by Rae Thomas
It is David who speaks first. He nudges me playfully. “Hey, why do you do that?”
I look at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”
He gestures to my hands in my lap. “That.”
I look down and realize that I am absentmindedly tracing the veins on my left wrist using the fingers of my right hand. I respond, “Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it.”
He smiles. “I’ve seen you do it before. At Nineteen. Sometimes when we were in the meadow. I think you do it when you’re really deep in thought.”
I smile. It makes my pulse quicken to hear that he notices little things about me, but I can’t clear my mind of what I have to ask him.
He senses the tension, and leans toward me. “Violet, what is it?”
“David, I’ve been meaning to ask you something…”
He waits a beat. I don’t begin.
“What, Violet?”
Still, I don’t say anything.
“Violet, what is it? You’re worrying me.”
He’s growing impatient, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no easy way to say this, so I just say it. “David, how did The Alter get my sketchbook?”
David looks perplexed. “What?”
“When The Alter questioned me at Vox headquarters, he had my sketchbook.”
David is attempting to grasp what I’ve said. Suddenly, he looks alarmed. He grabs my shoulders with both of his hands and looks at me. “Violet, are you telling me that The Alter has in his possession the same sketchbook that you gave me in the meadow?”
I am confused by his reaction. I nod. He continues. His voice has become a frantic whisper. “That means that they’ve been to my house, Violet. What about my mother? What if they’ve taken her, or worse, murdered her? Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
Oh, no. What have I done? How could I have been so selfish? I’ve been so busy questioning David’s motives that I didn’t think about him at all.
I struggle to find words. There’s no good explanation. “I—I—I don’t know, David. When I saw the sketchbook, I thought you’d given it to him. I thought—I don’t know what I was thinking but I thought you’d given me up or something.”
All of the anger that filled David’s face is now replaced with misery. “Violet, you suspected me again? First you thought I’d abandoned you in the apartment, and then you thought I’d betrayed you to The Alter? We’ll never make it, Violet. We’ll never survive if you don’t start trusting me.” David leans over and puts his head in his hands. I’m at a loss for words. There is nothing that I can say that might make this better. David is right. I had not trusted him, and because of my distrust, his mother might be dead. I can’t help but think of the way David smiled when he thought of his mother. I have stolen that from him. David turns to me and takes both of my hands in his. His cheeks are streaked with tears. “Promise me, Violet. Promise me, or I can’t take one more step with you. From this moment on, we’re in this together.”
Now that everything is on the table, I know that I can trust David. I can hardly bear the shame for having doubted his loyalty. From this very second, I’ll give him everything that I have. I nod my head. “David, I promise, but what can we do about your mother?”
David sighs. “There’s really not much we can do. I don’t want to risk her safety even more by attempting to communicate with her. We’ve just got to continue doing what we’ve got to do, and hope for the best.” Then he smiles sadly and adds, “I know that she’d want me to stay.” I look at him questioningly. He blushes, embarrassed, and says, “I’ve told her a lot about you.”
Now I’m the one who’s blushing. “Like what?”
He brushes the hair from my eyes. “Well, I’ve told her that you’re the smartest person I know.”
“Oh?”
He smiles. “Yep. I’ve told her that you’re the most interesting person that I’ve ever met.”
I am definitely blushing. He holds my face in both of his hands. “And I’ve told her that I wish you saw me as more than just a friend.” I’m shocked when he says this, but not quite as shocked as I am when he leans forward and presses his lips to mine.
The kiss lasts for a long moment, and when he finally pulls away, I feel lightheaded. David smiles and says, “I hope that wasn’t presumptuous of me. I’ve just been dying to kiss you since the day I met you.”
Before I can respond, one of the vendors in a stall about twenty feet away catches my eye. The man is bald, but has stubbly facial hair. From what I can see, he is very muscular. He doesn’t look like someone who’d be selling produce. He says something to one of the other vendors in his stall. She looks over at me, then back at him. She nods her head. David sees me looking over his shoulder and turns to follow my gaze. Quickly, I say, “Don’t turn around. David, that man is coming over here.”
Before we have decided what to do, the man is standing in front of me. For a few moments, we just look at each other. Then, slowly, he puts his hand into a fabric bag attached to his belt. He holds up an orange. His voice is gruff, but not unfriendly when he says, “Did you come for the oranges?”
I nod once and say, “Gillis sent us.”
“Is your name Violet?” I can hardly keep my face from registering the shock that I feel when this stranger says my name. How does he know who I am? Again, I nod. He lowers the hand that holds the orange so that he is offering it to me palm up. The symbol of The Third Stone is clearly visible on his inner wrist. “My name is Eli. I can take you where you need to go.”
Eleven
Eli is not a man of many words. We followed him silently from the bench at the Third Street Market to his vehicle which was parked in the back of the lot. David and I are both hesitant to be so trusting of The Third Stone, but there isn’t much else we can do; we’re out of information, and the only connection that we have found is this activist group. I can only hope that this isn’t some kind of trap, but if it is, we’re finished.
