“I’ll bring you one,” I said. “I’ll bring one back here. I promise.”

“And what makes you think the Rastas will give one up?” Orlic took a handful of cornhusks and threw them in the fire.

“Because we’re gonna band together,” I said. “Rise up against GenTech. You, too, if you’ll join us. Imagine it—getting out of the dirt. Enough food for everyone to share, and no one tribe to control it. Imagine forests growing free. Clean air, clean water. Plenty to eat.”

There was doubt on their faces. There was doubt in their eyes. And I started to ask myself the same damn questions. Would the Soljahs be willing to work with the rest of us? What sort of welcome would we receive if we made it across the river and reached Waterfall City?

But Crow would be there, I thought. And I’d trusted him before, so now I had to trust him again.

“Kade will go with you,” said Bracelets. “He’ll go with you and make sure one of the trees comes back here.”

“Kade helped them kill Harvest,” said another. “How can we trust him?”

“You saw him put that gun on me.” Kade stared at Orlic. “And he’d have taken what he wanted and left us with nothing, if it had been up to you.”

“Return with a tree, lad,” Orlic said to him, his eyes softening as they studied the fire. “And you will be pardoned. But you’ll never sit on this Council again.”

“We’ll take the rest of the speeders they came in on.” Kade touched the burns on his arms, from where he’d wrestled Harvest in the fire, and I couldn’t see his eyes, but I reckon they simmered full of rage. I heard him try to breathe through it. A poacher lord for three days, and now his robes had been turned to ashes, and he was in rags again. Just like us.

“What about Namo?” I said.

“The mammoth?” Orlic frowned.

“He could prove useful,” said Baxter.

“He already has,” I told them. “And you should let him go.”

I couldn’t argue them down about it. They wanted to keep the beast chained up and put him to work. And in the end, there weren’t no way he could come with us, anyway, I reckoned. Nor was there a way he could get home. Hell, for all we knew, every mammoth had perished in that battle between the Kalliq and the Harvesters, and Namo had no home to get back to at all.

I had Orlic swear they’d keep the chains off him. That lord needed me too much not to give me his word. And I didn’t know how much faith I should put in that poacher’s word, but what other choice did I have?

He let the three of us take Namo back down the tunnels, leading the mammoth to a spot where he could stay out of the way. Alpha leaned her head against him as she staggered along, worn out and busted as I’d ever seen her. Covered in dirt and blood, and her grip still on her machete, as if at any moment, the poachers might turn on us again.

We got to a crappy dugout, and Kade set down a bucket of corn, the tiny GenTech logos on the kernels the same purple as the mammoth’s fur. It was tight in there. Namo had to keep his head stooped, and it weren’t no place fit for him.

“He’s gonna get lonely,” I muttered.

“But he’s safe,” Kade said. “And what else can we do?”

I stared up at Namo’s big, shaggy face, and he just blinked down at me. Then I reached up a hand to his trunk, patting him as he brought his head close to mine.

“We’ll come back,” I told him. “Get you out of here.”

“You think he’s all that’s left?” Alpha asked. “The last of the mammoths?”

“I sure hope not.” I thought of the walls tumbling into the Kalliq’s crater. The bullets and rocks raining down. Harvest had got out, though. So maybe some of the Kalliq did, too.

“Kids will come and see him,” Kade said. “There are good people down here.”

“Bet they put him to work.” Alpha shook her head. “Soon as we’re out of sight.”

I leaned against Namo, and I’ll be damned if that big ball of fur didn’t wrap his great trunk around all three of us, curling us against him and holding us close.

“There’ll be hell to pay,” Alpha whispered, her voice muffled in Namo’s fur. “If these bastards eat him.”

“These bastards are my people,” said Kade. “And they’ll show him respect.”

Namo pressed us even tighter together, then uncoiled his shaggy trunk and stamped his way into the corner of the dugout. There was hardly enough room for him to turn around.

And he was like the trees, I reckoned. Something beautiful left behind. So there’d have to come a time when he was no longer hidden. You don’t do the world any favors if you hide things away.

“No one’s gonna eat him,” I said, though my voice trembled as we started back through the labyrinths, and I wondered if I’d ever have a chance to see that mammoth again. “Reckon you gotta have faith in folk.”

“Yeah?” Alpha said. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Reckon it’s too soon to say.”

“And what about Crow?” she said. “You think he’s gonna give up those trees when we get there?”

“Guess you’re gonna have to leave persuading him up to me,” I said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

I felt Alpha staring at me, but I turned to Kade.

“We’ll catch up with you,” I told him.

“Don’t get lost,” he said, pushing past us, and I waited till he’d disappeared around the bend.

“You know I don’t want to do this.” I couldn’t even look at Alpha as I said it.

“Do what?”

“Split.” The word came out weak, when I’d meant to sound strong.

“Split?”

“You and me,” I said. “We gotta say goodbye.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

I stood in that tunnel as the white lights throbbed on and off again, as if they were counting the seconds until one of us could speak.

“What’re you talking about, bud?” Alpha said finally. She tried smiling, as if I’d been joking. But her mouth couldn’t make the smile last.

“You have to gather your armies. Every pirate on the plains who can fight. Once GenTech finds out people are banding together, that we’ve got the trees, we’re going to have to be ready for them. And I gotta get to Waterfall City. Make sure those saplings get split up, for everyone, like we planned.”

“We’ll do it together.”

“There’s no time.”

“I’ll make time.”

I put my hand on her face. “All I want is to be with you. You know that.”

“Don’t—”

“I love you,” I said. And I needed to keep steady. I took her in my arms, to feel her against me, and so she’d not see if my tears started to fall.

“Then why would you leave me?” Alpha trembled as I held her. She was sobbing so hard, and there weren’t a thing I could do.

“I have to.”

“Because of the trees.”

“Because of the people who need them. Because everyone deserves them. It’s bigger than us. And it ain’t fair, none of it’s fair. But it’s the world we got given and the one chance we’ve got.”

“But I need you, Banyan. And I love you, too, damn it.” She said it softly, and the words I’d waited for cracked beneath the weight under which they were spoken. “I should have told you sooner. I should have told you all along.”

“No. I should never have started this to begin with.” It came out faster than I could think. “I fooled us both with this feeling. Wanting some life that we can’t have. It’s like you said, just something out of an old world song.”

“But it don’t belong to the old world.” She pulled away from me. Put a finger on my lips. “I belong to you, Banyan. And you belong to me. And I’d do it all again, all of it. Just to know you. Just to spend this time by your side.”