Crossed, Page 9

  There is a tiny stream, so small that it almost disappears when Indie and I both put our canteens in at the same time. The stream dries up or sinks underground entirely by the time it reaches the edge of the Carving. In staggering through the dark I did not notice when the stream began, only that it suddenly was. Pieces of driftwood wait on small sandy beaches, bone-dry, having floated in on a bigger river in a different time. I can’t stop wondering what this might look like from above: a shiny silver thread, pulled from one of the choices I saw in the Hundred Dresses, winding through the vastness of red rock that is the Carving.

  From above, Indie and I would be too small to see at all.

  “I think we’re in the wrong canyon,” I tell Indie.

  Indie doesn’t answer at first; she’s bending to pick up something fragile and gray from the ground. She holds it carefully in her hands and shows it to me.

  “An old wasp nest,” I say, looking at the thin, tissue-paper circles turning within and without each other.

  “It looks like a seashell.” Indie opens her pack and tucks the abandoned nest safely inside. “Do you want to try and go back out?” she asks. “Go to another canyon?”

  I pause. We’ve been moving for almost twenty-four hours now, and we are out of food. We have eaten most of our two days’ ration to give us strength after our long run to the Carving. I don’t want to waste tablets on going back out, especially since I don’t know what might be following, or waiting.

  “I guess we should keep going,” I say. “Maybe we’ll see some sign of him soon.”

  Indie nods, hoists her pack, and picks up the two knife-sharp stones she always carries while we walk. I do the same. We’ve seen the prints of animals here, though we haven’t seen a trace of an Anomaly yet.

  We haven’t seen a trace of any person—alive or dead, Aberration or Anomaly, Official or rebel.

  In the dark that night, I sit and work on my poem. It helps me keep from thinking about all I’ve left behind.

  I write another first line.

  I couldn’t find a way to fly to you so I walked every step on this stone.

  So many beginnings. I tell myself that in a way it’s good that I haven’t found Ky yet, because I still don’t know what to whisper to him when I see him, which words would be the very best ones to give.

  Indie finally speaks. “I’m hungry,” she says. Her voice sounds as hollow as the empty wasp’s nest.

  “I’ll give you a blue tablet if you want,” I tell her. I don’t know why I’m so averse to taking them, since this is precisely the type of situation Xander wanted to help me through. Maybe it’s because the boy who ran with us didn’t seem to want them. Or because I hope to have something to give Ky when I see him, since I gave away the compass. Or because Grandfather’s voice echoes in my mind from when he talked about a different tablet, the green one: You are strong enough to go without.

  Indie gives me a sharp, puzzled look.

  A thought comes to my mind and I pull out my flashlight. I shine it around, noticing again something I saw earlier and stored away in my memory: a plant. My mother didn’t teach me specific names of many plants, but she did tell me the general signs of poison. This plant shows none of those signs, and the very presence of the spikes seem to indicate that it has something within to protect. It’s fleshy and green, edged with purple. It isn’t lush like the vegetation in the Borough but it’s certainly better than the tired tumbles of sticks and leaves that many of the plants here have turned into for the winter. Some of them have small gray cocoons strung along their bare branches, memories of butterflies.

  Indie watches for a moment as I gingerly pull off one of the broad, spiked leaves. Then she crouches next to me and does the same, and we both carefully use our rock knives to scrape away the spikes. It takes a little while, but then we each have a small, skinned-looking gray-green piece of plant in front of us.

  “Do you think it’s poisonous?” Indie asks me.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I don’t think so. But I’ll go first.”

  “No,” Indie says. “We’ll both try a little and see what happens.”

  For a minute we do nothing but chew, and while it’s not the same as the food I’ve eaten all my life, Society food, it’s still enough to take the edge off and dampen the hunger. Cut me open, and you might find a girl held together not by bone, but by stringy dry sinews, ones that look like the bark that hangs off the trees here in strips.

  When nothing happens after a few moments, we both take another bite. I think of another word that might rhyme and write it down, then scratch it back out. It doesn’t work.

  “What are you doing?” Indie asks.

  “I’m trying to write a poem.”

  “One of the Hundred Poems?”

  “No. This one is new. It’s my own words.”

  “How did you learn to write?” Indie moves a little closer, looks curiously at the letters in the sand.

  “He taught me,” I say. “The boy I’m looking for.”

  She falls silent again and I think of another line.

  Your hand around mine, showing me shapes.

  “Why are you an Aberration?” Indie asks. “Are you first-generation?”

  I hesitate, not wanting to lie to Indie, but then I realize that I’m not lying anymore. If the Society has discovered my escape, I’ll certainly earn Aberration status. “I am,” I say. “First generation.”

  “So it was you who did something?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “I caused my own Reclassification.” That’s true, too, or will be. When my status changes, it won’t be my parents’ fault.

  “My mother made a boat,” Indie says, and I hear her swallow another piece of the plant. “She carved it out of an old tree. She worked on it for years. And then she paddled away and the Officials found her within an hour.” She sighs. “They picked her up and saved her. They told us she only wanted to try out the boat and that she was grateful they found her in time.”

