by Ally Condie
I’m relieved the minute I see Em sitting in the meal hall. She practically glows, and when she sees me, she lifts her arm to wave. The Banquet went well, then. She didn’t panic. She made it through. She isn’t dead.
I hurry through the line, sliding into the seat next to her. “So,” I ask, even though I already know the answer, “how was the Banquet?” Her radiance shines on everyone in the room. Everyone at our table smiles.
“It was perfect.”
“It’s not Lon, then?” I say, making a feeble joke. Lon was Matched a few months ago.
Em laughs. “No. His name is Dalen. He’s from Acadia Province.” Acadia is one of the more heavily forested provinces to the east, miles away from our rolling hills and rivered valleys here in Oria. They have stone in Acadia, and sea. Things we don’t have much of here.
“And ...” I lean forward. So do the rest of our friends gathered at the table, all of us eager for details about the boy Em will marry.
“When he stood up, I thought, ‘He can’t be for me.’ He’s tall and he smiled at me right through the screen. He didn’t even look a little bit nervous.”
“So he’s handsome?”
“Of course.” Em smiles. “And he didn’t seem too disappointed in me, either, thank goodness.”
“How could he be?” Em shines so radiantly today in her drab brown plainclothes that I imagine she was impossible to look away from last night in her yellow dress. “So, he’s handsome. But what exactly does he look like?” I’m embarrassed to hear a hint of jealousy in my voice, plain and clear. No one gathered around me to find out what Xander was like. There was no mystery because they already knew.
Em is kind enough to ignore it. “Actually, a little like Xander ...” she begins, and then she breaks off.
I follow her gaze to where Xander stands a few feet away from us, holding his foilware on a tray and looking stricken. Did he hear the jealousy in my voice when Em described her Match?
What is wrong with me?
I try to cover it up. “We’re talking about Em’s Match. He looks like you.”
Xander recovers quickly. “So he’s unbelievably handsome.” He sits down next to me but he doesn’t look in my direction. I’m embarrassed. He definitely heard me.
“Of course,” Em laughs. “I don’t know why I was so worried!” She blushes a little, probably remembering the night in the music hall, and looks at Xander. “It all turned out perfectly—the way you said it would.”
“I wish they still let you print out a picture right away,” I say. “I want to see what he looks like.”
Em describes her Match and tells us facts about Dalen that she learned from her microcard, but I’m too distracted to hear much. I worry that I’ve hurt Xander and I want him to look at me or take my hand, but he does neither of those things.
Em grabs my arm on our way out of the meal hall. “Thank you so much for letting me borrow the compact. I think it helped to have something to hold onto, you know?”
I nod, agreeing.
“Ky gave it back to you this morning, didn’t he?”
“No.” My heart drops. Where is my compact? Why doesn’t Em have it?
“He didn’t?” Em’s face pales.
“No,” I say. “Why does he have it?”
“I saw him on the air train after the Match Banquet. He was coming home late from work. I wanted you to have the compact back as soon as possible.” Em takes a deep breath. “I knew you’d see Ky at hiking before you’d see me here, and I couldn’t bring it straight back to your house because I was worried I’d be late for curfew.”
“Hiking was canceled this morning because of the weather.”
“It was?” Hiking is the one summer leisure activity that absolutely can’t be done in inclement weather. Even swimming can be done in the indoor pool. Em looks sick. “I should have realized that. But why didn’t he find some way to get it to you? He knew how important it was. I made sure to tell him.”
Good question. But I don’t want this to ruin Em’s big moment. I don’t want her to worry. “I’m sure he gave it to Aida to give to my mother or father,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted. “Or he’ll give it to me tomorrow at hiking.”
“Don’t worry,” Xander says, looking directly at me now. He reaches out with his words to cross the small divides that keep coming between us. “You can trust Ky.”
CHAPTER 15
As I walk to the air-train stop the next morning, things feel crisp, less weighted. The cool of the night accomplished what the rain yesterday did not; the air feels fresh. New. The sun blinking through the last of the clouds dares the birds to sing, and they do. It dares me to let the light in, and I do. Who wouldn’t rage against the death of something so beautiful?
I’m not the only one who feels it. At hiking, Ky finds me standing at the front of the group, just as the Officer begins speaking. Ky presses the compact into my hand. I feel the touch of his fingers and I think he leaves them there, on mine, the smallest bit longer than necessary.
I put the compact into my pocket.
Why here? I wonder, still tingling. Why not give it to me at home?
I’m glad I lent it to Em, but I’m glad I have it back, too. The compact is the one link that I have left to my grandparents and I vow never to let it out of my hands again.
I think maybe Ky will wait for me to go in the woods, but he doesn’t. When the Officer blows the whistle, Ky takes off without a backward glance, and all at once my new-bright feeling dissolves a little bit.
You have your compact back, I remind myself. Something returned.
Ky disappears completely into the trees ahead of me.
Something lost.
Three minutes later, alone in the woods, I realize that Ky didn’t give me back my compact. It’s something else—I can tell the moment I pull it out of my pocket to make sure it looks all right. The object is similar: gold, a case you can snap open and shut, but it’s definitely not my artifact.
