Page 160 of Starside

Just when I think I’ve reached my limit, there is more. More strength waiting.

Slowly, knees shaking, I get to my feet. I take one step. Another. Raker. He didn’t leave me. He’s just a few steps behind, sprawled out on the dirt. Only poison could have brought him down.

“Get up,” I say roughly, the way he did to me not so long ago.

He doesn’t move.

I reach for his mask, and his hand stops mine just an inch away.

“Get up,” I say again. “I know the way.”

Raker doesn’t question the silver. Maybe he can’t see it. But I can, and I follow it, with desperation scraped from the very bottom of my soul.

And he follows me.

My body is aching. It’s pushing beyond itself. But I never, not once, doubt the silver stranger. For the first time on this quest, hope and peace bloom in my heart. This path is leading somewhere, I know it. I just have to be strong and patient enough to reach the end of it.

I stumble through the forest, fluttering through memories, my mind not strong enough to smother them.

I see my parents. My mother, with her long, brown hair and freckles across her cheeks, and her lips red as cherries. Her dark blue eyes she gave me. I see my father, with his wide smile and the lines around his eyes, because he smiled with his whole face, and laughter poured from him like song.

I remember.

“I remember you,” I whisper to the forest, which might be listening. “I remember, and because of that, you’re not dead yet. You’re with me.”

You’re with me.

I feel them here, helping me take every step. Pushing me forward, like I’m being carried by a wind of all our memories. My mind plays the ones I have left, and they’re alive in my head. Always.

My eyes burn, my limbs are trembling, but I keep going, for them. For them all. For Stellan, on the floorboards.

For my sister.

For my parents, who never left, never gave up trying to save us.

Until the forest begins to twist together.

It starts with the roots. They join like ribbons. Then the branches. They unite in embraces across the forest floor. It keeps going until the woods tangle into a knot that ends at an arched set of gates, twisted from the trees.

Raker falls.

I try to last one more step, for the both of us. My arm reaches toward the doors.

But as I fall, my fingers don’t even brush the lock.

29

“Her hair is in a hopeless tangle.” My head jerks to the side as a comb is run through my braid, trying to unravel it.

“She’s human, Gallie,” says a soft voice. “Be careful.”

Am I dead? Is this some sort of hell?

Something clamors against a table. “Hopeless, see? We’re better off cutting the knots out.” Movement, right next to me. Rummaging.

“Don’t—don’t touch me,” I say feebly, hoping they didn’t already take off my clothing and see what’s underneath. “Please.”

A pause.