I know he's hoping that I will tell him he's wrong. I can see it in the way he holds his breath, waiting for me to correct him.

Instead, I look back at the door and the splinters and the cracks and the way it heaves under the weight of the Unconsecrated that will never stop pushing, trying to get into our world. That will never stop until we are all dead as well.

A shiver presses through my flesh and I pat my hand against my leg to call Argos to me for comfort. But he does not budge from Travis's side. Instead he lays his head on Travis's lap, his wide brown eyes staring up at me.

All I can remember is the waiting. With every breath and heartbeat, the waiting for him to come for me. “I wish I knew, Travis,” I say. “I wish I understood.”

“I know,” he says. Because he does know. He knows my desires better than I do.

I wonder then about my mother. My mother, who grew up listening to stories about the ocean and then passed them on to me but never went to look for it herself. She believed in these stories. The passion with which she would pass them on, the tremor in her voice when she talked about the time before the Return. The way she would cradle that photograph of our ancestor in the waves.

And I never asked her why she didn't leave. Why she didn't go in search of the ocean. Why she only passed these stories down with no instructions of what to do with the enormity of the memories other than pass them down ourselves.

I wonder, now, if she didn't leave because of us. Because of Jed and me. But in my heart I know that's not the case. She didn't leave in search of the ocean because of my father. Because he was enough for her. Enough to keep her snug within the fences her entire life.

Until he was the one on the outside. Only then did she leave the village, only then did she take that risk. For the man she loved she was willing to wander the Forest in constant hunger.

But not for the ocean. Not for herself.

“What do we do now?” I whisper, afraid of the answer. The house shudders under the pressure of the Unconsecrated outside. I pace back over to the door and lean against it as if my added weight will keep them at bay.

“We find a way out,” he says. “We keep going.”

I nod my head and we're both silent for a while. Looking at each other but not really seeing each other. Both of us lost in our own thoughts, our own world.

“Do you think they know about us out there?” I finally ask. When I see the confusion on his face I continue. “Not out there where Harry and the others are. I mean out there. Beyond the fence. Down the path.” I throw my hand out toward the shuttered windows.