by Ally Condie
When she isn’t looking, I open another tablet but my hands tremble too much. It falls to the ground and so does a tiny whisper of paper. And then I remember. Xander’s notes. I wanted to read them.
The paper slips away on the wind, and it seems like far too much work to chase it down or to try to find blue in the dark.
CHAPTER 19
KY
I wake to the sound of something big in the sky.
When did they start firing so early in the morning? I think frantically. It’s lighter and later than I thought. I must have been tired.
“Eli!” I call out.
“I’m right here!”
“Where’s Vick?”
“He wanted to get in a couple of hours of fishing before we left,” Eli says. “He told me to stay behind and to let you sleep.”
“No, no, no,” I say, and then neither of us says anything more, because the sound of the machines overhead is too loud. The firing sounds different, too. Heavy and ponderous. Precise. Not the scatter of rain we are used to. This sounds like hailstones as big as boulders pounding from the sky.
When it stops, I don’t wait even though I should. “Stay here,” I tell Eli, and I run out to the plain, start crawling through the grass, heading for that damn stream, that damn marsh.
But Eli follows me, and I let him. I crawl to that place on the bank and then I don’t look.
I believe what I see. So if I don’t see Vick dead it won’t be true.
Instead I look at the stream where something has exploded. Brown and green marsh grasses are partly hidden beneath the dirt like the long tangled hair of bodies pulled under.
The force of the explosion has thrown earth into the stream and dammed it. Turned it into pools. Little pieces of river with nowhere to run.
I walk a few strides downstream, far enough to see that they’ve done it again and again and again all along the length of the river.
I hear the sound of Eli sobbing.
Then I turn and look at Vick.
“Ky,” Eli says. “Can you help him?”
“No,” I say.
Whatever fell hit with such impact that it looks like it sent Vick flying; his neck was broken. He must have died instantly. I know I should be glad for that. But I’m not. I look at those empty eyes that reflect back the blue of the sky because there is nothing left of Vick himself.
What drew him out here? Why didn’t he fish under the cover of the trees instead of in this open place?
I see the reason in the pool near him, trapped in the newly stilled water. I know instantly what kind of fish it is though I’ve never seen one before.
A rainbow. Its colors flash in the light as it struggles.
Did Vick see it? Is that why he came out into the open?
The pool grows darker. Something, a large round sphere, sits at the bottom of the water. As I look closer, I see that the sphere lets off a slow release of toxin.
They didn’t mean to kill Vick. They do mean to kill this stream.
As I watch the rainbow turns over, its white belly up. It rises to the surface.
Dead like Vick.
I want to laugh and scream at the same time.
“He had something in his hand,” Eli says. I look at him. He has the piece of wood carved with Laney’s name. “It fell when he did.” Eli reaches for Vick’s hand and holds it for a moment. Then he crosses Vick’s arms across his chest. “Do something,” Eli tells me with tears streaming down his face.
I turn away and tear off my coat.
“What are you doing?” Eli asks in horror. “You can’t leave him like this.”
I don’t have time to answer. I throw my coat to the ground and plunge my hands into the nearest pool of water — the one with the dead rainbow. The cold hurts. Moving water rarely freezes, but this water isn’t moving anymore. Using both hands, I hoist the sphere out while it keeps spewing poison. It’s heavy, but I run it over to the side, put it near a rock, and start looking for the next one. I can’t clear all the dirt that has exploded, blocking the river in many places, but I can take the poison out of some of the pools. I know this is as futile as everything I’ve done. Like trying to get back to Cassia in a Society that wants me dead.
But I can’t stop.
Eli comes over and reaches into the water too.
“It’s too dangerous,” I tell him. “Get back in the trees.”
He doesn’t answer but instead helps me lift out the next sphere. I remember Vick helping me with the bodies and I let Eli stay.
All day long, Vick talks to me. I know it means I’m crazy but I can’t help hearing him.
He talks to me while Eli and I pull spheres from the stream. Over and over Vick tells me his story about Laney. I picture it in my mind — him falling in love with an Anomaly. Telling Laney how he felt. Watching the rainbow and going to speak with her parents. Standing up to celebrate a Contract. Smiling as he reached for her hand to claim happiness in spite of the Society. Coming back to find her gone.
“Stop it,” I say to Vick. I ignore Eli’s look of surprise. I’m turning into my father. He always heard voices in his head, telling him to talk to the people, to try to change the world.
When we’ve cleared as many spheres as we can, Eli and I dig Vick’s grave together. It’s hard going, even with the loose ground, and my muscles scream in exhaustion and the grave isn’t as deep as I would like. Eli works doggedly next to me, his small hands scooping out earth.
When we finish, we put Vick inside.
