In the midst of the swarm of creatures and the grim struggle to survive the attack, she had forgotten about the storm that had been moving in. The storm hadn’t forgotten them, though.
As well as the great swathe of burned creatures, the corpses forming a grisly semi-circle in front of the radio building, the rest of the settlement had fared little better. The flimsy houses had almost all been completely destroyed, the walls torn apart by wind, branches from the roofs scattered here and there. She could see one wall standing, swaying slightly in the light wind. Another storm would blow that wall down, too. Apartfrom the brick buildings, the only things still standing inside the settlement were the large kiln, water tower and work shed behind the radio building.
The wooden fence around the settlement was still in one piece. That had been built to last. The only thing that hadn’t fared well was the gates. Or, rather, the rope hinges that had held the gates to the walls. Hallie remembered the basket and dried grass that had been in the radio room along with the beginnings of more rope. Someone had been making more rope, perhaps to repair the gates, before they’d left the settlement. Without those repairs, the creatures had been able to gnaw through the rope hinges and topple the gate. Girard had put the gate back in place that morning, she remembered. He must have had to wrestle it into place while she slept off the effects of using magic. Feeling guilty for leaving him to so much effort, she gave him a hand pulling the gate aside to let them out, surprised at its weight.
The warrimel had also chewed through the rope that had held the walkway upright, cutting off pedestrian access to the settlement. The ramp had fallen back across the ditch at some point during the night, listing at an odd angle but still functional. That and the fallen gate would have made the warrimel’s access to the settlement much easier. Hallie followed Girard across the walkway and tried not to look down at the ditch that was full almost to the brim with the remains of the creatures.
Outside the settlement boundary, the storm’s effects were far less dramatic. There were a few branches down in some of the nearby trees, and odd patches of shrubs or undergrowth, flattened into swirling patterns that made no sense to her eyes, but apart from that it seemed that the island had not been badly affected by the storm.
“Which way?” she asked Girard, knowing that he would be able to take them wherever they needed to go. His magic, that Emmet had named as a pathfinder, seemed exoticand mysterious to Hallie. When he didn’t look awkward or embarrassed by her question, she realised he was beginning to accept his magic, which gave her a little jolt of happiness and made her want to smile.
“This way. It looks like there’s some kind of basic road. Hopefully that goes all the way to the main settlement and we won’t need to force a path through the forest,” he said. The path he pointed to led away from the settlement at an angle from the dirt path that had been laid from the newly cleared field into the settlement. Their new road was as basic as the path had been, if a little wider. The road led in a more or less straight line away from the settlement, cutting through dense shrubs. Someone, or several someones, had gone to the effort of cutting back the undergrowth from the road way so that the truly dense pockets of shrubs were set back from the road. The shrubs and ground-covering plants were a motley mix of greens ranging from pale, barely-there shades to vivid, striking tones and deep notes that looked more like shadows, the plants growing barely up to Hallie’s waist, with a few mature trees here and there to either side. Overall, it was a relatively open space to be walking through, and the line of the road gave them good visibility ahead. That could work both ways, Hallie knew. It would let them see anyone coming towards them, but they’d be visible, too.
Despite the swarm the night before and the uncertainty over what they might find ahead of them, Hallie’s curiosity stirred. She wondered what other new things she might see as they explored the island and felt a smile growing on her face as she looked around. The air was cool and slightly damp against her skin, laden with the scents of the plants around them. It was all so new and she wanted to take it all in.
The road would hold a vehicle of some kind at a pinch, Hallie thought, and then wondered if the islanders had access to anyvehicles, or even something more basic like a bicycle. Bicycles were rare in low city as the streets in the heart of the city were often too narrow or twisting or crowded to make a bicycle useful, added to which the local gangs took great delight in stealing any bicycles left unattended. But here, with a reasonably flat dirt road ahead of them, Hallie could easily see that a bicycle would be useful. Which made her realise something else.
She kept walking, shoulder to shoulder with Girard, and knew that he had set a deliberately slow pace.
“I was just thinking that a bicycle would be useful here, but there were no vehicles or mechanical equipment in the settlement, apart from the radio,” she said. “All the tools we found, even in the work shed, were hand tools. And that field looked like it had been dug by hand. That seems odd.”
“I noticed that, too,” Girard agreed. “It must have made things really difficult for them.”
