The Dark and Hollow Places

Page 36

Elias turns to stoke the large bonfire and my sister holds up the mouth of the balloon while he fans smoke into it, the fabric unfolding as it fills.
Catcher faces me, cups my cheeks in his hands. “I’ll see you soon.” He says it as a statement, not a question. The look he gives me is pained and I know he doesn’t want to leave me as much as I don’t want him to go. But he has to.
And I have to let him go. Just for a little while, I tell myself.
He presses his lips to mine softly and then urgently, and I wrap my arms around him, digging my fingers into the muscles along his back to draw him tighter.
When he pulls away his forehead barely touches mine. “Be safe,” he commands.
“You too,” I tell him. He nods and then nods again.
I search for anything I can say to keep him close, to stop him from going, but I know there’s nothing.
Except this: “I love you,” I whisper. It hurts to say the words, to know that he now carries my heart with him and that I have to trust him with it.
He kisses the tip of my nose, my mouth, my cheek. “I love you,” he says back, and then he turns and is gone.
The fire burns at my back, the smoke drifting and swirling around me as I watch him leave the building and cross to the cable car. As I watch it whisk him away from me.
On rooftops across the City I see other fires. Other sparks of light like stars. I try to shove my emotions down so I can focus on what needs to happen to keep us safe.
Behind me the balloon fills more and more. I help my sister keep the mouth of fabric open, astonished that it’s actually working. The seams hold, the oiled fabric capturing the hot air inside. I start to get a giddy rush in my chest. We just have to get off the Sanctuary and down the river a bit—not even half a day’s walk.
The horizon begins to lighten, a strip of pink vibrating along the curve of sky. “Should we give the signal to the others?” Gabry asks. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright with excitement.
I nod and turn toward the structure enclosing the stairwell. Most of my drawing of Catcher is gone, just a few bold slashes of charcoal left. I press my hand against what used to be his face and then climb to the roof, where there’s a long strip of bright red cloth tied to the end of a tall pole. I lift it, letting the ribbon unfurl in the frozen morning breeze.
It snaps out, catching the wind. Telling everyone in the Dark City that now’s the time to fly. This is it. A lightness fills my body, a rush so intense I want to combust with joy. The fabric balloon’s starting to lift. Elias throws more logs onto the fire. It won’t be long before it will carry us away. When we’ll be free.
That’s when I hear the shouts. I leap down and sprint to the wall. A Recruiter stands outside the headquarters, pointing up at us as if trying to figure out what’s going on. As the balloon lifts higher behind me he turns and runs back inside and before long there’s a stream of them racing toward our building.
“Go!” I shout at Elias. “They’re coming!”
My sister’s face pales as she joins Elias by the fire, fanning the smoke into the bag as hard as she can. It raises from the ground but not enough to carry the weight of the basket and us.
“They’re at the door downstairs,” I yell.
“It’s not going to fill in time,” Elias mutters under his breath and my sister knocks him with her elbow, telling him to shut up.
I look around the roof, searching for anything to buy us time. We’d used melted fat to coat the fabric and still have a vat of that and a few bags of oil for the lanterns. I grab them both and drag them to the stairwell.
In the center of the roof the envelope’s filling, the seams starting to strain and the basket lifting more. I can already hear the Recruiters shouting as they spiral up the steps. We’re running out of time.
Collecting pieces of fabric and wood, anything we won’t need anymore, I throw them all into the stairwell and then light the bag of oil and toss it down after. There’s a concussion and whoomp of air as the oil ignites, spreading along the steps and eating at the walls, bathing the hallway in flame. I slam the door.
“I guess you weren’t planning to need those stairs if this didn’t work,” Elias grouses as he lifts my sister into the box. She starts to stoke the fire in the center cauldron.
“It’s not going to burn long,” I tell him. There’s the sound of something popping and a high-pitched sucking sound as below us one of the windows explodes. I can’t help cringing, thinking about the awful waste of the destruction.
