Scareship_Issue8

he is not meant to be where they are. He can remember why they
came to the summit. Before he reaches the ground, he is sure he
can remember everything.
When they wake, there is hot, thick rain that makes soft
sounds.
Em blinks once, twice, three times to find Kai near her. He
stands in the grass on slight brown legs like those of a doe. His hair
is stuck to his scalp and he smoothes it back to grin through the
rain at her, but she can see the fear in his eyes even as he climbs
through the dense green world which was made for them but is not
yet theirs.
The sun has come to the sky and there is no more dark, but
when they come from the woods, they find a hole left in the world.
“They did not come for us,” Kai says.
“I knew it.”
“I wish I’d known. How did you—”
She shakes her head and says, “What is a storm?”
He sighs. Repeats, “When the world falls down and bumps its
crown.”
“Did they do it?”
“Make the storm?”
“What were black rolls of sound and white forks of light?”
“Like ash is to snow.”
“It was year’s end,” Em says noncommittally.
“There are still more. Out there,” he says. “But not to save
us.”
In his head, he can see it just as he could when he fell. The
wood box of the radio, the tinny static that came screeching out,
the damp voice of a frightened man who said that the town was not
safe, that they would come like storms, like fear, like war. That no
one would be left when it was done. That they had to hide. That
there was not any place to hide. That this was the end and they
should have known what it meant to hide from the wild.
“I can remember,” Kai says.
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