The village without a name remained behind them, but it did not truly remain behind. It followed them not with footsteps, not with voices and not with a figure in the fog, but with that mute order that had settled inside Eve and grew heavier with every breath. Door signs without writing, books without people, children’s drawings without faces, a schoolroom where sentences had been learned until no one knew whom they belonged to anymore. No one spoke about it for long when they took the path north, because some places do not leave words behind at once, but only begin making themselves known inside you later. The forest took them back in, gray, damp and too still for a world where birds should still have lived. Garren no longer led the group alone, but walked beside Kael, the map in his hand while Kael studied it with open mistrust. Nara moved through the undergrowth on the left, Marek on the right, Tara a little behind them, her gaze lowered and her fingers sometimes touching trunks or stones because she apparently had to check whether the path beneath their feet still knew what it was. Garrick walked in the middle and carried his damaged resonance device on a wider strap Finn had reinforced for him as best he could. Finn held the spool of copper wire, but unlike before, he no longer did it only because Garrick had given it to him. He held it with that quiet care that slowly turns a borrowed task into one of your own, and every time Garrick gave him a curt instruction, he answered without the old hesitation. Clara saw it. Eve saw that Clara saw it. It was not pride that appeared first on her face, but fear. Pride came too, later, cautious, almost reluctant, but fear was faster. Finn was becoming useful, Finn was becoming visible, Finn was becoming someone others included in their plans, and for Clara that was not a relief, but a new risk. Mira walked between Clara and Eve, small beneath the blanket Clara had wrapped around her shoulders, and since the village she had been quieter than before. Sometimes she looked at Finn, sometimes at Garrick’s device, sometimes at the trees behind which something apparently lay that only she could hear. The sentence from the well had lodged inside her, and Eve could see it in the way Mira moved her lips without speaking. If I can do something, then everyone will want me to do it. Eve had promised her that she was allowed to say no. The promise felt right, but it also felt heavy, not because Eve doubted it, but because she did not know whether the world would later allow them to keep that promise cleanly. The fact that Clara, by contrast, said almost nothing was new. Clara had never been talkative, not really, but until now her silence had had edges, brief warnings, sharp interjections, the constant need to remind everyone else where her boundary lay. Now her silence was tighter, it constricted her and made every movement seem controlled. Since the room in the village that had looked too much like a healer’s room, some part of her no longer seemed to be walking on this path. Eve had seen her standing outside against the wall, her hands pressed to stone, counting her breaths, and she had not asked, not properly. Perhaps that had been the only thing she had done right in that moment. Finn noticed it in his own way. He no longer walked directly beside Clara because she gave him no room for it, but his gaze kept returning to her. Not searching like a child, but attentive and worried. He had learned that his sister was not invulnerable, but not yet what exactly could break her. That was what made him vulnerable. The fog knew by now that Finn sounded bright, and perhaps soon it would also know which questions it had to wake inside him. The path narrowed the farther they moved away from the village. Roots stretched across the damp earth, and the fog lay flat over them, so that every step set off a pale wave that immediately sank back into itself. Kael stopped again and again to check the direction, while Garren watched for signs Eve did not know and probably would not have recognized even if someone had explained them to her. Once Garren stopped in front of a tree stump whose cut surface had turned black, and he passed two fingers just above it without touching it. “Not this way,” he said. Kael looked at the map. “The path should lead straight ahead.” “The path is dead.” “Paths do not die.” “You have clearly never lived near the fog long enough.” Kael looked at him, and there was more answer in his gaze than his voice allowed. “I have.” Garren paused. For one breath, one recognized the other again, and Eve hated how few words men like them sometimes needed to find each other where they vanished from everyone else. “Then you know what I mean,” Garren said. Kael nodded