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It’s the scrap of my dress from the Match Banquet. In keeping with tradition they have placed the silk between two pieces of clear glass with a smal silver frame around the edge. The glass and the material both reflect the light, blinding me for a moment and reminding me of the glass mirror in my lost compact. I stare at the fabric, trying to remember the night at the Match Banquet when we were al pink and red and gold and green and violet and blue.
Bram groans. “That’s al it is? A piece of your dress?”
“What did you think, Bram?” I say, and the acid in my tone surprises me. “Did you think they were going to send our artifacts back? Did you think this was going to be your watch? Because it’s not. We’re not getting any of it back. Not the compact. Not the watch. Not Grandfather. ” Shock and hurt register on my brother’s face, and before I can say anything he leaves the room. “Bram!” I cal after him. “Bram—” I hear the sound of his door closing.
I pick up the box that the framed sample came in. As I do, I realize that it is the perfect size to hold a watch. My brother dared to hope, and I mocked him for it.
I want to take this frame and walk to the middle of the greenspace. I’l stand next to that dry fountain and wait until the Official finds me. And when she does and asks me what I’m doing, I’l tel her and everyone else that I know: they are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing.
And I’l tel her that I don’t want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.
They have perfected the art of giving us just enough freedom; just enough that when we are ready to snap, a little bone is offered and we rol over, bel y up, comfortable and placated like a dog I saw once when we visited my grandparents in the Farmlands. They’ve had decades to perfect this; why am I surprised when it works on me again and again and again?
Even though I am ashamed of myself, I take the bone. I worry it between my teeth. Ky has to be safe. That’s what matters.
I don’t take the green tablet; I’m stil stronger than they are. But not strong enough to burn the last bit of Ky’s story before reading it, the piece he pressed into my hand earlier on our way back down through the forest. No more after this, I tel myself. Only this, no more.
This picture is the first one with color. A red sun, low in the sky, right on the napkin crease again so that it is part of both boys, both lives. The younger Ky has dropped the words of father and mother; they have vanished from the picture. Forgotten, or left behind, or so much a part of him that they don’t have to be written anymore. He looks over at the older Ky, reaches for him.
they were too much to carry
so I left them behind
for a new life, in a new place
but no one forgot who I was
I didn’t
and neither did the people who watch
they watched for years
they watch now
The older, current Ky’s hands are in handlocks in front of him, an Official on each side. He’s colored his hands red, too—I don’t know if he means to represent the way they look after he’s been working, or if he means something else. His parents’ blood stil on his hands from al those years ago, even though he did not kil them.
The hands of the Officials are red, too. And I recognize one of them; he’s caught her face in a few lines, a few sharp strokes.
My Official. She came for him, too.
CHAPTER 23
The next morning I wake to a shrieking so high and keening that I bolt straight out of bed, tearing the sleep tags from my skin.
“Bram!” I scream.
He is not in his room.
I run down the hal to my parents’ room. My mother came home from her trip last night; they should both be there. But their room is empty, too, and I can tel they left in a hurry: I see twisted sheets and a blanket on the floor. I draw back. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen their bed unmade and, even in the fear of the moment, the intimacy of that tangled bedding catches my eye.
“Cassia?” My mother’s voice.
“Where are you?” I cal in a panic, turning around.
She hurries down the hal toward me, stil wearing her sleepclothes. Her long, blond hair streams behind her, and she looks almost unearthly until she pul s me into arms that feel real and strong. “What happened?” she asks me. “Are you al right?”
“The screaming—” I say, looking around her for the source. Just then I hear another sound added to the screaming: the sound of metal on wood.
“It’s not screaming,” my mother says, her voice sad. “You’re hearing the saws. They’re cutting down the maple trees. ” I hurry out onto the front steps where Bram and my father also stand. Other families wait outside, too, many of them stil wearing their sleepclothes like us. This is another intimacy so shocking and unusual that I am taken aback. I can’t think of another time when I’ve seen any of my neighbors dressed like this.
Or maybe I can. The time when Patrick Markham went out and walked up and down the street in his sleepclothes after his son died, and Xander’s father found him and brought him home.
The saw bites into the trunk of our maple tree, slices through so fast and clean that at first I think nothing happened except the scream. The tree seems fine for a brief moment, but it is dead as it stands. Then it fal s.
“Why?” I ask my mother.
