They passed crumbling stone temples, older than anything that’d been stored in the Tunnels. They headed north and saw a hundred more decrepit buildings, their naked metal beams reaching into the sky like broken fingers. Where the buildings rose from the earth in dense clusters, with silent agreement the group gave them a wide berth, and not just because they seemed about to topple over and crush anyone nearby. They weren’t like the stone pyramids in the jungle, ancient and untouched for millennia. These tumbledown buildings were pitch-black and forbidding, and a damp rot seeped from every corner of their cast-iron skeletons. Jack felt no affinity for the people who’d built these things. They were long dead, and what they’d left behind was of no use to him.
For a number of days, a pair of jaguars kept pace with them, their orange-speckled coats glimmering through the green forest. They heard muted roars at night and glimpsed cat eyes reflecting the flare of fires ringing their encampment. The group drew close and encircled their camp armed with pointed sticks and cattle prods jammed on extended staffs. Then the animals disappeared and, with a collective sigh of relief, the group continued on.
After several weeks, they reached a low sloping valley. Jack climbed a steep rise that overlooked the expanse of land below where the mist rose off the distant hills colored with flowers—the purple and red, green and gold—that looked like amaranth in Vispera. Althea came over and sat beside him. They leaned close, sitting together quietly.
“You think we might not make it, don’t you? You’re worried no one here is strong enough to survive outside Vispera,” she said.
Althea had grown thinner since they’d left, and Jack supposed he had as well. Everyone looked tired and hungry. They had blisters on their feet, and their muscles ached. A Kate had broken her wrist, and two weeks ago half of the group had come down with a sudden and dangerous fever. They’d never been sick before, and it terrified them. But Jack had begun to notice the clones’ legs and arms were harder now, and there was a determination in their faces that was new. They were stronger than they’d been when they left.
“I don’t know if we’re strong enough to survive,” Jack said. “But everyone at least deserves a chance to try. Isn’t that what matters?”
The clones had changed in other ways, too. A Hassan told a story at the campfire one night. It wasn’t a very good story—mostly about losing his knife while trying to catch a large snake. But Jack noticed the embellishments he added, the ways the story wasn’t entirely what Althea would call true. Another night Jack played his guitar, and a few of the clones didn’t look quite as disgusted as they usually did. A Mei and Carson-312 even moved together in one of the ritual clone dances as he played. After, the two slipped away to a tent, gazing at each other in a way he hadn’t seen before from the clones.
Lying in their sleeping bag at night, Jack said to Althea, “Have you noticed people are talking more than they used to?”
“Their ability to commune is fading. We’re a long way from home, separated from our brothers and sisters, and there are fewer of us. It makes the bond weaker.” She paused for a long time and then said, “They think when you play music, that’s your way of communing with me.”
“Huh,” Jack said. It was an interesting thought. “Does it feel like communing?”
“No,” Althea said, turning toward him with a slow smile. “But we do have our own ways. The others can learn those ways, too.”
They moved on day after day. Heavy rains slowed them down sometimes. On a steep cliff, they lost a mule to a broken leg, and a broad rapid-strewn river forced them to make a wide detour for a safe place to cross. The map Althea had brought poked from her pocket, though she’d looked at it so often now, she no longer needed it.
“We should be getting close,” she said one night.
And they were.
By the end of the next day, they reached a stretch of land that spread before them, vast and green. The late orange sun warmed Jack’s face, while far below, from beyond the foot of a round hill, a score of neat cottages clustered together beside a rushing creek, thin plumes of smoke rising from within, and fields of crops—corn, rice, and bananas—stretched into the distance.
Looking down at this place, Jack didn’t know what they’d find. Would the people here have only one face, or many? Would they be kind? Were they clones, or human, or something else . . . something new?
He’d already lost so much. He didn’t know what was to come, and suddenly, after so many days of walking, he couldn’t move his feet.
Then Althea stood beside him and her fingers closed over his.
They made their way hand in hand, with steps thoughtful and slow, up and over the green blossoming hill until music, soft and joyful, met them on the wind.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Adam Schear, at DeFiore and Company. Without him, Your One & Only would not exist. From our first conversation, Adam understood my characters and stories, and his insight and attentiveness made this book infinitely better.
I am so grateful to Sarah Landis for choosing this project, and for her knowledge, professionalism, and amazing work in getting my book ready for the world. I loved working with her, and I am proud that she made me part of the HMH team. I am also immensely pleased that her last great service was to put me in the excellent hands of Lily Kessinger, her successor as editor, whose expertise, enthusiasm, and support have been equally invaluable. I am humbled by all the wonderful people at HMH who have dedicated their time to making Your One & Only the best it can be, with special thanks to Amanda Acevedo, Harriet Low, Linda Magram, Michelle Triant, Emily Andrukaitis, Mary Wilcox, Catherine Onder, Maire Gorman, Christopher Moisan, Karen Walsh, Mary Magrisso, and Lisa Vega.
I have endless gratitude to my friends and family for their support. Thank you to Caitlin Finlay, Leigh’Ann Andrews, Jordan Andrews, Jill Briggs, Catherine Dent, Ashley Grummel, Peg Keller, Rachel Morgan, Matthew Weedman, Dan and Teresa Schraffenberger, Jonathan Schraffenberger, Carolyn Harlow, Kirsten Faucher-Harlow, and Constance Finlay for offering their thoughts, critique, and excitement. Bill and Rhonda Morgan provided the Powell Mountain roundhouse as a beautiful setting for creative work, and Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls, Iowa, always had a table available and a cup of tea ready.
A special thank-you to Cynthia Bechhold Hawkins, a brilliant writer, reader, friend, and badass unicorn. You are missed.
Many people made this book better than I could have hoped, but if there is a single word in this story that is not the precise right word in the right place, it is only because my father, Robert Finlay, lost a long and contentious argument. He is also the only person a writer could hand an entire book to and get notes back within hours. I’m sorry I didn’t always heed them, but I couldn’t have asked for a more vigorous and attentive editor.
Ginny and Hattie are my inspiration and joy, my two little people who brighten every single day in their own special ways.
Finally, thank you to the brilliant poet J. D. Schraffenberger for the countless conversations and brainstorms, for the encouragement, and for making me forget why it is we ever needed words for this art. I love you.
About the Author
Jamie Orr Photography
ADRIANNE FINLAY received her PhD in literature and creative writing from Binghamton University. Originally from Ithaca, New York, she now lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with her husband, the poet J. D. Schraffenberger, and their two young daughters. She teaches at Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa, where she is the director of creative writing and an associate professor of English.
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