almost invisibly. They took a detour over a low embankment covered in wet grass and gray mushrooms. Marek stepped on one of the mushrooms, which burst beneath his boot and released a thin thread of pale smoke. Nara grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back before he could curse. “Do not breathe.” Marek pressed his lips together, which visibly cost him effort. The smoke dispersed after a few seconds, but Mira suddenly began to cough. Clara was at her side at once. “What is it?” Mira shook her head. “It tastes like an empty name.” Marek stared at her in horror. “How am I supposed to avoid mushrooms in the future when that is the description?” Garrick lifted his device and looked at the needle. “No strong reaction. Only a remnant. Perhaps the soil here absorbed something from the village.” “Wonderful,” Marek muttered. “Even the earth has bad habits.” Finn came closer, but kept his distance from Mira since she had said in the village that his name was warm. “Do you need water?” Mira nodded. Clara took the waterskin from her belt, but Finn was faster and offered his own. Clara looked at him. For a moment she apparently wanted to tell him to keep his own supply. Then she was silent and let Mira drink. It was a small gesture. That was exactly why Eve noticed it. Clara did not like giving up control, not even over a waterskin. After a while, Finn went back to Garrick’s side. “Can earth really absorb names?” Garrick looked at him, first with a trace of impatience, then with genuine attention. “Not names in the ordinary sense. But places store traces. Habits. Repetitions. If people do the same thing in one place for long enough, they leave patterns behind.” “So a place can learn?” “In a primitive way, yes.” Finn looked back toward the village, which had long since vanished from sight. “Then that village learned to forget people.” Garrick did not answer immediately. “Or people taught it how to forget.” Finn went silent. Clara heard the sentence despite the distance. Eve saw her face harden. Perhaps she was thinking of the village. Perhaps of the healer’s house. Perhaps of the fact that she too had taught Finn something, namely a false memory that was meant to protect him and might now be exactly the place where the fog could take hold. Lyra had barely spoken while they walked. Her notes were in the leather bag at her side, but several times she had placed her hand on it without pulling the book out. That was unusual. Lyra usually wrote against fear, against gaps, against silence, against the feeling that the world was slipping away faster than a person could hold it in place. Now the bag remained closed. Eve understood that better than she wanted to. After the village, every act of writing had become dangerous, because a register could preserve, but it could also prove how thoroughly something had been removed. At last Lyra stepped beside Eve and said quietly, “I do not know whether I am still doing the right thing when I write everything down.” Eve looked at her. “Why?” “Because every word gives something a shape. If I name something wrongly, perhaps my mistake will remain longer than what truly was.” Eve thought of the scraped away names, of the children’s drawings without faces and of the scrap of cloth at the well. “Writing nothing down did not help that village either.” Lyra nodded, but she did not look comforted. “No. But perhaps too much false writing began there.” Garrick, who had heard the last words, answered without turning around. “Writing is not dangerous. False certainty is dangerous.” Lyra looked at him. “That almost sounds wise.” “That was probably an accident.” Finn gave a quiet snort, and even Mira briefly lifted her gaze. For a moment, something small formed between them, not comfort and not hope, more a thin thread of shared exhaustion. Then the forest drew closer around them again, and no one said anything more. They walked until late afternoon without finding a suitable place to rest. The fog remained thin, but its thinness no longer reassured anyone. Since the village, they knew that erasure did not have to be loud. A place could look orderly and still be a grave for everything that made people different from one another. When the sky darkened, though the sun had not yet fully vanished somewhere behind thick clouds, Tara lifted her hand. “Down there.” She pointed toward a hollow between old stones. “The place is weak, but not hungry.” Marek looked at her. “By now I will take weak and not hungry as a recommendation.” Garren checked the surroundings, then nodded. “We stay there for the night.” Kael did not look satisfied, but did not object. “Double watches.” “Of course,” Garren said. “I had no intention of relying on the goodwill of the landscape.” The hollow was