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“I WILL GOwith Sara,” Lucy says. It cuts short our argument—our not-quite-an-argument, none of us wanting to state anything too firmly because then we’d be forced to acknowledge that itisan argument. We’re standing by the ruined end of the road, and daylight is seeping over the horizon. It catches on Lucy’s skin and slides over it the way it should, and a tension I have been holding in my chest without realizing it eases. I’m not sure why, except that it has something to do with sunrise—and with bones.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Becca’s more experienced.”

“All the more reason to spread out our knowledge,” Lucy says. She glances at Kyle and Mel, who paired up without any discussion or objections. “It’s unlikely we’ll be able to stick together once we leave the road. I’ll do my best to keep you all in sight, but we need to plan to be alone in our pairs.”

“So how do we find our way? How do we stay alive?” Mel asks.

“You need to keep your destination fixed in your mind,” Lucy says. “The gates of Ys. Do whatever you need to in order to keep that name in your mind. There are still traces of the road. Try to follow them. They’ll look different to all of us. But the rules arethe same. Stay to where the pathshouldbe, and you’ll be safe. Or safer.”

“This sounds impossible,” Mel says.

“But it’s not. Other people have gotten off,” Becca replies. I find myself nodding.

“There’s one more gate before the gates of Ys,” Lucy says. “It’s wrecked, but obvious. If you get there, stay there. It’s a safe point and we can find each other again. Past that is the dark. The last stretch before we reach the gates of Ys.”

“And then?” I ask.

Lucy hesitates. “I’ve never gotten that far,” she says. “I lost my partner. I couldn’t get through the dark. But I think if you get through the last gate, if you get to Ys itself, you can just... leave.”

“Sounds straightforward,” Mel says drily.

“It sounds like something we can’t possibly prepare for,” Becca says. “Which means that we should just go for it, before we talk ourselves out of it.”

“I agree,” Anthony says. “We can do this. And dark or no dark, whatever you do, don’t let go of your partner’s hand. We survive by sticking together.”

“Don’t let go,” I echo.

Lucy nods, smiles encouragingly, and reaches out her hand to me. I hesitate the barest fraction of a moment before taking it.

I hardly hear the click of Becca’s camera.

The light is strengthening. It makes Lucy almost glow, her veins a blue tracery under her milk-white skin. Her hand is warm and very much alive, but still the hair on the back of my neckprickles, and I cast an uncertain look at Becca. But she is busy putting away the camera and whispering with Anthony. Which of them is confessing worry and which offering encouragement, I’m not sure.

“Let’s begin,” Lucy says primly, settling a cloth satchel over her shoulder. She gives me a dimpled smile, waves farewell to John, and takes a prancing step. I follow behind less gracefully. We pick our way over the last few contiguous stones of the road. I try to make out the shape of it snaking through the trees, but I can only be certain of fragments here and there.

“We’ll make it,” Lucy assures me with confidence I envy. “I’ve been this way before.”

“You didn’t both make it,” I remind her.

“You’re stronger than he was,” Lucy says. “And you have better friends.” She doesn’t explain what she means; she steps off the stones, and I follow.

The world pulls itself apart. There is no other way to describe it. Colors separate. Matter reorganizes itself and then becomes chaos and then becomes a new order. We stand in a forest, in a desert, in the middle of a city square with people bustling past us, gray eyes fixed on the ground. I stagger, but Lucy steps through one world and then another with dogged determination.

The air whispers and thrums around us.

Where are you going?

Where is she taking you?

I know you.

I know her.

The gates are open.

The sea rushes in

Coral and bone