At the center he painted his parents.
Painting in the dark, he couldn’t see. The scenes blend and bleed into one another. Sometimes the colors are strange. A green sky, blue stones. And me, standing there in a dress.
He painted it red.
Chapter 45
KY
The sun beating down on the boat makes it hot to touch. My hands turn red and I hope she doesn’t notice. I don’t want to think anymore of the day she sorted me. What’s done is done. We have to go forward.
I hope she feels the same way, but I don’t ask her. At first it’s because I can’t—we all walk single file on the narrow path and everyone else could hear—and then it’s because I’m too tired to frame the words. Cassia, Indie, and Eli help Hunter and me with our packs but my muscles still burn and ache.
The sun wears on and clouds gather on the horizon.
I don’t know which would be better for us—dry or rain. Rain makes it hard to walk but it does cover our tracks. We’re walking another fine line for survival. But I’ve done what I can to make sure Cassia comes out on the right side of this line. That’s what the boat is for.
Once in a while it’s useful on dry land—when the path is too muddy and torn up to walk on, we put the boat down, walk over it, and pick it up again. It leaves marks like long narrow footprints on the path. If I weren’t so tired I might smile. What will the Society think when they see the prints? That something enormous came down and picked us up and walked with us right out of the Carving?
Tonight we’ll camp. I’ll talk to her then. By night I’ll know what to say. Right now I’m too tired to think of anything that could make everything right.
We make up for the lost time from the day before. No one rests. We all push through, stealing sips of water and pieces of bread along the way. We have almost reached the edge of the Carving when the light becomes dusky with evening and rain begins to fall.
Hunter stops and eases his part of the boat to the ground. I do the same. He looks back at the Carving behind us. “We should all go now,” he says.
“But it’s almost dark,” Eli says.
Hunter shakes his head. “We’re running out of time,” he says. “There’s nothing to stop them climbing over from the Cavern once they find out what’s happened. And what if they have miniports? They might call in people to cut us off at the plain.”
“Where’s our miniport?” I ask.
“I threw it in the river before we left the township,” Cassia says. Indie draws in her breath.
“Good,” Hunter says. “We don’t want anything that could track us.”
Eli shivers.
“Can you keep going?” Cassia asks him, sounding worried.
“I think so,” Eli says, looking at me. “Do you think we should?”
“Yes,” I say.
“We have the headlamps,” Indie adds.
“Let’s go.” Cassia reaches to help us lift the boat.
We hurry to the the bank, moving as fast as we can. I feel stones under my feet, thrown from the river. I wonder which one is the fish that marks Vick’s grave. In the dark it all looks different and I’m not sure I know where he lies.
But I know what Vick would have done if he were still living.
Whatever he thought would take him closest to Laney.
In the trees, in the light of a headlamp that we smother down low, Hunter and I snap the boat open and insert the pump. The boat takes shape quickly.
“Two can ride in it,” Hunter says. “The others who want to make their way to the Rising will have to follow the stream on foot. That way will be much slower.”
The air sighs into the boat.
For a moment I stand completely still.
The rain comes down again, stinging-cold and clean. It’s different from the storm before—this is a shower, not an onslaught. It will end soon.
“Somewhere higher, this water is snow,” my mother used to say, opening her palms to catch the drops.
I think of her paintings and how quickly they dried. “Somewhere,” I say out loud and hope she hears, “this water is nothing at all. It is lighter than air.”
Cassia turns to look at me.
I imagine these drops of rain hitting the scales of the sandstone fish I carved for Vick. Every drop helps the poisoned stream, I think, holding my hands out open wide. Not catching the drops or trying to hold them. I’m letting them leave their mark and then letting them go.
Let go. Of my parents, and the pain of what happened to them. Of what I failed to do. Of all the people I failed to save or bury. Of my jealousy of Xander. Of my guilt over what happened to Vick. Of worrying about what I can never be and who I never was in the first place.
Let go of it all.
I don’t know if I can, but it feels good to try. So I let the rain hit my palms heavy. Run down my fingers to dirt. Every drop helps me, I think. I tip my head back and try to open myself back up to the sky.
My father might have been the reason all those people died. But he also helped make their lives bearable. He gave them hope. I used to think that didn’t matter but it does.
Good and bad. Good in my father, bad in me. No fire raining on me can burn it away. I have to get rid of it myself.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Cassia. “I should never have lied to you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “The sorting was all wrong.”
We look at each other in the rain.
“It’s your boat,” Indie says to me. “Who’s going in it?”
“I traded for it for you,” I say to Cassia. “It’s your choice who comes with you.”
I feel the way I did before the Match Banquet. Waiting. Wondering if what I’d done would be enough for her to see me again.
Chapter 46
CASSIA
Ky,” I say. “I can’t sort people again.” How could he ask this of me?
“Hurry,” Indie says.