“Because the city is too small for you,” she says. She looks thirty-five instead of twelve.
“Don’t tell Liliya, okay?”
Genivee just rolls her eyes. “Please.”
And here is yet another reason to go over the wall. Because I won’t be able to bear it when Genivee forgets me.
The streets are emptying this close to the resting, the sun a sliver of gold behind the mountains, sky showing its first hazy stripes of pink. Tomorrow will be sunsetting, and I won’t see the light again until the Forgetting. I take the back way to Jin’s and sneak up his garden stairs well before the bell. I’d planned to be there first, to see Gray arrive, make sure he hadn’t brought Jonathan or someone else with him. But the glassblower’s son is already in his dark corner, waiting for me.
“Eager?” he asks. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t think Jin is in bed yet, and we all know how talkative you can get.”
I ignore him, move to the edge of the garden, and look down into the alley, then on the other side, down to the street. I can feel Gray’s gaze like a pressure on my back.
He says, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust you.”
He only grins. “Tell me how we do this.”
“The same as you saw before.”
“Simple, then. And the sun will help.”
My brows come down.
“The sun is low,” he says, “and we’re going straight into it. If anyone does have their curtains open, or is out when they shouldn’t be, the light will be in their eyes.”
I hadn’t thought of this, and I don’t like that Gray the Glassblower’s son thought of something before I did. I sit, back to a column, adrenaline taking away any thoughts of being tired. We wait until the water clock strikes once, the first bell of resting ringing out over the city. Deep silence settles into the air of the garden. I wonder what he talks about with Liliya. We wait a little more, and then Gray says, “Shall we?”
I make him go first. I reach up with the long hook, feel along the top of the wall until I snag the rope ladder, and pull it back over to our side, stretching it across the empty space so he can get a foot in the bottom rung. He rides the swing of the ladder across the alley to the wall better than I think he will, though I’m sure he’ll have a decent-size bruise on his shoulder. Gray climbs quickly, straddles the wall, then lies flat on his stomach.
I feel a sudden flutter of nerves. Unless someone is in the alley or in this garden with us, we can’t be seen … until we reach the top of the wall, and Gray is already up there. I guess I had expected something to happen. To see Jonathan arrive, trying to catch me in the act, telling Gray he’s earned his reward. But Gray’s back is in just as much danger as mine now.
I ride the ladder and climb fast to the top, flip it over, and as soon as Gray’s feet hit the grasses at the base of the wall, I follow him down, get my hands on a lower rung, and make the short drop. The ground is higher on this side, the rock face that is the lowest slope of the near mountain rising blue-gray and sparkling where it’s not in shadow, the tall golden grasses rippling in the breeze. I can smell the forest, and I am over the wall with the glassblower’s son.
Gray looks at me, gives me his grin. And then he runs.
I went over the wall.
When we were young in the learning room, Eshan once asked why Canaan had a wall around it. Our teacher said that we’d forgotten what was outside Canaan, but that was exactly why we needed the wall in the first place. To keep us safe from what we did not know. What if there were insects that could sting or bite? What if you fell off a cliff or into a deep hole? What if there was no food, and you starved? What if, the teacher said, you were outside the walls and you forgot? You’d wander alone, forever, never able to find a way home again. We stay inside the walls because that is what we know, and where we are safe.
It made me wonder, does the wall protect us, or keep us in?
Today I found I’m not afraid of the unknown. Today I discovered that the unknown loved me, and that I loved it back.
NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER
BOOK 13, PAGE 64, 11 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING
I watch Gray bound through the grasses, angling off to one side to go around the cliff face and climb the steep slope. This is the Gray I knew in learning, a little wild, with more energy than he can hold. Part of me wants to let him run. But I don’t need him on the windy, rocky scree at the top of the mountain. I need him at the waterfall, where that plant is twining through the fern trees. I run after him.
He’s faster than I expected, his legs much longer. Another minute and he’s out of my sight, but it isn’t hard to know where he’s gone. The suncrickets and the blueflies chirp and click wherever he passes, clouds of tiny white dust moths rising up from the leaves to make patterns in the air. I follow the noise and the moth clouds until I am up and around to the top of the cliff.
And there is Gray, standing stock-still at the very edge, toes hanging over the rocks. Nothing moves but his shirt, tightening and loosening as he breathes deep from his run. He’s looking out over Canaan, a white stone circle washed in a slanting gold light. I stand beside him. I’d almost forgotten the city could be like that. Beautiful. And this Gray, with the serious, settled face, is not the Gray I know at all.
“We’ll be seen,” I whisper. I’m not certain that’s true. I think we’re too high. But I need to redirect him. His sleeves are pushed up, and for the first time I see the scars on the inside of his right wrist and forearm, where it looks as if the skin has been melted. Burn scars. Yes, he would have scars from the Forgetting. I hadn’t realized that’s why he’s always worn sleeves. He turns his head to me, smiles once.
“Let’s go.”
