The Rift

“You’re not go

“Would if I thought you actually knew one.”

“Hey,” called Alpha. “You seeing this?”

I peered into the depths. Straight ahead and nowhere at all. But then I did glimpse it. A white light flashing. And right away, we were all slipping through the mud towards it.

We peered up at a small plastic lantern that had been stuck in the dirt. The light was faint and flickering, but it marked an entrance to a tu

The tu

But the tu

There were footprints ru

So there was power ru

Juice. And water, and footprints. So, somewhere, there’d be people. It was just a question of when we might find them.

And who they might be.

We rounded a couple more bends, then slid down against the walls, exhausted. Our skin full of mud, but our bellies so empty, our muscles so weak.

Namo knelt down, and Crow crawled off the beast, carefully lowering himself to the dirt. Then he clawed his way over so he was next to me, his head in his hands once he leaned back on the wall. Alpha and Kade were slumped opposite, against the water pipe, the pale, plastic light chattery above their heads.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alpha said to Crow. She kicked gently at one of his splinted wooden legs, and the limb looked pretty solid now, purple thread all bound up with the bark, but that leg just wobbled when Alpha kicked it, and I don’t think Crow even felt it at all.

“Hey,” she said to him. “It’s all right. We all saw crazy beneath those peaks.” Alpha rubbed her wrist where the skin was bruised from him gripping it.

I glanced at Kade and wondered what he might have seen beneath the Speak It Mountains. And had it really been madness? Is that what it had felt like?

No. Not for me, anyway. Those mountains had shown me something I needed to see.

“Looks like we made it.” Kade gazed at the dirt above us. “I’ve heard of tu

“I thought them was sewers,” I said. “Concrete.”

“Well, we’re not near Niagara.” Crow ran his hand along the wall behind him. He flitted his gaze quick between us, as if seeing if we’d still listen to him at all. “This dirt be too dry.”

“Someone’s got these lights ru

I scrambled forward so I was between the three of them. Then I began to sketch out a big square in the dirt.

Namo was rolled up on his side, flicking his trunk at my drawing and making these little sighing sounds. And the mammoth’s breathing was the only noise in that tu

“What’s this?” said Alpha, looking at the lines I had drawn.

“I been thinking things through.”

I pointed at the top edge of the square. “Above this line is the Rift,” I told them, then I scratched all the way across the bottom edge. “And here’s the South Wall. East and west, we got the coasts, the Surge,” I pointed, “here and here. So if we’re under the northern Steel Cities,” I marked a spot inside the northeast corner of the square, “then we’re somewhere around here. And if we get out of this tu

“You want to go to the Guild?” Crow said. Maybe it came out louder than he’d wanted.

“Yeah. All those old world machines. Gadgets and tools. Weapons. I figure they’d be good in a fight.”

“What fight you talking about, little man?”

I pulled the pack of trees off my shoulder. Laid it next to the map I had made. “For the first time in a hundred years, we got something to grow that ain’t owned by GenTech. Right?”

With my finger, I drew a thick line right down the center of the map, showing GenTech’s cornfields, ru

“This is what they did with their power,” I said, pointing to Vega. “They put it all in one place. Built themselves up by keeping other folk down. And now GenTech’s go

“Us against the Purple Hand,” Alpha said, nodding.

“Yeah,” I said. “Us. All of us.”

“Then we head to Waterfall City.” Crow pushed himself from the wall and jabbed a finger in the dirt map, marking another spot in the northeast corner, further inland than the Steel Cities. “I know what it comes down to, man. Known it all along. But if we go

“We’ll head there,” I said. “Right after we head to the Guild’s headquarters and get them on our side.”

“We should head to whichever one’s closer,” said Kade.

“No.” Alpha folded her arms across her chest. “We should head to Old Orleans, bud. Like you said that we would.”

“It’s too far,” I said, my eyes pleading with hers. “We’ll get there, though. Later. I promise.”

“You already promised. You and me, that’s what you said.”

“But it’s like Kade’s saying, we should go wherever’s closer.”

“So you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.” I struggled to keep my voice down. “I just know now what we gotta do.”

“And what do you know about starting a war?” she said. “We need to gather the armies from across the plains. Anyone got a score to settle with the Purple Hand, it’s the pirates.”

“We all got a score to settle,” said Crow. “Not just your people GenTech beat down to nothing.”

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s what I’m saying—we don’t need an army, we need every army. All of them. We have to share the weight.” I pointed at the bag full of trees. “And then we all share the wealth.”

Alpha shook her head. “There’s only six of those saplings, bud.”

“But they’ll grow tall and they’ll spread, and they’ll keep on going. A forest for everyone. A forest growing apples for people to eat. It’s like Zee said, we work together. Give people roots and branches, and it’ll bind us as one.” Wasn’t that why Pop had taught me to build trees in the first place? To show people the world could still be something special?

And now I knew what sort of builder I had to be.

“I saw it,” I told them. “Beneath the mountains. I saw what would happen if one tribe’s more powerful than the others. Hell, we’ve all seen it happen, for the last hundred years. And I saw it happening all over again.”