“And yet, the settlers somehow managed to build a brick building with a tiled roof. Three, in fact, if we include the work shed. I don’t know how they could have done that with the tools we saw.” Hallie remembered the well-read paper books in the radio room, which made a bit more sense if the people had needed to learn how to do everything by hand rather than with machines.
“It’s strange. We know that settlers here have come from all over the world, and everywhere now has some technology and infrastructure. While I’m sure a lot of people might have come to the island with almost nothing, the first humans got here a couple of decades ago. They can’t have been living all that time with just hand tools and manual labour. This place,” Girard indicated the settlement they were leaving with a jerk of his head, “had underground pipes and plumbing. Surely that needed some kind of mechanical assist?”
Hallie recognised the note in Girard’s voice. He wasn’t really asking her for answers, more talking things through. He’d been given a puzzle and wanted to solve it. She could feel her own curiosity sharpening, mind full of questions. She thought of Rosalia, and her roommate’s wish, at one point, to move to Paradise. Rosalia was tough and capable. But even she would have struggled to cope with the primitive conditions, Hallie thought. They’d only been on the island for a day, and she herself was already missing coffee and a hot shower.
And people.
She’d never thought she could miss people. The streets of low city were often too crowded for her heightened senses, full of dozens of voices, all raised in different conversations or arguments, everyone intent on their own business. Here it was just her and Girard. She was more than content to spend time in Girard’s company. It should have been enough, and it should have been peaceful with no one else around, but she could feel the hair rising on the back of her neck as they walked, leaving the empty settlement behind.
The emptiest place she’d ever been was the land around Cotovatre’s house, Vertiger. And even then, most of the time she’d had other people in earshot. And she’d known there were people in the house and around it, so she’d rarely felt alone. The only time she had really, truly felt alone had been when she’d been confronted with a monster outside and then left to die, with no one else from the house knowing where she was.
Now, though, she had no idea where the settlers had gone, or how many of them had been living in the flimsy buildings or bunk house. She frowned, trying to remember how many beds there had been. Too many for it to have been just one family group, she thought. And then there were the drawings. It hadn’t just been adults living there, trying to establish a settlement, but some of them had brought their children, too. Which madeher curious about what had led them here, away from the main settlement. Someone had chosen the site for a new home, where the settlers were going to have to create everything out of the wild land and forest. It surely would have been easier to do that closer to the first settlement, where there were more people and presumably more established infrastructure and tools to use.
Now she found she couldn’t stop thinking about it, mind turning on the possibilities as she kept pace with Girard along the packed earth road.
A while later and her mind was quiet, curiosity dimmed. Her entire focus was on keeping going, putting one foot in front of the other. The energy from the many bowls of soup that Girard had fed her had long since worn off and her feet were dead weights as she lifted one then the next to keep going.
“Let’s stop for a little bit,” Girard said. “I want to try the phone again.”
“Alright.” Hallie gratefully stopped moving forward and stood, swaying a little, in the middle of the road.
The dirt path had wound its way through increasingly dense shrubs and trees so that they were now in the middle of what Hallie could only call a forest, with great trees to either side blocking out open views of the sky. There were narrow strips of clearer ground to either side of the path, where the shrubs and undergrowth had been cut back, along with a few trees. Hallie could see a few tree stumps not far away.
“Here, let’s sit for a moment,” Girard said, and led them off the road towards the tree stumps.
Hallie didn’t say anything as she struggled across the uneven ground, almost crying with relief when she shed her backpackand sat on the nearest tree stump, not caring that it was still damp from the storm the night before.
“Why didn’t you say you were tired?” Girard asked. He’d shed his own backpack and was crouched in front of her, eyes intent on her face. “You look completely worn out.”
“I didn’t want to be a drag,” Hallie confessed, hearing a plaintive note in her voice and hating it. She was used to working alone. She was used to relying on her own resources. Now that she was still, and sitting, she realised just how exhausted she was. No use to anyone. It had been foolish and dangerous to let herself get so tired. “And I didn’t realise how tired I was until we stopped,” she added, scrubbing her hands across her face.
“Here, try this,” Girard said. He was holding out a protein bar and what looked like a miniature drink can. “It’s an energy drink. It’s mostly caffeine and sugar, with some vitamins,” he told her as she just stared at him.
“Oh. Sounds good. Thank you.” She took both items from him and opened the drink first, taking a cautious sip. “It’s really sweet.”
