THE MARK Read online

  Now the alley was empty. The bucket was calling Chris’s name, and she rushed forward, plunging her arms into the soapy water, cupping her hands together to drink. It tasted better than Perrier, better in fact than any drink she’d had in her entire life. No sooner did she swallow a gulp than she was bringing another handful to her lips. It was wonderful. It was bliss.

  She had forgotten where she was.

  Chris was mid-slurp when she saw the little boy at the far end of the alley staring at her. She let what was in her hands drop back into the bucket before slowly raising her index finger to her mouth. For a few brief seconds it seemed like he might have understood, like it was going to be their little secret. Then he turned and ran, screaming.

  She didn’t have a place to hide. The woman she had seen washing laundry was outside now, blocking the end of the alley from which Chris had come. Her arms were folded across her chest and arctic air wafted from her direction, raising goosebumps on Chris’s skin. The boy stood at the other end of the alley. He had a group of burly men with him. Curious people, all dressed in long shifts of white, drifted out from their homes, crowding the alleyway. She was surrounded.

  One of the men the boy had brought with him stepped forward. His wrinkled, sorrowful face became angry when he drew closer.

  “No Toppers are allowed here,” he said in a gravelly voice. It sent chills coursing through Chris’s body. Even so, she was relieved—and shocked—that he spoke English. She had to clear her throat several times before she could speak.

  “What’s a Topper?” she asked.

  Everyone around her looked surprised. Some began to whisper to each other: She doesn’t know what a Topper is? What’s wrong with her? The man who had spoken narrowed his gaze, reassessing her.

  “What is your region?”

  She had no clue what that meant, and she didn’t know how much to tell him. He didn’t seem like the friendly sort. Actually, none of them did, though they all seemed very curious about her. Many of them were eyeing her clothes. A little girl with a long braid even stepped forward to sniff her before her mother yanked her back. Distrust radiated from everyone. Except for one guy. Had they been on Earth, Chris would have assumed he was in middle school, around thirteen or so. He had large green eyes unlike the light brown eyes of everyone around him, but he did have short platinum hair like everyone else. He jerked his head to the side like he was trying to get her attention, but she had no idea what he was trying to get at.

  “He asked you, What is your region? Answer.”

  Slowly, Chris turned her head. The man who’d spoken was stocky with huge muscles on his arms laced with ropy veins. Looking down, she saw the handle of the knife he held to her throat.

  “Um, north?” she answered, too afraid to tell the truth.

  “Hmmm,” the older man said. After a moment’s deliberation, he pointed to the man next to Chris. “Check, just to be sure.”

  The stocky “assistant” ran his hands over her, every touch on her bare skin feeling like a burn, until he dug in her pocket and pulled out the fork. He held it up in the air for everyone to see. The alley rang with gasps and mutters.

  “I found it on the ground,” she said. It sounded lame, even to her.

  The thug growled. She quickly raised her hands in an “I’m unarmed” gesture. That’s when the green-eyed kid pushed through the crowd. “I vouch for her!” he yelled. Nobody seemed to hear him. “I can vouch for her!” he yelled louder. This time he got their attention. The noise settled down as he stepped forward.

  “You know this girl?” the old man asked.

  “Yes, Leader, I do. Enforcer can lower his knife.” Green Eyes said all this confidently, forcefully, though it seemed to Chris that he was lowering his voice on purpose like he was trying to sound older. Even so, the community leader nodded and the knife was finally taken away from Chris’s throat.

  “Who is she?” the leader asked.

  “She’s here to collect her brother,” he said without missing a beat. “He told me she’d be coming for him.”

  “And who is this brother of hers? The Topper who’s been lodging with you? Where is he now?”

  “In section fifteen.”

  The leader looked at the boy skeptically for a moment then finally waved off the “enforcer.” Chris felt like she could breathe again.

  “They leave today. Understand?”

  “Yes, Leader,” the boy answered.

  The crowd started to disburse, everyone walking away except for Chris and Green Eyes. Before she could even thank him, he said, “Follow me.” He was headed toward a tunnel leading away from town. Normally Chris wouldn’t follow some random guy—even if he was younger and smaller than her—but she couldn’t see another option. He was the only friendly face there.

  “Wait up!” she called to him, hoping she wasn’t making a grave mistake.

  CHAPTER 5

  Chris followed Green Eyes through yet another complicated network of tunnels. The torches on the walls became fewer and fewer the further they got from town until it grew so dark that Chris’s companion plucked one from its holder and carried it. Chris didn’t know how to talk to him. Anything she said could reveal what she was and all he had to do was run back to his village and tell everyone and then they’d be after her. She doubted there would be mercy next time. But the longer the silence went on the more uncomfortable she became. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Thanks for saving me back there,” she said, trying to keep up with his pace. “What’s your name?”

  “Digger.”

  “Digger? You live in a cave full of miners and your name is Digger?”

  “Yes,” he said. The irony seemed to be completely lost on him.

  “Digger.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Everyone in my region is named according to their role.”