not a beautiful place, but no one had seriously looked for beautiful places in days. The ground was fairly dry, a few crippled trees formed incomplete cover, and a shallow rock overhang protected at least part of the group from the fine drizzle that had begun falling from the gray sky. Nara and Marek checked the outer line. Tara placed small bone signs between two stones and murmured so quietly that not even Lyra understood every word. Garren marked three retreat directions, two of them bad and one barely responsible. Kael checked all three and apparently found each one even worse, but said nothing, which Eve took as agreement. Garrick sat down with a heavy sigh and immediately began to open the resonance device. Finn sat beside him without being asked and held the little lantern so Garrick could see the interior. “Not so close,” Garrick grumbled. Finn drew the lantern back two fingers’ width. “Is that right?” “Now it is too far.” Finn moved it again. “I am beginning to understand why your devices sound so irritable.” Garrick grunted. “My devices sound irritable because they have to work under adverse conditions.” “So do we.” “And you sound irritable too.” Finn smiled tiredly, and for one moment the world almost seemed normal. Clara sat a few steps away, Mira beside her, and watched the two of them. Eve did not sit down with her. Not yet. She waited until the fire burned low and the group settled into the tired order of camp. Lyra did not write, but only sorted her notes again and again without adding a single line. That was perhaps the clearest sign that the day had shaken her. Garren bent over his map, Nara crouched at the edge of the hollow, Marek pretended not to be asleep even though his head kept dropping forward, and Tara sat with her eyes closed beside a stone whose surface she touched with two fingers. Kael stood at the edge of the hollow and looked into the darkness, as if it were an old opponent that had simply not yet decided where it wanted to strike today. Finally, Eve took two cups of thin herbal infusion and went to Clara. “You do not have to say anything,” she began before Clara lifted her gaze. “Apparently that is the new way to begin conversations that are still supposed to become conversations.” Clara’s voice sounded dry, but not sharp enough to drive Eve away. Eve sat down beside her at some distance and handed her the cup. Clara did not take it at once. Then she did. “Thank you.” “The room in the village hit you.” Clara looked into the cup. “You said you were not asking.” “I am not asking. I am stating.” “That is almost worse.” Eve nodded because she knew Clara was right. Mira was not asleep, even though her eyes were closed. Eve saw the girl listening almost imperceptibly and lowered her voice. “Finn noticed.” Clara’s fingers tightened around the cup. “Finn notices too much now.” “Maybe he always did.” “No. He used to believe me.” There it was, the door. Not open, but a crack wide. Eve did not move, because even the wrong breath could close it again. Clara took a small sip, grimaced because the infusion was bitter, and then stared into the dull fire for a long time. “There was once a healer’s house,” she finally said. “Finn mentioned it. He believes we were attacked there by something from the fog.” Eve said nothing. Clara breathed out, slowly, controlled, too controlled. “I let him believe that. Not because I thought it was better for me. It was never better for me. Lies are not lighter just because someone else carries them without knowing they are lies.” Eve felt her throat tighten. “What was there?” Clara closed her eyes. “People.” That one word was enough. It stood between them, heavier than any creature. The fog could form monsters from darkness, could scrape names from stone, could bind voices and fold paths, but people sometimes needed no fog for that. They needed only opportunity, fear, hunger and the feeling that afterward no one would look too closely. Clara kept speaking, and her voice remained astonishingly calm, which made it unbearable. “We had believed it was safe. The house was still standing, the windows were intact enough, and downstairs there was a room with herbs, blankets and old bowls. Finn was so tired he almost fell asleep while walking. I told him we could stay there, just one night. I locked the door. I pushed a cupboard in front of the back door. I counted how many windows there were. I convinced myself that counting meant control.” She opened her eyes, but her gaze stayed on the fire. “Later I heard voices in the hall. Not fog voices. Real voices. Men’s voices. Someone laughed. Not loudly. That was worse. Loud laughter would have registered as danger. This laughter belonged to people who had long since decided that their own hunger mattered