Perry jostled him lightly. “Wake up. I need you to come with me.”
Cinder’s eyes flew open, and then he climbed down with a clumsy, noisy thump.
Reef and Twig woke. Hyde and Hayden too. Even Strag did. They looked at one another, and then Reef said, “I’ll go,” and rose to follow Perry.
It was just as well. Perry had planned to ask Reef along anyway.
Since the raid, the Six were as protective over him as ever. Perry let them be. He grabbed his bow by the front door, glimpsing the scars Cinder had given him. Like everyone, Perry was made of flesh and bone. He burned and bled. He’d survived the raid and the Aether storm, but how many times would he cheat death? There was a time for risk and a time for caution. Always he struggled to choose between them, but it was something he was learning.
Aether spread across the sky in waves, blue and glowing. Thicker than he’d ever seen, even in the harshest winters. The sun would rise and the day would brighten a bit, but they would still be in the blue, marbled light.
With Cinder and Reef at his sides, Perry took to the northern trail beyond the compound, passing a field of dead wood that tickled his nose with fine ash and left Reef sneezing. Neither of them asked where Perry was taking them—for which he was grateful. With every step, his pulse beat faster.
He glanced at Cinder, who was anxious, his temper vibrant and green. They hadn’t talked about what had happened in the raid. Perry had taken him aside a few minutes a day and showed him how to shoot a bow. Cinder was terrible—skitty and impatient—but he tried. And he seemed to have grown closer to Willow, who’d likely saved his life. They sat together in the cookhouse now, and a few days ago Perry had run into them on the harbor trail and seen Willow wearing Cinder’s cap.
The dirt path narrowed as it wove farther away from the compound. The earth was uneven and rocky here, no good for farming, but it was a good place to hunt—it had been, when that was how he spent his days. After an hour, the trail cut west and brought them to a cliff overlooking the sea. Below, the bluff wrapped around a small cove. Black rocks of every size jutted up along the beach and out on the water.
Perry glanced back at Reef and Cinder. “There’s a cave down there that I need you to see.”
Reef pushed his braids back, looked at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher. Perry could’ve searched for his temper, but chose not to. He climbed down the craggy slope, over rocks and hard sand and tussocks of grass. He’d done this a hundred times with Roar and Liv and Brooke. This climb had meant freedom then. An escape from the never-ending chores at the compound, and the closeness of tribe life. Now, instead of feeling eagerness to reach a hideaway, he felt like he was heading into a trap.
Skitty with nerves, he realized he was moving too quickly, and had to force himself to slow down and wait for Cinder and Reef, who were upsetting small avalanches behind him.
When they reached the sand, he was out of breath, but not from the climb. The steep walls of the bluff curved around him in the shape of a horseshoe, and he could already feel the weight of the rock inside the cave pressing down on him. The surf crashed against the shore. It felt like it pounded inside his chest. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. What he was about to say—and show them.
“This way.” He led them to the narrow cleft in the rock face—the entrance to the cave—and slipped inside before he could change his mind. He had to lean at an angle to fit along the narrow crevice until the way opened into the vast main cavity inside. Then he stood and made himself breathe, in and then out, in and then out, as he told himself the walls wouldn’t fold on him. Wouldn’t crush him beneath unknown tons.
It was cold and damp in the dim cavern, but sweat ran down his back and along his ribs, dripping from him. A brackish smell flowed into his nose, and a hollow silence roared in his ears. His chest was tight—as tight as it’d been under the churning water the day of the Aether storm. No matter how many times he’d been there, it was always this way at first.
Finally he found his breath, and looked around.
Daylight streamed in behind him, enough for him to see the vastness of the space—of the wide, open belly of the cave. His gaze moved to a stalagmite in the distance: a formation shaped like a jellyfish, with dripping, melting tendrils. From where he stood, it looked small and only fifty yards off. It was actually many times his height and a hundred yards away. He knew, because he’d shot arrows at it from there. He and Brooke had. A year ago, he’d stood in the same spot with her while Roar whooped loudly, laughing at the way the sound echoed, and Liv wandered off, exploring the deeper reaches of the cave.
Reef and Cinder stood in silence beside him, eyes wide and scanning, glinting in the low light. He wondered if they could see what he saw.
Perry cleared his throat. It was time for him to explain. To justify something he hated and didn’t want to admit.
“We need a place to go if we lose the compound. I won’t wander the borderlands with the tribe, searching for food, for shelter from the Aether. This is big enough to fit us all.... There are tunnels that lead to other caverns. And it’s defensible. It won’t burn. We can fish from the cove, and there’s a freshwater source inside.”
Every word that came out of him felt like an effort. He didn’t want to say any of this. He didn’t want to bring his people underground, to this dark place. To live like the ghostlike creatures from the deep sea.
Reef looked at him for a long moment. “You think it will come to this.”
Perry nodded. “You know the borderlands better than I do. You think I want to take River and Willow out there?”