“But you made it,” I tell him.

“I did,” he says.

For a moment we are silent. Listening to the world as it wakes up. To the moans of the Unconsecrated below.

“How long will we last here?” I finally ask.

He shrugs. He holds his hands limp in his lap now. “They've been talking about rigging the same system that we used to get here to get us to another path. To leave the village and escape these platforms.” He stops, rises from the edge of the bed, looks out the window. “But there has to be someone on the other side for it to work.”

He turns back to me. “One of us would have to get to the Forest. Would have to be there to tie off the rope.”

“But how? How could any of us get there? It's too far to the fence, there are too many…” The rest of the sentence hangs in the air between us. Travis doesn't nod or say anything but rather pulls a chair from the wall to the side of the bed, its legs scraping over the wood of the platforms. He sits, crosses one leg over the other. I notice that he has a strip of cloth wrapped around his left ankle that he tugs at absentmindedly

“When?” I ask. “When will they try it?”

He still doesn't meet my gaze. Instead, his eyes seem to drift around the room, to see everything but me.

“Right now the idea is to wait until winter. Hope that it's a harsh one that will slow or freeze the Unconsecrated. Jed and Harry have taken stock of the supplies. So long as we have enough rain to fill the water barrels we should be able to last until then.”

“Months,” I say under my breath.

“Yes, it would be a long wait,” he says. Again he tugs at the bandage around his ankle as if it's too tight and I reach out a hand to cover his. The muscles in his arm twitch at the touch.

“I wonder what that means for the two of us,” I say. He doesn't answer. His flesh feels cold under mine, empty. He still isn't looking at me and I pull back from him, tugging the covers around my shoulders.

Something isn't right between Travis and me. Something has changed but I don't know what it is yet.

“Tell me,” I whisper. Fearing the worst.

He shifts in his chair and I see him wince as he places his bandaged foot back on the floor. He stands, paces to the window and then back to the chair.

“Yesterday all I could think about was saving you. Saving us.” He pauses as if trying to figure out what to say, how to order his thoughts into words.

“It was only yesterday?” I ask. He smiles, breaking the tension for a moment.

“Mary,” he continues, “when I saw you in that hallway with the Unconsecrated pouring over you …” He shakes his head as if to dislodge the memory. “A part of me wanted to die at that moment. To switch places with you so that you would survive, so that you would make it.” He grasps the back of the chair and his knuckles begin to turn white.