more than any boundary.” Eve held the cup in both hands and said nothing. Mira lay completely still now. Eve did not know whether she was asleep or only pretending. Clara continued, each word careful, each word drawn from a place she had long since locked away. “I woke Finn. He was still half asleep. I pushed him into a cupboard and told him not to come out, no matter what he heard. He asked me whether the fog was there. I said yes. I still remember how quickly the lie came. It was there at once. I did not have to look for it. Perhaps in that moment I wanted to believe it myself. The fog was at least an enemy that did not pretend to still be human.” Eve noticed that her fingers were trembling. Not only from fear. From anger. Clara did not see it. Or she saw it and kept speaking anyway. “I took an iron pipe that might have come from a bed frame and was lying in the corner. I stood in front of the cupboard. I thought if I stood there long enough, if I looked strong enough, if I simply did not tremble, perhaps they would leave. They did not leave.” The silence afterward was full of images Clara did not have to speak aloud. Eve was grateful that she did not. Grateful and horrified at the same time. Clara lifted the cup, but did not drink. “I remember small things. Not everything. Not the way people in stories remember. I remember a lamp that did not quite go out. The smell of wet coats. My hand around the iron pipe. The thought that Finn was breathing too loudly in the cupboard, and that I was angry at him because I was afraid they would hear him. After that I remember less. Not nothing. Less.” Eve swallowed. “Clara.” “At some point I came back to myself properly. The room was empty. Finn came out of the cupboard. He had cried, but quietly. So quietly that I almost hated him for it because I had taught him to be afraid quietly. He asked whether the creature was gone. I said yes. I said it was gone. I said everything was good enough to keep going.” Her voice did not break. That made it worse. “Since then he believes I fought something from the fog. A creature. A shadow. Something you can hate without having to ask why it once had human hands.” Eve looked into the fire. “You wanted to protect him.” Clara laughed softly, and this time it sounded more bitter than before. “Yes. That is always the beautiful sentence. I wanted to protect him. I did not want him to know what people can do. I did not want him to look at me and understand why afterward I could no longer sleep if a door was not locked. I did not want him to feel guilty because he was in the cupboard. I did not want him to someday think he should have done something. He was a child. He was supposed to stay in the cupboard. That was the only thing that was right.” “Then tell him that someday.” Clara looked at her now, and in her gaze there was a weariness that seemed older than she was. “You say that as if truth were a light. You hold it up, and then everyone sees better. Sometimes truth is only a knife, Eve. And when you pull it from the wound, someone bleeds who at least could still walk before.” Eve could not say anything simple to that. Perhaps there was nothing simple to say. “The fog will notice that something there is wrong.” Clara went rigid. “You do not know that.” “No. But it has taken names, imitated voices, twisted places and today shown us a village that tried to save itself through erasure. If it notices that Finn carries a false memory, it will pull on it.” Clara stood so abruptly that Mira opened her eyes. “Then let it pull on me.” “It will.” Eve stood too, but slowly. “And on him.” Clara stepped closer. “You are talking as if I have to hurt him so the fog does not.” “I am talking as if the fog has learned how familiar things sound.” Clara breathed heavily. Her eyes shone, but again no tears came. “You want me to tell him I lied to him. That I lied to him for years. That the story that helped him keep breathing at night was a lie.” “I do not want anything from you.” “Yes, you do. Everyone wants something. From Mira. From Finn. From me. From Garrick. From you. This whole damned journey has become nothing but someone demanding that someone else endure something so everyone can keep going.” Mira sat up. “Some memories do not disappear just because you hide them from someone.” The words came softly, not accusingly, perhaps not even entirely from Mira herself, but they struck Clara hard. Eve saw the moment Clara’s face closed. Too quickly. Too hard. “You know nothing about that.” Mira flinched. Clara took a step toward her, not threateningly, but so abruptly that Finn looked up from the fire. “You know nothing. You hear things, you say things, and everyone acts as if truths come out of your mouth just because the fog touched