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My mind is whirling. Matthew Markham. Patrick and Aida’s son. He isn’t dead?
“Sione performed that trade with no fee, because it was a family member who wanted it. It was his wife’s sister. Her husband knew something was rotten in the Society. He wanted his child out. It was an extremely delicate, dangerous trade. ”
She looks past me, remembering Ky’s father, a man I never met. What was he like? I wonder. It’s impossible not to picture him as an older, more reckless version of Ky: bright, daring. “But,” Anna says, “Sione managed it. He thought that the Society would prefer word of a death getting around to news of an escape, and he was right. The Society made up a story to explain the boy’s disappearance. They didn’t want rumors to spread about the vanishings, as they were called. They didn’t want people to think they could escape. ”
“He risked a great deal for his nephew,” I say.
“No,” Anna says. “He did it for his son. ”
“For Ky?”
“Sione couldn’t change who he was. He couldn’t Reclassify himself. But he wanted a better life for his son than he could provide. ”
“But Ky’s father was a rebel,” I say. “He believed in the Rising. ”
“And in the end, I think he was also a realist,” Anna says. “He knew the chances of a rebellion succeeding were slim. What he did for Ky was an insurance policy. If something went wrong and Sione died, then Ky would have a place in the Society. He could go back to live with his aunt and uncle. ”
“And he did,” I say.
“Yes,” Anna says. “Ky was safe. ”
“No,” I say. “They sent him out to the work camps eventually. ” I sent him out to the work camps.
“But much later than they would have,” she says. “He likely lived longer where he was in the Society than he would have if he’d been trapped in the Outer Provinces. ”
“Where is that boy now?” I ask. “Matthew Markham?”
“I have no idea,” Anna says. “I never met him, you understand. I only knew of him from Sione. ”
“I knew Ky’s uncle,” I say. “Patrick. I can’t believe he would send his son out here to live where he knew nothing and no one. ”
“Parents will do strange things when they see a clear danger to their children,” she says.
“But Patrick didn’t do the same for Ky,” I say, angry.
“I suspect,” Anna says, “that he wanted to honor Ky’s parents’ request for their child, which was that he have a chance to leave the Outer Provinces. And eventually, I’m sure Ky’s aunt and uncle didn’t want to give him up. Sending one son out would have almost killed them. And then, when nothing terrible happened for years, they would have wondered if they’d done the right thing in sending him away. ” Anna takes a deep breath. “Hunter may have told you that I left him behind, along with his daughter. My granddaughter. Sarah. ”
“Yes,” I say. I saw Hunter bury Sarah. I saw the line on her grave—Suddenly across the June a wind with fingers goes.
“Hunter never blamed me,” Anna says. “He knew I had to take the people across. Time was short. The ones who stayed did die. I was right about that. ”
She looks up at me. Her eyes are very dark. “But I blame myself,” she says. Then she holds out her hand, flexing her fingers, and I think I see traces of blue marked on her skin, or perhaps it’s her veins underneath. In the dim light of the infirmary, it’s hard to tell.
She stands up. “When is your next break?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I’ll try to find out and bring Eli and Hunter to see you. ” Anna bends down and touches Ky’s shoulder. “And you,” she says.
After she leaves, I lean down to Ky. “Did you hear all that?” I ask him. “Did you hear how much your parents loved you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“And I love you,” I tell him. “We are still looking for your cure. ”
He doesn’t stir. I tell him poems, and I tell him that I love him. Over and over again. As I watch, I think the liquid dripping into his veins helps; there is a warming to his face, like sun on stone, when the light comes up.
CHAPTER 32
KY
Her voice comes back first. Beautiful and gentle. She’s still telling me poetry.
Then the pain comes back, but it’s different now. My muscles and bones used to hurt. But now I ache even deeper than that. Has the infection spread?
Cassia wants me to know that she loves me.
The pain wants to eat me away.
I wish I could have one without the other, but that’s the problem with being alive.
You don’t usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.
I don’t deserve either her love or this illness.
That’s a stupid thought. Things happen whether you deserve them or not.
For now, I’ll ride out the pain on the song of her voice. I won’t think about what will happen when she has to leave.
Right now, she’s here and she loves me. She says it over and over again.
CHAPTER 33
CASSIA
Xander finds me there next to Ky. “Leyna sent me to bring you back,” he says. “It’s time to get to work again. ”
“Ky’s drip was out,” I say. “I wanted to stay until he looked better. ”
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Xander says. “I’ll let Oker know. ”
“Good,” I say. Oker’s anger will carry much more weight with the village leaders than mine will.
