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Hunter’s hands tighten back into fists. “Everyone—Society, Rising, even people here in the village—we’re all doing everything to help these patients from the Society. No one did anything for Sarah. ”
He’s right. No one did, except Hunter himself, and it wasn’t enough to save her.
“And if we find the cure, then what?” Hunter asks. “Everyone flies away to the Otherlands. There’s been too much of that, people going away. ”
Anna comes a little closer so that Hunter can see her. “There has,” she agrees.
Then tears come to his eyes and he puts his head down and weeps. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“I know,” she tells him.
There’s nothing I can do. I leave them and go to Xander.
“You left Ky alone in the infirmary,” Xander says. “Are you sure that’s safe?”
“There are medics and guards watching,” I say. “And Eli won’t leave Ky’s side. ”
“So you trust Eli?” Xander asks. “The way you trusted Hunter?” There’s an uncharacteristic edge to Xander’s voice.
“I’ll go back soon,” I say. “But I had to see you. I’m going to try to figure out what the cure could be. Do you have any idea what Oker was looking for?”
“No,” Xander says. “He wouldn’t tell me. But I think it was a plant. He took the same equipment that we used when we gathered the bulbs. ”
“When did he change his mind about the cure?” I ask. “When did he decide that the camassia was wrong?”
“During the vote,” Xander says. “Something happened while we were out there that made him change his mind. ”
“And you don’t know what it is. ”
“I think it was something you said,” Xander tells me. “You talked about how you felt like you were missing something, and said it had to do with the flowers. ”
I shake my head. How could that have helped Oker? I reach into my pocket to make sure that I still have the paper from my mother. It’s there, and so are the microcard and the little stone. I wonder if the villagers will still let me vote.
“It’s lonely,” Xander says.
“What is?” I ask him. Does he mean that it’s lonely in the research lab now that Oker is gone?
“Death,” Xander says. “Even if someone is with you, you
still have to do the actual dying all alone. ”
“It is lonely,” I say.
“Everything is,” Xander says. “I’m lonely with you sometimes. I didn’t think it could ever be that way. ”
I don’t know what to say. We stand there looking at each other, sorrowful, seeking. “I’m sorry,” I say finally, but he shakes his head. I’ve missed the point somehow; whatever it was he wanted to say, I did not listen the way he had hoped.
The light coming in through the infirmary windows is gauzy, gray. Ky’s face looks very still. Very gone. The bag drips neatly into his veins. He and Xander are both trapped. I have to find a way to free them.
And I don’t know how.
I look at the lists again. I’ve gone over them so many times. Everyone else is working on re-creating Oker’s camassia cure. But I think Oker was right, and that we were all wrong. The sorters, the pharmics—we have all missed something.
I’m so tired.
Once, I wanted to watch the floods coming into a canyon, to stand on the edge and see it happen, on ground that was safe but shaking. I’d like to hear the trees snap away and see the water come higher, I thought, but only from a place where it couldn’t reach me.
Now I think it might be a terrifying, bright relief to stand on the canyon floor and see the wall of water coming down, and to know this is it, I am finished, and before you could even complete the thought, you would be swallowed, and whole.
As evening falls, Anna comes to sit beside me in the infirmary. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking at Ky. “I never thought that Hunter—”
“I know,” I say. “Neither did I. ”
“The vote will be tomorrow,” she tells me. For the first time, Anna sounds old.
“What will they do?” I ask.
“Xander will likely be exiled,” she says. “He could also be found innocent, but I don’t think that will happen. The people are angry. They don’t believe Oker told Xander to destroy the cure. ”
“Xander’s from the Provinces,” I say. “How is he supposed to survive in exile?” Xander’s smart, but he’s never lived out in the wild before, and he will have nothing when they send him away. I had Indie.
“I don’t think,” Anna says, “that he is supposed to survive. ”
If Xander is exiled, what will I do? I’d go with him, but I can’t leave Ky. And we need Xander for the cure. Even if I do find the right plant, I don’t know how to make a cure, or the best way to give it to Ky. If this is to work, it will take all three of us. Ky, Xander, me.
“And Hunter?” I ask Anna, very softly.
“The best we can hope for Hunter,” she says, “is exile. ” Though I know she has other children who came with her from the Carving, her voice sounds as sad as if Hunter were her own child, the very last of her blood.
And then she hands me something. A piece of paper, real paper, the kind she must have carried with her all the way from the cave in the Carving. It smells like the canyons, here in the mountains, and it makes me ache a little and wonder how Anna could stand to leave her home.