There are letters—N,E,S,W—and an arrow on the inside. It spins and spins and keeps pointing back to me.
I didn’t think that Aberrations could have access to artifacts, but Ky obviously does. Did he give it to me on purpose? By accident? Should I try to give it back or wait until he says something to me?
There are far too many secrets in these woods, I decide. I find myself smiling, polished bright again, ready for the sun.
“Sir? Sir? Lon’s fallen. We think he’s injured.”
The Officer swears under his breath and looks at Ky and me, who are the only two up on the top of the hill except for this boy. “You two stay up here and keep track of who comes when, all right?” The Officer gives me the datapod and, before I can say anything, he disappears back into the forest with the boy.
I think about telling Ky that we need to exchange artifacts, but before I say the words, something stops me. For some reason I want to hold on to the mysterious spinning arrow in its gold case. Just for another day or two.
“What are you doing?” I ask him instead. His hand moves, making shapes and curves and lines in the grass that seem familiar.
His blue eyes flash up to me. “I’m writing.”
Of course. That’s why the marks look familiar. He is writing in an old-fashioned, curved kind of writing, like the script on my compact. I’ve seen samples of it before but I don’t know how to do it. No one does. All we can do is type. We could try to imitate the figures, but with what? We don’t have any of the old tools.
But I realize as I watch Ky that you can make your own tools.
“How did you learn to do this?” I don’t dare sit down next to him—someone could come through the trees at any moment and need me to enter them in the datapod—so I stand as close as I dare. He grimaces and I realize I am standing right in the middle of his words. I take a step back.
Ky smiles but doesn’t answer; he keeps on writing.
This is the difference between us. I live to sort; he knows how to create. He can wri
te words whenever he wants. He can swirl them in the grass, write them in the sand, carve them in a tree.
“No one knows I can do this,” Ky says. “Now I have a secret of yours and you have one of mine.”
“Just one?” I say, thinking of the spinning arrow in the gold case.
Ky smiles again.
Some of the rain from last night pooled in the heavy, drooping petals of the wildflowers here. I dip my finger in the water and try to write along the slick green surface of one of the broad leaves. It feels difficult, awkward. My hands are used to tapping a screen, not to sweeping and swirling in controlled movements. I haven’t held a paintbrush in years, not since my days in First School. Because the water is clear, I can’t really see my letters but I still know that they aren’t formed correctly.
Ky dips his finger into another droplet and writes a glistening C on the leaf. He makes the curve smoothly, gracefully.
“Will you teach me?” I ask.
“I’m not supposed to do that.”
“We’re not supposed to be doing any of this,” I remind him. Sounds drift up from the tangled trees and undergrowth below us. Someone is coming. I feel desperate to make him promise to teach me before anyone gets here and this moment vanishes. “We’re not supposed to know poems or writing or ...” I stop myself. I ask again. “Will you teach me?”
Ky doesn’t answer.
We’re not alone anymore.
Several people have reached the top, and from the wails I can hear through the forest, the Officer and Lon’s group are not far behind. I have to enter these names into the datapod, so I step away from Ky. I look back once at where he sits with his arms folded, looking out over the hills.
It turns out that Lon will survive. Once the Officer cures the melodrama accompanying the injury, they find that all Lon has is a slightly twisted ankle. Still, the Officer warns us to take it slow on our way back to the bottom of the hill.
I want to walk down with Ky, but he attaches himself to the Officer and makes himself useful in getting Lon back down the mountain. I wonder why the Officer bothered hauling Lon to the top at all until I hear him muttering something to Ky about “making quota so they don’t get after me.” It surprises me, even though I know Officers must report to people, too.
I walk with a girl named Livy who is getting better and better at hiking as the days go on and who acts enthusiastic about everything. She talks and talks, and I imagine Ky’s hand making that sweeping curve of the C for my name and my heart beats faster.
We’re late getting back; I have to rush to the train bound for the Borough, and Ky has to rush to the one that will take him to the City for work. I’ve given up on talking to him again today when I feel someone brush past me. At the same time I hear a word so soft and quiet I wonder if he said it up on the hill and the wind has just now carried it down to me.
The word is yes.
CHAPTER 16
I’m getting good at C. When I arrive at hiking I practically sprint to the top of the hill. After I check in with the Officer, I hurry to my spot next to Ky. Before he can say anything, I pick up a stick and draw a C right there in the mud next to him.
“What’s next?” I ask, and he laughs a little.
“You know, you don’t need me. You could teach yourself,” he says. “You could look at the letters on your scribe or your reader.”
“They’re not the same,” I tell him. “They don’t connect like yours do. I’ve seen your kind of writing before, but I don’t know what it’s called.”
“Cursive,” he says softly. “It’s harder to read, but it’s beautiful. It’s one of the old ways of writing.”
“That’s what I want to learn.” I don’t want to copy the blocky, flat symbols of the letters we use now. I like the curves and sweeps of the ones Ky knows.
Ky glances over at the Officer, who stares fiercely into the trees as though daring someone else to fall and get hurt today. We don’t have long before the others arrive.
