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As we walked I let my hands graze the tall grass that grew alongside the trail. “So who is raising the children? The survivors in the City?”
“Right now they’re sitting in their new houses that overlook the canals that fourteen-year-old boys dredged up, and they’re feeding their babies that eighteen-year-old girls gave birth to, or they’re skiing on their indoor ski slopes and eating at the restaurants at the tops of skyscrapers where orphans work for free. It’s disgusting. ” He grimaced.
“How did you escape?” I asked again. I thought of the horrors of that labor camp, of Asher alone in the wild with his legs pinned down, or boys as small as Silas carrying stones on their backs.
“It happened one night after a particularly infuriating speech about the new royal palace,” Caleb began, as he extended a hand back to me, helping me over a boulder. “I couldn’t sleep. I kept staring at Asher and Leif’s empty bunk. The guards had found a two-year-old boy in the woods. He was newly orphaned, and he was sobbing. It wasn’t only the plague that made orphans. ” Caleb paused to explain: “Living conditions were so difficult after, the world in such chaos, that many children lost their parents even after the disease had passed. I had grown so numb I just listened to him crying for two hours. A gang had shot his mother. I didn’t care. I was hollow. It couldn’t touch me because there was nothing in me to touch. I was so . . . ” Caleb stopped on the path and turned to me. He cleared his voice, careful with his words. “. . . I was so callous. I’m still embarrassed. ” I couldn’t imagine him being so cold, not after the way he’d cradled the deer’s head in his hands, stroking the soft fur on its neck until it died.
Caleb grabbed a branch, rubbing his fingers over the rough bark. “I started thinking about everything and I knew I couldn’t live there much longer. It wasn’t living, it wasn’t a life. I was terrified and desperate. And I had the radio in my hand and I was turning it, just fiddling with it. ” He let out a deep breath. His fingers stopped moving. “Then I heard a voice. It was talking absolute nonsense. ”
“What was it saying?” I asked, stepping forward to close the space between us.
“I’ll always remember that first sentence. It said, ‘He especially loved people, is so happy, especially remembering Eloise. ’”
I leaned in, as if getting closer to him would help me decipher the meaning. “Who’s Eloise? I don’t understand. ” A gust of wind came through the mountains, making the trees lean. Shadows moved across Caleb’s face.
“I wasn’t sure at first either. The man just kept on like that. He said that a few times, and then other cryptic sentences. Always repeating the words in this haunting voice. I kept looking around wondering if I had split from reality, if I had drifted off into a dream or something. And then after the tenth time he repeated himself I stopped trying to understand the sentence and started listening to the way he said it. He was trying to tell me something, the tone in his voice was almost pleading. ” Caleb looked up, his eyes meeting mine. They were red and wet. “He especially loved people, is so happy, especially remembering Eloise. He especially—”
“H,” I interrupted, feeling my throat tighten with emotion. “E-L-P I-S H-E-R-E. ”
Caleb smiled, and I felt the rest of the world fall away—the trees, the path, the mountains, the sky—leaving only us.
“Yes. ” He nodded. “Help is here. ” He reached out his hand and I pressed it between mine. “The voice kept on. Over the next few nights he revealed a place in the wild where, if you could escape, he would meet you. It took a few months, and I waited for Leif to return to make a plan together. We studied the guard’s routines and found a loophole. We left one night—just the three of us. ”
“Three of you?”
Caleb looked at our hands, together, smiling slightly as though the sight pleased him. “We brought the little boy whose mother was shot. Silas. ” Caleb’s fingers threaded through mine, squeezing tight as we started back up the path.
“And you came here,” I said, keeping my eyes on his as we approached the clearing beyond the dugout.
“That was five years ago. The camp was already being built by a small group of boys, led by the man whose voice I heard all those nights. Moss. He started the Trail. There are safe havens all along the west, all leading to dugouts like this. Leif, Silas, and I traveled for two months to get here, sleeping in rebel houses. People are still out there, living outside of the City. They don’t believe in what the King is doing either, and they help girls and boys escape. ”
He grabbed a log on the side of the hill and pulled, exposing the hidden door. Inside the camp was quiet and dark. I was steadied by the sound of our bare feet on the floor, walking in time.
“So that’s what Teacher was talking about. Califia—that place where Arden and I will go. On the water. ” I watched Caleb as I said it, expecting a flinch—a grimace—something that would reveal his feelings about me leaving, but his expression betrayed nothing. Now that Arden was able to walk, even if it was just around our tiny room, it would only be a week or two before we’d be gone. I wondered if I would be able to go, to just leave the dugout and head west as I’d planned. Caleb was right beside me, and I missed him already.
“Yes, it’s another safe haven for orphans and Strays—the biggest,” was all he said.
“And Moss?” I asked. “Where is he now?”
Caleb led me through the dim tunnel. “There were murmurings that he was inside the City, but nothing is certain. For the most part he keeps his location secret and he’s moving around the Trail so much it’s impossible to track him. He’s still sending out messages, but we haven’t seen him in over a year. ”
I wished I had known about the radio communications and the Trail before I’d left School. Before I’d walked out of our room, leaving Ruby and Pip in those narrow beds, in their last pleasant sleep. Maybe there would be a chance to send them word from Califia. A chance to reach them.
I felt the soft give of Caleb’s hand as we reached my doorway, the sweet smell of sweat and smoke on his skin. I noticed the freckles that spread out over his nose and forehead, where his skin was browned by the sun. Neither of us spoke. Instead I just ran my hand over his, circling my fingers over the knuckles and his nails, for once not minding that they were caked with dirt. He rested his chin on the top of my head and I breathed in, aware of the mere inch that stretched between my nose and his chest.
“You did great today,” Caleb said after a long while. He squeezed my hand in good-bye.
“Thanks again for teaching me. ” I strode into my room, but I couldn’t stop myself. I turned back. He was still standing there, filling up the doorway.
I had listened to what Teacher Agnes had said. I learned about the Illusion of Connection and the Dangers of Boys and Men, and read through the Subtle Manipulations. But beneath all that, somewhere inside me, there was a deeper knowledge. It held a place that even fear and a carefully crafted education could not touch. It was the way Caleb had sung out of tune that day in the woods—just threw his head back and sang, his voice echoing through the trees. It was the food that was set out for us every morning and every evening, the awkwardly folded towels and shirts, the bathwater he dragged in for Arden, without anyone ever having asked.