And in the waiting, the Astronomer would need to hide.
She would go where no one would find her, where time would slip over her, decades, generations, until she would become a rumor, a story talked about and almost forgotten, a woman who was lost.
Alone.
Because only the Architect knew the way to the sea, and that made him just as valuable, just as hunted. Together, the Astronomer and the Architect were dangerous.
The Astronomer began marking her skin with ink, tattoos to chart a course—a map,a way—while the Architect had a ring forged by a blacksmith in Fort Bell, stamping the constellation Circinus into the metal—a symbol of the draftsman’s compass.
Each with their own marks, their own tokens, they hoped that the generations who came after them would be able to find one another.
They sacrificed themselves, kissing one last time beneath a half-waning moon, the Architect holding her close, the pain of letting her go almost too much. But they didn’t have a choice.
They said goodbye.
And the Astronomer watched the Architect walk over the ridge and out into the plains, before she, too, turned and began her march to the west, to look for a place far from the other towns and colonies. Far from everything. She walked for days, until she came upon a valley where a river carved its way through the rock cliff. She would build a small, quiet life. Where she would teach her daughter—now growing in her belly—to map the stars.
She would stay hidden.
And when the child was born, she would teach her of responsibility. Teach her to stay in the valley, safe. Teach her to wait for the sister stars to appear, and then maybe they would be saved.
ELEVEN
The wind carries scents of aged wood and salt before our feet have even reached the beach.
We pick our way through sawtooth rocks, descending the mountains quickly, before finally stepping onto the black-sand beach. The softness beneath my boots is such a relief, tears spill down my cheeks, and a smile edges across my lips.
We made it.
“August said this place is called Turnback Beach,” Noah says, lifting a hand over his eyes, the shrill cry of birds carried on the wind as they circle over the foaming sea.
I breathe in the salty air, clouds sitting low and somber over us, burdened by moisture. It will rain soon. “Why?”
“Because anyone who makes it this far should turn back and go home. He said this is the end of the continent. There’s nothing beyond this.” Noah squints through the mist rising off the water, eyes glassy, as if recalling the few stories that August told him over the years—stories passed from one Architect to the next—the passage he might someday take to get here with the Astronomer at his side. I can almost see the years of waiting in his eyes.
Waiting for me.
And now we’ve arrived, standing on the beach that I’ve tried to imagine in my mind for most of my life. A place I struggled to believe I’d truly reach someday.
Our feet make watery depressions in the sand, a path from the spiky mountains to the edge of the sea, where the waves are sliding foamy and slick across the black sand. But the ocean is not docile, a gentle rolling. The tide—a thing my mother described to me in one of her many lessons—lashes against the beach, waves crashing violently several yards out, a great explosion of sound, before they push up onto the shore.
Noah squints out at the heaving, tossing sea, a weariness in his eyes—all the miles we’ve traveled cut into his face. “What now?”
I scan the water’s edge, but there’s nothing here. “There’s supposed to be a ship,” I mutter under my breath, something I haven’t said aloud until now. A part of the story that Mom told, that I’ve kept all to myself.
But maybe we’re too late. Maybe too much time has passed, generations, a hundred years. Anything could have happened in that time. It could have long ago drifted away or sunk in the violent waters.
“A ship?” Noah repeats, stepping closer to the sea, the water sliding up across his boots. “Could it be out there?” He points across the ocean to where a rocky formation—a small island—sits just offshore against the stormy sky. “Hidden on the other side?”
I squint through the mist. “Maybe. But how do we reach it?”
Noah’s jaw tenses, not liking the answer he’s about to give. “We swim.”
Gray-spotted seagulls sit perched atop the jagged rocks at the center of the island, then dive out over the water, hunting for fish, while waves thunder against the beach, exploding when they hit the sand. I try to imagine a way through without drowning. But this sea is nothing like the river back in the valley—the predictable flow of the water always moving in one direction.
“But the water’s too dangerous right now,” he adds. “We should wait until low tide, for the waves to settle.”
“We might not have time.” I flash a look at the mountain ridge behind us, knowing Holt might not be far behind. Knowing the sky above is breaking apart—the darkness above looking too close, filling up too much of the horizon. A smear of black where there should be gray-blue sky.
