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She shook her head "I don’t know I can’t iu, and his was based only on wishful thinking and a threadbare piece of optiether and listened to the forest
"Benny?" Nix asked quietly after a while
"Yeah?"
"Last night … when you kissed me … ?"
His throat went instantly dry "Yeah?"
"Why did you do it? I mean, was it because I was so upset and you didn’t kno else to help me? Or was it because you really wanted to?"
"I--"
"You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to"
He took a breath "I kissed you because I wanted to," he said
She nodded "Last night, when you thought I was sleeping … I saw you looking at her card"
Benny plucked a steers It felt like cool silk "Did you?" he asked
"I saw you throw it away, too"
"Did you?" he asked again softly
"Yes, Benny … I did"
She didn’t say anything else, didn’t speak another word for a long time She leaned her head on his shoulder, and they sat there and waited for the day to burn away
49
BY LATE AFTERNOON THE SUN WAS COMPLETELY COVERED BY A SHEET OF thick gray clouds The temperature fell, but the huainst the trunk of one of the pines, and in his dreams he heard a sound that was like the roar of Lilah’s waterfall The sound started s mind made it be the noise of the waterfall, which was a perfect backdrop for his drea chased by Charlie and the Haed to keep their personalities They yelled to hi to do terrible things to him In his drea landscape barelyin place The zo behind hirew steadily louder, and Benny thought thatthe waterfall, but when he looked around, all he saas the plateau on which the bounty hunters had their ca brushed hi next to hi, but Benny could not hear her voice The roar of the waterfall kept getting louder and louder And it was deeper in tone now, more of a loud drone than the splash of water
"Benny!" Nix called his name, but it didn’t e
"BENNY!"
With a start, Benny realized that Nix’s voice was not co beside hi and that the real-world Nix was yelling at him He snapped his eyes open The camp and the zombies vanished The roar, however, was still there Deep and loud, and getting louder
"Benny!" Nix yelled
"What … what is it?"
"You have to corabbed his hands and fairly hauled him to his feet and then pulled him out from under the shelter of the trees Not toward the promontory that looked down on the camp Instead, she pulled him toward the trail that led back into the woods She was running, and her grip was so tight and insistent that Benny ran too
"What is it? What’s that sound?"
"You have to co, and there, Nix stopped and pointed She need not have bothered, because Benny saw it His eyes bugged wide, and his
It was silver and white, with vast wings that lifted it high above the mountains Benny raised his hand, as if he could touch it The thing appeared to move slowly, but that was an illusion It was just so far away Higher than the tallest of the surrounding ray storht to see it If the storm had started, it would have been both invisible and unheard
But they stood there, holding hands, staring up as it roared above the with alienfro east; far, far above the Rot and Ruin
"I don’t understand," he said
Nix just shook her head
"Where did it co east," he said, but Nix shook her head
"It caet you"
They watched it go, di, taking its roar with it When it was gone, there was at least five ain They stood in the clearing for tenit to come back
Benny said, "Nix … did we just see that? I reen eyes were filled with h to hold back the storm "It’s real, Benny We saw it"
"But how? It doesn’t make sense"
She shook her head, and they stared off to the east The thing they had just seen belonged to another age, to the days before First Night They knew about them from the history books, but neither had ever seen one Never expected to They kept looking into the distance
But the slow, lu jumbo jet did not return
50
THEY DID NOT KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY HAD JUST SEEN It was strange and wonderful, but it seemed more like a dream than a part of what they were about to do
"I wish I could tell Tom," Benny said
"I wish I could tell Moet out of this--"