The Outsider touched her arm. Aria jumped and then realized he was just guiding her on. For the next hour, she couldn’t get her heart to settle down. She felt those bulging eyes on her and heard the echo of that horrid wail. Questions raced through her mind. She wanted to understand how a person could become that way. How could they survive alone and terrified? But she kept silent, knowing she would endanger them by speaking.

Somehow she’d come to think she and the Outsider were alone in this empty world. They weren’t. Now she wondered what else was out there.

They found another cave in the late afternoon. This one was damp and crossed with formations that looked like melted wax. It stank of sulfur. Scraps of plastic and bone littered the ground.

The Outsider set his leather bag down. “I’m going to hunt,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back before it’s dark.”

“I’m not staying here alone. What was that thing?”

“I told you about the dispersed.”

“Well, I’m not staying. You can’t leave me here with that dispersed thing out there.”

“That thing is the least of our worries. Besides, it’s well behind us.”

“I’ll be quiet.”

“Not quiet enough. Look, we need to eat and I can’t hunt with you skittering all over the place.”

“I saw some berries back there. We passed a bush with berries.”

“Just stay here,” he said, his voice growing harsh. “Rest your feet.” He reached into his satchel and handed her a knife, hilt first.

It was a small knife, not the long one she’d seen him sharpening. There were feathers carved into the horn handle. It struck her as absurd to decorate such a sinister tool. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

“Wave it around and yell, Mole. Loud as you can. That’s all you need to do.”

It grew dark in the cave well before it did outside. Aria moved to the mouth and listened to an odd quiet with a headache ringing in her ears. The cave sat along a slope. She studied the trees around, straining her eyes as she searched downhill for people huddled in knots. She didn’t see any. Some of the trees were leafless and bare. She wondered why some thrived and others died. Was it the soil? Or was it the Aether choosing certain ones to incinerate? She saw no reason in it. No pattern. Nothing made sense out here.

She ached to talk to someone. Anyone. She needed to not be alone right now, thinking of that tree person. When she heard rustlings in the depths of the cave, Aria crawled to the Outsider’s leather pack and found her Smarteye. It didn’t work, but maybe wearing it would calm her as it had the first day. And it would annoy the Outsider too. That counted for something.