We hike around the mountain, down a natural path through the thick foliage in light that has grown a little dimmer since I was last here. One or two glowworms have already started to leave strands of luminescent silk as they travel between the fronds. By the first of the dark days this part of the mountain will have its own light from thousands of tiny threads. Gray doesn’t run anymore, or not as much, but he does veer off course when he sees something interesting. Which is often. I steer him back.
He asks me questions. What have I seen? Where else have I gone? I shrug, or nod, or shake my head when appropriate. The truth is I’ve been a resting’s walk away from my ladder in every direction and I’ve never seen anyone or anything to fear outside the walls, only rock, water, insects, and plants. Which is part of why I love it on my mountain; no people to complicate things. It’s strange to see another body here, unsettling, but at the same time Gray enjoys it so much, his enthusiasm rubs off. I show him a completely innocent-looking hole in a rock, let him be surprised when without warning the hole shoots a spout of water ten meters up into the air. But somewhere in Canaan the water clock is ticking. I have to get him up to those vines.
Finally I maneuver him to the two towering ferns I’ve been aiming for, skirt down the hill where the forgetting trees grow wild, and when we break free of the leaves, there’s a shallow canyon stretching wide between the cliffs, the foliage going dark purple and blue for sunsetting. To our left and just a little higher up is a waterfall, gushing and spraying four or five meters down to a pool at its base.
“Are we going up there?” he asks.
I nod and start uphill, fast, not letting him stop until we’re above the falls, at a watercourse gurgling around tumbled stone, where the low light can’t directly penetrate the dense, twisting leaves. It’s like a small room here, a room with a stream and a spectacular view of a canyon. Having Gray in this place is harder than on the mountainside; it feels a little bit like the time he opened my book. But there are the silver-white berries, only two or three bunches left, and I’m guessing we have an hour before we need to start back. A straight course back.
Gray squats down beside the water, drinks from his hand, then splashes some on his head and neck, turning the ends of hi
s hair into loose, dark spirals. I turn away, wander toward the berry vines.
“Do you swim here?” Gray asks.
I look back and find him right on the edge of the rocks again, leaning forward, looking over the waterfall and down to the pool. Gray the Glassblower’s son has obviously missed developing some key survival skills. I’m not particularly afraid of heights, but I do respect the fact that they will kill me. He glances over his shoulder.
“Come on, Nadia. Speak. Do you swim down there?”
“Yes,” I say, cautious.
He grins wide, all the way across his mouth, and starts working at the buckle of his book strap. “Let’s go, then.”
“There’s not time to hike down and back around before the resting is over.” This is mostly a lie. He has to stay up here. But his smile has gotten even bigger. He seems to consider it some kind of personal triumph every time I manage a full sentence.
“Who said anything about hiking down?”
And then I realize that Gray means to jump. Off the cliff. And swim. Without our books. I step back. He sets his book on a boulder, well away from the water, and looks at me.
“Coming?”
I shake my head, and his brow wrinkles.
“Isn’t the water deep enough?”
“It probably is. I’ve never found the bottom.” He relaxes again.
“Good. Let’s … ”
I shake my head again, harder, and this time he goes still. The small smile is back on his lips, the sarcastic one.
“Is it the jump, or me?” he asks.
I clutch the straps of my pack. I am not jumping over a waterfall. And while I might swim with my book in sight when I’m completely alone in a vast and unexplored wilderness, I will never separate from my book in the presence of another person.
“I see,” he says. He picks up his book, slowly buckling it back on.
Now I feel guilty. And annoyed. I turn my back, pretend to be very, very interested in the berry vine. The quiet grows loud in my ears. “Are you hungry?” I say, and break off a shoot heavy with the round white fruit, holding it out without actually looking at his face. But I see his feet as he comes and takes it, watch as he finds a spot to sit with his back to a boulder, running his fingers down the length of the branch.
He says, “Let’s play a game, Dyer’s daughter. Answer for answers. You answer my question, and I have to answer two of yours, no matter what.”
I think this through. Since I doubt Gray will ask anything that allows me to merely nod or shake my head, giving answers implies that I’ll have to talk. But getting Gray to answer, that is exactly what I want. Just as soon as he’s eaten what’s in his hand.
He gives me a little of his smirk. “You can’t say no to such a generous offer.”
I turn around, find a small flat rock beside the stream and sit on it. “Okay,” I reply.
The smirk gets bigger. He settles his elbows on his knees, the shoot of berries dangling from his fingers. I am so tense the muscles in my shoulders ache.
“Then this is my first question. Tell me, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter, why do you go over the wall?”
Answers shoot one by one through my brain, like when Genivee asked just a few hours before. But this time I need an answer that will keep Gray talking. I decide to offer him part of the truth. I lean over to the bank of the watercourse, pick up a stone from beneath the rushing flow. It’s the same blue-gray as the cliff face, rounded and smooth, with a little sparkle. I hold it up.