He’d emptied out one of his packs at our camp and brought it with him to carry his catch. I find one silver-scaled fish dead inside and I put it in the grave too. We leave Vick’s coat on him. The hole over his heart where the silver disk once was looks like a small wound. If the Society digs him up, they won’t know anything about him. Even the notches in his boots mean something that they won’t understand.
Vick keeps talking to me while I carve a piece of sandstone into a fish to leave on his shallow grave. The fish’s scales are dull and orange. A rainbow without all the colors. Not real like the one Vick saw. But the best I can do. I want it to mark not only that he died but that he loved someone and she loved him back.
“They didn’t kill me,” Vick says to me.
“No?” I say, but I say it quiet so that Eli can’t hear me.
“No,” he says with a grin. “Not as long as the fish are still around, still swimming, spawning, laying eggs.”
“Can’t you see this place?” I ask Vick. “We tried. But they’re going to die, too.”
And then he stops talking to me and I know that he’s really gone and I wish for a voice in my head again. I finally understand that as long as my father had that, he never had to be alone.
CHAPTER 20
CASSIA
My breathing sounds wrong. Like little waves of a stream lapping up against rock and making small tired sounds, hoping to wear away at the stone.
“Talk to me,” I say to Indie. I notice she carries two packs, two canteens. How did that happen? Are they mine? I’m too tired to care.
“What do you want me to say?” she asks.
“Anything.” I need to hear something besides my own breath, my own tired heart.
Somewhere, before Indie’s words turn into nothing sounds in my ears, I realize that she’s telling me things, many things; that she can’t stop herself from talking now that she thinks I’m too far gone to really listen. I wish that I could pay better attention to the words, that I could remember this. I only catch a few phrases
Always at night before I slept
and
I thought everything would be different after
and
I don’t know how much longer I can believe
It almost sounds like poetry, and I wonder again if I will ever be able to finish that poem for Ky. If I will know the right words to say when I finally see him. If he and I will ever have time for more than beginnings.
I want to ask Indie for anothe
r blue tablet from my pack, but before I can say anything I remember once again how Grandfather told me that I was strong enough not to take the tablets.
But, Grandfather, I think, I didn’t understand you as well as I thought I did. The poems. I thought I knew what you intended. But which one did you want me to believe?
I remember the words Grandfather said when I took the paper from him that last time. “Cassia,” he whispered, “I am giving you something you won’t understand, yet. But I think you will someday. You, more than the rest.”
A thought flitters into my mind like one of the mourning cloaks, the butterflies that string their cocoons along the twigs both here and back in Oria. It’s a thought I’ve almost had before but I haven’t let myself finish it until now.
Grandfather, were you once the Pilot?
And then another thought comes, one light and fast and that I don’t grasp completely, leaving me with another impression of gently moving wings.
“I don’t need them anymore,” I say to myself. The tablets, the Society. I don’t know if it’s true. But it seems that it should be.
And then I see it. A compass, made of stone, sitting on a ledge exactly at eye level.
I pick it up, although I’ve dropped everything else.
I hold it in my hand as we walk even though it weighs more than many of the things I have let fall to the ground. I think, This is good, even though it’s heavy. I think, This is good, because it will hold me to the earth.
CHAPTER 21
KY
“ Say the words,” Eli tells me.
My hands shake with exhaustion from the hours of work. The sky grows dark beyond us. “I can’t, Eli. They don’t mean anything.”
“Say them,” Eli commands, tears coming again. “Do it.”
“I can’t,” I tell him, and I put the sandstone fish down on top of Vick’s grave.
“You have to say them,” Eli says. “You have to do this for Vick.”
“I already did what I could for Vick,” I say. “We both did. We tried to save the stream. Now it’s time to go. He would do the same.”
“We can’t cross the plain now,” Eli says.
“We’ll stay by the trees,” I say. “It’s not night yet. Let’s get as far as we can.”
We go back and gather our things at the camp near the mouth of the canyon. As we wrap up the smoked fish, they leave silver scales on our hands and clothes. Eli and I divide up the food from Vick’s pack. “Do you want any of these?” I ask Eli when I find the pamphlets Vick brought.
“No,” he says. “I like what I chose better.”
I slide one into my pack and leave the rest. It’s not worth carrying them all.
Eli and I start across the plain walking side by side in the dusk.
Then Eli stops and looks back. A mistake.
“We have to keep going, Eli.”
“Wait,” he says. “Stop.”
“I’m not going to stop,” I tell him.
“Ky,” he says. “Look back.”
I turn and in the last of the evening light I see her.
Cassia.
Even far away, I know it’s her by the way her dark hair tangles with the wind and how she stands on the red rocks of the Carving. She’s more beautiful than snow.
Is this real?
She points to the sky.
CHAPTER 22
CASSIA
We’re almost to the top; we can almost look out over the plain.
