!” a
girl yells. “We’d still be locked in there if he hadn’t found us.
We’d be dead!”

A woman adds her voice
to the crescendo. “Yeah! Did you forget States were going to kill
us, James? Would you rather be dead? I can arrange that.”

“I’d love to see you
try, Jessi.”

“Enough!” Alba’s voice
has worn thin. “You are Guardians and you will act like it or so
help me—”

“We’re people too,
Alba,” says a dark haired man a little in front of me. He’s several
years older than most of the people here, his voice brittle. “We’re
allowed opinions—we’re not Officials.”

“Yes, thank you, Kyle.
And you’re right; you are allowed opinions, as long as you’re quiet
and inoffensive about it. James, however”—presumably Alba points at
the boy I first heard, the one with the nasty mouth—“was being
downright malicious and there’s no need for it.”

At Alba’s next words
everything snaps into place.

“Every one of us is equal now. Guardian, civilian, leader,
follower. We’re all homeless, we’ve all lost people, and not one of
us knows what will happen next. But to put all of your anger and
blame on Honour is wrong and it will get you nowhere. We have to be
a
whole
unit. We
can’t be turning on anyone. There are only seventy of us left and
we’re weak in our small number—but sticking together will make us
stronger. Internal conflict will only make us easier to break when
the Officials find us.”

She looks at the
people in the front of the crowd, her eyes settling on each person
in turn. “This is hard enough without you fighting each other. I
assure you that every single person feels bad enough already
without being laid into.” Her eyes drift in the direction of the
vicious James. “Attack anyone again, verbally or physically, and
you’ll be left here without help.”

With that she turns
and heads up a set of wooden steps onto a blue-hulled ship. A
white, three-tiered eyesore sits above the deck, filled with
windows that glare like narrowed eyes, and a string of all the
nations’ flags flaps in the sea breeze above them. The name Clelia
II is picked out in silver on its side.

We were told that a
team of their technologists and pilots have almost figured out how
to captain it, but I’m still dubious about boarding. I’m literally
placing my life in the hands of men and women who are making things
up as they go along. But if I don’t go with the Guardians I stay
here alone, with no direction, purpose, or friends to speak to.