Luna's Arc

Chapter 22 of 29

Luna woke to the hum of tires on rough road. Gray light filled the bus windows. Around her the children slept in a tangle of arms and coats. Luke lay with his head in her lap, the black kitten curled against his chest, rising and falling with his breath. Luna did not move. She watched her mother's eyes in the wide mirror above the wheel. Harper watched back. "You're awake," she said. Her voice was quiet, worn thin from the long night. She kept both hands on the wheel. The engine growled beneath them. "I owe you the truth. All of it. You've earned that." Luna stroked the kitten and waited. "The harvest isn't a season," Harper said. "It's them. The dead things from the clearing. When they wake, they don't wake alone. They move together, one herd, and they don't stop. They spread through towns. Through cities. They kill everything that still breathes." Her knuckles went pale on the wheel. "Your father and I couldn't stop it. So we did the only thing we could. We hid children. As many as we could carry. We put them where the herd wouldn't look." Luna's throat tightened. "You left me in the woods." "I left you where you could survive." Harper's eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the road. "I trained your hands. I made them remember how to fight. Then I took the memory away, so you wouldn't run toward the danger before you were ready. It was the cruelest thing I've ever done. I did it because I love you." Luke stirred but did not wake. The kitten yawned. Harper reached into her jacket without slowing the bus. She drew out a small metal tool and held it back over her shoulder. "This is yours. I made it a long time ago. I couldn't leave it with you then. It would have told you too much, too soon." Luna took it. The steel was cold and smooth. She turned it over in her palm. Her own name was cut into the polished face. Luna. She pressed her thumb across the letters. Someone had carved them with care, one line at a time. "You had one waiting for me," Luna said. "The whole time." "The whole time." Luna closed her fingers around the tool. The old anger sat in her chest, but something new sat beside it now. Her mother had left her nothing in the woods. That had been a lie. The gift had simply been held back until Luna was strong enough to hold it. She looked at the sleeping children, then at the barred windows, then at the road ahead. "Where are we going?" she asked. "Where do we even go, if the herd is everywhere?" Harper's hands tightened on the wheel. She did not answer. Luna gripped her tool and understood. Her mother did not know either.