It stole my breath. I spun in a slow circle, trembling at the size of it. I tilted my head back and saw overhead a vast field of black, spattered with brightness. I wanted to crouch down and cover my head. It was too much space, and horror overwhelmed me.
“Easy,” Fade said. “Look down. Trust me.”
He was right. When I looked at the ground, the terror dialed back. From that point, I didn’t look up more than I had to. Tall things surrounded us, mostly blocking my view. Shards of glass and broken stones littered the ground. The air was full of sounds I couldn’t identify, after having known only enclave noises. Wind rustled through rock, creating a mournful kind of song. Chitters and scrapes alarmed me. We weren’t alone, and I didn’t like not knowing what waited in the dark.
Down below, I always knew.
I refused to show my fear. Lock it down, Huntress.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing.
“Buildings, mostly abandoned.”
Some towered, spearing up to unimaginable heights. I couldn’t even imagine how such a thing had come to be built. Others had buckled and toppled, leaving rubble strewn all over the ground. That, I was used to.
The air didn’t burn the inside of my chest, at least, and it smelled fresher than I’d expected, based on the stories. No rot, no fetid wind like that down below. And I didn’t feel sick from standing here. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the elders had lied. Or maybe things had changed Topside since we first took shelter down below.
While I tried to get my bearings, he fitted the metal circle back in place and stomped it down. We stood in the center of an endless stretch of old rock. It didn’t look natural. Despite its age and poor condition, I thought it looked like something poured down and left to harden.
“I think you better tell me everything you know about this place,” I said shakily.
“I will,” Fade promised. “But first we should find shelter. There are no Freaks up here—at least there didn’t used to be—but from what I remember, there are other dangers.”
“There are places to hide all around us.”
He nodded. “But they’re marked. See?” As we walked, he pointed out bits of white or red paint marking the buildings. “The Topside gangs take their territory seriously. We don’t want to cross anyone.”
“What’s a gang?”
“Kind of like the enclave,” he said. “But meaner.”
“Is that why you left? To get away from the gangs?”
“Partly.”
I saw I’d get no answers while he was distracted and scanning the buildings, so I tried to help. I might not know what the symbols meant, but I could tell if they were present. We’d been walking for a while over the rough stone path—it buckled in spots as if the world had lifted up and given it a sound shake—when Fade spotted a crumbling red building that bore no marks at all.
“Here?” I asked.
“Let’s check it out.” He ran up three stairs to the door; it swung open when he tried it. But he stumbled away, one hand pressed to his face. “Stay back. There’s a reason nobody has claimed this place.”
The distance we covered seemed incredible to me. All the while, I fought my urge to panic. I couldn’t be up here. To combat the feeling, I focused on the new sights. Something flapped above us in the dark and I ducked down, curling myself into a ball.
“What was that?”
Fade was smiling. “It’s a bird. They can’t eat you. You’re too big.”
It sailed upward, riding the wind. The wings showed in silhouette, tapered and graceful. I marveled at the existence of such a marvelous creature, and wondered how it must feel to move like that, all elegance and velocity.
“All the old stories are true,” I breathed.
“Most of them.”
We walked until my feet hurt. I saw more birds, perched on poles and buildings. Rusted metal wrecks sat here and there along the street. Fade told me they were called cars and they’d once owned the surface we walked on. I found that hard to believe. Plants had forced their way through the cracks, giving the rock a mossy, uneven look.
The sky had begun to lighten by the time we found a building that didn’t smell terrible and didn’t bear any gang markings. Fade tried the door, but it was locked.
“Maybe there’s another way in?”
We circled and found in the back something Fade called a window—low enough for me to slide through. Fade wanted to, but it was too small. I waved off his concern.
“I’m a Huntress,” I said, out of habit. “I’ll be fine.”
And then it hit me all over again. I had no right to call myself that. I squashed the sadness and let him boost me up. The window slid open and I wormed my way through it. I hung upside down and managed to twist to my feet as I dropped. On the way down, I banged my shoulder on the wall.
When I got my bearings, I saw I stood in a dark room, but I could make out the shape of the door. Even the dark didn’t seem as black as it had down below. Maybe there were benefits to being Topside. I avoided the junk: dusty piles of broken glass and items that had rotted away or crumbled into dust. Still there were a few things I recognized like eating utensils, bottles, plates, and cups in different colors and patterns. The Wordkeeper would die of excitement if he could see this place.
After some fiddling, I managed to unfasten all the bolts, and then I opened the door to let Fade in. He joined me, redid all the latches, and then took a look around.
“It’s a storeroom. I think this was a shop of some kind.”
“A shop?”
“Where people traded.”
It sounded like a good idea. At the enclave, we’d held a shop on a regular basis in the common room, where we could examine what everyone else had and then barter for it with our best items. But if you lived in different buildings, people needed a place to gather and trade.
“Let’s take a look around.”
I led the way out, down a dark hall and into a bigger room. Metal shelves—we’d scavenged a few like that over the years—stood mostly empty. There were only a few tins left, nothing familiar, though, nothing I’d ever seen before. Broken glass crunched underfoot. Another door led to a waste closet, but this one didn’t smell like the other. Nearby, Fade twisted a handle but nothing happened.
“There used to be water, sometimes,” he said. “We used to drink it, my dad and me, but then he got sick.”