you. But you are a child, Mira. A child. You do not know what people have to hide so others do not break from it.” Mira went pale. “I did not want to…” “No. You never want to. It just says itself, does it? It speaks through you, it pulls through you, it uses you, and we are all supposed to pretend that is a gift.” “Clara,” Finn said sharply. He had stood up. Clara spun around. Regret was already in her face, but the anger was still too close to be taken back. “What?” Finn looked at her, frightened, hurt and angry all at once. “She did nothing to you.” Clara opened her mouth, but no words came. Mira sat motionless on the blanket, her eyes wide, her hands clenched together. Eve immediately knelt beside her. “Mira, she did not mean you.” That was not entirely true, and that was exactly why it burned on Eve’s tongue. Mira looked at Clara. “She did. But not only.” Clara closed her eyes. The pain in her face was so open that Eve wanted to look away for a moment. Then Clara stepped back. “I need air.” No one said there was air everywhere, because no one was that cruel. Clara went to the edge of the camp, not far enough to leave the watches, but far enough that she no longer stood in the firelight. Finn wanted to follow her. Eve placed a hand on his arm. “Wait.” He looked at her. “Why?” “Because right now she does not know how to look at you without seeing everything she cannot tell you.” Finn’s face changed. “What does that mean?” Eve took her hand away. She had said too much and too little. “She has to tell you.” Finn stared at her. “You know something.” Eve did not answer. Finn looked toward Clara, who stood at the edge of the hollow, her arms wrapped around herself, her head lowered. “Everyone always knows something and then decides that I am not supposed to know it.” “Not everyone.” “Yes.” His voice was not loud, but it carried. Garrick looked up from the device. Kael turned his head. Clara did not move. Finn continued more quietly. “Clara decides what I am allowed to know. You decide what you are not allowed to say. Kael decides with every sentence anyway whether we are mature enough to hear it. Garren watched us for days and decided when we deserved help. And Mira says things she does not want to say, but no one asks what it does to her when all of us then react as if she just opened a door.” Mira looked down at her hands. Eve felt the sentence hit her. Finn was right. Not completely, but enough. “Finn,” Garrick said, unusually calm. “Sometimes people keep things from you not because they want to keep you small.” Finn looked at him. “Then why?” Garrick closed the device and set the tool aside. “Because they themselves do not know how to touch the truth without cutting themselves on it.” Finn said nothing. He did not seem pacified, but he listened. That was something. Garren, who had been silent until then, lifted his gaze from the map. “Sometimes people keep things hidden because knowledge lays a trail.” Finn looked at him. “That is another sentence that is supposed to explain something and still only makes me have more questions.” “Then it is honest enough.” “No. It is convenient enough.” Marek made a soft sound that was almost agreement. Nara looked at Finn with an expression that was not gentle, but not mocking either. Garren folded the map. “You want the truth. That is understandable. But truth is not an object someone simply places in your hand. It changes you the moment you hold it.” Finn’s face hardened. “That is always decided by the people who already have it.” The sentence did not only hit Garren. Eve felt it herself. Kael looked into the darkness. Clara still stood at the edge of the camp and did not move. Mira had lowered her head, but Eve saw that she heard every word. Garrick finally cleared his throat. “Finn.” “What?” “You are right to be angry.” Finn seemed to have expected many things, but not that. Garrick continued. “That does not mean everyone can tell you everything at once. It only means your anger is not childish.” Finn looked at him for a long time. Then he nodded curtly. “Thank you.” Garrick took up his tool again. “Do not get used to me comforting usefully.” “Too late.” Garrick snorted, and this time Finn did not smile. But his shoulders lowered a little. Later, when the night deepened, they divided the watches. Clara volunteered for the first watch, and no one contradicted her, though everyone saw how exhausted she was. Kael positioned himself silently at some distance, not beside her, but close enough to intervene. Garren took the second watch with Nara, Marek claimed he could not sleep anyway and then lay down so demonstratively that after a few minutes he looked like someone resting angrily. Tara sat awake for a long time and stared into the earth. The fact that Lyra