Page 151 of Starside

Walk is generous. He all but drags me, because it’s almost impossible to walk quickly when I can’t see even an inch in front of my nose.

The tunnels are narrow. I know that, because the wall scrapes my arms every few seconds. My breaths echo. The air is stale. It feels like—it feels like I’m trapped.

But I focus on the steady heat of Raker’s long fingers around my elbow. I focus on his and my breath merging. I use his strength to steady myself, for even though my strides are cautious and unsure, his are not. He walks just as smoothly as he does in a field. He is like a blade cutting through everything, bending the world to his will.

I cling to that strength, try to let it call to my own. If he is not afraid, then I will not be. I slow my breathing. I steady my steps.

Then I pluck one of those remaining memories I covet.

I think about the time my father told my sister and I the story of how he and my mother fell in love.

They were neighbors. They had known each other their entire lives.

His father died young, so my father had to help his mother take care of the family. He would travel far away, to where thicker trees still grew, cut them down, then drag the wood back to the village in a sled. There wasn’t time to play in the streets, like the other children, but he would watch them as he cut that wood. He admired my mother from afar. He said she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He said he liked the way she threw her head back when she laughed. She was doing it that day, as she and the other children played a game.

The wolf came from nowhere. Its ribs were visible through its flesh. It was starving. It grabbed my mother by the back of her dress and dragged her through the streets, all the way into the forest, a patch of trees that were sickly and half-rotted. She screamed.

The other children ran away, but my father grabbed his ax and ran after her. He ran right into the woods.

Before the wolf could take a bite out of her, he chopped the fabric from her dress, freeing her.

And—as my mother added—it wasn’t the fact that he saved her that made her fall in love with him. No. It was the fact that he did not kill the wolf, even though he had an ax in his hands.

Instead … he brought it food.

It came back. And my father fed it again. And again.

What my father loved about my mother was that she forgave the wolf. She had mercy for it too, and she found flowers with soothing properties, to mend the scrapes on its paws. Little by little, the wolf became a friend.

Of course, the first thing my sister said after the story was over was that she wanted a wolf as a pet. And that, if one attacked me and she saved me, could we keep it?

I still remember the look our parents gave each other. Like maybe they shouldn’t have told us the story after all.

And I’ll never forget the love in that expression—like an entire lifetime of memories was trapped in that one look.

I blink, and the darkness is just as deep as it was a few minutes ago. But it has lost some of its weight and teeth.

“Can you see anything?” I ask, wondering how Raker is walking so assuredly.

“A little.”

“How?”

He waits a few moments before answering. It’s like every word has to be dredged out of him. “We trained in tunnels sometimes.”

I frown. “I didn’t know there were tunnels on Stormside.”

“There are several.”

I suppose there’s a lot about our side that I don’t know. “And what … what was the rest of your training like?”

His voice is sharp as a scythe. “If you’re looking for a distraction from your fear of the dark, then this isn’t it, Aris.”

I don’t know why the bottom of my spine curls every time he says my name. Even if it’s with irritation, like just now.

It’s been weeks of this, though. Just like he sees right through me, to my weakest points, I see right through him.

I exhale heavily. “That bad?” Is that … is that the suffering he endured? The one the Gardener spoke of?