Rowan (Worldwalker 1.50)

Lily wrenched her arm out of his hand, desperately trying not to cry. She put her right foot down to move away from him, and the pain that shot up her leg like lightning was the final straw. Tears that had been gathering in her eyes tipped over and spilled down her cheeks.

Rowan turned away from her with a sound of disgust, whispering the words “so manipulative” under his breath. Lily rubbed the tears off her cheeks and felt their salt sting the scratches on her hands. She took a few deep breaths to quiet her crying. There were still those things—the Woven—out there in the dark, and even though she was lost, confused, and hurt, she knew Rowan wasn’t joking. Any sound she made could alert those things and get them all killed. Still dwelling on the Woven, she startled and nearly screamed when she felt Tristan’s hands cup her ankle.

“This is bad,” he whispered. Lily felt his cold fingers gently prod a spot that was so sore she jerked away spasmodically. “I think it’s broken.”

Lily looked around at the looming forest, growing desperate. She was quite sure that they weren’t anywhere near a hospital. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I can get you to camp.” Tristan stood up suddenly. Before Lily could figure out what he was thinking, he’d already lifted her and started carrying her silently through the trees.

“Wait,” Lily pleaded. She pushed against his chest, trying to get him to put her down. He even smelled the same as her Tristan. “You can’t—”

“Yes, I can. Don’t worry. We’re nearly at the rendezvous point,” he said, hefting her easily in his arms. “You weigh next to nothing anyway.”

Rowan had gone ahead. When they caught up to him, he saw Tristan carrying Lily, and even in the dark Lily could read frustration oozing out of him; frustration and some other emotion she couldn’t quite place. Despite his displeasure, he didn’t object to Tristan carrying her, even though he clearly wanted to tell his friend to drop her on her behind.

The rendezvous point was close, as Tristan had promised. In less than ten minutes, Rowan stopped and called out softly, holding his hand to the side to indicate that Tristan should keep still. A moment later, Caleb came through the underbrush.

“You made it,” Caleb said, his wide grin showing brightly against his dark skin in the starlight. He and Rowan clasped hands briefly. “What happened to her?”

Rowan made an irritated sound and brushed past his friend, leaving Tristan to explain.

“She fell in the dark,” Tristan said hurriedly.

“She fell?” Caleb repeated, grimacing like he’d never heard anything so silly.

“Her ankle’s broken.” Tristan shook off Caleb’s next question and continued. “She’s not Lillian—I’m dead sure of it, Caleb. We need to get this straightened out right now. She’s in a lot of pain.”

“Come on. I’ll take you to the sachem,” Caleb replied reluctantly. He led the way through the small camp, occasionally glancing back at Lily warily. He still didn’t trust her.

“Isn’t a sachem, like, an Indian chief?” Lily whispered to Tristan, and quickly corrected herself. “Sorry—Native American chief?”

The only reason Lily knew this was because, being from Salem, she’d had to learn about the Pilgrim settlement in Massachusetts. A lot of land had been purchased from the sachem of the Algonquin tribe, including entire islands, like Nantucket. Lily was pretty sure there were no more Algonquin left in her world, although she knew that there was a high school in Northborough named after them. Not really a fair trade, in Lily’s estimation—a high school for your whole tribe.

Tristan gave her a puzzled look. “The sachem is the leader of the Outland people in this particular area. Well, what’s left of the Outland people, anyway,” he replied darkly. They passed a few guards, who inspected them carefully. Every time one of the guards recognized who it was that Tristan was carrying, Caleb had to stop to calm him down.

“What’s an Outland person?” Lily asked while Caleb argued with a few heavily armed men and women.

“An Outlander is someone who lives outside the walls of the Thirteen Cities,” Tristan replied.

“You only have thirteen cities in this world?”

“Why? How many do you have?”

Lily recalled the vibrant city encircled by those towering walls—vibrant, but not bigger than New York. In contrast, she looked at the old and thick forest that she had battled through for hours, and a strange feeling settled over her. Tristan carried her past an expansive oak that must have been growing for hundreds of years. If there were only thirteen cities in this America, just how large was this forest? This world suddenly felt much wilder then her own.

“So there are thirteen cities and this big, spooky forest, but what about the suburbs?” she asked in a hushed voice as more and more eyes peered at her as they neared the camp. “Where are they?”

“What’s a sub-urb?” Tristan replied, his mouth tentatively pronouncing the foreign word.

Stunned silent, Lily was still trying to figure out how to shape her next question when they entered a large glade. At first, she could only make out vague shapes looming here and there around the clearing. As Tristan carried her closer, she realized that the shapes were perfectly camouflaged tents, made of some kind of unfamiliar material.

They zigzagged their way in between the tents, which grew denser toward the middle, until Lily finally saw a light. A campfire burned, its light blocked from the rest of the forest by the clever positioning of the tents. The fire struck Lily as an oddly rustic centerpiece to what was otherwise a futuristic-looking camp. It was too small to keep them all warm, and she wondered why they bothered lighting it at all.

Tristan set her down next to the fire and shook out his exhausted arms. Caleb disappeared into one of the tents, indicating that they should wait there. Lily tried to keep her throbbing ankle elevated as best she could while she waited for him to return with the sachem. Even in the low light, she could see that her ankle was swelling alarmingly fast and already starting to bruise.

Lily looked up to see a man, about thirty years old, coming toward her with a forceful yet halting stride. He had prematurely graying hair and a pronounced limp, but other than that he looked incredibly fit. The man was flanked by Rowan on one side and Caleb on the other. He wasn’t particularly large—Caleb stood a full head taller—but Lily didn’t doubt his authority. This man was a leader. The sachem stood above her, taking in every aspect of her appearance. His dark eyes drilled into hers for an uncomfortably long time, and Lily found she couldn’t hold his gaze.

“Look at me, girl,” he snapped when she tried to drop her eyes. Lily obeyed even though his searching look unnerved her. “Who are you?” he asked.