When Miriam awoke the next morning, the sun was already high in the sky. With some creativity, the fire had been started up again and was now billowing smoke dramatically out into the forest. Carmen sat beside it looking proud.
"Did you put damp wood on?" Miriam asked, sitting up and pushing her hair back from her face.
Carmen shrugged. "How should I know? It was just wood."
Miriam sighed and wandered over, solving the problem as deftly as she could. Carmen watched with a mixture of indignation and desperate hope.
"I did start it again, though, didn't I?" she urged. "It was a good fire. It was burning. There were only embers when I woke up but now look!"
"Yes, look at the choking pillar of smoke," Miriam rolled her eyes. "No, it wasn't bad. You just need some practice."
Carmen was looking bright-eyed and fresh, all aglow with energy and enthusiasm. Nigs sitting beside her, chewing down an energy bar, looked well-rested but broody, deep in some thoughts of his own. On the other side of the fire, Sandy and Ebb sat apart from one another, both in silence.
"Where's Jonathan?" Miriam asked.
"Over there," Carmen pointed. "We didn't want to wake either of you. You were so soundly asleep."
"You've gone soft," Miriam teased. "Don't we have things to do today?"
Carmen shrugged. "No sense in rushing. We don't know how far away the sea is, after all."
"All the same," Miriam glanced up at the sun, "we should probably wake him."
"Be my guest," Carmen spread her hands wide. "I don't want to get my head snapped off for disturbing him."
Miriam walked across their encampment to where Jonathan lay, curled up with his knees against his chest, a blanket twisted across him.
"Hey," she shook his shoulder gently. "Hey, wake up. It's midmorning already."
He rolled over and blinked up at her, bleary-eyed. "Huh?"
"Wake up," she repeated. "It's time to get moving. The others have been up for hours."
"They have?" Jonathan forced himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes and brushing leaves out of his hair. "Damn."
"I've only just woken up as well," Miriam smiled. "Guess they slept better than us. Come on. There's time for some breakfast before we go."
"Miriam?" he caught her wrist before she could leave. "I need to talk to you today. Privately."
Miriam's eyebrows wrinkled into a frown. "You do?"
"It's just...something I don't want to discuss with anyone else," he paused. "Well, not yet. I'd just like to talk to you. Is that alright?"
Miriam's smile returned. "Of course. Whenever we have a moment."
"Thank you. It means a lot."
Miriam freed herself gently from his grip and walked back to fire while behind her Jonathan straightened out his shirt and struggled onto his feet. She saw, to her surprise, Nigs watching her, eyes narrowed, a look on his face as though there was something he desperately wanted to ask but didn't quite dare.
The day's walking was not strenuous. None of them, save Carmen, had any great ambition to reach the sea. They didn't even care whether they found civilisation or any trace of other humans left alive. All that mattered was being outside, relaxed, far away from Subterra.
There was little conversation throughout the morning. Overhead, birds sang with no fear of the strange creatures moving around beneath them. They caught glimpses of animals in the trees. Beside them, the river grew broader and stronger. The sun was still in its summer heights above them.
It was shortly past noon when they glimpsed it, just a flash between the hills rising ahead of them. Carmen gave a shout when she saw it, pointing, crowing out her victory at the thin stripe of blue water visible amongst the green.
"There!" she shouted. "There! It's the sea!"
There was no question of resting now, not when they were so close. Carmen wouldn't let them. They marched up the hills and stood, for a moment breathless, at the summit, staring out at the boundless horizon, scattered with clouds, and the rolling waves between them and infinity.
A cool breeze stirred Miriam's hair and she breathed it in: the tang of salt, the sharpness of fish and seaweed, the irresistible scent of the ocean. For a moment, just a moment, she was home again. It was not only Carmen who'd grown up on the shore and, though this sea was dark and troublesome compared to the turquoise waters Miriam had woken up to every dawn, it was still the same ocean she had known so well.
They all but ran, half-falling, down the steep hills, clambering over sections of cliff, finding paths until their feet sank into the sand and the waves beat only metres away in towering plumes of spray on the beach.
"Don't," Jonathan put out a hand to stop Carmen running to it. "There could be all kinds of currents."
"Does it look like I care?" Carmen demanded, shrugging him off.
With a wild whoop, she shed her pack and took off for the sea. Miriam didn't hesitate. She was right behind her, kicking off her shoes, letting her toes sink deliciously into the sand as she waded out into the water until a great wave hit her in the chest and bowled her off her feet.
For a moment, she was underwater and upside-down and blinded but then it passed and she righted herself, swaying on her feet, laughing aloud. This was nothing like the river that had drowned her. This was nothing to fear.
"You alright?" Nigs caught her shoulder as she almost fell again.
"I'm fine," she laughed. "I'm fine."
The two of them struck out, swimming against the waves, tossed and turned, to where Carmen was already bobbing neck-deep in the water and waiting for each swell to lift her off her feet. The three of them stood together, splashing and laughing and choking as the waves filled their mouths, weightless and wild with joy at being home.
Eventually, Miriam let the tide wash her back to the beach, soaked through, her hair stiff with salt, her eyes burning from it, shivering with cold. The water was always icy at this time in early summer. Carmen and Nigs were still happy out there, but Miriam was tired.
"You alright?" Jonathan looked amused as she staggered drunkenly up the beach, readjusting to gravity's hold on her.
"C-c-cold," Miriam's teeth chattered. "And hungry."
