Betrayals in Spring (10 page)

“Do you have to go already?” The suggestion of her exit makes the dusk feel colder.

Greer looks sorry to be leaving, too, and I wonder for the first time if perhaps she enjoys my company as much as I’m beginning to enjoy hers. “Yes. Now that they’re watching Griffin and me, it’s not safe for me to be away for long.”

“How did your brother know about this place?”

“He found it while he was out hunting one day when we were children. We used to sneak away and spend summer afternoons swimming in the lake and fishing when our mother was still alive. We haven’t been back in a while, but the cabin was furnished and our mother made sure the Others couldn’t know about it. You’ll be safe, for a while.” She takes a few steps backward, then forces a smile and jerks her chin toward the cabin. “I see your dilemma with Rock and Hard Place, there.”

I glower at her. “Stop calling them that. It’s embarrassing.”

She tips her head, studying me so intently I feel like I’m naked. “And you’re not really stuck between them, are you. Not in the way you thought you would be the last time we talked.”

Last winter, while imprisoned together, I told Greer about my confusion regarding the boys. Now I shrug, unwilling to give voice to the things that I want since they’re not within reach.

To my great surprise, she bounces up and down on her toes and claps her hands. “You’re like Scarlet when Ashley comes home from war—the minute she sees him she knows it’s Ashley she loves!”

“Shhh! I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, but please stop yelling,” I hiss, getting up and dragging her away from the cabin.

“
Gone With the Wind
? Rhett Butler?” Greer reaches out and knocks on my temple. “Nothing?”

“No.”

She lowers her voice, even though we’re almost to the pond now. “I’m right, right? You love Lucas?”

“It doesn’t matter. We have bigger problems.”

“You want my advice?” She continues while I’m still considering my answer. “Try to relax. Two gorgeous, loyal boys who understand what it’s like to be you—who would choose you over everything else—want to love you, Althea.”

Her advice makes my head shake instinctively. It’s not that I don’t know I’m lucky to have them, and here’s Greer, who loves a boy she can never have. But the three of us should be focused on finding Deshi and saving the planet.

Greer’s violet eyes soften in the deepening twilight. “Seriously? You can’t choose, Althea. You need them both, and once you choose, someone is going to feel like an intruder.”

With that she takes long strides to the tree, moving with the same flowing grace as her brother, and disappears.

CHAPTER 8.

The hologram arrives less than an hour later. I’ve been searching for a way to steal a moment alone with Lucas so I can look into his eyes and find a shred of reassurance. That he’s still on board with the idea that the Others are the bad guys, that he’ll fight to return. It all happens too fast, though, and Pax hangs around like a nervous mother on Gathering night.

The hologram isn’t an Other, and it’s not Cadi or Ko or Griffin. This creature is more obviously alien. It has the solid black eyes of the Others, but stands barely as high as Lucas’s stomach. It wears no clothing from the waist up and its skin is stretched so thin that the bright red blood running through its veins is visible from across the lawn. He or she has no hair, and its ears are as big as its head.

It doesn’t identify itself or speak; it simply crooks a long finger at Lucas. We’ve all said our goodbyes, so he obeys, striding to the creature’s side. The thing beckons again, until Lucas bends to stare into its face. It unfurls a hand, one spindly, bony finger at a time, then blows a palm full of sparkling black dust into Lucas’s face.

He stands up, sneezing violently. As our eyes meet, he begins to disappear. I don’t look away until he’s totally gone, as though he never walked back into my life at all.

It takes everything inside me not to run after him, not to scream and cry and go completely insane with letting him go again. I don’t, though. I have to believe that we’ll get through this, too.

I walk into the kitchen, figuring out what we’re going to eat in an effort to keep busy, my limbs heavy as though balls of lead run through my veins. A pang of panic hits when I think about how we sent Lucas away without dinner—who knows when the Others will feed him, or if they even eat food the way we do. Pax pads into the kitchen behind me after a few minutes with leftover containers of pasta and sauce that we’d left outside to keep cold.

“Let’s just set these by the fire until they warm up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel much like cooking.”

“Wolf brought a rabbit. We should skin it for him.” Despite my massive effort at keeping control, tears choke off the words.

Pax stands near me, but he doesn’t pull me into his chest the way Lucas would. Instead, he puts the containers of pasta on the counter and then takes one of my hands between both of his. The familiar sparks that accompany his touch are dull, and the almost painful clench of his fingers around mine reminds me I don’t need him to hold me up. I can stand on my own.

Pax smiles his slow smile, but worry crinkles the corners of his eyes. The fact that he’s feeling uncertain about Lucas’s departure gives me hope that the three of us can find a way to work together.

We go back outside, taking Wolf along, and he bounds off into the woods while we watch the stars emerge and twinkle above our heads. My whole life I’ve wondered who else might be out there, and after meeting creatures who are neither human nor Other, my curiosity has only heightened. It makes me think about what Lucas says, that perhaps the Others are our future. I wonder if that’s true, if we’ll visit those far-flung places in unnamed galaxies, and if we could be happy putting our own survival above that of our hosts.

If Lucas chooses to stay with his father, to make a life with the Others, what then? Would I go with him?

A glance at Pax’s handsome profile, his serious expression, tugs my heart another direction. We belong here, on Earth, no matter our unique genetic makeup. The Others stand for narcissism and cruelty, even though Lucas might try to convince me they don’t have a choice. If they’re to survive, they must feed off whatever it is that keeps them alive, and it’s not exactly their fault that their presence destroys planets.

But they could have done the noble thing. They could have searched for a place compatible with their needs, and if one didn’t exist, annihilation of their own race should have been the decision—as opposed to annihilating countless more.