  I hear a strange sound in the dark that I can’t place, a sort of delicate movement like a whispering. It takes me a moment to realize that the sound is Indie, turning the wasp nest around and around in her hands as she speaks.

  “I’ve never lived near the water,” I say. “Not the ocean, anyway.”

  “It calls,” Indie says softly. Before I can ask what she means, she adds, “Later, when the Officials were gone, she told my father and me what really happened. She said that she meant to go. She said the worst part was that she didn’t even lose sight of the shore before they found her.”

  I feel that I stand at the edge of an ocean and something, some knowledge, laps at my feet. I can almost see the woman on the boat in the water, drifting farther, seeing nothing behind her but sea and sky. I can almost hear her deep breath of relief as she turns her face away from where the shore once was, and I wish she had made it far enough for that.

  Indie says quietly, “When the Officials found out what she’d told us, they gave us all red tablets.”

  “Oh,” I say. Should I act as if I know what happens next? The forgetting?

  “I didn’t forget,” Indie says. And though it’s too dark to see her eyes anymore, I can tell that she looks at me.

  She must think I know what the red tablets do. She is like Ky and Xander. She is immune.

  How many more are there like them? Am I one of them?

  The red tablet tucked among the blue tempts me sometimes, the way it did the morning they took Ky away. But now, it’s not because I want to forget. It’s because I want to know. Am I immune, too?

  But I might not be. And now is not a time for forgetting. Besides, I might need the red tablet later.

  “Were you angry that she tried to go?” I ask, thinking of Xander and what he said about how I left. The moment the words leave my mouth I wish them unsaid, but Indie doesn’t take offense.

  “No,” she says. “She always planned to come back for us.”

  “Oh,” I say. Neither of us
speaks for a moment, and I think suddenly of a time when Bram and I stood near the little Arboretum pond waiting for my mother. Bram wanted to throw a stone into the pool but knew he’d get in trouble if someone saw him. So he waited. Watched. Just when I thought he’d lost his nerve he snapped his arm forward and the rock went in and rippled the water.

  Indie throws first. “She’d heard about a rebellion on an island off the coast. She wanted to find it and come back for the family.”

  “I’ve heard of a rebellion, too,” I say, unable to control my excitement. “The one I’ve heard of is called the Rising.”

  “That’s the same one,” Indie says, sounding eager. “It’s everywhere, someone told her. This Carving is exactly the kind of place it might be.”

  “I think that too,” I say. In my mind, I see a piece of translucent paper laid over one of the Society’s maps, its markings showing places the Society doesn’t know about or doesn’t want us to see.

  “Do you believe in a leader called the Pilot?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Indie says, excited. And then, to my surprise, she recites something in a gentle voice very unlike her usual brusque tone:

  “Every day the sun rolls by

  Across the sky and through night’s door

  Every night the stars light high

  Above the earth and shine once more

  Any day her boat might fly

  Across the waves and to the shore.”

  “Did you write that?” I ask, a sudden flash of jealousy cutting into me. “I know it’s not one of the Hundred Poems.”

  “I didn’t write it. And it’s not a poem,” Indie says with certainty.

  “It sounds like one,” I say.

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?” I ask. I’m learning quickly that it’s useless to argue with Indie.

  “Something my mother used to say every night before I went to sleep,” Indie tells me. “When I was old enough to ask about it, she told me that the Pilot is the one who will lead the Rising. My mother thought it would be a woman who comes across the water.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. I always thought of the Pilot as someone from the sky. But Indie might be right. I remember again the sound of the Tennyson poem. There was water in it.

  Indie’s thinking the same thing. “That poem you said when we were running,” she begins. “I hadn’t heard it before, but it proves that the Pilot could come from the water. A bar is a ridge of sand in a shallow place in the water. And a Pilot is someone who steers the ships safely in and out of the harbor.”

  “I don’t know much about the Pilot,” I say, which is true, but I do have my own hopes about the leader of the rebellion and they don’t quite align with Indie’s version. Still, the idea is the same, and the story the Archivist gave me says that the Pilot changes over and over. Indie and I could both be right. “But I don’t think it matters. It could be either a man or a woman, coming from the sky or the water. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Indie says, sounding triumphant. “I knew it. You aren’t only looking for a boy. You’re looking for something else, too.”

  I look up into the narrow river of sky above with its clear sharp stars. Is that true? I’ve come a long way from the Borough, I think, with a sudden feel of elation and surprise, and it’s not far enough yet.

  “We could climb out,” Indie says softly. “Go across the top. We could try going down into another canyon. Maybe we’ll find him there, or the Rising.” She flicks on her flashlight and shines it up the side of the canyon. “I know how to climb. You learn it in Sonoma. My Province. We can find a good place tomorrow, somewhere the walls aren’t so high and sheer.”

  “I haven’t climbed like that before,” I say. “Do you think I could do it?”

  “If you’re careful and don’t look down,” Indie says.

