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Before she can answer, our flight plans start coming through. Indie reaches for them but I snatch them away first and she sticks out her tongue at me like we’re kids. I look down at the plans and my heart misses a beat.
“What is it?” Indie asks, craning her neck so she can see.
“We’re going to Oria,” I say, stunned.
“That’s strange,” Indie says.
It is. The Rising doesn’t like us to pilot into Provinces where we once lived. They think we’ll want to try to get the cargo to people we know instead of letting the Rising distribute according to need. “The temptation is too high,” the commanders tell us.
“Well, it could be interesting,” Indie says. “They say Oria and Central are the places with the most Society sympathizers. ”
I wonder who still lives there that I would know. Cassia’s family was sent to Keya, and my parents were taken away. Does Em’s family still live there? What about the Carrows?
I haven’t seen Xander since the time I gave him the note from Cassia. A few days after I talked with Indie about getting inside the Camas City barricade, the Rising sent us in to deliver some of the cures. I think Indie had something to do with the assignment, but whenever I ask her about it she shrugs it off. “They probably just wanted to see if we could make the landing,” she says, “since it’s one of the most difficult ones in a City. ” But she’s got that glint in her eye that means she’s not telling the whole story. It worries me, but if Indie doesn’t want to tell you something, it’s pointless to keep asking.
But we made it inside the walls and helped Caleb with the cargo and I delivered Cassia’s message. It was good to see Xander again. He was glad to see me too. I wonder how long that lasted after he saw that part of the letter was ruined.
The main part of the flight is, as usual, all sky.
Then we drop lower. I aim the ship in the direction of the barricade. Though it was the Society who put up the white barriers, the Rising has left them in place for now to keep a lin
e between the sick and the healthy.
“Oria looks like everywhere else,” Indie says, sounding disappointed.
I’ve never thought of it that way. But she’s right. That was always Oria’s most important characteristic—it was so perfectly Society that it was practically anonymous. Not like Camas, which has the mountains to set it apart, or Acadia, which has a rocky shore to the East Sea, or Central with all its lakes. The middle Provinces—Oria and Grandia, Bria and Keya—look pretty much the same.
Except for one thing.
“We do have the Hill,” I tell Indie. “You’ll see when we get closer. ”
I feel hungry for the sight of that forested rise with its green trees. I feel like if I can’t see Cassia, the Hill is the next best thing. We stood there together. We hid in the trees and for the first time our lips touched. I can almost feel the wind on my skin and her hand in mine. I swallow.
But when we soar a circle over Oria to prepare for landing, I can’t seem to find the Hill in the dusky light of evening.
Indie is the one who sees it. “That brown thing?” she asks.
She’s right.
That bare, brown place is the Hill.
I start to bring the ship down. We get closer and closer to the ground. Trees along the streets turn large. The ground rushes at us. The buildings become familiar instead of generic.
At the last second, I pull the ship back up.
I feel Indie looking at me. I’ve never done this before in the months we’ve been running in supplies.
“Landing wasn’t right,” I say into the speakers. It happens. It will go down on my record as an error. But I have to see the Hill again, closer.
We come up in the opposite direction and head for the Hill, dropping lower than I should so I can get a good look.
“Is something wrong?” one of the fighters asks over the speaker.
“No,” I say. “I’m bringing it in. ”
I’ve seen what I needed to see. The ground is bare. It’s been completely bulldozed. Burned. Butchered. It’s like the Hill never knew trees. Parts of the Hill have sloughed downward, no longer anchored by the roots of living things.
The little piece of green silk from Cassia’s dress is no longer tied to a tree on the top of the Hill, wearing out into white with wind and rain and sun. Our buried scraps of poems have been exhumed and reburied and pushed farther under.
They’ve killed the Hill.
I land the ship. Behind me, I hear Caleb open the hold and start dragging out the cases. I sit and stare straight ahead.
I want to be back there, on the Hill, with Cassia. I want it so much I think it might destroy me. All these months have passed and we’re still apart. I put my head in my hands.
“Ky?” Indie asks. “Are you all right?” She puts her hand on my shoulder for a second. Then she lets go and, without looking at me, goes down to help Caleb.
I’m grateful to her for both the touch and the solitude, but neither lasts long.
“Ky?” Indie calls out. “Come see this. ”
