Silence… When that terrible ringing in my ears drew back, this was all that remained. And this silence was more frightening than the noise of a moment ago.
I looked around. Everyone had been scattered. The girl from before had dropped to her knees a little ways off, shaking someone lying on the ground. The uniformed high schoolers had bunched together, clinging to one another; one of them, the blond, was looking around in a wild panic.
I was on my feet, but my balance hung by a thread. The feeling of loneliness… the urge to be left utterly alone under that vast, alien, purplish sky drove me into motion. I had to do something. I couldn't just stand there and watch those damned moons.
Nearest to me lay a dark shape, face down.
I staggered toward it. He was a black-haired man in ordinary clothes. He wasn't moving.
I crouched beside him. "Hey!" My voice tore out of my throat. "Wake up."
I looked at his face and got even more irritated. He lay there grinning, as if he were having a very pleasant dream.
"I said wake up!"
I raised my hand and brought it down across his face. It wasn't a hard slap; it was a reflex, a "come back to life" call.
The poor man flinched at the slaps, jolted up, and started staring at me with fear-filled eyes. His face had reddened after the slaps. He touched it with his hands, trying to understand what had happened. The awful smell must have bothered him too, because he scrunched up his face.
"You…" he said, his voice trembling but not shouting. "Did you hit me?"
He wasn't angry. He just couldn't make sense of it.
"You wouldn't wake up," I said, going on the defensive. "I was checking whether you were dead. I called out but you didn't hear."
The stranger let out a deep breath. His shoulders dropped. He raised his head and looked at that impossible sky. At the sight, his face went white, but he didn't scream. He just closed his eyes, waited a few seconds, and opened them again.
"I understand," he said in a whisper. "Thank you… I think."
That's how calm he was. While the world looked like it was ending, he was thanking me.
He tried to stand. When he staggered, I caught him by the arm. "Take it slow. The ground feels like it's slipping out from under your feet."
"I'm fine," he said, gently pulling his arm back. "Just… dizzy."
Just then two more people came up to us. One was the man who'd been cursing at the café, his clothes a mess. The other was the one beside him, his face expressionless, his gaze cold as ice.
The disheveled one looked at us, out of breath.
"That was a rough wake-up," he said. His voice was tense. "The way you woke him… it was pretty effective."
The man I'd woken answered calmly: "It was necessary, I suppose. I'm Hazar."
He didn't offer his hand, but he put his name forward like a shield. As if, in this chaos, he were trying to hold on to his identity.
The other one nodded. "I'm Poyraz." Then he gestured to the silent, eerie man beside him. "And this is Hak."
It was my turn. The eyes were on me.
Holding out my hand, I said, "Tunay."
Hak didn't even deign to look at me. Instead Poyraz cut in, as if trying to dissolve the tension:
"Never mind, that's just how he is. He puts up a wall with everyone he meets."
Just then a shrill scream rose from a little way off.
"Sevda! Breathe! Look at me!"
We turned toward where the voice came from. The orange-haired girl was having a panic attack, and the blue-eyed girl beside her had grabbed her by the shoulders and was shaking her.
The calm expression on Hazar's face cracked for an instant. "Sevda…" he murmured. He knew her.
He immediately headed that way, his steps still unsteady but determined.
Hak spoke after him: "We need to gather together." His voice sounded like a command.
Hazar paused, looked at Hak. Hak went on: "We're spread out. If something… if something happens, we'll be hunted one by one."
The word 'hunted' hung in the air.
'This man is too cold-blooded…'
And as I was thinking that, I noticed that I was 'too cold-blooded' as well.
Hazar nodded, didn't object. "You're right," he said softly. "We should stay together."
We started walking toward the others together. The soil beneath my feet caved in with every step.
It seemed everyone who'd been able to wake had gathered in a spot lit by moonlight. Though I'm not sure you could even call it moonlight. One or more of the many moons in the sky was lighting this point among the rocks.
Hak sat down on a stone; Poyraz and I sat beside him. The others went on talking. I pricked up my ears and started to listen to them.
The blond high schooler was talking excitedly, almost hysterically.
"Did you see those black thrones? That gap? I can't be the only one who saw it! I'm not going crazy, am I, Sedef?"
The girl beside him took his hand. "I… I didn't see it, Yavuz…"
She turned to Hazar, to the blue-eyed girl:
"Aylin, did you see it?"
The blue-eyed girl had calmed down a little upon seeing the panicking girl and Hazar come back to themselves, but her voice was still tense. "I saw it," she said fearfully. "They were all… all so huge."
"I saw it too," I said.
The certainty in my voice silenced everyone. Every head turned to me.
"We all saw it," I went on. "And now we're here."
There was a brief silence. Apart from the moan of the wind passing through the rocks, there wasn't a sound.
Everyone had gone quiet. It seemed fear had taken hold of many of them. And they were right to feel it. Anyone who suddenly found themselves in an unknown world of rotting earth and foul smells, among strangers, would react the same way.
At that moment the blue-eyed girl began to speak, her voice tense but sounding like the most level-headed of the group:
"So what should we do right now?"
After that question, silence fell again. Then murmurs began to come from the group. The girl hiding behind the blond high schooler whispered to him and to the other girl beside her: "We should stay together."
The frail boy beside Hazar—Hazar had called him Tekin—muttered, "We can't just stand here like this."
Hazar, meanwhile, had fixed his eyes on the surroundings.
Poyraz and Hak had gotten into a small argument between themselves.
No one was sure what to do. Sentences trailed off half-finished, eyes scanned the area at every moment. The earth, the air, the sky—everything here was alien to us. And that strangeness unsettled us.
Meanwhile Poyraz had started to move forward a few steps. He had fixed his eyes on the slopes among the rocks, on the nearest of the hills out on the plain, on the inclines leading up the hill. Hazar, from where he sat, was gazing into the distance.
I felt like I understood what both of them were thinking. They were still weighing their idea, and to me that idea was the sensible one. But they hadn't yet dared to put it into words.
Just as I was about to speak, I heard a hiss in the distance. No one paid it any mind. Maybe it was the wind. I didn't think much of it. I should have…
"We could climb somewhere high and see if there's a settlement, a water source, or anything around."
Hazar and Poyraz fixed their eyes on me. By voicing the idea in their minds, I had caught their interest.
Poyraz hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
"At least we'd get to see the area," he said. "It's better than standing here waiting."
Hazar spoke without taking his gaze from the distance:
"Climbing those hills isn't safe," he said first. Then he added:
"But there's nothing we can do staying here."
These words had made the people in the group even more uneasy. No one would want to climb those narrow, steep inclines and sharp rocks.
"What else do we have?" asked the blue-eyed girl. Her voice was still calm, but she couldn't hide the unease in her eyes.
"There's no need to force anyone—we'll climb the hill with whoever volunteers and come back," I said.
They didn't seem to believe the "come back" part much. Still, they didn't object.
The blond high schooler tried to get up, but the girls beside him took his hands and pulled him back: "Don't go, stay here."
Poyraz and Hazar, who'd first brought up the idea, came to my side; they'd readied themselves to go. Along with Poyraz, Hak came too.
Hazar said his goodbyes to his friends and we set off.
Steep hills, sheer rocks, and merciless cliffs awaited us.
When I looked back, the place where we'd gathered no longer looked the same.
Either we had moved away…
Or that place had given up on us.