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The Society. Not the Rising. I’ve seen how they leave you when they don’t need you anymore. I’m afraid of the Rising. Even more than that, I’m afraid of who I’d be in the Rising.
I walk over to where Indie stood when she slipped something into her pack. On the table in front of me sits a waterproof box full of maps.
I glance over at Indie. She’s moved on. Her fingers turn the pages of a book and her bent head reminds me of the bell of a yucca flower tipped down toward the ground.
“We’re running low on time,” I say, picking up the box. “I’m going to find a map for each of us to use in case we get separated. ”
Cassia nods. She’s found something else interesting. I can’t see what it is, but I can see the joy in her face and the way her body tenses with excitement. The very idea of the Rising makes her come alive. It’s what she wants. Maybe it’s even what her grandfather wanted her to find.
I know you came into the Carving for me, Cassia. But the Rising is the one place I don’t know if I can go for you.
Chapter 36
CASSIA
Ky puts a map down on the table and reaches for a little black charcoal pencil. “I found another one we can use,” he says to me as he begins marking the page. “I’ll have to update it. It’s a little old. ”
I pick up another book and flip the pages, looking for something to help us, but somehow I end up composing a poem in my mind instead. It’s about Ky, not for him, and I find myself copying the mystery author’s style:I marked a map for every death
For every ache and blow
My world was all a page of black
With nothing left of snow.
I look over at Ky. His hands move as quick and careful with marking the map as they do with writing, as sure as they move over me.
He doesn’t look up and I find myself wanting. I want him. And I want to know what he thinks and how he feels. Why does Ky have to be able to sit so silent, hold so still, see so much?
How can he both draw me in and keep me out?
“I need to go outside,” I say later, exhaling in frustration. We haven’t found anything concrete—only pag
es and pages of history and propaganda about the Rising and the Society and the farmers themselves. At first it was fascinating, but now I’m aware of the river outside rising higher and higher. My back aches, my head hurts, and I feel a small flutter of panic beginning in my chest. Am I losing my ability to sort? First the wrong decision about the blue tablets, now this. “Has the lightning stopped?”
“I think it has,” Ky says. “Let’s go see. ”
In the cave full of food, Eli has curled up to sleep, packs filled with apples surrounding him.
Ky and I step outside. The rain comes down but the electricity has left the air. “We can move when it’s light,” he says.
I look over at him, at his dark profile lit faintly by the flashlight he carries. The Society would never know how to put this on a microcard. Belongs to the land. Knows how to run. They would never be able to write what he is.
“We still haven’t found anything. ” I try to laugh. “If I ever go back, the Society will have to change my microcard. Exhibits exceptional promise in sorting would have to be deleted. ”
“What you’re doing is more than sorting,” Ky says simply. “We should rest soon, if we can. ”
He’s not as driven as I am to find the Rising, I realize. He’s trying to help me, but if I weren’t here, he wouldn’t care at all about looking for a way to join with them.
I think suddenly of the words of that poem. I did not reach Thee.
I push the words away. I’m tired, that’s all, feeling fragile. And, I realize, I haven’t heard Ky’s complete story yet. He has reasons for feeling the way he does, but I don’t know all of them.
I think of all the things he can do—write, carve, paint—and suddenly, watching him stand in the dark at the edge of the empty settlement, something sorrowful washes over me. There is no place for someone like him in the Society, I think, for someone who can create. He can do so many things of incomparable value, things no one else can do, and the Society doesn’t care about that at all.
I wonder if, when Ky looks at this empty township, he sees a place where he could have belonged. Where he could have written with the others, where the beautiful girls in the paintings would have known how to dance.
“Ky,” I say, “I want to hear the rest of your story. ”
“All of it?” he asks, his voice serious.
“Anything you want to tell me,” I say.
He looks at me. I lift his hand to my lips and kiss his knuckles, the scraped places on his palm. He closes his eyes.
“My mother painted with water,” he says. “And my father played with fire. ”
Chapter 37
KY
As the rain comes down I let myself imagine a story for us. The one I would write if I could.
The two of them forgot about the Rising and stayed alone in the township. They walked through the empty buildings. They planted seeds in the spring and harvested in the fall. They put their feet in the stream. They had their fill of poetry. They whispered words to each other that echoed off the empty canyon walls. Their lips and hands touched whenever they wanted for as long as they wanted.
