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“So we have a little time,” she says.
Time. It’s what we’ve always wanted, what we rarely have.
She’s sitting in the copilot’s chair and she turns it so that she faces me. There’s mischief in her bright green eyes and I catch my breath.
Cassia slides her hands behind my neck and I lean forward.
I close my eyes and remember her standing as beautiful as snow when she came out of the canyons. I remember holding the green silk against her cheek on the Hill. I remember her skin and sand in the canyons, and her face looking down on me in the mountains, bringing me back.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you,” I say back.
I choose her again, and again, and again. Until the Pilot interrupts us and it’s time to fly.
Into the sky we go. The two of us together. As the wisps of clouds go by, I pretend that they’re my mother’s paintings, evaporated up from the stone. Drifting even higher on their way to something new.
CHAPTER 61
CASSIA
He takes us up higher and the air ship shudders and groans, and my heart beats fast, and I am not afraid.
There are the mountains, enormous blue and green against the sky, and then less, and less, below us, and it is blue all around.
In the blue, there is white and gold, white wisps of cloud trailing across the sky like the cottonwood seed I once gave Grandfather. “Clouds of glory,” I whisper, remembering, and I wonder where he found those words and if this is a journey he made after he died, coming up to be warmed by the sun, his fingers catching hold of these bits of sky, letting go.
And then where? I wonder. Could there be anywhere else as glorious as this?
Maybe this is where the angels went when they flew up. Perhaps it is where my father is now, drifting in the sun. Maybe it would be a cruel thing to bring him back and weigh him down. Or maybe when they are light, they are lonely.
I look over at Ky. His face is as I have rarely seen it before, perfectly serene.
“Ky,” I say. “You’re the Pilot. ”
He smiles.
“You are,” I say. “Look how you fly. It’s like Indie. ”
His smile turns sad.
“You must think of her when you fly,” I say, a little sharp pain cutting through me even though I understand. There are places, times, when I will always think of Xander. Whenever I see a blue pool, a red newrose, the roots of a plant pulled up from the ground.
“Yes,” Ky says. “But all the time, I think of you. ”
I lean over and press my hand against his cheek, not wanting to distract him too much from what he’s doing.
The flight, with the man I love, is gorgeous, glorious. But there are so many people trapped below.
We drop lower, out of the clouds, and the mountains wait for us. The evening light on their faces turns white snow pink and gray rock gold. Dark trees and water, flat at first and then glinting and gaining dimension as we come closer, cling to the sides of the mountain; ravines of tumbled stone cut into green foothills.
Hand in hand, we walk up the path from the landing meadow to the village to find and speak with Anna and Eli. I hope they’ll come with us, I think. We need them in the Provinces. But they might want to go to the Otherlands, or stay in the mountains, or go out to look for Hunter, or back to the Carving. There are many choices now.
Ky stops on the path. “Listen,” he says. “Music. ”
At first I hear only the murmur of the wind through those tall pine trees. And then I hear singing from the village.
We all quicken our pace. When we come into the village, Ky points at someone. “Xander,” Ky says. He’s right. Xander’s ahead of us—I see his blond hair, his profile. He must have flown in on one of the other ships.
He’s going to try to go to the Otherlands.
Xander must know we’re here, somewhere, but he’s not looking for us. All he’s doing, right now, is listening.
The villagers aren’t just singing, they are also dancing around the stone, in a farewell. Fire dances, too, and somehow, with things carved of wood and strung with string, the villagers are making music.
One of the officers moves to break it up, but Ky stops him. “They saved us,” he reminds the officer. “Give them a little time. ”
The officer nods.
Ky turns to me. I brush my fingers along his lips. He’s so alive. “What now?”
“Dance with me,” he says. “I told you I would teach you. ”
“I already learned how,” I say, thinking of that time back at the Gallery.
