The Edge of Everything(49)

"Stop it," said Zoe. "Just stop it. He doesn't love anybody but himself. I understand that now. You are going to be free. Do I seem like somebody who changes her mind?"



They walked for what felt like much more than half a mile. Maybe it was because the woods were strange. Maybe it was because Zoe was going to see her father. She was so tense now, so alert, that time seemed to crack open and expand just to maximize her anguish.



       
         
       
        

She was going to see her father-it seemed like such an innocent statement. Except that he was supposed to be dead. Hadn't she prayed for his soul at the cave? Yet, somehow, her father was still alive. He was up ahead through the trees. Doing god only knew what. Pretending to have no wife, no children, no Zoe, no Jonah, no past. Did they mean so little to him?

Rage seeped through her. She knew one thing she'd tell her father for sure: it was a good thing he'd gotten rid of his name because where he was going they wouldn't let him keep it anyway.

A squirrel jumped into a tree as they passed, sending snow down the back of Zoe's neck. She shivered as it melted on her skin. They couldn't be more than a quarter mile away now-but a quarter mile from what? Knowing her father, he could be living in a house, a cave, an igloo, anything. She peered through the trees. There was no plume of smoke, no sign of life at all.

Suddenly, her phone trilled again.

ME!!!! it said.

"Bug, I can't talk," she said, hoping to preempt another tirade.

"Why are you looking at an ocean?" said Jonah, his voice more desperate than before. "You don't even like oceans! You have to come home, Zoe! Right now, right now, right now! I am still alone and now it's-it's either raining or snowing, I can't tell which. But it's creepy and loud, and even Spock and Uhura are mad at you because I told them where you were."

Zoe only half-listened.

The forest thinned out up ahead. The light grew stronger.

X leaned close and whispered, "We will soon be within sight of your father."

Zoe nodded, and squeezed his hand.

"I gotta go, bug," she said into the phone. "I'm sorry. I love you."

"No, Zoe, no!" he said. "If you hang up, I will call back! I will call back thirty-two times!"

"Bug, stop!" she said. "I promise to call you back and make you giggle, okay? I will do whatever it takes. I will tickle you over the phone, if I have to."

"That's not even possible, obviously," he said. "Unless I, like, put the phone in my armpit, and probably not even then."

She felt guilty for hanging up. Jonah had suffered even more than she had. If she'd cried over her father a hundred times, he had cried a thousand. His eyes had gotten so puffy with tears that he could hardly see, and he'd let out wails that she would never forget.

There were only a hundred yards of forest left.

They could see something through the trees-a field of snow, maybe. A gray sky hung above it.

Zoe took X's arm, and they followed the path as it snaked through the firs. Anger and fear fought for her attention. The woods were so quiet it was as if the silence, rather than being passive and still, were a living thing that devoured all sounds. It was like the snow. It buried everything. 

Just ahead, two snow ghosts leaned toward each other, weary under their heavy white coats. They formed a narrow archway-an exit out of the woods, an entrance to whatever it was that awaited them. Zoe peered between the trees. In the distance, she could see a dark smudge on the snow-a cabin, maybe. A hundred feet and they'd be out of the forest.

She needed this to be over, but she kept slowing down, she couldn't help it. She kept thinking of that day with Stan. She thought of Spock and Uhura huddled on top of Jonah in the snow, saving his life. She thought of Stan throwing Spock into the freezing water and holding him down with his foot. She thought of X doing the same to Stan. The boot on Stan's head, the frigid water lapping into his mouth-the images were carved into her. They were her tattoos.

They ducked under the snowy archway. The branches groaned above them. Zoe didn't trust them to hold. She held her breath, waiting for snow to bury them. She thought of the bird that had flown in for their breakfast-but now, instead of being trapped inside the hut, it was trapped inside her. She felt its wings banging and thumping in her rib cage.

"I want to talk to my father alone first," said Zoe.

X began to object. She shook her head to silence him.

"Just give me a few minutes," she said. "Then you can come and take him. I want him to know what he's done to us."

