The first coherent thought Mara had when the Songbird passed was not that they had just–improbably, impossibly–survived a creature of terrible destructive power. Nor was her first thought a mental note about the absolute quiet of the woods around them. Nor a gasping gratitude to whatever deities were listening. Not even an inner complaint about her aching head.

  Her first thought when quiet finally descended was of Davy.

  Specifically, she hoped that Davy really was confined to her dreams, that he truly could not see life passing by through her eyes.

  Because if he could?

  If he could, he wouldn’t like this. For all the uncertainty in her life, she was quite sure of that.

  Because the first thing she saw when the danger passed and she finally dared open her eyes and look around, was Eli.

  Eli, right there.

  Eli, kneeling at her side.

  Eli, fingers woven through hers, clasping her hand, pressing it to his chest with such force she could feel the drum of his heartbeat against the back of her hand. His other arm draped across the top of her pack behind her shoulders. The fabric of his sleeve tickling the back of her neck. His head bent close, not touching hers but near enough that strands of his hair tickled the clammy skin of her forehead.

  And she was also, for her part, right there.

  She was the one who’d angled her body towards him, so that her face was inches from his and her knees were wedged against his side, caging Nick’s sleeping body in a fortress of stubborn, fiercely protective flesh–hers and his. Face to face, backs to the world, their bodies Nick’s only, their only protection against an engulfing danger. She was the one who had pulled him closer, off balance so that he had to brace an arm against her pack to keep from falling into her entirely.

  Of course, if Davy had been watching through her eyes up to that point, then he would understand the context. He’d understand how they’d come to be so close. How Eli had come to be right there in her space, and why she had done what she’d done to occupy his.

  What he wouldn’t understand is what she didn’t understand herself. The actions–inactions, rather–of the present moment, as she blinked open her eyes and found herself still alive, the Songbird having passed, the moment of tension and danger behind her. This present moment when she found herself in the shelter of another man’s arms, mingling her breath with his, squeezing his hand so tightly she could feel the lines of his palm intersecting with her own.

  Davy wouldn’t like this moment, because she couldn’t seem to leave it. She didn’t want to leave it.

  She couldn’t even blame the magic. Persuasion still reverberated between them, but already it had faded. Either from some intuitive understanding that the danger had passed, or simply because of their flagging reserves of energy. Whatever the cause, the current had ebbed. She could break free, if she wanted to.

  Instead, she breathed the air his body warmed and watched a single bead of sweat make a slow track down the bridge of his nose, watched it slope away to the right, swooping to chase the ridge of his cheekbone. She listened to the little huffs of air he exhaled through his nose. Listened to the low hum, deeper than her ear could capture, of his life as it raced along its path, a swift river cutting deep through the land it chose to travel.

  Listen to me.

  He hadn’t spoken the words in some time, but they rang in her ears, the magic thick, tantalizing. She wanted to taste its source, salty sweat of effort on her tongue.

  No, Davy definitely wouldn’t like this.

  For that reason alone, she tried to yank herself free of the magical current and found it held a little faster than she expected. The effort made her dizzy, like she’d been spinning in circles and now wanted to stop, but the world just whirled faster beneath her clumsy feet. The direction of the current between them was an object of both their wills, but it was predominantly Eli’s energy, the furnace of his body wheeling them around, propelling this frantic, swirling, dizzying–

  “Eli,” she gasped, squeezing his hand until she met the resistance of his bones, and then squeezing harder. “Eli.”

  His eyes flew open, inches from hers, and thirteen sluggish heartbeats throbbed in her ears as she waited. Waited, watching pink lines branch out in the whites of his eyes. Waited, as a new bead of sweat coiled through his right eyebrow and dropped heavily from the outer corner to race down the side of his face. Waited for him to realize what had happened, where they were, what they had somehow—improbably, impossibly—managed to do.

  Listen to me.

  On the cusp of the fourteenth heartbeat, Eli blinked. The spell fell away, and it was as if that girl within her, spinning around with her hands clasped in his, had finally managed to stop. Vertigo assailed her, and instead of pulling away from Eli she found herself collapsing into him. Her forehead smacked his jaw and she heard his teeth meet with an audible crack.

  And still she didn’t pull away. She lay with her forehead resting on his shoulder, like a woman so deep in her cups she couldn’t hold her body upright, gulping for air, clammy and nauseous as the world rocked like a broken cradle beneath her. It took all the strength and command she possessed just to hang on to Nick. She didn’t even think of Davy for those sickening moments, only of the waves of dizziness, the answering churn of her stomach, the bile burning the back of her throat.

