Crossed

CHAPTER 18 CASSIA

“You don’t look right,” Indie says. “Do you think we should slow down?”

“No,” I say. “We can’t.” If I stop I’ll never start again.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good if you die on the way,” she says, sounding angry.

I laugh. “I won’t.” Though I’m exhausted, hollow and dry and aching, the idea of dying is ridiculous. I can’t die now when I might draw closer to Ky with every step I take. And besides, I have the blue tablets. I smile, imagining what the other scraps inside might say.

I search and search for another sign from Ky. Though I’m not dying, I may be more ill than I first thought, because I find signs in everything. I think I see a message from Ky in the pattern of cracked mud on the canyon floor, where it rained once and then hardened into something that I think could be interpreted as letters. I crouch down to look at it. “What does this look like to you?” I ask Indie.

“Mud,” she tells me.

“No,” I say. “Look more closely.”

“Skin, or scales,” she says, and for a moment I am so taken with her idea I pause. Skin, or scales. Maybe this whole canyon is one long winding serpent that we walk along, and when we reach the end, we can step right off the tail. Or we’ll get to the mouth and it will swallow us whole.

I finally see a true sign when the sky above the canyon shifts from blue into blue-and-pink, and the air begins to change.

It’s my name: Cassia, carved into a young cottonwood that grows in a patch of soil near a thread of a stream.

The tree won’t have a long life; its roots already grow too shallow from trying to soak up the water. He carved my name so carefully into the bark that it almost looks as if it is part of the tree.

“Do you see this?” I ask Indie.

After a moment, she says, “Yes.”

I knew it.

Near the stream I see a small settlement, a little black orchard of twisted trunks and golden fruit hanging low on the trees. Seeing the apples on the branches like that makes me want to bring some to Ky as proof that I followed him every step of the way. I’ll have to find something else to give him besides the poem — I won’t have time to finish it, to think of the right words.

Then I look back at the ground near the cottonwood and see footprints leading farther into the canyon. I didn’t notice them at first; they are mingled with the tracks of other creatures that came to the stream to drink. But there among the clawed and padded prints are the distinct marks of boots.

Indie climbs over the fence into the orchard.

“Come on,” I say to her. “There’s no reason to stop here. We can see where they went. We have water and the tablets.”

“The tablets won’t help us,” Indie says, and she tears an apple from a tree and takes a bite. “We should at least bring these.”

“The tablets do help,” I say. “I’ve taken one.”

Indie stops chewing. “You’ve taken one? Why?”

“Of course I’ve taken one,” I say. “They’re as good as food for survival.”

Indie hurries over to me and hands me an apple. “Eat this. Now.” She shakes her head. “When did you take the tablet?”

“In the other canyon,” I say, surprised at her expression of concern.

“That’s why you’ve been sick,” Indie says. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“The blue tablets are poisoned,” she says.

“Of course they’re not poisoned,” I say. How ridiculous. Xander would never give me something poisoned.

Indie sets her mouth in a thin line. “The tablets are poisoned,” she says. “Don’t take any more.” She opens my pack and puts a few of the apples inside. “What makes you think you know where we should go?”

“I just do,” I say, making an impatient gesture at the footprints. “I’m sorting the signs.”

Indie looks at me. She can’t decide whether or not to believe me. She thinks I’m sick from the tablet, that I’m losing my mind.

But she saw my name on the tree and she knows that I didn’t carve it there.

“I still think you should rest,” Indie says, one last time.

“I can’t,” I say, and she can see that it’s true.

I hear it not long after we leave the settlement. A sound of footsteps behind us. We’re near the water and I stop.

“Someone’s here,” I say, turning to face Indie. “Someone is following us.”

Indie looks at me, her expression wary. “I think you’re hearing things that aren’t there. Just like you were seeing things that don’t exist.”

“No,” I say. “Listen.”

We both stand still, listening to the canyon. It’s quiet except for the rustling of leaves as the wind moves through them. The wind stops and the rattling ceases, but still I hear something. Feet on sand? A hand brushing against stone for support? Something. “There,” I say to Indie. “You must have heard that.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Indie says, but she looks unnerved. “You’re not well. Maybe we should rest a little.”

I answer her by walking again. I listen for the sound of someone behind us, but all I hear are the leaves, skittering and moving again on the canyon breeze.

We walk until dark, and then we use our flashlights and we keep on. Indie was right; I don’t feel anyone following us now. I only hear my own breath, feel my own self, the weakness in each vein of my body, each bend of my muscle, every tired step of my feet. I will not let anything stop me when I am this close to Ky. I will take more tablets. I don’t think Indie’s right about them.

When she isn’t looking, I open another tablet but my hands tremble too much. It falls to the ground and so does a tiny whisper of paper. And then I remember. Xander’s notes. I wanted to read them.

The paper slips away on the wind, and it seems like far too much work to chase it down or to try to find blue in the dark.