Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

And to be fair, there was a lot to keep the new council busy. They’d given everybody jobs, made up all these procedures for how to check and clear a shelter when they stopped, who would cook and clean and all of that. Smoke was kind of like how he used to be back when they lived in the school, he let other people make the big decisions, but now he would have his own opinion a lot of the time instead of insisting everyone keep talking until they came up with a decision together.

They’d been off the main roads for a week now, the terrain getting more and more uneven. Nadir had explained about how Mayhew was planning to crash the shelter, and in a lot of ways it seemed like that was still the plan, but somehow it was okay now since they were just trying to survive.

Sammi and her friends constantly discussed what would happen if the settlers weren’t happy to see them. What if they told them to turn around, find their own damn camp? Sammi couldn’t imagine that her dad and the rest of the new council would fight people over what was, to be fair, theirs.

They’d probably have one of their stupid secret meetings where they went walking after dinner, talking it all through. Then they’d come back and tell everyone they would just have to keep going and make the best of it. They’d act like it was no big deal, at least to Sammi and her friends, because they still thought of them as immature, even though Kalyan was going to be eighteen in July and the rest of them were all over fifteen. If her dad could see what Colton had given her, well, then he might change his mind…but she still hadn’t figured out how to give it to her dad without getting Colton into trouble. The adults wouldn’t understand how none of it had been his idea, that he’d thought they were just messing around, that he’d never realized it would go so far.

Nadir’s lists said that Salt Point would get below freezing at night through April. That was almost two more months like this. There was no way that they would be able to build adequate shelter for that, not right away, anyway. And if they went down to lower elevations, they would need Beater walls, just in case, and they were right back to the same problem.

Sammi wondered if they should have just picked someplace on the way and made the best of it, like so many other people had done. Only…she’d seen what happened on the islands. At the mall. Before that, at the school and the library and almost every other place she could think of since the Siege. If the Easterners thought the only place to make a new life was up north, at least until someone figured out a way to get rid of the Beaters once and for all, then Sammi had to admit they were probably right.

They crested a ridge and there, on the other side, was a scattering of farms with a few buildings at the center making a tiny town. And in the center of that was a sweet little white church with a spire on top, looking like a postcard against the blue blue sky.

“It’s so pretty,” Sammi couldn’t resist saying.

“You think? I’ve been in a hundred of those,” Sage said sourly. “That’s a Methodist church, bet you anything. They go in for the wooden pews. No cushions.”

“Huh,” Sammi said, as they trudged on.

Sleeping in a wooden pew didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. Nadir might say one of his pretty Muslim prayers-that would be kind of nice.

She knew it was all the same God, just different ways of talking to Him. But in a way, it would be better if there was a whole team of gods they could pray to. Sammi had a feeling they were going to need all the help they could get.

IN THE VESTIBULE of the old church Cass found a bride’s dressing room. It looked like it had once had some other function; perhaps it was a supply closet before a steady stream of city brides discovered this perfect little setting that practically guaranteed enviable photos, with the drifts of wildflowers and the mountain backdrop. All those brides…they’d adjusted their veils in the mirror, checked their makeup, quelled their nerves and stepped out with breathless anticipation in their satin high heels and French manicures and updos constructed with a hundred tiny hairpins. All of this to launch marriages that, more often than not, would end in tears and bitterness and regrets.

Nevertheless, here she was, alone in the twilight of an early March day in the year 2022, wiping a year’s worth of dust from the mirror, regarding her reflection and thinking about love. When Ruthie was born, Cass had sworn off all love but that which she had for her daughter. Back then it had seemed that her damaged heart would have to struggle the rest of her life to be worthy of her daughter, that it would have to work overtime learning the lessons of devotion and faith and support. But all of that had come instantly, hard, crushingly, the moment she held Ruthie in her arms.

Then there had been Smoke. They’d come together in the threat of the unknown, first loved each other while on the run and then-when she’d rescued Ruthie and they were safe at last-clung to each other and built something real from the tender shoots. They’d had three months together in the closest thing to bliss that Cass had ever known. She’d been shocked to discover that she had learned to trust him; at the end of each day he came back to her and that was a sweet miracle, that alone was enough.

But then he’d left her. It had to be: he could never have been at peace knowing he hadn’t tried, that he hadn’t avenged the loss of those he cherished. Smoke could not have continued to love her if he hadn’t made the quest. And now, finally, after this journey, Cass accepted it. She’d forgiven him for leaving, he’d forgiven her for Dor, and she trusted that he was ready to love her again.

Why, then, was she hesitating?

Cass leaned closer to the mirror, dust motes swirling prettily in the last beams of fading light, and looked at herself critically. She was different-different than she was a year ago, different than she’d been after the attack, even different from the start of this journey. There were the obvious things: they were all thinner, their bodies pushed to the limit each day, with little to eat other than kaysev. But the changes that eluded her, things she noted as one sees shadows from the corner of one’s eye, were as compelling as they were subtle.

Her eyes were still the startling clear green of those few who survived the fever, her pigment altered forever. But there were depths to them, a weariness accumulated from all the stories of hurt and loss that she’d not only witnessed but lived through. Phillip, Jasmine, Terrence…all the lives she’d moved through had changed her, both hollowed and intensified her.

Her hair was startling, too. It had grown long and thick and fine, silvery-white strands supplanting her old honey blond. At times she thought it looked like a botched dye job, but in this mirror it looked startling and lovely, like an ice queen from a book of European fairy tales, flowing around her shoulders and tumbling over her forehead no matter how many times she pushed it back.

But even these were not what she was looking for. Cass was convinced there were answers to be found in the set of her lips, the cant of her cheekbones, the fine lines that had appeared on her brow. Somewhere inside her was the knowledge of whether she could truly ever be with a man, and if so, who she was meant to be with, and it was hard to resist the notion that if she just looked long and hard enough, she might find it here, in the glass.

But the harder she looked, the more it eluded her.

There was a soft knock at the door, and it creaked open.

Smoke.

“Okay if I come in?” he asked. “I’ve got room service.”