She rakes a hand through her hair, making it look as though it has been styled with an electric current. “Nobody knows exactly what we can expect inside that wall. The security forces are estimates, and we’re not sure how much support our friends in Portland have drummed up. I was urging a delay, but I was overruled.” She shakes her head. “It’s dangerous, Lena. I don’t want you to be a part of it.”
The rattling piece in my chest—the anger and sadness over losing Alex, and also, more than that, even, over this life that we string together from scraps and tatters and half-spoken words and promises that are not fulfilled—explodes suddenly.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” I am practically shaking. “I’m not a child anymore. I grew up. I grew up without you. And you can’t tell me what to do.”
I half expect her to snap back at me, but she just sighs and stares at the smoldering orange glow still embedded in the ash, like a buried sunset. Then she says abruptly, “Do you remember the Story of Solomon?”
Her words are so unexpected that for a moment, I can’t speak. I can only nod.
“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me what you remember.”
Alex’s note, still tucked into the pouch around my neck, seems to be smoldering too, burning against my chest. “Two mothers are fighting over a child,” I say cautiously. “They decide to cut the baby in half. The king decrees it.”
My mother shakes her head. “No. That’s the revised version; that’s the story in The Book of Shhh. In the real story, the mothers don’t cut the baby in half.”
I go very still, almost afraid to breathe. I feel as though I’m teetering on a precipice, on the verge of understanding, and I’m not yet sure if I want to go over.
My mother goes on, “In the real story, King Solomon decides that the baby should be cut in half. But it’s only a test. One mother agrees; the other woman says that she’ll give up claim to the baby altogether. She doesn’t want the child injured.” My mother turns her eyes to me. Even in the dark, I can see their sparkle, the clarity that has never gone away. “That’s how the king identifies the real mother. She’s willing to sacrifice her claim, sacrifice her happiness, to keep the baby safe.”
I close my eyes and see embers burning behind my lids: blood-red dawn, smoke and fire, Alex behind the ash. All of a sudden, I know. I understand the meaning of his note.
“I’m not trying to control you, Lena,” my mother says, her voice low. “I just want you to be safe. That’s what I’ve always wanted.”
I open my eyes. The memory of Alex standing behind the fence as a black swarm enfolded him, recedes. “It’s too late.” My voice sounds hollow, and not like my own. “I’ve seen things . . . I’ve lost things you can’t understand.”
It’s the closest I’ve come to speaking about Alex. Thankfully, she doesn’t pry. She just nods.
“I’m tired.” I push myself to my feet. My body, too, feels unfamiliar, as though I’m a puppet that has begun to come apart at the seams. Alex sacrificed himself once so that I could live and be happy. Now he has done it again.
I’ve been so stupid. And he is gone; there is no way for me to reach him and tell him I know and understand.
There is no way for me to tell him that I am still in love with him, too.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” I tell her, avoiding her eyes.
“I think that’s a good idea,” she says.
I’ve already started to move away from her when she calls out to me. I turn around. The fire has now burned out completely, and her face is swallowed in darkness.
“We make for the wall at dawn,” she says.
Hana I can’t sleep.
Tomorrow I will no longer be myself. I will walk down the white carpet, and stand under the white canopy, and pronounce vows of loyalty and purpose. Afterward, white petals will rain down on me, scattered by the priests, by the guests, by my parents.
I will be reborn: blank, clean, featureless, like the world after a blizzard.
I stay up all night and watch dawn break slowly over the horizon, touching the world with white.
Lena
I’m in a crowd, watching two children fight over a baby. They are playing tug-of-war, pulling it violently back and forth, and the baby is blue, and I know they are shaking it to death. I’m trying to push through the crowd, but more and more people are surging around me, blocking my path, making it impossible to move. And then, just as I feared, the baby falls: It hits the pavement and shatters into a thousand pieces, like a china doll.
Then all the people are gone. I am alone on a road, and in front of me, a girl with long, tangled hair is bent over the shattered doll, piecing it back together painstakingly, humming to herself. The day is bright and perfectly still. Each of my footsteps rings out like a gunshot, but she doesn’t look up until I am standing directly in front of her.
Then she does, and she is Grace.
“See?” she says, extending the doll toward me. “I fixed it.”
And I see that the doll’s face is my own, and webbed with thousands of tiny fissures and cracks.
Grace cradles the doll in her arms. “Wake up, wake up,” she croons.