The Forsaken

of a cluster of nearby trees.
    It’s a granite slab, like a monolith—nearly twice my height and about six feet wide. I stumble toward it rapidly.
    But when I get there, I don’t see anything carved on its surface, let alone my last name. The surface is mostly overgrown with icy vines and hanging moss. I shove the vines away with my gloved hand, trying to see if anything is hidden underneath. I find nothing but jagged granite.
    Time is running out, and I don’t see any other rocks around anywhere.
    Wait—maybe the message is on the other side.
    The underbrush is thicker there, but I wade through it, trying to get around the rock, just in case. My breath is as visible as smoke in the frigid air.
    As I turn the corner, at first I don’t see anything. But then as I quickly pick my way around it, I see that a flat area has indeed been chiseled onto the surface of the rock.
    My heart starts pounding as I swiftly move toward it.
    I see letters.
    Then the letters coalesce into words.
    I stand there in the underbrush, swaying slightly in disbelief.
    “Shawcross Rock,” I murmur in shock, reading the letters chiseled into the granite surface.
    David was telling the truth.
    Underneath are two names, “Thomas & Leah Shawcross.”
    The names of my parents.
    I fight back tears.
    Underneath their names is a date and a dash: “June 16, 2026–”
    That’s two months after they got taken!
    And underneath that is my own name, just as David said it would be.
    I sink to my knees in the brush, feeling light-headed. My parents must have ended up here somehow. But what does that dash mean?
    The rock doesn’t seem to be a tombstone, because there’s no second date. No record of their death. It seems more like a marker to signify their presence. Of course, I realize that someone else could have chiseled their names into the stone. Someone who knew them, a friend of theirs. So maybe it doesn’t mean as much as I think it does.
    But then I see some lines chiseled next to the names, obscured by vines. I brush the vines back with one hand.
    What I see beneath them makes me know once and for all that my parents were actually here. It’s not a message consisting of words. Instead, it’s a pictogram. Probably most of the drones who saw it couldn’t make sense of the image. But I can. In fact, I know exactly what it means.
    On the rock face is a primitive carving of a steep hill, with a human being—barely more than a stick figure—pushing a circular object up the sharply angled plane. The figure is smiling.
    It’s Sisyphus.
    I know that my dad carved this, and that he did it for me. Somehow, as impossible as it sounds, he must have known I would be sent to the wheel one day. Why, or how, or when is a mystery. I take off one of my gloves and push the vines back farther, hoping there are more images, but there is only one:
    An arrow, pointing northeast.
    Just as I lean in closer, trying to figure out what the arrow means, I hear Gadya bellowing my name in the distance, sounding worried. But I’m not ready to leave yet.
    I place my hand flat against the rock face, tracing the chiseled lines of the arrow with my fingertips. It’s some kind of instruction, left years ago by my dad.
    I hear Gadya yell my name again, louder, so I push myself off the rock, letting the vines swing back into place. I wipe my eyes. I don’t want to leave, but I have to keep my secret safe. I don’t want anyone—not even Gadya—seeing this rock. It’s too personal. Too painful. I need time to deal with it myself before I show it to anyone else.
    With a backward glance at the granite monument, I hurry back through the forest to the clearing. I wish I had time to search for more rocks that might carry other messages for me. My head is flooding with thoughts and images of my parents—their faces, their clothes, their voices. How they smelled. It’s like the rock in the forest is giving me my memories back.
    When I reach the group, Gadya is standing up at one edge, peering around. “Took you long enough!” she says when she spots me. “What the hell’s wrong with you, running off like that?”
    David is sitting against a low stone, with Markus and Sinxen standing over him like guards.
    “Sorry,” I mutter. I sit down on a rock, trying to keep my turbulent emotions to myself. I’m not sure whether I feel like crying or laughing. I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve found. I don’t even know what my discovery means. I try to catch David’s