Scene 1. The Dying Engine
He came out of the water.
His foot struck stone. Moss soaked with moisture slipped beneath his sole. The slope began. Dirt dug into the top of his foot. Wet trousers clung to his legs, making a slapping sound with each step.
Chak. Chak. Chak.
The boy was following behind. He could tell by the pulling force of the hand gripping his shirt-tail. The force was weakening. At first it had been a fist. Now it was two or three fingers. Not gripping the cloth—hanging from it.
Halfway up the slope, the force disappeared.
Thuk.
The sensation of the hand falling away from his shirt-tail. The pull severed. Ian did not stop. One more step. Two. Behind him, a sound. The dull thud of knees striking dirt. Then the sound of a body toppling sideways. Grass being crushed.
He looked back.
The boy had collapsed onto his side. Moonlight trickled between the brush and outlined only the boy's contour. A curled back. Trembling shoulders. The breath leaking from his mouth was short and broken.
Huk. Huk. Huk.
The sound of teeth chattering had stopped. Not enough strength left to shiver.
The engine was dying.
Ian descended the slope. Two steps. He stood in front of the boy. Looked down. The boy's lips were the color of dirt in the moonlight. His fingers were clutching the grass. Not clutching—locked in that position.
He bent at the waist. Seized the boy's collar at the nape. The wet fabric slipped in his grip. He squeezed harder. The cloth wound tight around the boy's neck.
Dragged.
Across the dirt. Across the grass. The boy's body scraped along. Not heavy. The weight of a child. But the dirt created friction. The boy's side caught on a jutting stone. Something like a moan leaked from the boy's mouth. Ian did not stop. He dragged past the stone.
"Get up."
No answer.
At the crest of the slope, a boulder came into view. A black mass lodged in the earth. The underside was hollowed out. A gap carved by wind and rain. Wide enough for two bodies to squeeze inside. The floor within was dry dirt. No moss. A place the water did not reach.
He shoved the boy into the gap. Closer to throwing than shoving. The boy's back struck the inner wall. A dull thud. The boy slid down and crumpled to the floor.
Ian pushed his body into the gap.
Scene 2. The Ember in the Palm
The inside of the boulder was dark.
Moonlight entering through the opening drew an oblique rectangle on the dry dirt floor. Beyond the edge of that light, nothing was visible. The boy lay somewhere in the dark. Only his breathing marked his position. Short, shallow breaths. Between them, a dry cough.
Ian opened his right hand.
He looked up at the palm. In the dark, even the lines of the palm were invisible. He curled and uncurled his fingers. The joints were stiff. Fingers that had swollen in the water and begun to dry were shriveling.
He called the flame.
Light bloomed at the center of his palm. At first it was orange. A fingernail-sized point of orange that settled onto the lines of his palm. The point flickered. Not trying to die. Ian was suppressing it. Caging what wanted to spread within his grip. Different from destruction. Not detonating—compressing. The flame inward, inward, further inward.
The orange changed.
The edge of the point bled from orange to white. The core deepened. Beyond white into something bluish, condensed at the very center of the point. Smaller than the tip of a needle. That point was three or four times brighter than the surrounding orange. A light that stung the eyes. Light escaping between his fingers drew shadows on the boulder's ceiling.
The shadows were moving.
Each time the flame wavered, the shadows on the rock wall stretched and shrank. The shadows of Ian's fingers spread across the wall like enormous talons, then contracted when the flame subsided. The cracks in the rock's surface caught the light and emerged like capillaries. Every pebble on the dry dirt floor dragged its own shadow.
The boy was visible.
Slumped on his side against the inner wall. Eyes closed. His lips carried a bluish tint. What had been dirt-colored under moonlight was bruised violet under the flame. Wet clothes clung to his body, outlining every rib. With each inhale, the fabric rose and fell imperceptibly.
Ian tilted his palm toward the boy.
Heat moved. He could see it spreading from the flame. Not directly visible. What he could see was white steam beginning to rise from the boy's wet clothes. From the shoulders. From the chest. Vapor climbed in thin threads, struck the boulder's ceiling, and dissolved. The flame's light passing through the steam created an amber haze.
Ian held the flame's size. Did not let it grow. Fingernail-sized. No larger. If it ran wild, the rock would heat up. A heated rock leaves a thermal trace. A thermal trace leads to tracking.
The bluish point in his palm pulsed in a steady rhythm. The orange fringe expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted. Like a heart. Not in time with Ian's heart. The flame's rhythm was slower. Ian's heart was slowing to match the flame.
The steam was diminishing. The clothes were drying. The white thread rising from the boy's shoulder thinned. The chest was still wet. The back, pressed against the rock wall, was beyond the heat's reach.
Ian adjusted the angle of his palm by a fraction.
The direction of the heat swung from the shoulders to the back. Steam rose from the rock wall behind the boy. The moisture trapped between wall and spine was evaporating. The flame's shadow rotated slowly across the rock. As far as Ian's wrist moved.
The boy's trembling was subsiding. The spasms in his shoulders grew further apart. His breathing lengthened. What had been short and fractured was beginning, little by little, to connect.
Ian watched the flame. The small light on his palm. The blue point at the center glinting inside the orange glow. In the facility, this flame had been something that melted walls and burned people. Now it was drying wet clothes.
The same flame.
Only a different size.
Scene 3. The Rule
The boy opened his eyes.