“I’ll be back,” I tell Ky, in case he can hear. “As soon as I can. ”
Outside of the infirmary, the trees grow right up to the edge of the village buildings. Branches scrape and sing along one another when the wind comes through them. So much life here. Grasses, flowers, leaves, and people walking, talking, living.
“I’m sorry about the blue tablets,” Xander says. “I—you could have died. It would have been my fault. ”
“No,” I say. “You didn’t know. ”
“You never took one, did you?”
“Yes,” I say. “But I’m fine. I kept going. ”
“How?” he asks.
I kept going by thinking of Ky. But how can I tell Xander that? “I just did,” I say. “And the scraps in the tablets helped. ”
Xander smiles.
“The secret you mentioned on one of the scraps,” I say. “What was it?”
“I’m a part of the Rising,” Xander says.
“I thought that might be what you meant,” I say. “You told me on the port. Didn’t you? Not in words, I know, but I thought that’s what you were trying to say. . . . ”
“You’re right,” Xander says. “I did tell you. It wasn’t much of a secret. ” He grins, and then his expression sobers. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about the red tablet. ”
“I’m not immune,” I say. “It works on me. ”
“Are you sure?”
“They gave it to me in Central,” I say. “I’m certain of it. ”
“The Rising promised me that you were immune to the red tablet, and to the Plague,” Xander says.
“Then they either lied to you or made a mistake,” I say.
“That means you would have been vulnerable to the original version of the Plague,” Xander says. “Did you go down with it? Did they give you a cure?”
“No. ” I understand what’s puzzling him. “If the red tablet works on me, then I was never given the initial immunization when I was a baby. So I should have gone down sick with the original Plague. But I didn’t. I just got the mark. ”
Xander shakes his head, trying to figure it out. I am sorting through, too. “The red tablet works on me,” I say. “I’ve never taken the green. And I walked through the blue. ”
“Has anyone else ever walked through the blue?” Xander asks.
“Not that I know of,” I say. “I had Indie with me, and she
helped me keep going. That might have made a difference. ”
“What else happened in the canyons?” Xander asks.
“For a long time, I wasn’t with Ky at all,” I say. “We started in a village full of other Aberrations. Then three of us ran to the Carving; me, the boy who died, and Indie. ”
“Indie is in love with Ky,” Xander says.
“Yes,” I say. “I think she is, now. But first it was you. She used to steal things. She took my microcard and someone else’s miniport and she used to look at your face whenever she could. ”
“And in the end, it was Ky she wanted,” Xander says. I detect a note of bitterness in his voice; it’s not something I’ve heard often before.
“They flew in the same Rising camp,” I say. “She saw him all the time. ”
“You don’t seem angry at her,” Xander says.
And I’m not. There was the moment of shock and hurt when Ky said that she’d kissed him, but it vanished when Ky went still. “She makes her own way,” I say. “She does what she wants. ” I shake my head. “It’s hard to stay upset with her. ”
“I don’t understand,” Xander says.
And I don’t think he can. He doesn’t really know Indie; has never seen her lie and cheat to get what she wants, or realized how among all of that is a strange inexplicable honesty that is only hers. He didn’t see her push through the silver water and bring us to safety against the odds. He never knew how she felt about the sea or how badly she wanted a dress made of blue silk.
Some things cannot be shared. I could tell him everything that happened in the Carving and he still won’t have been there with me.
And it’s the same for him. He could tell me all about the Plague and the mutation that followed and what he saw, but I still wasn’t there.
Watching Xander’s face, I see him realize this. He swallows. He’s about to ask me something. When he does, it’s not what I expect. “Have you ever written anything for me? Besides that message, I mean. ”
“You did get it,” I say.
“All except for the end,” he says. “It got ruined. ”
My heart sinks. So he doesn’t know what I said, that I told him not to think of me anymore in that way.
“I wondered,” Xander says, “if you’d ever written a poem for me. ”
“Wait,” I say. There is no paper here, but there is a stick and dark dirt on the ground and it is, after all, how I learned to write. I hesitate for a moment, glancing back at the infirmary, but then I realize The time for keeping this to ourselves is long past. And if I tried to share it with everyone out in Central, why would I keep it from Xander?
All the same, it feels intimate to write for Xander. It means more.
I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think of something, and then it comes to me, an extension of the poem with a word that made me think of Xander. I begin to write. “Xander,” I say, pausing.