  Digger dodged a low hanging stalactite and held the torch so Chris could see it, too. “Thanks,” she said.

  They turned a corner and kept walking.

  “So you’re the only person who digs in your whole town?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “There are ten of us.”

  “Doesn’t having the same name as ten other guys get confusing?”

  “What are you called?”

  “Christina. Chris,” she said.

  “So how many people are called ‘Christina’?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Hundreds? Thousands?”

  “Hmm. Doesn’t that get confusing?” He laughed, knowing he’d won. “My friends call me Digs. It’s alright if you’d like to call me that, too.”

  “Okay, Digs. Call me Chris.”

  There were torches on the walls again, not as close together as they had been near the village, providing just enough light to illuminate any obstacles. Digs placed his in an empty holder.

  “Through here,” he said. He stood in front of a small alcove in the cave wall. The interior was brightly lit, torches casting light on the blankets and pillow on the floor. Someone sat in the middle of the room eating what looked like stew off a metal plate. When Chris drew closer she realized who it was.

  “Micah!” she yelled.

  He looked up from his food and stared at her as if he didn’t believe it was really her. His pants and shirt were dirty as a construction worker’s and his face was smudged but otherwise he looked unharmed. She couldn’t quite believe it either. How was it possible they ended up at the same place?

  “Micah,” she said, “it’s me. Chris.” She slowly walked into the alcove and crouched down to meet his eyes. “Christina from…” She almost said “Earth” but stopped herself. “Chris from home.”

  Something seemed to click into place for him then because he looked at her—really looked at her—and tears welled in his eyes. “I thought you were dead,” he said.

  Chris hugged him, hard, and he hugged her back, dumping stew onto the floor.

  “You disappeared,” she said, crying, not letting go. “I turned ar
ound and you were gone. How did you get here?”

  They held each other a while longer, but eventually, reluctantly, they let each other go.

  “When we were in space—”

  Chris loudly cleared her throat, trying to mask what he was saying, but she had a feeling Digs heard anyway.

  “It’s fine,” Digs said from the tunnel. “Micah already told me everything.”

  “What?” she said, looking at Micah. What would make him do something so stupid?

  “It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm her down. “Digs is cool. He won’t say anything.”

  “How do you know that?” she said, lowering her voice. “You just met him.”

  “He covered for me in town, told them my parents sent me here to work as punishment for not doing my chores. And he let me crash here the past couple of nights. And he’s been bringing me food. He’s a good guy.”

  “Wait,” she said. “How long have you been here?”

  “What’s it been, Digs?”

  “Three days.”

  “You’ve been here for three whole days?” Chris asked. How was that possible? They’d both gone through the wormhole or portal or whatever it was at the same time.

  “Yeah. I landed on a beach outside the cave and Digs found me,” he said, doing his best to clean up the stew he’d spilled on the floor. He managed to scoop the big chunks back onto the plate. “He thought I washed onto the beach after a shipwreck so he led me into town and got me some water and food. I told you, he’s a good guy.”

  He seemed so matter-of-fact about the whole thing, about basically being abducted by an alien, travelling through space without air, and miraculously landing on another planet. Maybe it was because he’d had some time to adjust. He did have three whole days on Chris. That probably went a long way in helping him sort some things out.

  Micah went on to tell her about where they were. They had landed on a planet called Kellet and the people they had seen so far, including Digs, were called Moles. The name seemed a bit on-the-nose for Chris’s taste, maybe even a bit derogatory, but that’s what the Toppers—those who lived aboveground—had called them for so long that the name eventually stuck. They were in a cave system beneath the Northern Kingdom where King Karniv lived in a castle named Polaris. The utensils lodged in the walls were apparently the equivalent of gold nuggets. They would be taken north then melted down and shaped into coins, and then stored in the castle’s treasury until they were used as currency throughout the kingdom.

  Digs approached them then. “I’ve been wanting to take Micah to Polaris but he wouldn’t go. He was waiting for you.”

  Chris felt a sudden surge of affection for her friend. And he was suddenly very interested in getting the remaining stew off his bedding.

  “Why did you want to go to Polaris?” she asked Digs. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell the king about us.”

  “Oh, believe me, Karniv is the last person we should talk to,” Digs said.

  From the tone of his voice, Chris could tell there was a story there.

  “But I think my sister might know what to do.”

  “Is she the queen?” Chris asked.

  He chuckled. “A Mole queen? That would never happen. No, Megland works in the castle as a maid, but there’s a chance she might know somebody that could help. Though if what Micah said is true, if you have a Swamper after you, then it’s going to be extremely dangerous.”

  So that’s what Leroy was: a Swamper. Chris had lots of time to think about him while she drifted through space. She told Digs that she couldn’t understand why in the world she didn’t freak out when he first appeared in the study or why she did whatever he asked.

  “They hypnotize people,” Micah said.

  “They charm them,” Digs corrected him. “But the question is why a Swamper was there in the first place. Micah says there’s no magic on Earth.”

  “There’s not,” she said.