"Here," Sandy held out his jacket. "You're going blue."
Miriam shook her head. "Better to let the sun dry me. It shouldn't take long in this weather."
"Come for a walk?" Jonathan offered, with a meaningful look in his eyes. "You'll get warm quicker."
Miriam accepted his gallantly offered arm and they trudged along the sand, which coated itself to Miriam's damp feet and legs while the wind whipped her drying hair across her face like knives.
"You really are cold," Jonathan apologised. "Are you sure you don't want a jacket?"
"It's my own fault," Miriam smiled through her shivers. "I'll be fine in a minute. What was it you wanted to talk about?"
Jonathan looked back to where Sandy and Ebb sat on the beach, a good few metres apart, and where Carmen and Nigs were trying to drown one another in the ocean. Miriam thought she saw Nigs turn to watch them for a moment, before Carmen surged up behind him and dragged him under the water.
"My old life..." Jonathan hesitated. "I mean, the life they are claiming is a dream...it wasn't a dream."
Miriam didn't reply. She just watched her own footprints in the sand as they kept on walking.
"I know that was reality," Jonathan swore. "I know it was. My family, my friends, all of it. That was what life is. This...I don't know what this is. Some fevered dream of mine. A madness. But it's not my life, and the memories I think I remember now are no more real than anything else around me."
"Yes," Miriam replied. "I have had those thoughts."
"I knew you would," Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief. "That's why I wanted to talk to you about this first. I don't know...I don't know if the others will understand. But you will."
Miriam nodded. "This life isn't my reality. I feel the other one too strongly. Nothing in Subterra has been...has been as emotive of anything as the sea has been of my past today. I am convinced that this is the dream."
"I wonder why," Jonathan mused. "I was so sure that I died..."
"So was I," Miriam admitted. "But then again, how would we really know? In the end of all things? I believe...I believe I did drown in the river but I did not die. I am, perhaps, in a coma, being cared for, everybody waiting for a miracle to happen and for me to wake up..."
Jonathan closed his eyes. "Thank god. I'm not the only one. I was afraid...I was afraid I was only going mad."
"No. You're quite sane."
They walked in silence for a while.
"And even if we're wrong," Miriam said, eventually, "I'd rather go back to that dream life."
"You would?" Jonathan looked at her in surprise. "But you've nothing to go back for. You have so much here, and nothing there."
"I have a duty," she returned, meeting his eyes. "I have an obligation. I have people who need me. Here, what am I? Just a person, on the outskirts of history. There, I am essential. I could not abandon them for a few creature comforts."
Jonathan smiled sadly. "You're braver than you let on, Miriam Grey."
Miriam nodded. "Yes. I know."
"I've been wondering," Jonathan murmured, "if we have a time limit."
"How do you mean?"
"If we are, as you say, lying in comas and dying as we speak...when will our bodies back there die and leave our minds here severed and abandoned? And if they do, do we remain here in this dream forever or do we fade away? Do we die here, if we die there?"
"And most importantly," Miriam completed, for him, "how long do we have in which to wake up?"
"Not long, I shouldn't think," Jonathan chewed his thumbnail. "We've been here a while, even if time is different in dreams."
"It's been such a strange dream," Miriam sighed. "How did we imagine it, all these things?"
"Who can say?" Jonathan smiled. "But we're agreed? We have to wake up?"
"Wake up? What do you mean, wake up?"
They turned, startled, to face Nigs, dripping wet and breathing hard from his run up the beach to join them. He looked from one to the other, something in his expression urgent and hungry. Jonathan looked at Miriam in fear.
"We're going to wake up," Miriam explained. "This...this is the dream. We're sure of it."
Nigs's shoulders sagged and he let out a breath. When he stood up straight again, his eyes were shining.
"Yes," he said, softly. "I knew it was so. I knew it had to be that way. I want to wake up more than anything."
Miriam looked into his eyes, haunted with the ghosts of home, and read all her yearning, all her loneliness and homesickness and fear, in their depths. She smiled.
"We shall," she promised. "As soon as we can work out a way."
"But surely the way is obvious?" Jonathan frowned.
"Is it?" Nigs demanded. "Then what's your big idea?"
"We go back to sleep," Jonathan shrugged. "It's obvious, isn't it? We get them to put us to sleep again, plug us in to all those machines, and while we go to sleep here, we wake up back home."
It was a beautiful idea, faultless in its simplicity, flawless in its execution. How could it ever fail?
"Yes," Nigs breathed. "Yes, it's perfect. It'll work, don't you think?"
"It'll work," Jonathan confirmed. "It has to work."
"Are we going to tell the others?" Nigs looked worried. "I thought you two...I thought you two understood. But Carmen will..."
"We'll wait," Miriam agreed. "Until after we've solved our problems here. Once Subterra can go above ground, once the chain of command here is sorted out...then we'll let them know. Maybe they'll understand what we know. Or maybe they won't."
"Nigs! Hey, Nigs, what are you doing?" Carmen shouted, from down the beach. "Get over here!"
Nigs rolled his eyes, turned and ran back, droplets of water scattering from his hair with every step.
"We're going home," Miriam said, softly, unable to believe the truth of it. "We're really going to go home."
Jonathan pulled her into a hug, gently folding her against him. Miriam hugged him back tightly, aware that her sodden clothes were soaking his uniform but not caring at all.
"Yes," he told her, gently. "We're going home."