AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So was your father the Pilot?” Eli asks, sounding awed.
“If he was, he’s dead now,” I say. “And he took our whole village with him. ”
“He didn’t kill them,” Vick says. “You can’t blame him. ”
I can and do. But I also see Vick’s point.
“Was it Society or Enemy who killed them?” Vick asks after a moment.
“The ships looked like the Enemy,” I say. “But the Society didn’t come until it was all over. That was new. Back then, they usually pretended to fight for us, at least. ”
“Where were you when this happened?” Vick asks.
“Up on a plateau,” I say. “I went to see the rain come down. ”
“Like the decoys who tried to get the snow,” Vick says. “But you didn’t die. ”
“No,” I say. “The ships didn’t see me. ”
“You were lucky,” Vick says.
“The Society doesn’t believe in luck,” Eli says.
“I’ve decided it’s the only thing I do believe in,” Vick says. “Good luck and bad luck, and ours always seems to be bad. ”
“That’s not true,” Eli says. “We got away from the Society and made it into the canyon. We found the cave with the maps and we escaped the township before anyone found us. ”
I admit nothing. I don’t believe in the Society or the Rising or any Pilot or good and bad luck. I do believe in Cassia. If I had to say I believed in anything more than that, I’d say I believe in it is, or it isn’t.
Right now I am, and I intend to keep it that way.
“Let’s go,” I tell the other two, and I roll up the map.
At dusk, we decide to camp in a cave marked on the map. When we duck through the opening, our flashlights illuminate a series of paintings and carvings on the walls inside.
Eli stops in his tracks. I know how he feels.
I remember the first time I saw carvings like these. In that little rocky crevice near our village. My mother and father took me there when I was small. We tried to guess what the symbols might mean. My father practiced copying the figures in the dirt. It was before he could write. He always did want to learn, and he wanted to find the meaning in everything. Every symbol and word and circumstance. When he couldn’t find the meaning, he made it for himself.
But this cave is amazing. The paintings are lush with color and the carvings etched along the surface are rich in detail. Unlike the dirt on the ground, when you carve into this stone it becomes lighter instead of darker.
“Who did this?” Eli asks, breaking the silence.
“A lot of people,” I say. “The paintings look more recent. They look like the farmers’ work. The carvings are older. ”
“How much older?” Eli asks.
“Thousands of years,” I say.
The oldest carvings show people with splayed fingers and broad shoulders. They look strong. One seems to reach up to the sky. I look at the figure for a long time, at that reaching hand, and remember the last time I saw Cassia.
The Society found me in the early morning. There was no sun yet and the stars were almost gone. It was that nothing time when taking things is easiest.
I woke right when they leaned down for me in the dark with their mouths open to say the things they always said: There’s nothing to fear. Come with us. But I hit them before they could speak. I drew their blood before they could take me away to make me spill mine. Every instinct said to fight and so I did. For once.
I fought because I had found peace in Cassia. Because I knew I could find rest in her touch that somehow both burned me up and washed me clean.
The fight didn’t last long. There were six of them and only one of me. Patrick and Aida weren’t awake yet. “Come quietly,” the Officials and Officers said. “It will make it easier for everyone. Do we have to gag you?”
I shook my head.
“Classification always tells in the end,” one of them said to the others. “This one was supposed to be easy; he’s been compliant for years. But an Aberration is still an Aberration. ”
We were almost out the door when Aida saw us.
And then we went along the dark streets with Aida screaming and Patrick talking low and urgent and calm.
No. I don’t want to think about Patrick and Aida and what happened next. I love them more than anyone in the world besides Cassia, and if I ever find her, we will look for them. But I can’t think about them for long—the parents who took me in and received nothing in exchange but more loss. It was brave of them to love again. It made me think I could do it too.
Blood in my mouth and under my skin in bruises waiting to show. Head down, hands locked behind me.
And then.
My name.
She cried out my name in front of everyone. She didn’t care who knew that she loved me. I called her name, too. I saw her tumbled hair, her bare feet, her eyes looking only at me, and then she pointed to the sky.
I know you meant that you would always remember me, Cassia, but I’m a fraid you might forget.
We clear away pieces of brush and smaller stones so we have a place to rest. Some of the stones are chert, likely cached here by the farmers for fires. I also find a piece of sandstone, almost perfectly round, and I think instantly of my compass.
