He thinks for a moment before signing. Find clothes. Find food. Hide from my people. Yes.
The more I speak to him, the more the nuances of his language translate easily in my head. I will make sure you are safe. I’ll get you there, back to your people. I promise.
“I hope so.”
He taps his head and makes a sign that looks like my name, but not quite.
“I’m sorry I don’t . . . fly think? Fly dream? What does that mean?”
You said it just before.
“I . . . I hope so? Hope? That’s how you say hope? Flying dream?”
He nods.
“That’s a very pretty way of saying it. Hope is my middle name.”
He tilts his head, raising a question hand.
“I know. It’s kind of ironic. I’ve been called ‘hopeless’ enough times. A hopeless case.”
Raven. Hope, he signs, but I see it as “Flying Black Dream.”
I’ve never felt my name suited me less. It sounds like some kind of advanced stealth aircraft.
“My mom thought Hope was a lucky name, I guess. She pictured a black-haired, clever, and hopeful daughter. And she got me.” I turn from him and blink away the thought of her panicked face, the thought of the silent car ride home from the police station, Mom and Jack in the front seat, me in the back, burning with shame. I’d tell August about it if I thought I could without losing my mind.
“I really miss my parents,” I say instead. It seems like this is the first time I’ve ever admitted this, but that can’t be right. It feels good to say it anyway; the words keep me connected to them. And I’m starting to think Mom was right all along. It’s all inside me. The hope has kept me sane all this time. The raven has kept me alive. If only I had something that would let me keep . . . August.
After a few seconds I feel his hand on my shoulder.
Why hopeless? he signs when I look back at him.
“Oh, you know, I was a brat.” Understatement, but whatever. “I broke rules,” I add when he seems to not understand.
I broke hard promises too.
“Hard promises?” He flicks his head back a couple of times. “Your language is interesting.”
You are interesting.
We sit in silence for a moment while my face gets hot. “On the road again,” I say finally. A weak attempt at humor.
Happy, he says.
“You are?”
He nods. Happy to be outside. Happy to be moving. Happy to be with you. He changes position slightly, his armor creaking. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like my own people. I don’t like your people. But I like you.
This is about the longest speech he’s ever made. Maybe the saddest, too.
“You know when we get to the coast, you’ll have to leave me, right?” I say, putting my hand on his knee. His armor is almost too hot to touch. “We won’t be able to stay together.”
He places his armored glove over my hand and squeezes gently. Maybe the world will end, he signs. Maybe the sky will fall. Then he signs another sentence I don’t quite catch.
“Maybe something and something will be friends? What were those two signs?”
With his finger he draws two childish pictures in the dirt. A bear and a bee.
“Maybe bears and bees will be friends?” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as he nods.
Maybe snowflakes will rise and time will stop moving.
The way he says maybe is “almost hope.” Almost a flying dream. With every word I know him better. I had no idea he was such a philosopher. So many things I don’t know about him. So much to learn and such a limited time in which to learn it. But then again, as he says, maybe time will stop moving, and I will come to know him better than I know myself.
I want to get out of here, back to my parents, to safety. I want to save Topher and Xander and everyone else I can. I want the human race to survive. I want us to have a chance to redeem ourselves.
But I almost hope time stops moving too.
AUGUST
She sleeps, eventually, her little head tumbling onto my aching knee as I rest my hand in her hair and stare out at the dark beyond the cave entrance. I don’t think the other humans would be foolish enough to come after us at night. But I have miscalculated their foolishness before.
As for my own foolishness, that knows no bounds. I will take her to the ends of the earth, descending to elevations that will make my nose bleed inside my mask. I will see spots and my joints will seize up, if Sixth’s words are anything to go by. Maybe those were all lies. Maybe I could slip my armor off and stroll into the human refugee camps without anyone noticing. I don’t look that different from them. Taller, my skin made dull by the sludge in my veins. Mainly, I think my behavior would give me away. I’d probably kill someone in a jealous rage within the first day.
Anyway, Sixth was probably telling the truth.
I check the altimeter on my sleeve. 3,900 feet. I could disconnect for a few minutes and . . . what? I don’t even know. Watch her sleep without my mask between us? Breathe the same air as her? Wake her and ask her to put her hand on my face again? The possibilities are too numerous to consider. But it’s a noisy, messy thing disconnecting from armor so recently recharged. She would be terrified and maybe run away and fall, tumble off a cliff in the dark, her last thoughts of the monster that woke her.
Tomorrow we head south, to a small town I’ve visited before. I can find her the clothes and food she will need for the journey. Then, unless my addled brain betrays me, we turn north and look for a series of low tunnels through the rock. Early on, long before I met Dandelion, some humans tried to escape that way. Tried. We watched it from a distant cliff, but the noise of the explosion was enough to rattle my eardrums. Sixth celebrated by embracing me tightly, then was so angry with herself she pulled out her knife and chased me down the mountain until I hid in a human car. She drove her fist through the windshield and dragged me out, but by that time her anger had abated. At least her desire to stab me had. That was the time she let me drink the fizzy brown drink that nearly killed me.
But the tunnels, long quiet now that most of the humans are processed, are the safest road west. They will be dark, and many miles long in places. And under tons of rock, and low most of the way. If Sixth is right, it could finish me.