  Eli shifted against her in a series of movements too fast for the slurry of her mind to assemble. All she knew was that he moved, his grip shifting, her own body a listless, clumsy thing too heavy to wield. At his more competent direction, she found herself leaning forward, sweat-damp hair combed back from her face and held away as she lost the battle with her insides and vomited a few coughing, bitter mouthfuls of bile into the hash of damp, rotting leaves.

  Then, just as briskly, she found herself manhandled back into an upright position, leaning back against her pack, head wobbling on her neck. She blinked, her fuzzy, splitting vision slow to come together into a coherent picture.

  Her ears worked alright, though. Well enough to discern that the blurry, double figure to her right was Eli, that he was now also hunched over, his back to her as he spilled his own guts with a wet splatter into the leaves.

  Well, at least it wasn’t just her.

  She let her eyes drift shut when he finally went quiet. Cleared her throat and asked, shakily, “You okay?”

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  She heard him clear his own throat, spit, and then the rustle of his clothing, the gentle jostle as he slumped down beside her, his pack nudging against hers. “Are you?”

  She swallowed, wincing as her dry throat constricted around the residual burn. “I asked first.”

  “But you were sick first.”

  “Why in deepest depths does that matter?”

  He sighed and the side of his hand nudged hers, and before she could pull back she felt the tingle of healing magic, little threads of concern racing purposefully through her veins to whisper polite, diagnostic inquiry to all the weary parts of her. After a moment, he moved his hand away. “You’re okay.”

  “That’s cheating,” she said limply. “And I’m not playing games with you. Are you okay or not?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Do you need another rejuvenative?”

  “Badly. And so do you.”

  “But we’re okay,” she said.

  “We’re okay.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her arms around Nick, burying her face in his hair. They had survived. She hadn’t yet looked at whatever twisted chaos the Songbird had left in her wake. The air was thick and sweet with rot, and deathly still, so quiet every word they spoke was muffled by the engulfing silence. All around them was death, but they had survived. Her son was still alive, and she was still alive to love him.

  “Can you wake Nick up?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure if I should, just yet. We’d better move. Can you stand?”

  Mara lifted her head and found it a little easier, at least, to blink her vision straight. The earth no longer swayed beneath her, either. She didn’t feel so terrible. Just weak. “I think so,” she said, pressing an absent kiss to Nick’s temple.

  She heard Eli release a resigned, bracing breath before he moved, using the tree to push himself to his feet, slow and stiff as if he’d been kneeling there beside her for hours.

  Maybe he had.

  When he reached down, she let him pull her to her feet as well. The world faded for a moment, but when it came back she was still upright, his hand on her upper arm, silver-gray sparkles dancing at the edges of her vision. When she was steady, he released her and they stumbled side-by-side toward the path of destruction that lay before them.

  It wasn’t the way she imagined it would be—the trail of the Songbird’s wake. It was narrow, for one, a band of shriveled foliage no wider than Mara’s shoulders, pale, dry footprints trailing down the center. It seemed the creature actually had to touch a thing to kill it outright.

  But all along the edges of the trail…

  Mara shifted until the length of her upper arm was pressed against Eli’s.

  Thousands of animals lay strewn along the edges of the path. Small animals, mostly—birds, mice, squirrels—their bodies whole but bloated already, somehow, putrescent rot spilling out from the sockets of their eyes, their gaping mouths. Larger animals lay here and there as well—a deer to the right, belly burst from the force of its rapidly decomposing innards, swollen blue-black tongue resting at the edge of a pale footprint. The body of what appeared to be a jet black wolf lay some distance to the left. And over all, a thin carpet of lifeless insects, dark specks and splotches gathered in the fur of the dead animals and the curled remnants of the leaves.

  “I don’t want her between us and the river,” Eli said. “I don’t care how far south she is.”

  Mara nodded, understanding. The Songbird had been traveling north to south, and her path of destruction now lay between them and the distant guidepost of the river–their ultimate destination.

  She didn’t want that either.

