We fly for a long time. I’m not sure of the direction because I can’t see the sky above me. The alien blocks my view. The entire core of my body hurts from his tight grasp and my face starts to feel chapped from the wind. But at least I am warm. His body radiates heat and it exchanges easily between us.

  He sets me down in the darkness and I stumble a few paces before tripping and falling over. The palms of my hands sting as I reach out to try and catch my fall, but only succeed in slamming down on the ground. I realize I’m on a rock and after I adjust to the starlight I look up and find the Milky Way. Instantly my eyes are drawn down to the beacon of hope that dominates the western horizon. Peak City has never looked so beautiful and I smile as I realize where we are.

  "You ever go there?" Tier asks me casually as I stand back up, like we’re just a couple of friends taking in the view.

  I snort out a grunt. "I grew up twenty miles from the border, of course I go there." Peak City is the capital of the Mountain Republic. The western edge of the Rural Republic bucks up against the planet pad where the suborbitals land. Technically the pad belongs to us, as it’s inside our border, but since we’re such a small country and very few of our citizens will ever require a suborbital, we lease the land to the MR for a tidy sum that pays for our exceptional military.

  "So it’s not forbidden for you to leave yer Republic?"

  "Where’d you ever get that idea?" I scowl at him. People think that just because we don’t have certain modern amenities that we’re backwards. It’s really only the entertainment shit we renounce and it’s beyond ignorant to believe that people who shun screens are backwards. We simply have better things to do than sit around watching strangers do stuff, then try to convince ourselves it’s fun.

  He shrugs. "You Farm Families seem to have a lot of rules."

  "Yeah, we do. But we’re not prisoners. If you’re not Farm you can even work in the MR. Lots of people in our Council do. But if you’re Farm, then," I shrug, "your job is here taking care of your land and making it productive. The city is just a nice place to visit and that’s pretty much it."

  "Do you resent that?"

  "What kind of crap is this? Some third-degree on my political leanings?"

  "From what I can tell, you seem to resent quite a bit about following rules."

  "Well, you don’t even know me, so how the hell would you know anyway?"

  "So, all the trouble you’ve caused over the past few months is – what? A strange coincidence?"

  "For your information I went into the Stag to see if a friend was OK," I lie. "My father just died and Dale didn’t show up for the funeral. So I was – worried."

  "OK. Let’s just pretend that’s true. What about all the other stuff?"

  I look back at him. He’s standing with his feet apart, arms crossed over his chest, and his wings are not quite closed tight against his body, but neither are they in any way extended. Relaxed, maybe? The wing tips sneak out from behind his body in an upturned lift, like they cross somewhere at the small of his back.

  I stop myself from staring. "What other stuff?"

  His head nods up and down as he grits his teeth, which makes his jaw muscles tighten. But he doesn’t answer me. Instead, he turns his back and walks away. I can see his wings first-hand now, and they do cross over each other, but they also seem to have a life of their own – like the ears on a horse – rotating and lifting in reaction to external stimuli.

  He stops at a dark shadow along the edge of the mountain. It’s about three feet long and two feet high. There are thick roots from the tall conifers that dominate the side of the mountain branching over it, half concealing it from view. If I didn’t see Tier approach it, I might never have noticed the little opening. He bends down and sticks his feet in the hole, then pushes back the woody tree roots and slips inside, leaving me alone in the darkness.

  I wait for several seconds but he doesn’t come back so I get to my feet and walk over to see what he’s up to. I try to see in the little hole, but it’s too dark. His head pops back out and I scream in surprise, covering my mouth as he looks up at me, startled. "Why are ya just standing there?"

  I shrug. "What do you want me to do?"

  He grabs my ankles and pulls, making me fall on my ass. Then he’s dragging me under the ground into the dark hole, my dress rolls up and the rocks are scraping against my plasma-burned back. Once inside I kick him hard in the shoulder and he lets go. "Get off me, you jerk!"

  He puts his face right up to mine and I feel my heart jump. "I’m tired of playing games with ya, girl. If you see me go somewhere, ya follow. Understand?"

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  I consider saying something nasty back to him, but his eyes are glowing again and I take that as a sign that his patience is running on empty. So I just nod.

  He turns and begins to slide down the rocky hill inside the mountain and I follow, trying my best not to let loose an avalanche of stones on his head. The only light we have is from a lightstick that is the same color as his eyes. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that his eyes aren’t actually providing some light as well.

  When we get to the bottom of the hill we stop and then he disappears into another dark shadow in the ground, taking the lightstick with him so I’m left in complete darkness.

  Again his head pops back up when I hesitate. "Jump down, Junco."

  "No. I’m not jumping into some dark hole, you’re crazy. If you want to take me somewhere go ahead, but you’re not stuffing me down into a hole."