Now, as Eli remains silent and the vehicle makes its way to the outskirts of Summus, I realize how vulnerable we truly are. If The Third Stone does have ulterior motives, perhaps they will keep us alive based on the knowledge that they think we have, and we can figure out a way to escape. Escape seems more and more unlikely, however, when I realize how far out of town we are being driven. Technically, we are still in Summus, but we have left behind the bustling city. Here, the structures are much further apart. Most of this area is consumed by buildings-in-progress. Summus continues to expand.
After traveling a main road for a while, Eli begins turning down side streets, so I assume that we will be arriving soon. The vehicle creaks and groans in protest as Eli swings around corners without much effort at slowing down. Finally, Eli pulls into a private drive, and we know that we have arrived. However, a glance out the window is not encouraging; we have been driven to a demolition site. What was once a towering stone structure has apparently been blown into several million pieces. Both large and small chunks of rock litter the ground around us. Eli opens his door and exits the vehicle. He then opens the door near my seat and says, “Get out. Both of you.” This is not exactly encouraging. This site would be the perfect place for an execution; who knows how long it would be before anyone discovered our bodies, if ever.
From what I can tell, the site has been like this for some time. The air is clear, not polluted with the clouds of dust that would indicate a recent explosion. If this had happened in the main part of Summus, the government would have rebuilt it immediately, but out here, it’s just another construction project. The Sententia will probably have the rubble removed or rebuilt when this area becomes more populated and the surrounding buildings have been completed. For now, it remains the ruins of what it once was.
Eli does not wait for us; he begins to walk deeper into the crumbled structure. Some of the walls stand waist-high; some lie in piles that we must climb over. David and I look at one another and apparently make the same decision. We be
gin to follow Eli into the rubble. As we enter what is left of this building, a piece of rock that was once an outer wall catches my eye. There are words printed on it. I make my way over to the slab and use my palm to brush away the layers of dust, dirt, and sand so I can read what is written. This place was once called Tara Labs. I look up at David, who sees the excitement on my face, but does not understand. “David, my mother’s name was Tara.” I see recognition flood his eyes as he puts this information together. My father was a scientist; he must have owned a private lab and named it after my mother. David smiles and says, “I guess we’re in the right place, then.”
Invigorated by the prospect of finally finding some useful information, David and I scramble to catch up with Eli. When we find him, he has reached the center of the building’s floor plan. He slides down a rocky slab that probably used to be a wall, or perhaps the ceiling of this level, and David and I do the same. Two more pieces of slab lie at the bottom of the first, but these two fell in such a way that they are holding each other up, and there is a triangular space that we can squeeze through by turning sideways. It’s easier for me because I’m small, but David and especially Eli truly have to squeeze. When we come out the other side of the tunnel, we have entered a small room where the structure seems to have been spared by the otherwise unyielding destructive force of the explosion. Perhaps this room was reinforced for safety, like a bomb shelter of sorts. If something had compromised the integrity of the structure, one only had to make it to this room to be safe, rather than escape the entire building.
Eli continues to the back of the room. David and I follow, though we are somewhat confused. The only way out of this room is the way we just came in. No one else is in here, and there doesn’t seem to be any documents or other evidence to look at. What does Eli have in mind? In the furthest corner, the stone closest to where floor meets wall is slightly different than all of the others. In the bottom right corner of this stone, the symbol of the overlapping diamonds has been engraved. Eli turns to face us. He puts his hand in his pocket and draws out a smooth rectangular piece of stone. He presses a button on the black stone and a retractable blade appears at the end of the handle.
So he has brought us here to kill us. Just as I am deciding whether I should lunge at him to surprise him or try to flee, Eli uses the blade to make a cut on his own thumb. He motions for us to come closer. At this moment, my curiosity is stronger than my fear. Cautiously, David and I approach to see what he is doing. Eli takes a knee and squeezes three drops of blood onto the chiseled symbol and bowing his head in reverence whispers, “E pluribus unum.”
Interested, I say, “Eli, what does that mean?”
“It is a phrase that was once used on Earth. It means, ‘Out of many, one.’ This is what The Third Stone seeks to accomplish. The people of Cerno should be united by our government, not cowering in fear of it. Many small people can make a great impact if they act as one. The people wait for us to free them. The people wait for us to give them a voice. But if the people do not join us, we will never defeat The Sententia.”
When Eli finishes speaking, we notice sound and movement beneath our feet, though we see nothing happening. What is that sound? Stone scraping stone, I realize. The stones closest to the wall begin to move. They reposition themselves to form a staircase that leads into the darkness below the floor. Eli looks at us and raises his eyebrows, motioning for us to descend the staircase first. I take a deep breath. It’s now or never.
We descend into the darkness until we reach the bottom of the staircase. When we do, the stones reposition themselves as they were in the floor. We have been sealed in. I soon realize that we have not reached the bottom as I previously thought. We have only reached a landing that serves to change the direction of the staircase. We begin our descent again, but this time, a soft golden light emanates from bowl-like sconces mounted high on the wall. We reach another landing, and again, we descend further. Finally, we come to a door. Eli steps in front of David and me. He uses the face of his ring as a key; he presses it into an indentation on the door and the door swings open as if mechanized.
