“But what if we're the last people?” he asks. “What if we are all that's left? If you leave us you aren't just damning us but all of humanity.”

“If we are all that is left,” I tell him, “then maybe we weren't meant to survive. Maybe we've only been postponing the inevitable by staying trapped in our village.”

“Cass was right—you're only chasing stupid bedtime stories and it's selfish,” he says as he throws his double-bladed ax to the ground and turns on his heel and walks away from me, back down the path into the damp darkness.

I pick up the ax, test its heft in my hand, the handle slippery with rain and mud.

“There's another way,” Jed says as soon as Harry is out of earshot. “There are other paths, probably other villages. This can't be the only way to the ocean, if it even exists.” I watch the water trail down his cheeks and drip from his jaw. “No, this is the one.” Again I see Jed's irritation flash across his face. “But how can you know, Mary?” he shouts.

His muscles seem tight with frustration.

I throw my hands in the air, equally frustrated. “Because I figured out the code and it works.

Because according to the code this is the first gate,” I shout back. “Because They wouldn't have put a gate here for no reason—”

“We don't even know who They are, Mary! How can we trust that They put a gate there for a reason? They've built these fences, these paths everywhere. Don't you think that if there was something important out there that They wanted us to find They would have just built a path there?”

“Jed, all I know is that—”

“You don't know anything! You asked us to take it on faith that we were following the right path and it led us to that village—”

“But it was the right path. And it was not on faith. I knew where we were going, I knew how to read the signs on the path. It led us to Gabrielle's village.”

“It led us to a death trap, Mary.”

“We had no other options, Jed!” I am panting now, my chest heaving and hands clenched into fists. “Why do you even care if I go through that gate?” I ask him. I can see that he's taken aback by the question. “You turned me away after our mother died!” He steps back, his shoulders slumping a bit. He looks off into the Forest and for a moment we listen to the rain crash down around us. “Because you are all I have left of family,” he says.

“Mary, we can still go back,” Jed says, rain flying from his fingers as he waves his hands.

“We can let the rain douse the fire. Backtrack, take another path. The fire would have killed most of the Unconsecrated. We have a few weapons, we could get through it.” I can see how his eyes shine with the possibility.