Zoe finally trapped the bird in X’s coat. She carried it to the door. She released it, watched it disappear over the waves, then sank down in the doorway. The agitation had pushed her over the edge. X, who’d slept through all the commotion, woke up the instant she began crying. She found that moving somehow: that he could ignore anything but her.
He touched her shoulder.
“I dreamed you were kissing me,” he said. “I dreamed you were kissing my fingers, my hands, my throat.”
Zoe turned and smiled guiltily.
“Weird,” she said.
She dried her eyes on her sleeves, embarrassed that something as random as a bird had upset her.
“Can you stand?” she said.
He nodded and stood.
“Can you walk?” she said.
He nodded again.
“It’s time to find my father,” she said. “I’ve made a decision.”
X nodded a third time, and took his coat from her. Even the simple act of pulling it over his shoulders seemed to exhaust him.
“What is your decision?” he said. “I must know.”
Zoe stood now, too. The birds were still circling the hut.
“The lords gave you his name to punish us, right?” she said.
“To punish me,” said X. “You have done nothing to chastise yourself for. I beg you not to imagine otherwise.”
“Why do they want to punish you?” said Zoe. “Because you’re innocent—and they’re not? Is that what it is? They’re just … assholes?”
“You may think me innocent,” said X. “But they do not. They think me arrogant and vain, for I have put myself above them. I have put you above them. Now they mean to show me how weak I truly am.”
“Because they don’t think you can do it?” said Zoe. “They don’t think you can take my father, no matter what evil crap he’s done? They think you’d rather go back to the Lowlands forever than do something that would hurt me?”
“And I fear they are correct,” said X.
Zoe opened the door and began descending the ladder again.
“They are not correct,” she said. “You are going to take my father and you are going to come back to me. Not just because he deserves to be punished, but because—even if you’re a dork and don’t believe it—you deserve to be free.”
They headed up the beach to the road, the rocks sliding and clacking under their feet. It was afternoon now. Zoe knew it wouldn’t stay light for long. They walked half a mile without speaking, and she was grateful for the silence. If they talked, they’d have to talk about the fact that X was growing sicker by the minute—that he was tripping over his feet and hanging on to Zoe for support. She had never seen him so weak. Being close to her was not helping him now.
Once again, Zoe’s body told her that her father was near, just as X’s body told him. She saw omens and metaphors everywhere. It wasn’t just the dark birds back at the beach. It was the frigid wind, which pushed at their backs as if goading them on. It was the black road, which was riven down the middle with cracks, as if something was trying to break out of the earth.
After ten minutes, X and Zoe passed a junky-looking truck parked on the shoulder of the road. There was a path just ahead. X led Zoe to it, and they entered the dense, snowy forest. It was like the woods near her house. Every awful detail from the day she had chased Jonah and the dogs came back to her unbidden—everything about Bert and Betty, the fireplace poker, and the hole in the ice. And here she was preparing to collide with another soul marked for the Lowlands.
Zoe looped her arm through X’s. She didn’t know if she could survive another day like that.
The forest was hushed except for the creaking of the trees. Some of the firs were so deeply encased in snow that Zoe couldn’t see the slightest hint of green. They leaned over in every direction—giant, hooded figures bowing to each other. Snow ghosts, she’d heard them called.
Zoe thought of how much she’d once loved the woods. She remembered running through them in summer, patches of sunlight bright on her skin. She remembered snowshoeing through them on days so crazily cold that it hurt to breathe. She remembered Jonah’s laughter lighting them up, no matter the season. But too much had happened. She feared forests would always feel hostile now—claustrophobic somehow, as if the trees were waiting for her to look away so they could rush at her from all sides.
X’s fever was spiking. When they came to a larch that had fallen across the path, Zoe cleared some snow from the trunk and snapped off a half dozen spindly branches. She helped him sit.
“How much farther?” she said.
She was desperate to get there. And desperate not to.
“Perhaps a half mile,” said X, each word draining him even more. He pointed at the path ahead of them, which was tamped down and streaked with mud. “These tracks,” he said, “are your father’s.”
Zoe’s stomach did its tightening thing, where it felt like someone was turning a wheel. This time, it felt as if her skin was caught in the gears.
“My throat is in flames,” he said. “I feel as if glowing coals were being shoveled down it. Still, there is counsel I would give you, if you will hear it?”
“Of course,” she said.
She sat down next to him on the trunk.
“It is not that your father is an evil man,” said X, his voice a husk. “It is that he is a weak one. You will know it the moment your eyes encounter him.” He paused, collecting his energy. “You will also know that he loves you,” he said. “We are not slaying a dragon today, Zoe—just putting a wounded animal to rest. You will find it harder than you imagine. I have never known my parents—and it seems that I never will—so perhaps I have no right to advise you. However, if you find that you pity your father, you need only look at me and I will know—and I will not take him.”