did not write was perhaps the clearest sign that the evening had shaken her. Eve stayed with Mira until the girl was breathing more calmly again. “She does not hate me,” Mira whispered without opening her eyes. “No.” “But she is right.” Eve leaned closer. “About what?” “That it uses me.” Eve felt a stab in her chest. “Mira, you are not what the fog wants to make of you.” “And if everyone else needs me too?” “Needing is not using.” Mira opened her eyes and looked at her. “Finn said that too.” “Then Finn was clever.” “But how do you really know?” Eve remembered Finn’s answer on the village square. Whether someone is still allowed to say no. “Perhaps by whether you are allowed to say no.” Mira looked into the fire. “Clara said no, and the memory still remained.” Eve did not answer, because she did not know how much Mira knew and how much she only felt. That was the new cruelty. With Mira there were no clear boundaries anymore between knowledge, feeling and foreign echo. After a while, Tara sat down with them without being asked. She did not look at Mira, but at the ground between them. “Some places hold no for a very long time.” Eve looked at her. “What do you mean?” Tara drew two fingers through the damp earth. “A no does not disappear just because no one listens to it. It remains somewhere. In walls, in thresholds, in hands, sometimes in those who had to go on afterward.” Mira looked at her. “Can it be found again?” Tara breathed out slowly. “Sometimes. But it does not always come back as protection. Sometimes it comes back as pain because pain was the only part that did not lie.” Eve thought of Clara at the edge of the camp, of Finn in the cupboard, of a door that perhaps had never stopped being closed in his dream. “That is not a comforting thought.” Tara nodded. “No. But not every true thought is comfort.” Mira lowered her gaze again. “Then Clara’s no was still there.” Tara did not answer at once. “Perhaps it was never gone.” Around midnight, the fog settled deeper over the hollow. It did not come with force, but with weariness. First the fire grew smaller, though Garrick added wood, then the shadows lengthened, though the flame was barely high enough to cast them. Finn eventually slept beside Garrick’s toolbox, his cloak half drawn over his shoulders, the copper spool still within reach of his hand. Clara stood at the edge of the hollow and looked over at him. Eve watched her from the other side of the fire. Kael stood a few steps behind Clara. “You should sleep,” he said quietly. Clara did not flinch. Perhaps she had noticed him long ago. “People like saying that when they have no better idea.” “Usually it is still true.” “Sleep has never guarded anything.” Kael was silent for a while. “It has. Sometimes it guards the part of you that otherwise eventually does not come back.” Clara did not look at him. “Speaking from experience?” “Yes.” “And did it come back?” Kael did not answer. Clara nodded bitterly. “Thought so.” Kael stayed. Eve saw that Clara did not send him away. That was unusual enough to mean something. After a while, Kael said, “You do not have to tell him everything tonight.” Clara closed her hand around the handle of her knife, not threateningly, but out of habit. “That almost sounds kind.” “It is not kindness. It is experience.” “Then keep it.” “I kept things hidden for too long because I believed later pain was better than immediate pain. Sometimes that is true. Often it is only cowardice that has learned patience.” Clara looked at him for the first time. “Are you trying to help me or judge me?” Kael held her gaze. “I am not particularly good at either.” Clara breathed out, and for a moment the shadow of a tired smile touched her face, too weak to remain. “At least honest.” “Not always.” “I feared as much.” Then they fell silent again. That silence was not warm, but it did not bite. Eve thought this might be the closest thing Kael could call comfort. A sound made Eve lift her head. Finn moved in his sleep. Not restlessly enough for an ordinary nightmare, but his breathing changed. Mira suddenly sat up. “He hears.” Eve was awake at once. “What?” Mira looked at Finn. “He hears them.” Clara turned around. “Whom?” Finn’s lips moved. At first no sound came. Then he whispered, “Clara?” Clara was beside him in three strides and knelt down. “I am here.” Finn’s eyes remained closed. “Clara, open up.” Clara froze. The blood drained from her face. Eve saw it and knew at once that this sentence did not belong here. Not in this night. Not in this place. Finn whispered again, this time with a voice that sounded younger, much younger. “Clara, I hear them.” Clara gripped his shoulder. “Finn, wake up.” He kept sleeping. His face twisted because he was seeing something behind closed lids. “Is