  But that, of course, meant that they would have to traverse… that.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” she asked, and in the periphery of her vision she saw him shake his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  Mara tried to feel, tried to listen, but her body and mind were both shaky and weak. She didn’t think she could do a basic grounding exercise right now without falling into a faint.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  The pressure of his arm against hers disappeared as he leaned away and snapped a branch off a nearby tree—the foliage around them a bit dull but still alive. Before she could ask what his plan was, he tossed the branch into the center of the Songbird’s trail.

  They both watched it, waiting, like she used to wait at the edges of the great summer storms. She’d liked those storms when she was a girl. They made her feel cozy in the warm, dry sanctuary of her home. But the year she turned seven, one of those storms had ripped the roof from their house, and ever since then the winds tumbling down the slopes of the mountains had brought with them a twisting, anticipatory dread.

  She knew that same dread now, but the branch lay quiescent in the center of the Songbird’s path, a grotesque green mockery of the death all around it. The leaves didn’t wilt. Not after a few seconds, or even a minute. The Songbird’s magic, it seemed, had gone with her.

  “I’ll go first,” Eli said, and before Mara could stop him stepped cautiously forward, avoiding the corpses as best he could. He reached the edges of the narrow band of pale earth, stepped over it in one large stride, and then picked his way to the far side until he reached corpse-less ground.

  He turned. Looked down at his hands, and then up at her. Shrugged.

  Barely ten strides stood between them.

  “Do you feel… cursed?” she asked, eyeing the path he’d walked with acute distrust.

  “Generally, yes. By this in particular? No.”

  Her gaze shot to his, and the smile that tugged at her lips almost hurt. “Was that a joke?”

  He shrugged, the gesture a bit listless, smile weak but genuine. “I think it’s safe.”

  Gritting her teeth, she closed off all the parts of herself that were not a mother trying to carry her child to safety, and tiptoed mincingly through the field of carcasses. She managed not to step on any animal carcasses, but the dead insects were impossible to avoid, her boots crunching over hard shells and still wings. As Eli had, she stepped fully over the narrow strip of absolute destruction, and then proceeded with somewhat more confidence until she reached his side.

  “Feel okay?” he asked.

  “Not any worse than before,” she answered. “Now what?”

  “What time is it?”

  Passing Nick into his arms, she pulled the watch from her pocket and flipped it open, the effort requiring both hands, as she seemed to have left her manual dexterity on the far side of the crisis.

  “Just after six,” she said, closing the watch.

  She’d felt the Songbird coming just before their midday meal, and now it was pressing on dusk.

  They’d lost half a day.

  “Are you okay to walk?” Eli asked, with the wan intonation of a man who was not okay to walk.

  Mara didn’t think she was either, but neither of them had much choice. They needed to get some distance and find somewhere to make camp, all before the arrival of the swift-approaching night.

  She turned, presenting him with her pack, and he wordlessly removed the physik’s kit from the right outer pocket. He handed it to her, and she pulled out two blue-stoppered bottles, passing one to him and wedging the kit beneath her arm so she could pry the cork from the other. She tipped the potion down her throat, tongue immediately flaring with heat, lips tingling. She coughed and stoppered the empty bottle, pushing it back into its loop. Eli handed her the other, and she replaced that as well. The kit only had four rejuvenation tonics.

  They were down to one.

  “When are you going to wake Nick?” Mara asked. Truthfully, she’d rather her son sleep through the rest of the day and into the night. She didn’t know if she could be a proper parent at the moment. But she was a proper enough parent in general to recognize that wasn’t a very good reason to keep her son in magically induced slumber.

  “Let’s get away from all this first.”

  She nodded. Shifting Nick higher and supporting him with one arm, Eli pulled his compass from a pouch on his belt and flipped it open with his thumb, taking a heading that was—Mara guessed—vaguely west and north. Away from the Songbird. Towards the Ripshaws. Towards safety.

  “Ten minutes and then we’ll take a break for food and water,” he said, nodding his head in the direction the compass pointed. “You take the lead. North-northwest. Stop sooner if you need to.”

  With a bracing breath, Mara nodded and began walking, so tired it didn’t even seem to matter anymore. All she could consider was the next step, and the next step wasn’t so far. One step was easy. She could take one step all night. She could do it for days, all the way to the Enclave without stopping. Already, one step at a time, she had walked to the edge of the world she had once held as certain. What was one more? One more step toward that fuzzy horizon where impossible became improbable became a fresh new realm of certainty.

  She pulled out her compass, glanced at the face for her heading, and picked a distant landmark–a tree with a twisted trunk–to walk toward. One step at a time.