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I don’t know plants the way my mother does, so I’m not even sure what it is I dig up in the little courtyard of the medical center. It could be a weed, it could be a flower. But I think she’ll be happy with either—she just wants, needs, something to combat the sterility of her room and the emptiness of a world without my father.
I fold the foilware container I brought with me into a kind of cup, scoop the soil inside, and pull out the plant.
The roots dangle down, some thick, others so thin that the breeze goes through them as easily as it does the leaves. When I stand up, my knees are dusty, my hands are dark with dirt. I am bringing my mother a plant because there is no way I can bring my father back for her. I understand why people wanted the tubes; I am also desperate for something to hold on to.
And then, standing there with roots dripping dirt on my feet, the middle of the red garden day memory comes back to me. My mother, my father, Grandfather, his tissue sample, cottonwood seeds, flowers growing wild and made of paper, red buds folded up tight, the green tablet, Ky’s blue eyes, and suddenly I can follow Grandfather’s red garden day clue, I can take it and follow it up to leaves and branches and all the way down to the roots.
And I catch my breath with remembering . . .
Everything.
My mother’s hands are printed black with dirt, but I can see the white lines crossing her palms when she lifts up the seedlings. We stand in the plant nursery at the Arboretum; the glass roof overhead and the steamy mists inside belie the cool of the spring morning out.
“Bram made it to school on time,” I say.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she says, smiling at me. On the rare days when both she and my father have to go to work early, it is my responsibility to get Bram to his early train for First School. “Where are you going now? You have a few minutes left before work. ”
“I might stop by to see Grandfather,” I say. It’s all right to deviate from the usual routine this way, because Grandfather’s Banquet is coming soon. So is mine. We have so many things to discuss.
“Of course,” she says. She’s transferring the seedlings from the tubes where they started, rowed in a tray, to their new homes, little pots filled with soil. She lifts one of the seedlings out.
“It doesn’t have many roots,” I say.
“Not yet,” she says. “That will come. ”
I give her a quick kiss and start off again. I’m not supposed to linger at her workplace, and I have an air train to catch. Getting up early with Bram has given me a little extra time, but not much.
The spring wind is playful, pushing me one way, pulling me another. It spins some of last fall’s leaves up into the air, and I wonder, if I climbed up on the air-train platform and jumped, if the spiral of wind would catch me and take me up twirling.
I cannot think of falling without thinking of flying.
I could do it, I think, if I found a way to make wings.
Someone comes up next to me as I pass by the tangled world of the Hill on my way to the air-train stop. “Cassia Reyes?” the worker asks. The knees of her plainclothes are darkened with soil, like my mother’s when she’s been working. The woman is young, a few years older than me, and she has something in her hand, more roots dangling down. Pulling up or planting? I wonder.
“Yes?” I say.
“I need to speak with you,” she says. A man emerges from the Hill behind her. He is the same age as she is, and something about them makes me think, They would be a good Match. I’ve never had permission to go on the Hill, and I look back up at the riot of plants and forest behind the workers. What is it like in a place so wild?
“We need you to sort something for us,” the man says.
“I’m sorry,” I say, moving again. “I only sort at work. ” They are not Officials, nor are they my superiors or supervisors. This isn’t protocol, and I don’t bend rules for strangers.
“It’s to help your grandfather,” the woman says.
I stop.
“There’s been a problem,” she says. “He may not be a candidate for tissue preservation after all. ”
“That can’t be true,” I say.
“I’m afraid that it is,” the man says. “There’s evidence that he’s been stealing from the Society. ”
I laugh. “Stealing what?” I ask. Grandfather has almost nothing in his apartment.
“The thefts occurred long ago,” the woman says, “when he worked at Restoration sites. ”
The man holds out a datapod. It’s old, but the pictures on the screen are clear. Grandfather, younger, holding artifacts. Grandfather, burying the artifacts in a forested area. “Where is this?” I say.
“Here,” they say. “On the Hill. ”
The pictures cover a span of many years. Grandfather ages as I scroll through them. He did this for a very, very long time.
“And the Society has only now found these pictures?” I ask.
“The Society doesn’t know,” the woman says. “We’d like to keep it that way, so he can still have his Banquet and his sample taken. We need you to help us in return. If you don’t, we’ll turn him in. ”
