Tainted

Chapter Fifty-Four

The sun shines against my eyelids. I stretch my neck, working out the kinks, and rub the sleep from my eyes.

Sailor is snoring. He's leaning so far over his limb, it's a wonder he hasn't fallen from the tree.

"Sailor," I say, gently shaking him awake.

He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. "I'm up, I'm up," he says, looking wildly about. I hold him steady so he doesn't fall.

"We should get moving. I don't want to wait around for the guard to find us."

Sailor nods. He follows me down the tree, jumping heavily to the ground from the last branch.

We make a measly breakfast of berries, before picking our way through the trees, following the moss. I was once told that moss settles on the northside of tree trunks, so if we can keep it ahead of us, then we're moving in the right direction.

We pass a patch of turned dirt. It's possible the footprints are ours, but they could also be from the guard.

A splatter of arrows stick to the trees to our right. Chips of wood lay scattered at their feet. I run my fingers along the ruins, remembering the sear of arrows whirring past my face.

"How long 'til we reach th' lake?" Sailor asks.

"I don't know." Longer now that we've left the horses behind.

We walk in companionable silence for most of the day. I try to keep my thoughts from straying to Rogue, and it helps to focus on the path ahead and not worry about those we've left behind. Besides, if Sailor and I start talking about the rest, then we'll have to wonder if they've made it out okay, and I'm not ready to wonder that yet. I want to preserve my memory of Haven. I want to keep thinking of it as it was—a haven.

The shadows grow long in the trees. My stomach growls, and I can hear Sailor's rumbling behind me. We have no food. We'll have to eat berries again.

I slow to match Sailor's pace. "So, how do you feel about berries for lun—"

My voice dies in my throat. Just past Sailor's head is a tree whose trunk is split in a perfect Y. I know this tree. It was struck by lightning when I was five. It was the only time the Laplands had ever seen a thunderstorm.

Sailor follows my eyes, his expression fearful.

"Wha' is it?" he whispers. He pulls in close to my side.

"We're here," I say.

We're here. For the first time in three years, I am a half day's walk from my home. I have dreamed of this moment from my first night in the prison, and now it's here. I was expecting to be excited, to be jumping up and down, barely able to contain my joy, but I'm not. I just feel...hollow. As if my time in the prison scraped out every part of me that was me and left behind a hardened shell with nothing but a Fate to say who it is.

What if my father doesn't know me? I know I've grown taller and my face has changed shape, but what if I have lost that part of me that makes me Mira? Or what if he believes the news, and when my father looks at me, he'll turn saying, "you can't be my daughter, my daughter's dead." Or worse, what if, like Tanymede said about Sani, my father looks at me, and doesn't recognize the person staring back.

Sailor catches me before I fall. He sets me down, gently, on a dry patch of the sodden ground and rubs the space between my shoulder blades.

My stomach heaves and I suck in great gulps of air. I'm frightened. I'm truly terrified.

"I go' yae," Sailor says softly.

The tears slip from my eyes.

"What if he doesn't recognize me?" I whisper, salt tears flecking my lips. "All I wanted for three years was to get back to him, and what if the moment he sees me, he doesn't know me? Then who will I be?"