And there is sunlight. Fields and wind and the smell of grass and the scratch of insects. And sunlight.
Delphine laughs and wriggles out into the brightness. Charlotte follows. Even Bernadette cannot help herself and laughs with the rest of them, her sour little face twisting, her hands shading her eyes against the sudden, painful light. I climb out last. The sun tickles my cheeks. I listen to my sisters’ joyful shrieks, and I feel the darkness squirming beneath my skin, the sting of the deep red wound.
My fingers reach for the daisy in my apron pocket, and I twist it like a charm. “I will come back for you, Jacques,” I whisper, and the breeze takes my words and folds them away. “I will find you.”
It is a vain promise. Perhaps I will die tomorrow. Perhaps Father will send guards after us and drag us back into the depths, or we will be captured by revolutionnaires and guillotined, and I will never see Jacques again. But in this moment, there are no truer words. I will find him. I will try.
We start off across the field. The wheat is a soft new green, waving in the breeze. The air is hazy with pollen. Trees border the field like a hunched gathering of giants. In the distance I see smoke rising from the chimneys of a farmhouse. I hear the splash and babble of water, the gentle creak-creak of a waterwheel, rolling tirelessly nowhere.
And I decide then that I dare not think of tomorrow. I dare not think of hours or days or years at all. I will think of Mama, smiling at me from under the apple tree. I will think of the wind and the wheat and the sound of the birds, and how, if I could, I would take my sisters by their hands and we would leap into the air like little starlings and let the breeze wheel us away. I will think of a tall boy and a tall girl, far underground.
I have this moment in the sun. I have had many before it. Come what may, they will be mine forever.
Epilogue—217 feet above sea level, Pitié-Salpetrière Hospital, Paris
We crawled up somewhere near the outskirts of Péronne, in a freezing green field. We dragged ourselves about three hundred feet to a little farmhouse. Nearly gave the elderly couple living there a heart attack when we asked to use their phone. The police came, ambulances bleeding swirling light onto the snow.
I’m lying in a hospital now. Lilly is one bed over. Across from me are Will and Jules. They kept us together, probably for security reasons. Four teenagers purported dead in a plane crash emerging alive from a massive, unexplained subterranean explosion is a bit of a sensation, apparently. Journalists, the gendarmerie, folks from the U.S. embassy: they’re all waiting to talk to us. Our room’s been quarantined, a guard from the special police stationed right outside. We’re being spared for now.
Bright winter sun streams through the blinds, and I feel heavy and weightless, sad and happy. But more happy than sad. A lot more happy. Happier than I’ve ever felt in my life, which is ironic because there’s a drip stuck into my arm, and Hayden’s dead, and we’re going to be explaining this for a long, long time.
I look across the room at Will. He’s sleeping, his face bruised, one arm slung across his forehead. Jules is awake. He catches my eye and starts making winky faces at me until I grin.
“Anouk?” I glance over. Lilly’s propped up on her side, peering across the gap between our beds. She looks hollowed out and tired. Her head is bandaged, both fists, too, like a boxer. But now she grins and there she is again.
“Yeah?” I say.
“We made it.”
“We did.”
“Parts of us.” Will’s awake now, too. His hand has gotten a real bandage, and I think he looks great, all things considered. Who needs ten fingers anyway? We sit up in our beds in our white, sterile hospital room, and we stare at each other like: Well, that was crazy. Down in the street journalists are screaming, cars are passing, pigeons are warbling, but in here it’s just us. And I smile at the others. Really smile, a bright, warm smile that I feel in my chest.
“Thanks,” I say.
I doubt they have any clue what I’m thanking them for. But I know, and they smile back, and that’s all I wanted anyway. I think of flying back across the ocean, talking to my parents, hugging Penny. Technically this whole thing was a massive failure. But I still feel like I’ve done something great. Something awesome. I see a black Mercedes, speeding toward a pale chateau and an underground palace full of monsters. A girl with her head against the cold glass, thinking: There’s this special talent humans have that they can be unhappy no matter where they are. But humans have another special talent: We can be happy almost anywhere, too. We can be happy because we’re not alone.