“Let’s go,” Elias says, holding out a hand to me. I let him help me into the box and the balloon jerks us from the roof, Elias still lifting his leg over the side.
The balloon struggles at first, skimming across the roof, and then it pulls free and hovers, dragging us up into the air as the door to the stairwell slams open and flames leap out. Men in black uniforms chase us on the ground, but we’re rising higher and higher and their sounds are lost to the wind. Elias points us toward the river, trying to clear the airspace over the Sanctuary as Recruiters scramble for crossbow bolts.
For the first few heartbeats that we’re airborne my body revolts, desperate for the feel of solid ground as the tiny box jerks and sways. Air curls up my legs and the sensation is entirely wrong—unnatural.
The men chasing us grow smaller, the buildings less imposing as they recede below. I hold my breath, terrified that any movement will cause the balloon to spiral out of control, will split the seams and send us plummeting to a certain death.
“We’re flying!” Elias shouts as if he can’t believe it, the dawn wind ruffling his short hair. He throws his hands out wide in the air like wings and I clutch the edge of our small vessel, waiting for it to tear apart.
But it doesn’t. The balloon continues to rise, the propeller steering us out over the river and away from the Sanctuary, while other balloons climb out of the Dark City—at first only one or two and then more and more. They’re different colors, different sizes, but they all spring into the air, carrying the survivors away from the dead-choked streets.
We did it. My chest feels lighter than air, as if I alone am pulling us into the painted dawn sky.
Chapter XLI
The sun’s just rising over the horizon, the morning wind shifting, pushing us across the river and over the edges of the Dark City. Behind us more Recruiters surge toward the Sanctuary wall but they’re distracted by a group of dingy gray balloons rising on the south end of the island: the Soulers.
I whoop and cheer; Elias and my sister grab for each other, kissing and hugging. We did it! I want to scream at the world. We’re free!
But the Recruiters won’t let us go that easily. They climb the Sanctuary walls and continue to fire their crossbows at us. I hold my breath, watching the bolts go wide or fall short. Every second we’re farther away, every heartbeat we’re drifting out of range.
The balloons careening away from the south end of the Sanctuary aren’t as lucky. A flaming arrow pierces the fabric of one of them, fire racing along the fat-soaked seams and crumbling the material to ash almost instantly.
I avert my eyes but not quickly enough to escape the sight of bodies plummeting to the frozen river below.
And then a loud ripping sound races down my spine—the sound of fabric tearing, splitting apart, and I look up to see a small flap of the material snapping in the wind. It takes a few seconds to lose enough air but suddenly the envelope buckles and we drop, fast. I scream from the shock of it, grabbing for my sister.
I struggle to add more fuel to the fire to refill the balloon, but my fingers fumble as the basket whips and jerks around. Hot air rushes into the envelope but we’re still dropping. Sweat pours from our faces, every inch of our skin glistening from being so close to the flames.
The lightness I’d felt earlier solidifies into something dense as panic teases my mind. I force it away, needing to focus.
“Weight,” I shout. “We have to drop everything we can.”
My sister scrambles for the bags at her feet—supplies for the journey ahead—and tosses them over the side. Our descent slows but we’re still not rising and the wind’s taken over, shoving us faster in the wrong direction—toward the shore of the Dark City.
Elias cranks the propeller, trying to steer us away from the ragged buildings, but the balloon is too heavy and it’s difficult to control. We might not even make it over the first one. “Maybe we can just land and repair the seam,” my sister says, pointing to a long rooftop ahead. I glance up at the envelope, at the way it strains.
“We’d never find enough fuel to fill it again,” I shout as I shovel more wood onto the fire.
Recruiters bellow in the distance. I look back and see them scrambling into the cable car, and slowly it starts to move across the river right underneath us. But the shore at the other end still teems with Unconsecrated: It’s suicide for them to come after us.
“Look.” I point down at them as Elias shifts the propeller, trying to turn us away from the tallest buildings. Heat billows into the balloon from the fire, a trail of smoke seeping out from the tear.