it the fog?” Clara pressed her lips together. Eve saw her whole body fighting the past. “Wake up,” Clara said more sharply. “Finn, you are waking up now.” Finn whispered, “You said it was the fog.” Mira began to cry. Not loudly. Only tears running down her face. Garrick was awake by now, Kael had moved closer as well, Garren stood at the edge of the hollow with his blade drawn, Nara behind him, Marek cursing as he got to his feet. Lyra sat rigidly because every word could pull the dream deeper. Finn’s breathing quickened. “Why are they laughing?” Clara made a choked sound. “No.” Eve stepped to her. “Clara, this is the fog.” “I know.” “It is not simply showing him the truth. It is showing him something meant to break you.” Clara looked at her, and in that look lay the terrible question she did not have to ask. What if it is close enough? Finn moved his head from side to side. “I am supposed to be quiet.” Clara bent over him, both hands on his face. “Finn, listen to me. You are not there. You are here. You are with me. You are in the camp. You are not in the healer’s house.” The word had been spoken. Finn’s eyes snapped open. For a moment he did not see Clara, but looked through her into a room she had left him for years as a fog story. Then he sucked in air as though surfacing from water. Clara pulled him to herself so fiercely that he could barely react. “You are here,” she repeated. “You are here. You are here.” Finn sat stiffly in her arms. “I heard you.” Clara held him tighter. “I am here.” “No.” His voice was brittle. “Back then.” Clara closed her eyes. Eve saw her fall inwardly. Finn whispered, “I heard you, Clara.” No one moved. The fog lay at the edge of the camp, calm and thin. Too calm. Clara loosened her hold on Finn a little, but only enough to look at him. Her hands remained on his shoulders. “Finn.” He looked at her, and his eyes were full of fear, but also full of something else. Not accusation. Not yet. Confusion. Pain. The beginning of a question larger than the dream. “It was not a creature, was it?” Clara opened her mouth. No word came. That was answer enough, perhaps not complete, but enough to change something in Finn’s face. Eve wanted to look away and did not. Clara had been right, truth was a knife, but the fog had already taken it in hand. “Not now,” Clara finally said, and her voice was barely more than a scrape. “Please. Not now.” Finn stared at her. Then he slowly nodded, not because he was satisfied, but because he saw that his sister could not stand in that moment if he kept asking. He was hurt, and still he protected her. That made it worse. Garrick stepped closer, but not too close. “Finn, say your name.” Finn looked at him, still half in the dream. “What?” “Say your name. Only that.” Finn swallowed. “My name is Finn.” Garrick nodded. “Again.” “My name is Finn.” Clara held his hand. Finn drew a trembling breath. “My name is Finn. I am here.” Garrick’s device made no sound, and that was exactly what unsettled him. “No resonance.” Garren looked into the fog. “Then that was not a grasp for his name.” Lyra whispered, “But for his memory.” Mira wiped the tears from her face. “For Clara’s voice.” Clara looked at her. This time there was no anger in her gaze. Only horror. “What?” Mira looked toward the edge of the camp. “The fog has learned what you sound like when you are afraid.” Kael slowly drew his sword. Garren gave Nara a sign. Garrick reached for his device, but the needle remained still. “I measure nothing.” “Because it is not here,” Mira said. “Not yet.” Finn looked at Clara. “I heard your voice.” Clara swallowed. “I spoke.” “Not just now.” He looked into the fog. “Before.” Clara followed his gaze. Eve did too. There was nothing to see out there. Only gray night between the trees, thin fog above damp ground and the kind of silence that did not feel empty, but attentive. Then Clara’s voice came from the fog. Not loud, not distorted and not far enough away to be harmless. “Finn, open up.” Clara stood right beside him, her hand lay on his shoulder, and her lips were closed. Finn turned chalk pale. Eve drew her dagger. Kael placed himself between Finn and the fog. Garren cursed quietly. Clara did not move. Her face had become empty, as though for one moment something inside her had stopped holding the world together. The voice from the fog repeated, gentle, familiar and terribly patient, “Finn, I am here.” Finn did not answer. Clara reached for his hand and held it so tightly that her fingers turned white. “No,” she said, not loudly and not only to the fog, but to herself, to the past, to the lie and to everything she could no longer control. “No.” The fog fell silent. That was no relief. It was the beginning of something that now knew which sound it had to use.