“Cassia, stop,” Indie says as I start to climb an outcropping of rocks.
“We’re almost there,” I say. “I have to see.” Over the last few hours I’ve felt strong again, clearheaded. I want to stand on the highest point so I can try to see Ky. The wind is cold and clean. It feels good rushing over me.
I climb on top of the highest rock.
“Don’t,” Indie says from below. “You’re going to fall.”
“Oh,” I say. There is so much to see. Orange rocks and a brown-grassed plain and water and blue mountains. Darkening sky, deep clouds, red sun, and a few small cold flakes of white snow coming down.
Two little dark figures, looking up.
Are they looking at me?
Is it him?
This far away, there’s only one way to know.
I point to the sky.
For a moment, nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and—
He starts to run.
I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish I could run, I wish I’d written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass—
And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have.
Ky. Running toward me.
I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right.
He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore.
“You’re here,” he says, breathing hard and hungry. Sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I’m the only thing he ever needed to see.
I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss.
CHAPTER 23
KY
“ Our poem,” she whispers. “Will you say it to me?”
I put my face close to her ear. My lips brush against her neck. Her hair smells like sage. Her skin smells like home.
But I can’t speak.
She is the first to remember that we are not alone. “Ky,” she whispers.
We both pull back a little. In the fading light I see the tangles in her hair and the tan on her skin. Her beauty always makes me ache. “Cassia,” I say, my voice hoarse, “this is Eli.” When she turns to him and her face lights up I know that I didn’t imagine his resemblance to Bram.
“This is Indie,” she says, gesturing to the girl who came with her. Indie folds her arms across her chest.
A pause. Eli and I glance at each other. I know we both think of Vick. This should be the moment we introduce him to them but he’s gone.
Just last night Vick was alive. This morning he stood next to the stream, watching the trout as it swam. He thought of Laney while the colors flashed and the sun shone down.
Then he died.
I gesture at Eli, who stands very straight. “There were three of us this morning,” I say.
“What happened?” Cassia asks. Her hand tightens on mine and I squeeze back gently, trying to be careful of the cuts I feel carved into her skin. What has she been through to find me?
“Someone came,” I tell her. “They killed our friend Vick. The river, too.”
Suddenly I’m aware of how we must look from above. We’re standing here on the plain out in the open for anyone to see. “Let’s get inside the Carving,” I say. In the west beyond the mountains the sun slides low — almost gone — on a day of dark and light. Vick gone. Cassia here.
“How did you do it?” I ask, drawing closer to her as we slip into the Carving. She turns to answer me, her breath hot on my cheek. We come together to kiss again, our hands and lips gentle and greedy with each other. Against her warm skin I whisper, “How did you find us?”
“The compass,” she says, and she presses it into my hand. To my surprise it’s the one I made of stone.
“So where do we go now?” Eli asks, his voice wavering, when we reach the spot where we camped with Vick. It still smells like smoke. The beams of our flashlights catch the silver of fallen fish scales. “Are we still going to cross the plain?”
“We can’t,” Indie says. “Not for a day or two, anyway. Cassia’s been sick.”
“I’m fine now,” Cassia tells us. Her voice sounds strong.
I reach for the chert in my pack to start another small fire. “I think we stay here tonight,” I tell Eli. “We can decide more in the morning.” Eli nods and wi
thout my asking begins to gather brush for the fire.
“He’s so young,” Cassia says softly. “Did the Society send him out here?”
“Yes,” I say. I strike the chert. Nothing.
She puts her hand on mine and I close my eyes. The next time I strike, the sparks snap and fly and she catches her breath.
Eli brings an armful of stringy, tough brush. When he adds it to the fire, it crackles and the smell of sage rises into the night — sharp and wild.
Cassia and I sit as near to each other as we can. She leans into me and I keep my arms around her. I don’t fool myself that I hold her together — she does that on her own — but holding her keeps me from flying apart.
“Thank you,” Cassia tells Eli. I can tell from her voice that she smiles at him and he smiles back, barely. He sits in the spot where Vick sat last night. Indie moves to give Eli more space and leans in to see the fire dance. She glances at me and I see a flash of something in her eyes.
I shift position a little, blocking her view of us with my back and angling my flashlight so that it shines on Cassia’s hands. “What happened?” I ask her.
She looks down. “I cut them on a rope,” she says. “We climbed into another canyon looking for you before we came back to this one.” She glances at the other two and smiles at them before she leans in more closely. “Ky,” she says, “we’re together again.”
I have always loved the way she says my name. “I can’t believe it either.”
“I had to find you,” she says. She slips her arms around me, underneath my coat, and I feel her fingers on my back. I do the same. She’s so slight and small. And strong. No one else could do what she’s done. I pull her even closer, the ache and release of touching her a feeling I remember from the Hill. It is even stronger now.
