Only six hours until today’s noon.
Tick-tock.
CHAPTER
49
CHARLEY
DAY 64, DAWN
I woke, alone.
The bed beside me was cold, and for one terrifying second, I thought Thad was gone. We’d gotten back last night, after nearly two weeks on yet another fruitless Search.
“Hey.” Thad’s voice rang from the doorway. “I didn’t mean to wake you. The waves are pumping. Want to come?” The rising sun shadowed his eyes, and I didn’t like it. “But no pressure,” Thad was saying. “If you want to sleep longer, just say the word.”
“No.” I jumped up. “I’m awake.”
Outside our A-frame, two boards lay on the ground. By the fire, Dex was carving a spear, his back to the Wall. Only now there were two walls, which felt both right and strange.
Sergio was carving the island map in wood, right next to the Naming Wall. When finished, the Master Map would live on, long after the paper maps disintegrated and the ones who made them were gone.
Like me, and like Thad.
As we passed the Wall, Thad’s blank space stood out like a sorethumb. Other blank spots held more meaning than ever. Jillian. Rives. Jason. Macy. All had spaces waiting to be filled, belonging to real people I knew and cared for.
Bart’s space was blank, too, and for all I knew, it might stay that way. The consensus was that he’d either caught a gate or run into trouble. No one gave him much credit for survival, and no one seemed to care.
There was a new name, Naomi. Her accent reminded me of Sabine’s, only less buoyant. She’d been here six days.
I’d been here sixty-four.
And Thad had been here 330.
Trying not to freak out so early in the day, I focused on the dawn. As the rising sun kissed the water, the day’s promise was so fresh, so raw, it gave me hope.
We glided through the channel, with the breeze at our backs. I pulled up on my board, and in that perfect moment, Natalie’s words floated back to me.Time flies here, faster than you’re ready for.
Natalie was right. The last few weeks had flown by, too fast to count—and yet we did. Twenty-six days, twenty-six noons. Fourteen days with no gates at all. Three inbound: one brought a deer; another, a chicken. The third came and went, with no rider at all. Five outbound. Two singles, both moving away, too fast to catch. Two doubles. One was close, so close Thad said he felt the heat, but it collapsed before he made it, almost on top of the Woman in the Maze carving, which of course I’d made a rubbing of to add to my collection. The other double was so distant it may have been wishful thinking. And two days ago, we’d seen a triple, close enough to identify, but too far away to catch. That noon was the worst. To miss three chances was a huge loss, because triples were rare. No wonder Thad doubted my quad.
And I was doubting my charts. The gate wave started in thelower right quadrant of the island—that I believed. It made sense. It fit with the charts and the labyrinths. But after that, gates flashed without a definitive pattern. Like I’d already figured out, they never flashed in the same place two days in a row, or even on the same latitude. But they jumped around, and days would pass without us seeing any gates at all. Something was missing.
No,Iwas missing something. We all were.
And now that I’d seen the Woman in the Maze for myself, I was more convinced than ever that the carvings provided not only the start of the gate wave, but something deeper, something more personal. Something each person had to figure out before he or she could leave. That part I didn’t voice to Thad. On the subject of the labyrinths, his mind was closed.
He floated beside me, studying the horizon. I traced his profile with my eyes, committing the lines of his face to memory.
“I absolutely, completely love you,” I said.
“And I absolutely, completely love you.” Smiling, Thad raised one eyebrow. “What was that for?”
“No regrets,” I said.
“No regrets,” he agreed. His blue eyes sparkled. Then he pointed. “Go, Charley from Georgia. Or you’re gonna miss your wave.”
I didn’t move.
