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I barely hear him. I’m staring at the pictures painted on the walls. The figures were painted with a different hand than the ones in the cave, but again they are beautiful. They have no wings on their backs. They do not look surprised at flight. Their eyes are not turned up to the sky, but instead look down toward the ground, as though they will keep that sight of earth as a memory for higher days.
But still I think I recognize them.
“Angels,” I say.
“Yes,” Ky says. “Some of the farmers still believed in them. In my father’s time, anyway. ”
The dark falls a little deeper and the angels turn into shadows behind us. Then Ky sees it, in the small house across the way. He points out the light to us. “It’s in the same house as the night before. ”
“I wonder what’s happening inside,” Eli says. “Who do you think is in there? A thief? Do you think they’re robbing the homes?”
“No,” Ky says. He glances over at me in the shadowy night. “I think they are home. ”
Ky and I are both at the window at first light, watching, so we are the ones who see the man first.
He comes out of the house, alone, carrying something, and walks through the dust, along the path closer to us, down to a little stand of trees that I noticed when we first came in. Ky motions to all of us to be quiet. Indie and Eli go to the other window in the front of the house and look out, too. We all watch carefully over the edge of the windowsills.
The man stands tall and strong; he’s dark and tanned. He reminds me of Ky in some ways: his coloring, that quiet movement. But there’s a tiredness in him and he seems unaware of anything except what he carries, and in that moment I realize it’s a child.
Her dark hair streams over his arms and her dress is white. An Official color, but of course she’s no Official. The dress is lovely, as though she’s going to a Banquet, but she’s much too young.
And much too still.
I put my hand to my mouth.
Ky glances over at me and nods. His eyes are sad and weary and kind.
She’s dead.
I glance over at Eli. Is he all right? Then I remember that he’s seen much more death than this. Maybe he’s even seen a child dead before.
But I never have. Tears fill my eyes. Someone so young, so tiny. How?
The man puts her gently on the ground, in the dead grass under the tree
s. Something, a sound carried on the canyon wind, reaches our ears. Singing.
It takes a long time to bury someone.
While the man digs the hole, slowly and steadily, it begins to rain again. It’s not a heavy rain, but a sustained spatter of water against dirt and mud, and I wonder why he brought her out with him. Maybe he wanted her to have rain on her face, one last time.
Maybe he just didn’t want to be alone.
I can’t stand it anymore. “We have to go help him,” I whisper to Ky, but Ky shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “Not yet. ”
The man climbs back out of the hole and walks over to the girl. But he doesn’t put her in the grave; he brings her near it and puts her body down.
And then I notice the blue lines all over his arms.
He reaches down and lifts up the girl’s arm.
He pulls out something. Blue. He marks it on her skin. The rain keeps washing it off and yet he keeps drawing, over and over and over. I can’t tell if he still sings. Finally the rain stops and the blue stays.
Eli’s not watching anymore. He sits with his back to the wall underneath his window and I crawl over across the floor to sit next to him, not wanting my movement to catch the eye of the man outside. I put my arm around Eli and he slides closer.
Indie and Ky keep watching.
So young, I keep thinking. I hear a thump, thump sound and for a moment I can’t tell if it is the beating of my heart or the sound of the dirt as it falls on the little girl in her grave.
“I’m going now,” Ky whispers finally. “The rest of you, wait here. ”
I turn and look at him, surprised. I raise my head so I can see out the window again. The man has finished burying. He lifts a flat gray stone and puts it over the spot now filled in with dirt. I don’t hear singing. “No,” I whisper.
Ky looks at me, raises his eyebrows.
“You can’t,” I say. “Let’s wait until tomorrow. Look at what he’s had to do. ”
Ky’s voice is gentle but firm. “We gave him all the time we could. We have to find out more now. ”
“And he’s alone,” Indie says. “Vulnerable. ”
I look at Ky, shocked, but he doesn’t discount what Indie says. “It’s the right time,” he says.
Before I can say more, he opens the door and leaves.
Chapter 29
KY
Do what you want,” the man calls out when I reach the edge of the graveyard. “It doesn’t matter. I am the last. ”
If I hadn’t already known he was a farmer, his accent and the formality of his speech would have given him away. My father sometimes had a hint of their inflection in his voice when he came back from the canyons.
I told the others to stay behind but of course Indie didn’t listen. I hear her coming up behind me and hope that Cassia and Eli had the sense to stay in the house.
“Who are you?” the man asks.
Indie answers behind me. I don’t turn around. “Aberrations,” she says. “People the Society wants dead. ”
“We came into the canyons to find the farmers because we thought you might help us,” I say.
“We’re done with that,” the man says. “Finished. ”
Footsteps. Behind us. I want to turn around and call to Cassia and Eli to return to the house but I can’t turn my back on the man.
“So there are four of you,” he says. “Any more?”