“What’s next?” I ask again.
“A,” says Ky, showing me how to make a small letter a, embraced by a little swoop at the beginning and at the end, to attach it to what comes before and after. “Because it’s the next letter in your name.” He reaches and takes hold of the stick above my hand.
Up, around, down.
Guiding, gentle, his hand presses against mine on the downward strokes, releases a little on the upward ones. I bite my lip in concentration; or maybe it’s that I don’t dare to breathe until the a is finished, which it is, all too soon.
The letter looks perfect. I exhale, a little shakily. I want to look up at him, but instead I look down at our hands, right next to each other. In this light, his don’t look so red. They look brown, strong. Purposeful.
Someone is coming through the trees. We both let go at the same time.
Livy bursts into the clearing. She’s never been third before, and she’s almost beside herself with excitement. While she chatters at the Officer, Ky and I stand up and casually trample what we’ve written into oblivion.
“Why am I learning to write the letters in my name first?”
“Because even if that’s all you learn to write you’ll still have something,” he says, bending his head down to look at me, making sure I know what he’s saying, what he’s about to ask. “Was there anything else you wanted to learn to write instead?”
I nod and his eyes brighten with understanding.
“The words from that paper,” he whispers, his eyes moving to Livy and the Officer.
“Yes.”
“Do you still remember them?”
I nod again.
“Tell me a little every day,” he says, “and I’ll remember it for you. Then there will be two of us who know.”
Even though the time is short before Livy or the Officer or someone else comes over to talk to us, I pause for a moment. If I tell Ky these words, I step into an even more dangerous place than I was before. It will put Ky in danger. And I will have to trust him.
Can I do it? I look out at the view from the top of the hill. The sky does not have an answer for me. The dome of City Hall in the distance certainly doesn’t. I remember thinking of the angels from the stories when I went to my Match Banquet. I don’t see any angels and they don’t fly down on their cotton-soft wings to whisper in my ear. Can I trust this boy who writes in the earth?
Someplace deep within me—Is it my heart? Or perhaps my soul, the mythical part of humans that the angels cared about?—tells me that I can.
I lean closer to Ky. Neither of us looks at the other; we both gaze straight ahead to make sure that no one will suspect anything if they glance our way. That’s when I whisper the words to him, my heart so full it’s about to burst because I’m saying them, really saying them out loud to another person: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”
Ky closes his eyes.
When he opens them again he slips something rough and papery into my hand. “Look at this for practice,” Ky says. “Destroy it when you’re done.”
I can hardly wait for Second School and sorting to end so that I can look at what Ky has given me. I wait until I’m at home in the kitchen, eating my dinner alone because my work hours were long tonight. I hear my father and Bram playing a game on the port in the foyer and I feel safe enough to reach into my pocket and pull out Ky’s gift.
A napkin. My first reaction is disappointment. Why this? It’s a normal napkin, the kind we get from the meal halls at Second School or the Arboretum or anywhere else. Brown and pulpy. Smeared and used. I have the impulse to incinerate it right away.
But.
When I open it up there are words inside. Gorgeous words. Cursive words. They were beautiful up on the green hill with the sound of wind in trees and they are beautiful here in my gray-and-blue kitchen with the grumbling of the incinerator in the background. Dark, curling, swirling words curve across the brown paper. Where dampness has touched them the wo
rds are slightly blurred.
And it’s not just words. He’s drawn things, too. The surface is covered with lines and meaning. Not a picture, not a poem, not the lyrics to a song, although my sorting mind notices the pattern of all these things. But I can’t classify them. This is nothing I have seen before.
I realize that I don’t even know what you would use to make marks like this. All of the words I practice are written in the air or traced in the dirt. There used to be tools for writing but I don’t know what they were. Even our paintbrushes in school were tethered to artscreens, our pictures wiped away almost immediately after we finished them. Somehow, Ky must know a secret, older than Grandfather and his mother and people before them. How to make. Create.
Two lives, he’s written.
Two lives, I whisper to myself. The words hush and hang in the room, too soft for the port to hear above the other sounds in the house. Almost too soft for me to hear above my heart beating fast. Faster than it ever has in the woods or on the tracker.
I should go to my room, to the relative privacy of that little place with my bed, my window. My closet where plainclothes hang, dead and still. But I can’t stop staring. It’s hard, at first, for me to figure out what the picture is meant to be; but then I realize it’s him. Ky. Drawn twice, once on each side of the fold of the napkin. The line of his jaw gives it away; the shape of his eyes, the spareness and strength of his body. The spaces left empty; his hands and the nothing they hold, though they are cupped, tipped skyward, in both pictures.
That’s where the similarity between the pictures ends. In the first picture, he looks up at something in the sky, and he looks younger, his face is open. The figure there seems to think his hands might still be filled. In the second, he is older, his face narrower, and he looks down at the ground.
Along the bottom he has written Which one is the true one, I don’t ask, they don’t tell.
Two lives. I think I understand this—his life before he came here, and his life after. But what does he mean by the line of song or poetry or plea at the end?
