I was worn down and torn up, and I couldn’t move a muscle for fear I might fall.

“We’ll be together again,” I whispered, her finger still pressed on my lips.

“The pirate clans are all over the plains. It’ll take weeks to unite them. Months.”

“We ain’t got months.”

“No.” She turned her face to the dirt wall. “You’re right. We got no time at all.”

The poachers quit working when it came time for us to leave. They stood in the dirt with their tools and their corn, and even the Council pried themselves away from their fire. It was a silent affair. Solemn as a gray-rain dawn. Kade had me and Alpha climb with him into a big, empty bucket at the base of the scaffold, then he gave the signal, and poachers started working the ropes and pulleys, hoisting the three of us into the air.

The pulley system creaked and clanged, and I wondered if the whole thing might fall apart. But Kade said it’d be all right. Said it had held a lot more than our weight, was built to keep hauling poachers and corn for a whole lot more years to come.

So we got dragged up the side of the scaffold, staring down at the dirty faces. I spotted Orlic, Baxter and Bracelets and the rest of the Council, all huddled together in their cornhusk robes. And I wondered how Namo was doing. Did he miss us? Did he miss his old buddy Crow?

I pictured the Soljah heading east, purple wood legs wrapped around his stolen speeder. And would he remember me when the time came? Would he still believe in the things I had said? That we had to gather the tribes together. And to do that, we had to break up the trees.

Hurt to admit it, but I reckoned I’d no idea what Crow would do. Nor did I know how much sway he would hold with the Soljahs. And if the Soljahs wouldn’t share the saplings, what would come next?

Alpha stood beside me with her arms crossed, and she seemed distant already. And I would lose her. For a while. Or forever. Because that’s what falls upon everyone. Every step you take gets you closer to the end.

“Almost there,” Kade said, and I glanced at the top of the scaffold, where ladders pointed straight up into a hole in the dirt.

Still the bucket hoisted us higher, till we were enveloped by the earth and bound by darkness, black as a grave, the smell of soil rich and damp. And the only sound was the squeak of the rusted bucket and the creak of the cornhusk ropes.

We pushed up through a thatched panel of husks and dirt. And when we broke out beneath the sky, the red sun filtered through the crops hardly at all, but it was enough to bloom through my insides and turn me blind for a moment.

I kept my eyes shut as I turned my face to the light, felt its fingers on my skin as if it were tugging me closer. As if it might hold me against it and never let go.

And when my eyes got used to being aboveground again, I could only blink at the huge corn plants that towered above us, thirty feet high, tightly packed stems and dark green leaves, dusted with the dirt from the plains. I peered up at the stalks—so damn straight, and planted so damn close together. Nothing like the ragged six saplings. Nothing like my thin, twisted trees.

I remembered how sickly those trees had looked when I had seen them last. How drained of color and life they’d appeared. But Crow would have gotten them water and given them sunlight. Plenty of water in Niagara, after all, and plenty of sun in a world where shade’s so hard to find.

A handful of poachers emerged from the corn, stepping out from the plants around us, their feet not making a sound.

“My lord,” said one of the men. “I hear you’re leaving us.”

“I’m leaving,” Kade said. “But I’m not a lord anymore.”

He asked three of the men to hand over their shotguns. He gave one to Alpha, and he gave one to me.

Then they led us through the corn, pushing at the stiff leaves, working our way between the tight green stems, until we reached a narrow service road. Abandoned, by the looks of it, the surface rutted and broken. Little patches of snow in the ditches. Frost gleaming in the dust.

Too cold for locusts then. Good crossing season at last.

There were three ATVs on the side of the road, covered with old cornhusks and stems. We hauled the dried remains off the vehicles, dusted them down.

“Here you go,” Kade said, handing us GenTech masks to protect our lungs from the landscape. Alpha pulled hers down, hiding too much of her beautiful face. But I just hung mine loose from my neck, as if the dust could do me no more damage.

“We follow this road through the corn,” Kade said. “It winds east till it pushes us out to the plains.”

“Then let’s stop there.” Alpha straddled her ATV and propped her shotgun under her leg. She glanced at me. “To say goodbye.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Kade said, and he threw us each a pair of goggles.

“Don’t worry,” I muttered, climbing onto my bike and pulling the goggles down over my head. “They’re open every second of the day.”

We never saw any agents as we rode down that road. We never saw any dusters in the distance or field hands in the corn. All I could see was Alpha ahead of me and the dust raging high all around us, and I plowed through the ditches and deep sand, my face once again all covered in grit. It felt good, to be honest. The dirt thick on my tongue, crunchy in my teeth. Hell, maybe the dirt was the closest thing to a home I ever had.

At the edge of the cornfields, the tall plants stretched west behind us, and they spread north and south far as the eye could see. But the landscape just gave up to the east, where everything was crumbled dirt. We stopped the ATVs, letting the dust settle as much as it could.

“We’re pretty far north,” Kade said. “Niagara’s about due east of here.”

“Well, compadre.” Alpha pulled her mask and goggles up onto her head, approaching Kade then slapping him on the shoulder. “A general needs an army, so I’m dropping south to start building one. And I guess this is it.”

“A general, huh?” He smiled, as if remembering he’d called her that, but you could see his heart weren’t in it. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you on the battlefield then.”

“I hope so.”

“You know, I’ve been trying to find the right way to thank you.” Kade gazed back into the corn. “For killing that monster.”

“You held Harvest still,” Alpha said. “All I did was point Namo the right way.”

“No.” Kade climbed off his bike. “He had a gun at my head, and I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“He had a gun on me, too, once. Remember?”

“Yeah.” He choked the word out. “I do.”

“I miss her, too.” Alpha took Kade’s face in her hands, making him look into her eyes. “But we’ll fight for what Zee wanted. And there’ll be more sorrow, but the hurt’s to be lived with, you hear me? Don’t go getting yourself killed.”

“You underestimate me.”

“And you’ll take care of my man for me?”

“Like he’s my own brother,” Kade said, glancing over at me.

I was still sat on my ATV, and I yanked my goggles down around my neck and stared east at a world that now seemed foreign. Everything altered since when I’d last seen it. As if the way things were stitched together had all been undone.

“Come on, bud,” Alpha said, striding past me. “It’s time.”

I slid into the dust and followed her over to her bike, and then we stood there, a cold wind picking up the dirt around us as the sun beat down.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, taking my hands but avoiding my eyes. “And you ain’t gonna like it.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s about what I saw. Beneath the peaks.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

“I was in a forest, bud. A real forest. It was all tangled and dusty, but there were leaves on the trees. Everything all green and thick.”