Siena

Siena used to take solace in the wilderness. The sharp, verdant air. The bright sorbet mountains in the early morning. The quiet. Even during storms, silence somehow permeated the bad weather and difficult experiments and constant threat of wildfire. Her mother had taught her how to love the quiet, and so she came to the woods when her mother passed. When she left Emmett. When Feyrer died. She came to the woods to search for silence, and when it met her, it sank into her bones, hushing wayward thoughts, dousing moments of despair.

But now, the distance of that silence was galactic.

In the clearing outside the cabin, a darkness settled beneath the boughs of the surrounding damp evergreens. Whatever that darkness was, she could hear it as an unrelenting ring in her inner ear. She didn't know if the sound was real or in her head. It reminded her she was lost.

Siena bared her teeth at the forest and nocked an arrow. She turned back toward the side of the cabin, where she had set up a target using the boxes of blank paper in the cellar.

"Lift the bow first," Isaac said when she began pulling back the string. He'd taken up residence on a nearby stump to watch her. "Up. There you go. Now draw back... closer to your face. Closer. Don't be afraid of it."

"I'm not," Siena growled. The feathers of the arrow brushed her cheek.

"Elbow back. Alright."

Siena released the arrow. It smacked against the cabin roof and rolled off the eaves.

She stretched out her sore fingers. "I suck at this."

"Everyone sucks at the beginning."

She tried again, nocking an arrow and raising Isaac's handmade bow. The grain on the grip was worn, as though the bow had been shot thousands of times.

Had Isaac been hunter, or prey?

She pulled back and released. The arrow flew over the mark, not sparing her the courtesy of sinking into the cabin wall as it bounced and toppled to the ground.

"I can't nail the basics down before I leave. I don't have enough time." She wiped away the hair clinging to her face. "Fuck this."

Isaac smiled at her. She saw how old he truly was, the way his scars and pocked skin stretched and wrinkled. The way he looked like he had a million secret lifetimes brewing behind his eyes.

She quickly glanced away and caught sight of Emmett through the bedroom window.

Maybe he wanted her to stay so she could never get away from him.

She nocked another arrow and aimed lower. It sailed over the mark and sank into the cabin's exterior.

"Good," Isaac said.

The praise only grated against her. She swung toward him and waved the bow. "Why the fuck did you need to make this? What the fuck happened to you? Where the fuck have you been?"

Her shoulders heaved amid their staring contest. She felt like she couldn't take in enough air, and he didn't even look like he was breathing.

"Why won't you say anything more? Why won't you tell me who's trying to kill me?" She threw the bow down. "I don't understand why you're holding all this information hostage. It's like you don't want me to trust you—"

"Not everything is about you, Siena." His eyes had lost their depth, closing her off. "Maybe I'm not ready to relive what has happened to me. Maybe I don't want to place that burden on you."

"It isn't a—"

"You already know what you need to know. Getting out of here is all that matters. It may not look like we're in Deadswitch, but it is... for now. You reach the border, and you're home."

"What do you mean, for now?"

"There's a reason this place looks different than it did two days ago, and it isn't going to change back."

She clenched her teeth. Maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to stop asking questions and get the hell out of here, because whatever had happened to Isaac she didn't want happening to her. Isaac wanted the same for her, and she should have been grateful. Instead, she was angry. Angry with Isaac. With Feyrer, who was dead and didn't even know what he'd put them through.

She picked up an arrow for another shot. It tumbled from her fingers onto the ground.

Anger at Emmett for trying to trap her. At her father, for not coming to visit since she broke up with Emmett. For not seeing her one last time, before she disappeared into this forest forever.

She shot again. The arrow scraped the top of the stack of boxes.

"Good," Isaac said again, as though she hadn't yelled at him.

She picked up another arrow, her rage now much louder than the steady ringing in her ear.

Emmett sat in the kitchen eating a late lunch by himself when Isaac and Siena reentered the cabin. "You spent all day out there."

"Isaac was teaching me a few things." She gently set the bow on the kitchen table like she hadn't thrown it to the ground earlier that day.

He sneered at it. "You need to eat. And we need to discuss our strategy for dealing with..." His eyes shot to Isaac and then back at her. "Everything."

They'd already discussed the strategy last night. Emmett's strategy was to wait at the cabin. For what, she didn't know. Rescue wasn't coming. They weren't going to be able to suddenly call out or pick up a receiver. And yet he wanted to continue to discuss staying until she agreed with him. It wouldn't happen.

She suddenly craved someone who thought the way she did, someone who would anchor her sanity and fight alongside her.

"Where's Cam?"

Emmett glanced down at his food. He stabbed at the mush in his bowl with a fork. "The glacier."

Siena's heart jolted. "That isn't funny."

"I'm not joking." He continued to avoid her eyes.

The glacier?

Rage screamed through her like a train horn. "What the fuck were you thinking, letting her go alone?"

Emmett jumped from his chair. "So when I care what happens to people, I'm controlling, but I let her do what she wants, and suddenly it's what the fuck were you thinking?"

"That is different!" Siena swiped a full Nalgene from the kitchen table and charged toward the door. She tried flinging it open, but the lock was, magically, no longer broken.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was Cam.

"Siena, wait," Emmett ordered.

Siena turned the knob and yanked open the door. She hurried off the porch and veered toward the peak. The cabin door slammed behind her, and Emmett called her name again. She picked up her pace and jogged into the dark undergrowth.

The path up the mountain no longer existed, the ground beneath her covered in rot and moss as thick as carpet. She maneuvered through ferns as high as her waist, resting her palm against an old tree for support. Its trunk was just like that of the giant they'd found back in Deadswitch—tapered, like a cypress.

She pushed deeper, until the ferns were to her chest and her clothes were soaked, and stopped to catch her breath. In front of her, the ground slanted upward and continued beyond the tree canopy, hopefully the way to the mountain summit. She could no longer hear Emmett behind her, but the ringing in her ear had returned.

She shut her eyes. Water dripped from her hair and trailed along her cheek in a rivulet. Her heart thundered an angry warning of panic.

She reminded herself she wouldn't be out here if it weren't for Emmett, and opened her eyes. A stone's throw away stood a silhouette.

It hovered above the ground amid the evergreen branches, impossibly onyx, sucking the light from the very sky like a cosmic gash. She blinked, and it was still there, waiting right before the mountain ascent. Waiting for her.

The ringing in her ear morphed into vowels and consonants that composed her name. He called her closer.