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I try not to think about the other reasons I don’t tell Cassia Xander’s secret.
If she knows it, she might change her mind about him. And about me.
Chapter 34
CASSIA
Indie carries her pack even more carefully than before and I wonder if something happened to her wasp nest during our crawl into the Cavern. She brought the bag with her and, though she’s thin, I don’t know how she managed to protect it either coming or going in a space so tight. I don’t know how she could have kept the fragile shell of the nest from being crushed.
Something about the story of Indie’s mother and the boat seems strange, like an echo coming off a canyon wall and leaving part of the original words behind. I wonder how well I really know Indie. But then she shifts her pack again and I have a sudden image of the fragile, papery nest inside, and a memory of a picture fallen to pieces and rose petals dry and light. I’ve known Indie since the work camps and she hasn’t let me down yet.
Ky turns around and calls to us to hurry. Indie looks at him, and I see an expression very like hunger cross her face.
You smell the rain here before you see it or feel it. If Ky’s favorite smell from the Outer Provinces is sage, I think mine is this rain that smells ancient and new, like rock and sky, river and desert. The clouds we saw earlier sail in the wind, and the sky turns purple, gray, blue as the sun goes down and we reach the township.
“We can’t stay here for very long, can we?” Eli asks as we climb the path to the storage caves. A strip of lightning runs hot-white between earth and sky and thunder cracks through the canyon.
“No,” Ky says. I agree, too. The danger of the Society coming in the canyons now seems to outweigh what we face out in the plain. We’ll have to move.
“But we have to stop in the cave,” I say. “We need more food, and Indie and I don’t have any books or papers. ” And there might be something to find about the Rising.
“The storm should buy us a little time,” Ky says.
“How long?” I ask Ky.
“A few hours,” Ky says. “The Society’s not our only danger. A storm like this could cause a flash flood in the canyon and then we couldn’t cross the stream. We’d be trapped. We’ll stay here just until the lightning stops. ”
Such a long journey, and whether or not we find the Rising could all come down to a matter of hours. But I didn’t come to find the Rising, I remind myself, I came to find Ky, and I have. Whatever happens next, we’ll be together.
Ky and I hurry through to the library cave and its piles of boxes. Indie follows us.
“There’s so much,” I say, overwhelmed, as I open the lid of one of the boxes and see the pile of papers and books inside. This is an entirely different kind of sorting—so many pages, so much history. This is what happens when the Society does not edit and cut and prune for us.
Some pages are printed; many are written by different people. Each handwriting is distinct, different, like the people who wrote them. They could all write. I suddenly feel panic. “How will I know what matters?” I ask Ky.
“Think of some words,” he says, “and look for them. What do we need to know?”
Together, we make a list. The Rising. The Society. The Enemy. The Pilot. We need to know about water and river and escape and food and survival.
“You too,” Ky says to Indie. “Anything that has those words in it, put here. ” He points to the middle of the table.
“I will,” Indie says. She holds his gaze for a moment. He doesn’t turn away first; she does, flipping open a book and scanning its pages.
I find something that looks promising—a printed pamphlet. “We already have one of those,” Eli says. “Vick found a whole pile of them. ”
I put down the brochure. Then I open a book and am instantly distracted by a poem.
They dropped like Flakes -
They dropped like Stars -
Like Petals from a Rose -
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers - goes -
It’s the poem where Hunter found the line for Sarah’s grave.
The page has been torn out and shoved back in—in fact, the whole book is out of order and falling apart, almost as though it were headed for a fire on a Restoration site and then someone found it and put all its little bones back in. Parts of it are still missing—the front cover seems to have been improvised after the first one was lost. It’s now a plain square of heavy paper sewn over the pages, and I can’t find the name of the author anywhere.
I turn over the pages to another poem:I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.
