Rise

twenty five

IT TOOK US THREE DAYS TO REACH MARIN. WE'D DECIDED TO approach it from the north, avoiding the city, in case any soldiers were passing through. When we were just a quarter mile out, Clara took off across the moss-covered road, her head down, the reins clasped in her hands. The spotted mare she'd ridden in on was calm as she urged it around the abandoned cars, the fallen trees, and trash bags, deflated and broken on the curb. They were moving so fast, nearly at a full gallop, her hair blown back by the wind.

"She's going to do it," Benny whispered behind me. He kept his hands on the sides of the horse to keep his balance. "She's going to jump."

I watched the road ahead, where the pavement was obscured by a mangled heap of garbage-plastic bags spilling out clothing, others filled with worn toys or papers. Warped wooden planks were scattered across the road. Clara was racing straight at it, her shoulders down, eyes locked ahead.

The horse lifted off, jumping the massive heap, its coat reflecting the midday light. Helene started clapping, and a few of the other girls joined in. "Did you see that?" Benny asked. He kept nudging me in the back, pointing at Clara, who was already circling back to us. She paused at the side of the road, where Ruby was standing, and helped her back onto the horse. She smiled at me as she threw the packs over the horse's bare rump. I knew she was trying to lift the mood, to celebrate our arrival in the little ways she could.

The days had passed in silence. At night, when we camped, the conversation always found its way back to Pip. Benny and Silas seemed to accept her death in a way the rest of us couldn't. Benny's brother Paul had been killed in a nearby ravine two years before, and it seemed to them some unavoidable part of life in the wild. But the girls wanted to know the details of how Pip had died, how long she'd been in the building at School, if she was sick or if this were something that no one could prevent. I was still puzzling through the answers on my own, and it felt strange to talk about her death out loud. To discuss Pip, this friend I'd known since I was six, with relative strangers. To say she was, she did, she used to-all in the past tense.

Clara called out to the girls as she started ahead, seeming satisfied that they were smiling now. She had led us most of the way. As we kept on down the roads, mile upon mile, it was hard to do anything except follow behind. I listened to the dull, hypnotic sounds of the hooves on pavement. I thought of Arden and the last day I'd seen her, when I'd given her the key. It was possible she'd been inside the City during the siege. I tried to push down the possibility that kept resurfacing, the lingering feeling that she too was dead. She could've been one of the rebels who'd been found and executed. There was no way for me to know now, with so little word from the Trail. There was a chance I would never know.

Three days had gone by and we hadn't encountered any soldiers along the way. I wondered if most of the King's forces were concentrated inside the City now, around its walls, with less support in the wild. When we were at the dugout, Ruby had mentioned the raids. The boys had visited the storehouses three times in the prior month and never gotten caught. When they'd returned, the rooms were just as they'd left them, the shelves nearly bare, the lock still broken.

But even if surveillance in the wild had dwindled, it was only a matter of time before the troops were dispatched again. How long could I possibly stay in Califia? We'd left the settlement after discovering Maeve was prepared to use me as a bartering chip-a way to negotiate Califia's independence if it was ever discovered by the King. Would I be safe there? How long would it be before I was sent back to the City to be executed? My body had changed even in the past few days. I could feel the slight difference. My pregnancy was getting harder to conceal. If the rumors were true-if the King had always suspected there was a settlement beyond the bridge-I'd have only a few months before he came to find me, to take my child away.