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“Why didn’t they bury them higher?”
“They needed that land for the living. ”
“But the books,” I say. “They stored those high and books aren’t living. ”
“The living still have use for books,” Ky says softly. “Not for bodies. If a graveyard floods, nothing is ruined that wasn’t already gone. It’s different with the library. ”
I crouch down to look at the stones. The places where people lie are marked in different ways. Names, dates, sometimes a line of verse. “What is this writing?” I ask.
“It’s called an epitaph,” he says.
“Who chooses it?”
“It depends. Sometimes if the person knows they are dying, they choose it. Often it’s those left behind who have to choose something that fits the person’s life. ”
“That’s sad,” I say. “But beautiful. ”
Ky raises his eyebrows at me and I hurry to explain. “The deaths aren’t beautiful,” I say. “I mean the idea of the epitaph. The Society chooses what’s left of us when we die there. They say what goes on your history. ” Still, I wish again that I had taken the time to view Grandfather’s microcard more closely before I left. But Grandfather did decide what was left of him as far as preservation goes: nothing.
“Did they make stones like this in your family’s village?” I ask Ky, and as soon as I do I wish I hadn’t done it, wish I hadn’t asked for that part of the story yet.
Ky looks at me. “Not for my parents,” he says. “There wasn’t time. ”
“Ky,” I say, but he turns away and walks down another row of stones. My hand feels cold now without his around it.
I shouldn’t have said anything. Except for Grandfather, the people I have seen dead were not people I loved. It is as though I have peered down into a long dark canyon where I have not had to walk.
As I move between the stones, careful not to step on them, I see that the Society and Hunter are right about the life expectancy out here. Most of the life spans don’t reach eighty years. And other children lie in the ground, too, besides the one Hunter buried.
“So many children died here,” I say out loud. I’d hoped the girl yesterday was an exception.
“Young people die in the Society too,” Ky says. “Remember Matthew. ”
“Matthew,” I repeat, and as I hear his name, I suddenly remember Matthew, really remember him, think of him by name for the first time in years instead of as just the first Markham boy, the one who died in a rare tragedy at the hands of an Anomaly.
Matthew. Four years older than Xander and me; so much older as to be untouchable, unreachable. He was a nice boy who said hello to us in the street but was years ahead of us. He carried tablets and went to Second School. The boy I remember, now that his name has been given back to me, was enough like Ky to be his cousin; but taller, bigger, less quick and smooth.
Matthew. It was almost as though his name died with him, as though naming the loss would have made it more real.
“But not as many,” I say. “Just him. ”
“He’s the only one you remember. ”
“Were there others?” I ask, shocked.
A sound from behind makes me turn; it’s Eli and Indie closing the door to our borrowed house. Eli lifts a hand to wave and I wave back. The light is full in the sky now; Hunter will be here soon.
I look down at the stone he placed yesterday and reach out and put my hand on the name carved there. SARAH. She had few years; she died at five. Under the dates is a line of writing, and with a chill I realize that it sounds like a line from a poem:
SUDDENLY ACROSS THE JUNE A WIND WITH FINGERS GOES
I reach for Ky’s hand and hold on as tight as I can. So that the cold wind around us won’t try to steal him from me with its greedy fingers, its hands that take things from times that should be spring.
Chapter 31
KY
When Hunter comes to meet us he has a canteen of water and a pile of ropes slung over his shoulder. I wonder what he intends. Before I can ask, Eli speaks.
“Was she your sister?” Eli points to the newly placed stone.
Hunter doesn’t glance back down at the grave. The smallest flicker of emotion crosses his face. “You saw her? How long were you watching?”
“A long time,” Eli says. “We wanted to talk to you but we waited until you were finished. ”
“That’s very kind of you,” Hunter says flatly.
“I’m sorry,” Eli says. “Whoever she was, I’m sorry. ”
“She was my daughter,” Hunter says. Cassia’s eyes widen. I know what she’s thinking: His daughter? But he’s so young, only twenty-two or twenty-three. Certainly not twenty-nine, which is the youngest someone with a five-year-old child can be in the Society. But this is not the Society.
Indie’s the first to break the silence. “Where are we going?” she asks Hunter.
“To another canyon,” Hunter says. “Can all of you climb?”
When I was small my mother tried to teach me the colors. “Blue,” she said, pointing to the sky. And “blue” again, the second time pointing to the water. She told me I shook my head because I could see that sky blue was not always the same as water blue.
It took me a long time—until I lived in Oria—to use the same word for all the shades of a color.
I remember this as we walk through the canyon. The Carving is orange and red, but you’d never see this kind of orange and red back in the Society.
Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she’d never love me. The way I loved her on the Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It’s different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color.