X agreed reluctantly.

"I will watch from the trees," he said. "If you want me, I will be at your side before you can even finish the thought."

They plunged out of the archway. The forest fell away and the world rushed out in every direction.

The smudge they had seen was not a cabin and it did not stand on a plain. It was a dingy shed, smaller even than the hut on the beach.

It stood on a frozen lake.

Zoe felt the bird squeeze up into her throat, scratching and choking her and desperate to get out.

In front of them, a small hill ran down toward the lake. They were out in the open now. If Zoe's father was in the shed, he might see her at any moment. She thought of hiding, but there were no snowbanks or bushes or rocks and, anyway, she was paralyzed. She couldn't convince her body to move.

The door of the shed swung open. The sound reached her an instant later, like an echo.

It was her father.

It was her father.

He was skinnier than she remembered, and she didn't recognize his tattered clothes. But she knew the goofy way he walked-the way his head bobbed, the way his lanky arms swung at his sides.

He carried a fishing pole.

She watched as he loped around, his eyes cast downward to inspect the frozen lake. It took her a moment to understand-to see what he saw-and then the bird in her throat let out a screech so sudden and alien that it shocked even her. X clasped her hand.

Her father turned and saw them.

There were a dozen holes in the ice.





nineteen


X watched as Zoe hiked down the hill. Her arms were crossed tightly around her chest. She was staring straight at her father, refusing to let him look away.

X heard noises behind him in the woods. Something was crunching through the snow. He assumed it was an animal and did not turn. He would not take his eyes off Zoe.

The Trembling made it almost unbearable for X to be so close to his prey. His fever burned beneath his skin. His hands had a will of their own, and began to shake at his sides. They were desperate to act-to kill-even if X was repulsed by the thought.

He reminded himself that killing this one last soul would set him free. But freedom was too strange and vast an idea to hold for more than an instant, and it was followed by a crushing guilt. Why must being with Zoe come at another soul's expense-and why must that soul be her father? The lords had made even freedom seem a sin. He told himself not to think of his bounty as Zoe's father, but rather as a faceless, nameless creature to be disposed of: a 16th skull to hang around his neck, no different from the 15 others.



       
         
       
        

A branch snapped behind him. It was a tiny sound but X was so agitated it assaulted his ears. Still, he refused to turn.

Zoe was halfway down the hill now, halfway to her father.

Before X met her, he'd wrenched souls from the Overworld without so much complaining from his conscience. He used to tell himself that he hated it, but, when the time came, he always managed to summon up enough fury to strike his target down. He wondered if he'd been such a fierce bounty hunter because he had the blood of a lord in his veins-or because he'd never lived a true life and never known the value of a soul.

The noises returned. It was not an animal behind him. He knew that now. It was a human being.

A hiker, perhaps, or a hunter.

X could hear the man's breath.

He could not have someone stumbling on the scene about to unfold. He forced himself to look away from Zoe. He spun back to the trees. He saw a flash of gold through the parted branches of a fir.

Aggravated by the interruption, X stalked back down the path, the trees exploding with snow as he pushed past them. He would terrify whoever it was and send him running. It wouldn't be difficult. He knew how grim and malevolent he must look with his wild eyes and his hair trailing him, ragged as fire.

The glint of gold was maybe 200 feet back, still hidden by trees. X bore down on the intruder. Whoever it was would surely turn and flee before he'd even reached him.

But something strange happened. Rather than retreating, the figure moved toward him, scudding through the snow.

X himself was being hunted.

Ripper appeared suddenly, breathless and fierce and firing words.

"The lords are coming," she said. "I am here to warn you."

X was so shocked to see her that he could not speak. Ripper waited a moment, then continued, her voice rising.

"Struck dumb, are you?" she said. "You must do what you were sent to do. You have dallied too long with your lover. The thing that needs stiffening is your spine! Do you not know how the lords watch you? Do you not know how your insolence makes them seethe? I am ignorant of their plan, but they will surely unleash hell if you betray them again."