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And then she’s gone.
Who will be waiting for me at the Gallery? Is the passage to Camas real, or is it one final betrayal? Did she arrange it for me, perhaps out of guilt for taking my papers? I don’t know. I can’t trust her anymore. I pull off the red bracelet that marked me as one of the Archivists’ traders and put it on the shelf. I have no need of it, because it does not mean what I thought it did.
I find my case sitting alone on its shelf. When I open it and see the contents inside, I find I want none of them. They are part of other people’s lives, and it feels that they no longer have place in my own.
But I will keep the poem the Archivist gave me. Because this, I think, is real. The Archivist might have stolen from me, but I cannot believe she would forge something. This poem is true. I can tell.
We step like plush, we stand like snow—
I stop at that line and remember when I stood at the edge of the Carving, in the snow looking out for Ky. And I remember when we said good-bye at the edge of the stream—
The waters murmur now,
Three rivers and the hill are passed,
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my premium
And gets the look at Thee.
No.
That can’t be right. I read the last two lines again.
Now Death usurps my premium
And gets the look at Thee.
I switch off my light and tell myself that the poem doesn’t matter after all. Words mean what you want them to mean. Don’t I know that by now?
For a moment, I’m tempted to stay here, hidden among the warren of shelves and rooms. I could go above ground now and then to gather food and paper, and isn’t that enough to live on? I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could write paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.
In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more.
That doesn’t work in real life. And I love my real people the most. Bram. My mother. My father. Ky. Xander.
Can I trust anyone?
Yes. My family, of course.
Ky.
Xander.
None of us would ever betray the other.
Before I came here, Indie and I ran a river, and we didn’t know if it would poison us or deliver us to where we wanted to go. We took a dangerous, black-water risk; even now, I think I can feel the spray as we went down, the swell as we were swept under.
It was worth it then.
I remember again the Cavern in the Carving. It and the Archives mingle together in my mind—those muddy fossiled bones and clean little tubes, these empty shelves and vacant rooms. And I realize that I can never stay in these hollowed-out places in the earth for long before I have to come up for air.
This passage to Camas, I tell myself, is a risk I am willing to run. You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all.
I hide in alleys, behind trees. When I wrap my hand around the bark of a small willow in a greenspace, I feel fresh letters carved into it, and they don’t spell my name. The tree is sticky with its own blood. It makes me sad. Ky never cut deeply like this when he carved on something living. I wipe my hand on my black plainclothes and wish there were a way to leave a mark without taking.
I’m not even halfway to the lake when I hear and see the air ships.
They soar in overhead, carrying pieces of the barricade back toward the City.
No, I think, not the Gallery.
I run through the streets, darting away from lights and people, trying not to count how many times the ships come overhead. Someone calls out to me but I don’t recognize the voice, so I keep going. It’s too dangerous to stop. There’s a reason we are supposed to stay inside—people are angry, and afraid, and the Rising is finding it increasingly difficult to cure and keep peace.
I run out into the dark of the marsh. Rising officers in black climb up to secure cables to the barricade walls while the ships hover over, their blades chopping through the air. I can just make out what’s happening from the lights of the ships above and from the steadier beacons of those that have landed in the marsh.
The Gallery is still there, ahead of me, if I can just reach it in time.
I press up against a wall, breathing hard. I’m getting closer. The lake smell of water hits me.
One of the Gallery walls lifts into the sky and I stifle a cry. So much will be lost if the Gallery is gone. All those papers, everything we made, and how will I ever find the person who was supposed to take me to Camas if the meeting place no longer exists?
I am running, running, as hard as I ran into the Carving to find Ky.
They lift the second piece of the Gallery from the ground.
No. No. No.