“This was probably jagged once,” I say, “broken off from a larger stone.” My words are halting. “But the water has worn it down, like the whetstone at Arthur’s. Use and time wear away the edges. Make them smooth.” He leans forward, so intent on my face I have to pause. Speaking is difficult, being looked at like that even more so. Saying thoughts aloud I have never shared with another living soul? Excruciating. “But the stone in the city … it isn’t worn at all. It looks … freshly cut.”
“So you think we haven’t lived in the city long?”
I shake my head.
“You think we came from somewhere else, outside the walls?”
I nod.
“So your question is, where did we come from before Canaan?”
I look up in time to see him lean back, thoughtful, no need for me to answer at all. He’s getting this quicker than I thought, and I’m glad, because I’m not sure I can go on. Then, as if to justify my sacrifice of speech, he eats a berry.
Gray says, “So what are you looking for, exactly, outside the walls?”
I take a breath. “Roads. Paths. A dropped tool. Anything.”
“And what have you found?”
“One pit where we’ve dug out the metal ore, one where we’ve dug out clay. Nothing for the sand for the glass.”
“We’ve got masses of sand. Sacked and stored. No idea where it came from. And nothing else?”
I shake my head. He eats a handful of berries. I note the number.
“And what about a pit for the stone?”
I frown at him, and then at the running water.
“Have you found where they dug or cut the stone?”
All this time I’ve been thinking about that stone and taking its existence for granted. An entire city of unworn stone. Where had it come from? The hole would have to be massive, the cuts incredibly obvious. I’m on my feet and to the cliff beside the waterfall in an instant, where Gray had been earlier, looking out over the canyon, a wide scoop in the landscape of hills. Then I drop flat onto my stomach and put my head over the edge, push aside the wet, hanging foliage to expose the rock. Mist sprays my face. More of the blue-gray stone, not white, and no man-made cuts, at least not that I can see. I look back over my shoulder, where Gray is watching me, and shake my head as I get to my feet.
“It could have filled with water,” Gray says. “You should think about that as well.”
I eye him warily as I brush off the dirt. When he’s still like this, I can almost see the little boy before the Forgetting instead of the Gray from the learning room. Is he that different, I wonder, or did I just never really know him at all? He’s much smarter than I’d given him credit for. Then he eyes me, a little sly.
“Maybe you should go swimming with me after all. We could look for tool marks. You don’t mind getting your tunic wet? Or, you don’t have to get it wet at all. What do you think, Dyer’s daughter?”
Meaning my tunic is not required, I take it. No, I decide. He’s not that different. But I also note that he’s tossed away the shoot I gave him, stripped clean. Now is my time. I go back to sit on my rock and for once meet his eyes. “What I think,” I say, “is that you’ve asked me nine questions. That gives me eighteen answers, doesn’t it, Glassblower’s son?”
“I did not ask you nine questions.”
I hug my knees.
“That was conversation!”
“It’s not my fault if you didn’t specify.”
He looks like he’s going to argue, but then he grins and cocks his head once, as if to acknowledge my point. He leans back and puts his arms behind his head. “Go.”
Questions swirl through my mind like the dust moths, and there are so many to tempt me. Is Jonathan of the Council waiting for me on Jin’s roof? What is your relationship with my sister? Why did you want to come over the wall with me? But instead I ask the thing I need to know the most: “What is your earliest memory?”
He frowns, an unusual expression for his face. I wait for his answer, heart thumping so hard I’m afraid I could look down and see the movement. Finally he says, “I would think it would be the same as yours. Waking up after the Forgetting. Why would you ask me that?”
“No questions,” I say, “only answers, and that wasn’t one.” Think, Gray, I beg in my mind. Remember what happened when I came into the workshop before the Forgetting.
“I don’t want to talk about that, Nadia,” he says. And he’s not teasing or joking.
“Okay,” I say, thinking quick
ly. “Then tell me how you got the scars on your arms.”
He jerks his arms down from behind his head, glancing once at his forearm. “You know, this isn’t as fun as I thought it was going to be.”
I wait. Wind ruffles the tops of the fern trees.
“Fine. I don’t know how I got them.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
He looks at me in confusion, maybe a little bit of anger. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.” Think, I’m silently pleading. Try to think back to before the Forgetting. Please have a memory.
“I mean that when I woke up, I was burned.”
“Who tended the burns? Your mother?”
“No.”
“Was there anything in your book about it?”
“No.” Gray is calm on the outside, but I can see that he’s mad now. Boiling beneath his skin. It’s possible I’ve never actually seen the glassblower’s son angry. I hadn’t bargained on being so completely alone with someone who is bigger than me, faster than me, and mad. And having him agitated won’t help his memory.
I say, “I’m sorry if it … it seems like I’m … ” I stop. I really am terrible at this. I decide to offer him another part of the truth. “I’m just trying to understand some things … about the Forgetting.”
“What things?”
“No questions,” I say. But I did hear the subtle shift in Gray’s mood. “What if you tried to remember how you got those burns? Can you remember what it felt like?”
“I’m telling you they were there when I woke up. But yes. It hurt. A lot.”
The Forgetting Page 5
