Six days crept by after Mara’s conversation with Eli and the dream that had followed. Six nights spent traveling across the featureless prairie, six dreams spent in idle, sensual pursuits. Six cloudless starry skies wheeling overhead. Six pink suns warming the horizon, foretelling the end of another backwards day. Six times off with Mizzo’s saddle, six times back on. By the third day, Mara could work the buckles in the dark. On the fourth, she offered to look after Rizzo as well, and Eli let her while he built the fire.

  Six darknight fires.

  Six hidden campsites.

  Mara had not counted the days in Ashfall, but she counted the days on the Morro Plains, because what else was there to do? Ponder her future? Interrogate Eli? Entertain her son? The first was pointless, the second futile, and the third impossible. Now that Nick was speaking in full sentences, he had endless thoughts to share. And it was not Mara with whom he wanted to share them. That honor went to Eli.

  She was jealous–no point in pretending she wasn’t. But she was also aware of her complicity in Nick’s shift of allegiance. Even before Davy had died, she had been stressed. After he died, she’d all but disappeared into herself. Of course Nick would gravitate toward someone more present. And on occasion, she would catch sight of them crouched side by side working on some project, their faces fixed in identical expressions of concentration or glowing with symmetrical amusement, and she felt neither jealousy nor resentment. Just gentle fondness that left her as one, but branched to twine around them both, wrapping them tightly, holding them together.

  Late on the sixth night, Eli pointed toward the northern horizon. “You see the ripples?” he asked Nick, and Mara followed his finger as well. Dark as it was, she could see what he indicated–dark bumps against the deep navy sky, a slight scalloped edge to the horizon. “That’s the Ripshaws. We’re getting close.”

  Mara turned her attention back to the east, searching for any signs of a forest.

  “The way the ground curves, you won’t see the Smokestacks until we cross the Muddy,” Eli said, following her gaze. “But you’ll know we’re close when the sun starts rising and the mists shift west.”

  They stopped an hour later to bed down, the dawn a gray, claustrophobic thing that settled like wet clothing on her mood. She waved her hand through the fog as she dismounted. “I take it these are the mists?”

  “These are the mists,” Eli grumbled, pulling Nick down from Rizzo’s saddle and looking around. “This time of year, the air shifts at dawn and brings them out of the trees and onto the plains. It’ll burn off with the sun.”

  “When will we reach the forest?”

  He rocked his head from side to side. “Around midnight tonight. Maybe earlier. We’ll–” he broke off mid-sentence, and Mara froze as she felt his magic unfurl in a wave of sensing. She stood with her hand still on the buckle of Mizzo’s saddle, not bothering to reach out with her own senses. If she tried, she’d just make more noise for him to listen through.

  Instead, she focused on pushing her fear down into the ground and swallowing her questions. Eli stood several strides away beside Rizzo, eyes closed, nostrils flaring with each slow, silent breath. Nick was on his hip, one small hand braced on his shoulder, looking around with wide eyes. Mara looked around as well, not that there was anything to see–just sifting, milky fog.

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  Eli’s eyes snapped open and found Mara’s.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  His hand came up to settle on Nick’s back. “Trouble.”

  All of her innards seemed to gather themselves up and shove against her lungs, clamoring for the safety of her ribcage. Nick emitted a little whimper and curled up, tucking his head beneath Eli’s chin and clinging to his shirt, watery eyes on Mara.

  “Head east.”

  Mara jerked her attention from her son back to Eli. “What?”

  “East.” He stepped briskly to Mizzo, pressed a kiss to the crown of Nick’s head, and lifted the boy up into the saddle. “Keep as fast a clip as you can safely maintain. We’re a few hours from the treeline, at most. You’ll have to cross the river, but it’s shallow this far south. Give Mizzo her head and let her find her way across.”

  Mara went numbly to the horse when he gestured, hauling her aching body back into the saddle. Nick was crying, and she wrapped her arm around him. “Where do we wait for you?”

  “You don’t. After the river, keep moving. At the edge of the woods, take your bag, the saddle, everything off the horse. Leave her there. She knows to head home when you don’t come back for her. Turn into the woods. Nobody will follow you into the Smokestacks.”

  “How do you kn–”

  “Travel half an hour east to create some distance, and then turn north towards the foothills. It’s a four, maybe a five day walk. Once the terrain starts to change, turn west and head back to the river. The guide will meet you where the water meets the foothills, on the eastern bank. The codeword they give you is ‘sunshine.’ You’ll answer with the codeword ‘hearth.’ They’ll direct you to the Enclave from there.”

  “What guide? Eli–”

  “What do you do when you reach the forest?”

  “Head east. But–”

  “For how long?”

  “A half an hour.”

  “Then?”

  “North, four or five days to the foothills. Then west again to the river. Eli–”

  “The codewords.”

  “Sunshine.”

  “And?”

  “Hearth.”

  “Good. Go. I’ll catch up.”

  That was an awful lot of very rushed, very detailed instruction for a man who planned to ‘catch up.’

  “Where are you going?”

  “To slow them down.”

  “Slow who down? Eli, just come with us,” she begged, and later she would wonder what had come over her. In a moment so obvious rife with pressing, looming danger, why did she linger? Why did she waste time pleading with him not to protect her? Not to give her the head start she apparently needed?

  “I’m sorry.” He looked it, too. Sorrow pinched at the corners of his eyes and hardened every angle of his face. “But you need to go, Mara. Now.”

  He didn’t wait for her to respond or even for her to go. Giving her his back, he stalked to Rizzo, swung up into the saddle, and kicked the horse into a gallop, heading west. The fog billowed out ahead of him and rolled back in behind. In seconds, all that remained was the sound of thundering hooves.

  Swallowing tears, Mara tightened her hold around Nick and urged Mizzo in the opposite direction.

  Toward the Smokestacks

  Alone.