  “That’s strange. Swampers are attracted to magic. Why would they travel to a place that doesn’t have any?”

  It was one of about a billion questions left unanswered. According to Digs, night was coming. He could sense it. Apparently all Moles could, which was a good thing since the sun burned their skin. The three of them needed to get going. There were supplies to be gathered if they were going to leave by nightfall and Polaris was waiting for them.

  CHAPTER 6

  When they finally stepped out of the cave it was just after sunset. All three of them had to submit to a search before leaving the village because of Chris’s unintentional theft earlier. After that they were free to go. There was just enough daylight left that Chris could see they were in a savannah that stretched off into the distance. She breathed deeply, savoring the fresh air.

  The path to Polaris was a set of deep ruts made by years of countless wagons loaded down with utensils. A vast mountain range lay to their west. And, according to Digs, the beach Chris had landed on was to the east. But the land in front of them was covered in waist high golden grass and strange trees dotted the horizon, the spread of their bare branches like slightly cupped hands held up to the sky. Low brush hid the occasional jackrabbit whose shadow startled Chris whenever it darted out into the open only to hide in the shelter of another cluster of tangled and rough foliage.

  She wanted to talk about something, anything to distract herself from thinking about what other kinds of creatures might be lurking in the dark. She was afraid of what Digs had told her back in the cave, of what they needed to be on the lookout for: mercenaries.

  Digs had said that nobody knew a lot about Swampers, but the fact that they couldn’t be away from the Swamplands for very long was common knowledge. It was the source of their power. So, they had mercenaries to do their bidding. All sorts of strange creatures acted on behalf of the Swampers. Digs said they came from beyond the Swamplands, further west than anybody had ever been. The swamp stretched out for miles and miles, seemingly forever. Whatever was out there was uncharted.

  He was ahead of Micah and Chris now, leading the way. All three of them carried torches. The sun had finally gone and stars once again filled the sky. Chris tried to find the Milky Way. When she couldn’t, she realized that she had traveled beyond it.

  “I’m sorry I got you into all of this,” she said. Micah was walking beside her. Torchlight cast half his face in shadow. He had washed it before they left and was finally starting to look like himself again.

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “If I hadn’t listened to Leroy we wouldn’t be in this mess. I did this.”

  “If you had known what you were doing, I mean if you hadn’t been ‘charmed’ by an alien and had done it anyway, then I’d be pissed. But you were hypnotized.”

  Ahead of them Digs cleared his throat.

  “I don’t care if it’s wrong,” Micah said. “My way of saying it sounds better.”

  He and Chris smiled at each other and she knew in that moment that she would do whatever it took to make it up to him.

  Chris wondered what time it was on Earth. Were days the same length on Kellet as they were there? If so, then her mom would have called the police by then. Did she think Chris had been kidnapped or that she had run away? Micah’s mom would have noticed he was gone, too, and that might make them think that they had run away together. Of course, they could never imagine what was really happening.

  They had been walking for hours. The trees Chris had seen on the horizon towered over them. Their branches stood at attention, like upright hair picks, except when Chris raised her torch to get a better look she could see that each branch was tipped with gold.

  “Weird,” Micah said.

  Lights flickered in the air above them. At first Chris thought they might be lightning bugs, but then the tree next to her sparked and she saw the tops of its branches come alive with flame. One by one all the trees eventually lit up, and it was like being surrounded by thousands and thousands of candles. The path they were on led
right through the heart of the forest, and even though they had been walking all night Chris felt reinvigorated. Maybe this place wasn’t all bad.

  Micah reached out to touch the tree nearest them when a hand reached out of the dark and clamped down on his arm.

  “The trees are poison,” Digs said, releasing his grip.

  Chris looked at the flaming majesty of the forest, its dazzling splendor.

  “It’s the wax,” he said. “It drips from the top. One drop blisters skin. If it gets in your eyes,” he snapped his fingers, “instant blindness. The candelabra is beautiful to behold but not something you want to get too close to.”

  Chris checked Micah’s arm to make sure he hadn’t gotten any wax on it.

  “I’m good,” he said, nodding to Digs.

  “We’d better go,” Digs said, continuing down the path. Christina caught up with him.

  “Why are you helping us?” she asked. “A Swamper’s after us. You’re risking your life. Why?”

  He was quiet for a moment. The silence was punctuated by the sound of wax plopping and sizzling on the grass to either side of them. She thought he wasn’t going to answer her but he finally said, “Our village was raided when I was a baby. King Karniv heard that some Moles were practicing magic so he sent mercenaries to round them up to take to the Swampers. My mother was one of the people practicing magic. When they came to take her, my father fought back and they killed him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged like it was all old news, but Chris could see the pain in his face. “Meg pretty much raised me,” he said. “She left to work at Polaris when she was fourteen to try to find out what happened to our mother. She’s been there ever since.”

  Chris couldn’t imagine losing both her parents at the same time. At least she still had her mother.

  “Wait. How old are you?” she said.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You look so much younger than that.”

  He scrunched up his face. “I don’t think so. We look the same age to me.”