My sister heaves the last of the supplies over the side and then stands there with a book held in each hand, staring at the covers. I’m sick knowing she’s willing to throw away things that mean so much to her.
She glances at me trying to fill the envelope with as much hot air as possible, and at Elias, who’s trying to steer us, but there’s just too much weight.
We’re blown over the edge of the City, buildings passing by so close we could almost touch them. She tosses the books, watching them fall to the roof just below us, pages fluttering like broken wings.
But it’s still not enough. We’re still not rising.
In that moment I’m thrown back in time. I’m standing on the path and staring at Abigail, who’s crying and begging Elias and me not to leave her behind. She’s scared and alone and bleeding. I’m back in my little girl body, trying to decide what to do.
Except this time I can’t choose between them. I don’t have to choose between them.
“I love you,” I say. They look at me, confused. “Both of you.”
“We’ll make it out of this,” my sister says.
I reach out and cup Gabry’s face, feeling her smooth skin under my thumb. “Build a world for me,” I tell her.
And then I jump.
From the air I can hear Gabry shout and I can see Elias throw himself against the other side of the basket to keep it balanced. I’d watched the books fall and I know it’s not that far a drop. I try not to scream because I don’t want to scare my sister, but even so, when I hit the roof and tumble into a roll to break my momentum, I can’t help but cry out.
I pivot to my feet, staring up at the balloon pulling them up and away from me. I tell myself I have to be strong. I’ve survived alone before and I can do it again, but still a penetrating isolation filters through me.
Gabry and Elias lean over the basket and shout down to me frantically and I wave them on. I can only stand and watch as Elias steers them south, other balloons drifting by high overhead.
They look like dandelion seeds on the wind, off to create a new world. To fall in the fields, burrow into the soil to grow and eventually bloom.
I scurry across the roof to my sister’s books, plucking them from the wet snow. Even from where I stand the walls of the building I’m on look old, the bricks crumbling in some places. I can already hear the moans from the streets, plague rats shuffling below, pushing against the structure.
I won’t be safe here long.
Far off in the distance to the south I see a thin plume of smoke. Catcher. My eyes blur thinking about him out there, expecting me to come flying toward him. I know he’ll look for me when he finds out what I did, but I also know I can’t wait for that to happen.
Not if the Recruiters are still crossing the river. It would be stupid of them not to turn back. Crazy.
Except that something moves in the distance—a figure lumbering across a roof several blocks down. I squint, trying to make out who or what it is, hoping it’s just Unconsecrated shuffling after me.
But the figure runs hunched over, weaving around obstacles. Others follow, their black uniforms almost blending in with the dull morning light. I let out a long low breath like a hiss as I watch the Recruiters race for a bridge to the next building, making their way toward me.
Somehow they made it into the City. They’ve found access to the roofs and they’re coming after me.
A frozen wind needles into me. All I have is the small knife in my pocket—no real weapon—which means my only option is to run. Dread fills my blood. I drop my sister’s books and am headed toward the closest bridge when something flutters from the pages.
I plan to ignore it, the need to escape overpowering, except that I recognize the bright yellow banner, the block letters spelling out NEW YORK CITY across a photo of this city as it used to be.
It was the object that gave my father hope when he was lost in the Forest as a child. Something my sister carried with her when she came looking for me. The last remnant of my life from the village.
I can’t leave it and I stoop to pick it up, to slip it into my pocket, when I remember standing on the roof in the Sanctuary with my sister as she tried to locate landmarks in the picture. When she told me about the secret histories of the buildings in the photo—underground rooms with hidden access to the tunnels.
Over my shoulder the Recruiters bear down on me, finding a way through the maze of broken bridges that leads to where I stand. Already I can hear snatches of them shouting for me.
The streets are filled with dead. The bridges will never take me across the island—too many of them have been cut and I’ll always be in sight of the Recruiters. If I want any hope of escaping them, there’s only one option: the subway.