The other body was Auntie’s. It was Peter who found her, sitting in a kitchen chair in the small clearing outside her house. She had been dead many months, he knew, and yet very little seemed to have altered in her appearance. But when he touched her hand where it lay in her lap, he felt only the cold stiffness of death. Her head was tipped backward; her face wore a peaceful expression, as if she had simply fallen asleep. She had gone outside, he knew, when darkness had come and the lights did not go on. She had carried a chair into the yard, to sit and watch the stars.

“Peter.” Alicia touched his arm as he crouched beside the body. “Peter, what do you want to do?”

He pulled his eyes away, realizing only then that they were full of tears. The others were standing behind her, a silent chorus of witness.

“We should bury her here. Near her house, her garden.”

“We will,” Alicia said gently. “I meant about the lights. It will be dark soon. Michael says we have a full charge if we want.”

He glanced past her to Michael, who nodded.

“All right,” he said.

They closed the gate and gathered in the Sunspot—all except Michael, who had returned to the Lighthouse. It was just twilight, the sky purpling overhead. Everything seemed held in suspension; not even the birds were singing. Then with an audible pop the lights came on, dousing them all with a fierce and final brilliance.

Michael appeared to stand beside them. “We should be good for tonight.”

Peter nodded. They were silent for a time in the presence of this unspoken truth: one more night, and the lights of First Colony would darken forever.

“So now what?” Alicia asked.

In the stillness, Peter felt the presence of his friends around him. Alicia, whose courage was a part of him. Michael, grown lean and hard, a man now. Greer, his wise and soldierly countenance. And Amy. He thought of all that he had seen, and those who had been lost—not just the ones he knew of, but those whom he did not—and he knew what his answer was.

He said, “Now we go to war.”

Chapter Seventy-Four

SEVENTY-FOUR

The last hour before dawn: Amy crept from the house, alone. The house of the woman called Auntie, who had died; they had buried her where she’d sat, wrapping her body in a quilt from her bed. On her chest Peter had placed a photograph he had taken from her bedroom. The ground was hard, it had taken them many hours of digging, and when they were done, they had decided to sleep the night there. The woman’s house, Peter had said, would be as good as anyplace. He had a house of his own, Amy knew. But he did not seem to want to go back there.