I voice that last thought to Pax, wondering what his thoughts are on all of this now, after he’s realized the Others aren’t going to forget we exist. When I first met him, Pax wanted nothing to do with the humans or the Others, but after meeting Leah, an unveiled human…it has to have at least given him something to think about.

“I guess people don’t think that way, Summer,” he replies to my question about the Others choosing extinction over killing. “It’s instinct to keep yourself alive.”

His quiet, sure response floats over to me like feathers tossed on a breeze, kind of soft and tickling me with the terrible truth. If the Others weren’t hopping through space, discovering planets with the resources to support them for however short a time frame, they would be no more. Faced with those options, I’m starting to think it would take a special kind of person to choose in favor of the greater good.

The Prime Other, as horribly as he’s treated me, was faced with an unthinkable dilemma all those years ago when it became clear that Deasupra would not survive the civil war that nearly ended their race. Hundreds of Others looked to him, and this was his decision—life.

“That’s true. Cadi and Ko chose to live in captivity all of these years, and so have Griffin and Greer. I mean, it’s not like they could have escaped, but they could have…done what Apa tried.” I can’t bring myself to say the phrase
tried to kill themselves
. The simple idea of it hurts my heart. “They’re choosing life over death, too, even though it’s not a life most people would want.”

He slides closer to me, sharing his warmth and the comforting smell of apples and cinnamon. “I think you never know how far you’ll go to stay alive until you’re in the situation. But that doesn’t change anything. It’s not right, what they’re doing. If we can save Earth, we still should. And if we get to choose between humans or Others, I choose humans.”

“Me, too.”

My stomach grumbles and we both laugh. I lay my head on his shoulder for a minute as tension unwinds from my shoulders and neck, surprised again when there’s no rush of heat, only friendship. We whistle for Wolf and the three of us head inside to eat dinner. If we’re going to make it through whatever’s coming, we have to find a way to focus on the things we can change and let go of the things we can’t. Lucas is gone, for now. I have to believe that he wants to get back to us, and if he truly does, he’ll find a way to use Greer’s portal.

In the meantime, Pax and I should be putting our minds to something useful.

We eat the reheated pasta and sauce, still mulling over the intricacies of the Others’ occupation of Earth and the moral ambiguities of their decisions.

“It’s funny, talking about how we’ll make a choice, that Cadi and the Others are picking life in captivity over death, but humans don’t have any choices at all.” I swallow a gulp of water, sadness sinking into my belly along with the cool liquid.

We’ve discussed before how none of us have a real idea of what unveiled humans are like, or how life on Earth existed before the Others changed everything. In humans who’ve we’ve un-controlled—on accident, mostly—we’ve seen many of them display tendencies toward violence and anger. The adults more than the kids our age.

“That’s the best we can hope to accomplish, I guess. To keep this planet livable after the Others leave, and to give them back their choices. People aren’t meant to be controlled.” Pax’s eyes hold mine, questions tumbling behind his sharp gaze, as though he’s wondering where my train of thought is heading.

When I say nothing, he reaches out and punches my arm lightly. “Winter is going to be okay.”

It takes a couple of big gulps of air to control my swirling fear, but then I force a wobbly smile. “I know.” On my feet it’s easier to think, and moving around will keep my mind off the long hours stretching ahead, not knowing if Lucas is safe, if he’s being harmed…and wondering if he has any intention of coming back.

“Where are you going?” Pax ask as I head toward the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.

“I think I’ll poke around a little bit and see what information might be hiding around here. We know Deshi’s in Rapid City. Maybe there are more maps somewhere that show this area,” I answer, stepping out of the room.

Pax’s footsteps pad out of the living room and hit the tile in the kitchen, followed by the sounds of dishes settling in the sink. It’s hard to see without the light of the fire, but the flashlight I brought from the Clark’s last winter still works. We’ve tried to use it as little as possible.

It takes me an hour or so to go through the closet and all of the drawers in the bedroom. I don’t find much that interests me or that looks to be potentially helpful, and when I return to the front room, Pax is sitting on the floor behind the coffee table picking through a small pile of stuff he’s found.

I drop to the floor next to him, spilling the four or five things I brought out next to his. “Maps! Where’d you find them?”

“In that room with the desk and the old-looking communication device. Where’d you find that crap?”

“Bedroom.”

Until I ran away from the Sanctioned City of Des Moines, I’d never seen a map of anything besides the sky. Star and planet maps, constellations, solar systems. But the Others don’t supply us any clues as to the size or terrain of this place we live.

I push aside the extra flashlight, batteries, a floppy book titled
Holy Bible
, and fingernail clippers that were hiding in the bedroom, and poke through Pax’s find. Besides the maps, he’s unearthed another lined disk like Lucas’s clue—this one with the name
Johnny Cash
on the outside of the case—two more books, and what looks like a family photograph.

The books remind me of the ones we found at Fort Laramie—textbooks that tell what happened on Earth before now. I hope the stories aren’t as depressing as the ones about what happened to the Native American people when the white settlers came to their land.

It’s frustrating, only knowing half of the stories and being unable to fit the rest of the puzzle together. To know terms and places and dates but not the how and why of things, the ins and outs of what made a group of people decide they could take what belonged to someone else because of the color of their skin.

I suppose if I understood that, I would understand the Others, too.

After all, they believe they are superior to the people of Earth because they have greater technology, and because they have mental capabilities that outstrip the ones of the inhabitants of this planet. But those things, in my estimation, don’t make the Others better than humans. It simply makes them different. I’m sure that if—
when
—humanity returns to its former state, it will have plenty of strengths to show off.