  The silence stretches on as I look up and realize that even this limited bit of sky holds more stars than I was ever able to catch sight of in the Borough. For some reason, this gives me hope that there is much else I don’t see. I hope for my parents and Bram, for Xander, for Ky. “Let’s try,” I say.

  “We’ll find a place early,” Indie says. “Before it’s very light. I don’t want to cross in broad daylight.”

  “I don’t either,” I say, and in the sand I write a beginning line and for the first time, a second line too:

  I climb into the dark for you

  Are you waiting in the stars for me?

  CHAPTER 13

  KY

  The sides of the canyon are black and orange. Like a fire caught burning and turned to rock. “It’s so deep,” Eli says, looking up in wonder. In this spot the walls rise higher than any building I’ve ever seen, higher than the Hill. “It’s like someone huge made cuts in the earth and dropped us inside.”

  “I know,” I say. In the Carving, you see rivers and caves and stones that you’d never see from above. It’s as though suddenly you are down close looking at the workings of your own body, watching your own blood run and listening to the sound of your heart beating it through.

  “It’s nothing like this in Central,” Eli says.

  “You’re from Central?” Vick and I ask at the same time.

  “I grew up there,” Eli tells us. “I’ve never lived anywhere else.”

  “It must seem lonely to you out here,” I say, remembering how when I was Eli’s age I moved to Oria and felt a different kind of loneliness—the loneliness of what seemed like too many people.

  “How did the Anomalies get stuck in here, anyway?” Eli asks.

  “The original Anomalies chose to be Anomalies, back when the Society came to be,” I tell Eli. I remember something else, too. “And the ones who live in the Carving don’t call themselves Anomalies. They prefer to be known as the farmers.”

  “But how could they choose?” Eli asks, fascinated.

  “Before the Society took control, there were people who saw it coming and didn’t want any part of it. They started storing things inside the Carving.” I point at some of the curves and bends in the sandstone walls. “There are caves hidden everywhere in here. The farmers had enough food to see them through until some of the seeds they brought could be planted and harvested. They called their settlement a township, because they didn’t want to use the Society’s words for that, either.”

  “But didn’t the Society track them down?”

  “Eventually. But the farmers had the advantage because they came in first. They could cut down anyone who tried to follow. And the Society thought the farmers would all die off sooner or later. It’s not an easy place to live.” Part of my coat has come unsealed and I stop at a pinyon for more sap. “They also served another purpose for the Society. Many of the people in the Outer Provinces were too afraid to try to escape to the Carving because the Society started spreading rumors about how savage the farmers are.”

  “You think they’ll really try to kill us?” Eli asks, sounding worried.

  “They used to be merciless to any one Society,” I say. “But we’re not Society anymore. We’re Aberrations. They didn’t kill Aberrations or other Anomalies outright unless attacked.”

  “How will they know what we are?” Eli asks.

  “Look at us,” I say. “We don’t look like Citizens or Officials.” The three of us are young and dirty and disheveled, clearly on the run.

  “So why didn’t your father bring your family in here to live?” Vick asks.

  “The Society’s right about some things,” I say. “You die free out here but you die faster. The farmers don’t have the medicine or technology in the canyons that the Society has outside. My mother didn’t want that for me and my father respected it.”

  Vick nods. “So we’re going to find these people and ask them to help us. Since they helped your father.”

  “Yes,” I say. “And I’m hoping to trade with them. They have maps and old books. At least, they did before.”

  “And what do you have to trade?” Vick asks sharp
ly.

  “The same things that you and Eli have,” I say. “Information about the Society. We’ve lived on the inside. It’s been a while since there have been any real villages in the Outer Provinces, which means the people in the canyon might not have been able to trade or talk with anyone for a long time.”

  “So, if they do want to trade with us,” Eli asks, sounding unconvinced, “what are we going to do with all those papers and old books once we get them?”

  “You can do whatever you want,” I say. “You don’t even have to trade for them. Get something else. I don’t care. But I’m going to get a map and try to reach one of the Border Provinces.”

  “Wait,” Eli says. “You want to go back into the Society? Why?”

  “I wouldn’t go back,” I say. “I’d go a different way than the one we came. And I’d only go back far enough to send a message to her. So she’ll know where I am.”

  “How can you do that?” Eli asks. “Even if you did make it to the Border Provinces, the Society watches the ports. They’d see it if you sent anything to her.”

  “That’s why I want the papers from the township,” I say. “I’ll trade them with an Archivist. They have ways to send messages that don’t involve the ports. But it’s expensive.”

  “An Archivist?” Eli asks, puzzled.

  “They’re people who trade on the black market,” I say. “They’ve been around since before the Society. My father used to trade with them, too.”

  “So this is your plan,” Vick says. “There’s nothing more to it than what you’ve told us.”

  “Not right now,” I say.

  “Do you think it will work?” Eli asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. Above us a bird starts to sing: a canyon wren. The notes are haunting and distinct. They descend like a waterfall down the rock canyon walls. I can identify the call because my father used to mimic it for me. He told me it was the sound of the Carving.