  "Jump in the hole, Junco. Or I’ll leave ya here and you’ll wander around in the dark until the nightdogs get a hold of yer scent and eat ya alive."

  Fuck.

  I climb in after him, ignoring the stench of guano, the spiderwebs that flit against my cheeks, and the noises that echo off the walls. It isn’t really a hole, more like a rooftop entrance into a larger cavern which opens up into a series of tall terraced steps that takes us further and further into the belly of the mountain. Eventually it morphs into a fairly well-defined tunnel.

  The terraced steps are flat, which hints that someone shaped this passageway, but the sides of the tunnel are absolutely man-made. Even in the extremely dim light I can see the toolmarks left from when it was drilled. There must be more entrances, larger entrances, that can accommodate heavy machines.

  We walk on like this for a while. It’s hard to tell how long. All I know is that I am exhausted from tripping over various small objects that seem to present themselves under my feet at every opportunity. We cross a small stream, thankfully not too deep, and then I spot a faint light source up ahead. Tier grabs my hand and pulls me towards it. The width of the tunnel expands with the growing light until it empties into a spectacular wide-open cavern filled with so many different types of cave formations that it takes my breath away.

  "All this time I’ve been living next to this place and I never knew it."

  "You barely know anything, Junco." He takes my hand again and pulls me to the center of the cavern, spins me around a few times, and lets go.

  "Hey, what the hell?"

  "Look around."

  I pivot on my heel and frown at what I see.

  "You’ll think twice about running off then, eh?"

  I nod and find a seat at a camp table set up in the center of the room and the exhaustion takes over as I survey my new surroundings. He won’t need to bind me or stick me in a hole here because there are three identical openings leading into the cavern, each one equidistant to the next. I have no idea which one we just came through.

  "How long have you been here?" I ask as I take in the mounds of supplies layered around the central clearing.

  He’s pulling some stuff out of a container and piling it on the floor beside him. "Long enough for it to feel like home."

  My mouth makes a little O shape as I spy a sleeping bag on the ground. I crawl over to it and sink into the surprisingly soft and buoyant blankets, watching him as he prepares some sort of food. "What’s that?"

  "Nutrition," is all he comes back with.

  I yawn. "Doesn’t look very good."

  "Then don’t eat it."

  "I won’t, believe me." And then my eyes close and I drift off.

  The planks on the deck are warm under your feet and you’re wearing a long thin white shirt, open in the front, that barely covers your body. The waves lap against the dock and you reach over and drag your fingers through the water. It folds against your wrist and slaps up the side of your arm. The drops bead against your oiled skin, pool together, then spring forth into a trickle which takes the liquid back to the source. The mountains are high and imposing and then they crowd in and consume you as the sunlight disappears...

  No. That’s not what happens.

  I wake up and know immediately I am alone. There is a bowl of cold food sitting next to me and a note written in some gibberish. Did he really just do that? Write me a note in a language that I can’t read? I toss it and smell the food as I consider how hungry I am.

  Not enough to eat that shit.

  I stand and stretch, taking in the room again. This time my head is much clearer, but my back is creaking from sleeping on the cold cave floor. I have no idea how long I was out but I feel pretty well-rested.

  The chamber is large, about fifty feet long and maybe thirty feet at its widest point. It narrows where a massive stalactite and stalagmite meet to form a column the width of a sequoia trunk.

  The roof of the cave is adorned with thousands of breathtaking stone icicles and there are large white crystals growing out of every crevice. My eyes follow the cave wall to the end and see hundreds of drapery formations hanging from the ceiling. Water flows down the curving rock and deposits into a small pool.

  The floor is almost smooth, but there are soft mounds of rock which makes me think of flowing lava. This pitches the ground up and down like rolling hills as I walk.

  I stand in the middle, half in awe of this cave being here in the first place, and half in awe because I am actually standing in it.

  There are three wide tunnels that lead to this central room. That they are man-made I have no doubt. Whether they are enough to keep me from escaping is another story.

  I study the three exits with a critical eye. They aren’t all the same; they just looked that way at first because I was in a new place and I was exhausted. But now I can see subtle differences.

  If you stand inside one there is a long dark column obstructing the view into the cave as you enter. I know I didn’t see that as we passed through, so I knock that one off the list right away. Now there are only two, and if I take a chance, I have a fifty-fifty shot of picking the right one and walking right out of here and back to my house.

  I study them a little more and walk a few paces into each one to see if there are other landmarks. The walls of one has a formation near the entrance that I remember from school. Moonmilk. I think I would have noticed that, even if I was delusional.

  I walk over to the remaining cave and search for anything that might strike it off the list, but there is nothing there to make me hesitate. Then I search through Tier’s supplies and find some flares, stuff some disgusting food into my boot, and grab some rope because rope is something you should probably have in a cave.

  I take one last look around and then head into the dying light that semi-permeates the tunnel.