Ian knew it by sound. The tiny sound of lashes peeling apart where they had stuck together. Following that, the movement of pupils rolling to find focus reflected the flame's light. In the dark, two small circles flared orange.
The boy's gaze settled on Ian's palm.
He was watching the flame. The fingernail-sized light where orange and white commingled. The boy's pupils locked on it and did not move. His mouth hung half-open. The sound of a dry swallow echoed inside the rock.
Gulp.
The coarse sound of a parched throat.
Ian read the boy's face.
The violet hue of his lips had faded. Not fully returned. But no longer the color of dirt. Warmth was spreading across his cheeks. Whether it was the flame's glow or actual color, he could not distinguish. It didn't matter. The breathing continued. Unbroken. That was enough.
Ian extinguished the flame.
He curled his fingers. As the fist closed, the flame shrank. The orange light receded. The shadows withdrew from the rock wall. The blue point remained to the last. A needle-tip of blue glinted once from between his knuckles and went out.
Darkness returned.
But this time, it was not total darkness. Moonlight entering through the boulder's opening drew a rectangle on the floor. His eyes began to adjust. The boy's outline emerged gradually. He was sitting with his back against the rock. He had raised his torso from the position he'd been lying in. When he'd sat up, Ian had not seen. He had been focused on the flame.
The boy's gaze rose.
From Ian's extinguished fist to Ian's jaw. From the jaw to the eyes. Their gazes met.
Ian read. What was inside the boy's eyes. Fear was there. Fear of a being who holds flame in his hand. But beneath it, something else was layered. His mouth was about to open. His lips stirred. He was trying to say something. Ian knew what it was.
"Forget it."
The boy's mouth closed.
Gratitude. That was what he had been about to say. Ian cut it off before it could emerge. Gratitude changes the relationship. Transforms it into a bond of debts given and received. That was not their relationship.
Silence settled. From outside the boulder, the sound of wind scraping branches entered.
Swish. Swish.
A rhythmic sound. Between it, the boy's breathing. Ian's breathing. Two breaths dividing the air inside the rock.
Ian opened his mouth.
"If you're going to stay at my side, don't break."
The boy's shoulders flinched. His head dropped. His gaze fell to the floor.
Ian was not looking at the boy. He was looking at the darkness beyond the boulder's opening. The black outlines of trees where moonlight did not reach. Somewhere beyond them, the pursuers. Not visible now. Not visible did not mean not there.
"As long as you're useful, I'll give you your share of the heat."
Dry. The exchange of fuel for output. The voice of someone reading the clauses of a contract.
"When you stop being useful."
He broke off.
Did not say what came after. No need to. The boy's back pressed harder into the rock wall. That was the answer. It meant he understood.
Wind blew again. The sound of scraping branches entered the rock. The boy drew his knees to his chest. His half-dried trousers had stiffened. He buried his chin in his knees. Did not close his eyes. He was staring down at the dry dirt of the boulder's floor.
Ian did not close his eyes either.
He was watching the boulder's opening. The rectangle of moonlight on the floor was slowly tilting. The moon was moving. Time was passing.
The two of them sat inside the rock. No words. Only the sound of wind and the sound of breathing struck the rock walls and returned.
Scene 4. Straight Line
The light changed.
What entered through the boulder's opening was no longer moonlight. The color was different. Moonlight was silver. What entered now was gray. Colorless light filtered through the trees and was erasing the rectangle on the boulder's floor. The rectangle's edges blurred. The light seeped deep enough to reveal the cracks in the rock wall.
Dawn.
Ian rose.
The inside of his thigh throbbed. A spot that had locked up from sitting through the night. His knee made a sound when he straightened it.
Puk.
A dry sound. Ignored. He extracted himself from the gap. He braced a hand on the edge of the opening and climbed onto the boulder.
Where he stood was the crest of the slope.
Trees descended in a gradient below him. A forest. The gray morning had settled onto the leaves. The leaves drank the light and gleamed leaden. Because of the dew. Between the trees, fog lay low. The fog was erasing the forest's floor. Only the trunks rose above the fog. Like columns. Endlessly repeating columns.
Ian turned his gaze. Left to right. Slowly.
He was drawing what could not be seen. The pursuers' cordon. The search party launched from the facility would be spreading in a circle. The circle's center: the facility. Its radius: the distance covered overnight. They had followed the valley stream south. The search would fan in all directions, but where there was a watercourse, they would concentrate downstream. This slope sat west of the watercourse. It could be a gap in the search. It could also not be.
His gaze stopped at the south.
Between the repeating black outlines of trees, there was something else. Not a tree. Wedged among the irregular curves of branches—a straight line. A short, horizontal straight line. Trees do not make straight lines. Straight lines are made by people.
Ian's eyes narrowed. The fog had not lifted and the shape was unidentifiable. But it was a straight line. It could be the railing of a road. It could be the roofline of a building. It could be abandoned. It could be not abandoned.
Either way, it was where the forest ended.
Ian looked down beneath the boulder. Inside the gap, the boy was looking up. Knees drawn to his chest. Eyes wide.
"We move."
Short. That was all.
Ian came down from the boulder. He walked toward the slope. Behind him, the sound of the boy crawling out of the gap. Fabric scraping rock. Feet striking dirt. The sound of following.
He descended into the forest where the fog lay low.
Toward the straight line.