“There’s a root to the left of you,” Olympia says. “You can use it for your left foot. Then I’ll pull and you should be able to—”

What is Olympia saying? What the fuck is Olympia saying?

Malorie feels to the left, finds the root. How did she not feel this before?

And how does Olympia know where it is?

“Ready, Mom?”

“No, Olympia…what’s happening…how did you…”

“Come on, Mom. You step up and I’ll pull and you’ll be able to—”

When Malorie cuts her off, her voice comes much calmer than she means for it to sound.

“How did you see the root, Olympia?”

There is a creature with Malorie in this hole. This grave. This Safer Room.

“Mom…” Then…the loaded silence of a sixteen-year-old girl who has been keeping secrets.

“Olympia. I need you to tell me how you knew this was here. And I need you to tell me now.”

Malorie, parenting. Still.

“Mom,” Olympia says, “there’s no creature in there with you.”

What?

“You do not know that.”

“I do. You’re alone down there.”

“You can’t know that!”

Quiet from above. The sound of a daughter about to tell her mother the truth.

“I’m looking into the hole, Mom. I can do that. I can look.”

Malorie pulls her hands away.

“Olympia…”

As if learning Olympia is able to see could drive Malorie mad all on its own.

Then, tears from above. Olympia is crying. And Malorie recognizes this brand of cry.

Shame.

She reaches up again and finds Olympia’s hand. She uses the root as her daughter pulls. Malorie feels the ledge, just out of reach this whole time.

Her fingers dig into the lip of the hole and Olympia grabs both her wrists. Before Malorie has time to process what Olympia’s just told her (but already accepting it because it rings a bell, doesn’t it? Rings many), she is flat to the ledge, pulling herself forward.

With an effort and a strength she did not know she still has, Malorie is fully out of the Safer Room at last.

She spends hardly any time at all on the ground, exhausted, before she gets up. Again, Olympia’s hand is there to help. A hand that has helped Malorie thousands of times over the course of what feels like thousands of years.

“You…”

She hugs Olympia hard.

“I thought you would be upset,” Olympia says. Crying still. “I thought you would be scared. I thought people would be afraid of me.”

Malorie, eyes closed, grips both Olympia’s shoulders.

“You’ve seen them?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“All of them.”

“What does that mean? What does that mean?”

“Every one of them that was near enough for me to see.”

“Olympia…how long have you been able to look?”