The first thing that I notice when I enter is that this must be some type of common room. Cushioned seats line the walls on one end of the space. Various reading materials and papers are organized on shelves that seem to have been carved into the stone walls. The other end of the room is a kitchen, in the simplest sense of the word. A recess large enough for two men to stand inside has been made into the stone wall. Here, a fire heats the contents of a large black kettle pot. The smoke does not come back into the room, so some type of vent or chimney must be used as an outlet. There is no icebox or refrigerator, so I assume that residents either eat mostly preserved foods that are just heated up in the pot, or fresh food is brought in daily. Eli sees me analyzing the room and says, “We don’t have a power source, but we do have running water; we’ve tapped into the main of a nearby building since all of the pipes are connected underground. We don’t draw much; so far we don’t think anyone has noticed.”
Something about this place is familiar; I have been here before. I remember waking, but much of what followed is still hazy. There are many details that I cannot recall. However, I know that I was here before my father and I went to Eligo.
As Eli speaks, three other members of The Third Stone enter the common room from a separate chamber. They are talking amongst themselves until the woman among them sees me and stops short, causing one of the men to plow into her. “Hey, watch it, Arielle—” the man begins, but then he follows her gaze to me and his voice trails off. It is apparent that these people recognize me, but how?
The woman steps forward first. She pushes her long dark brown hair behind her shoulder, then holds out her hand to me. “Hello, Violet. Welcome. And you are?” she says, gesturing to David.
“David.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Next, the man who stepped on Arielle holds out a well-worn hand. He’s a bear of a man with an auburn beard and a red face, but his eyes reveal a jovial nature. He nods first to me, then to David. “Violet, David. Name’s Cecil.”
The third member of the group, who has been watching me throughout this conversation, does not introduce himself. In fact, he ignores us entirely. As Cecil introduces himself, the man walks to the kettle and stirs its contents. He then walks to one of the shelves, removes a dusty volume, sits and begins to read. Well, he is pretending to read, but I can tell that he is not. He’s just listening.
Cecil seems embarrassed by his companion’s rudeness. In a voice loud enough for the pretend reader to hear, he says, “And that unfriendly fellow over there’s Ezra.” Then, with a good-natured smile, Cecil puffs out his chest and adds, “Don’t mind him, he’s just embarrassed because he doesn’t possess my stunning social skills, and Arielle’s got the good looks in the family.”
When Cecil mentions Ezra, I take another look at him as he continues looking at his book. I know that Cecil was only teasing him, because both Arielle and Ezra are strikingly good looking. They are very young for revolutionaries; surely they have not seen more than eleven rotations. Ezra’s hair is the same dark brown as Arielle’s, and he wears it in the same rugged style that my father had. While Ezra and Arielle bear a remarkable resemblance to one another, there is a marked difference in appearance that seems to be caused by difference in demeanor. They both have thick, heavy brows and the same dark eyes, but Arielle’s eyes are inviting and seem constantly to be smiling, while Ezra’s seem clouded and somber.
We move to a section of the cushioned seating. I end up sitting about three feet from the end where Ezra is seated. David sits on my other side, while Cecil and Arielle sit facing us. Though Ezra wants me to think that he is still reading, I see him watching me. When David reaches over to hold one of my hands, Ezra lowers his gaze to look at our intertwined fingers, and he does not look away for several moments.
Eli tosses each of us an orange and announces that he’s going to have a wash
. As he leaves the room, Ezra gets up and follows him. Arielle takes the opportunity to apologize for his behavior. “I’m sorry about Ezra… We’re twins, so we look alike, but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. He can be really moody. Sometimes he goes to a dark place and it might take him days to snap out of it. I’m sorry he took it out on you two, though. He’s not always comfortable with meeting new people.”
I smile and nod as David responds, “Oh, it’s all right. I think we can all be like that sometimes.”
I’m not listening. I’m straining to hear what Eli and Ezra are saying in the hallway. I try to tune out David and Arielle’s conversation and focus all of my hearing on Eli and Ezra. It helps that the volume of their voices has become raised.
The first voice that I hear must be Ezra. “So who is going to show her?”
There is a pause. “No one’s going to show her anything.” Yes, that’s Eli.
“She has to know, Eli. She deserves to know. It’s not his right to keep it from her.”
“And it’s not your right to show her! We figured that this day would come and we’ve all agreed on how to handle it. The Scientist thinks it’s best.”
“The Scientist. Who cares what he thinks? Who put him in charge?”
Eli is no longer patient. He speaks to Ezra with force and finality. “Ezra. We are not going to discuss this anymore. Let me remind you that none of us, not me, not you, not Arielle, would have anywhere to go if it weren’t for The Scientist. I suggest you remember your place. The decision has been made.” I hear the shuffle of feet as Eli walks away.
I have the distinct feeling that the she in that conversation was referring to me. What is it that I haven’t seen?
