Evelyn. And if the hazards of the unknown seas didn’t sink the ships, then sometimes I felt that the weight of our expectations would. They were everything, now. We’d managed to rid the Council of the Confessor, and of the machine that she was using to keep track of all Omegas—but it wasn’t enough, especially after the massacre on the island. We might have slowed down the Council, and cost them two of their most powerful weapons, but the tanks were patient. I’d seen them myself, in visions and in the awful solidity of reality. Row after row of glass tanks, each one a pristine hell.
That was the Council’s plan for all of us. And if we didn’t have a plan of our own, a goal to work for, then we were just scrapping in the dust, and there’d be no end to it. We might forestall the tanks for a while, but no better than that. Once, the island had been our destination. That had ended in blood and smoke. So now we were seeking the ships that Piper had sent out from the island, months before, in search of Elsewhere.
There were times when it felt more like a wish than a plan.
It would be four months at the next full moon since the ships sailed. “It’s a hell of a long time to be at sea,” Piper said as we sat on the rock.
I had no reassurance to offer him, so I stayed silent. It wasn’t just a question of whether Elsewhere was out there. The real question was what it could offer us, if it existed. What its inhabitants might know, or do, that we couldn’t. Elsewhere couldn’t just be another island, just a place to hide from the Council. That might offer us a respite, but it would be no solution, any more than the island was. There had to be more than that: a real alternative.
If the ships found Elsewhere, they’d have to make their way back through the treacherous sea. If they survived, and if they weren’t caught attempting to return to the captured island, then they should be returning to a rendezvous point at Cape Bleak, on the northwest coast.
It felt like such a tenuous chance: if piled on if, each hope feeling flimsier than the last, while Zach’s tanks were solid, multiplying with each day that passed.
Piper knew better, by now, than to push against my silences. He kept staring at the sunrise and went on. “When we’ve sent out ships in the past, some of them made it back to the island, months later, with nothing to show for the journey but damaged hulls and crews sick with scurvy. And two ships never came back.” He was quiet for a moment, but his face betrayed no emotion. “It’s not just a question of distance, or even storms. Some of our sailors have come back with stories of things we can barely imagine. A few years back, one of our best captains, Hobb, led three ships north. They were gone for more than two months. It was nearing winter, when Hobb got back—and there were only two ships by then. The winter storms we’re used to on the west coast are bad enough—we didn’t even make crossings to the island in winter, if we could help it. But further north, Hobb told us the entire sea up there had started to freeze solid. The ice crushed one of the ships, just like that.” He opened his hand wide, then closed his fist. “The whole crew was lost.” He paused again. Both of us were looking at the frost stiffening the grass. Winter was on its way.
“After all this time,” he said, “do you still believe that The Rosalind and The Evelyn could be out there?”
“I’m not sure about belief,” I said. “But I hope they are.”
“And that’s enough for you?” he said.
I shrugged. What would enough mean, anyway? Enough for what? Enough to keep going, I supposed. I’d learned not to ask for more than that. Enough to get me to fold my blanket at the end of each day’s rest, stuff it back into my rucksack, and follow Piper and Zoe once more onto the plain for another night of walking.
Piper held out the meat again. I turned away.
“You need to stop this,” he said.
He still spoke as he always had: as if the world was his to command. If I’d closed my eyes, I could imagine he was still giving