“You aren’t serious.”
“Only if you can hold a spoon.” He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Amusement? Challenge? It wasn’t like Li’s challenge look. “But if you can’t . . .”
“Oh, I can. I’m just not sure whether you can keep up and eat your share.”
He grinned and riffled through drawers for a pair of spoons. “We’re going to make ourselves sick.”
“It’s going to be fun.” I tested my right hand. Though it certainly didn’t feel good, when Sam offered a spoon, I was able to hold it.
Soon, we were both perched on the counter, jar between us, and desperately trying not to dribble honey all over our clothes. He told stories, and listed all the things he thought we should do when we got to Heart, and I couldn’t remember ever smiling so much.
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Chapter 6
Butterfly
AT THE BEGINNING of the third week, we quit the cabin before dawn. The weather had warmed and the sky was deep sapphire as we made our way through the graveyard, the silence as delicate as hoarfrost. The predawn air was crisp, but pleasant. Elk pushed through the forest, while eagles and hawks called their territory boundaries at one another. I couldn’t help but hum as we crossed the river bridge.
“You’re chipper.” Sam tugged Shaggy down a stair carved into the path; the pony snorted and swung his head toward the cabin again, and his warm stall with endless food.
“Yep.” Finally, we were going to Heart, the great white city I’d heard about since I was a child. “The idea of learning what I am is”—I rolled my shoulders to keep the backpack straps from digging—“it’s terrifying, because I might not like what I find out. But it’s exciting.”
“There’s always the option of deciding for yourself who you are and what you’ll become.”
The sky turned paler shades of indigo as we walked. I couldn’t ask him to understand the need to know what had happened, why Ciana was gone forever. He couldn’t understand the guilt, knowing everyone wished I was her.
I tugged at the gauze. “For a year after Councilor Frase’s visit, I convinced myself I was Ciana. I called myself Ciana in my head and told myself I’d somehow lost my memory between lives. I read everything in the cottage library about her, tried to imagine myself weaving and inventing ways to mass-produce cloth. It turns out I can barely imagine how that would work, let alone discover ways to synthesize silk to avoid the mulberry trees and worms. So there’s that. Plus, the Soul Tellers are never wrong.”
“Not these days, anyway.”
“Oh?”
He chuckled. “The tests weren’t always as accurate, but we figured it out when toddlers started cursing at the Soul Tellers. It took some doing to remember Whit was actually Tera and we should call him that. A few of us might have had faulty memories for the next few years, just to make him angry.”
My grin appeared before I could hide it. “You’re lucky you have any friends left if you treat everyone so badly.”
“That’s why I had to go out and find a new one. The others all left me.” He winked before I could wonder if he was serious. “When we get to Heart, I’ll introduce you to anyone you want to meet. Even the friends I don’t deserve.”
“I can think of a couple.” I blushed, remembering the confession about Dossam, but Sam kindly didn’t say anything. That was part of a conversation I still wasn’t ready to have.
We followed the path around spruce trees and rotting logs, down to the road, which would take us to Heart.
Just before midday, Sam came back to our earlier discussion as if we’d never left. “Seems to me you’re in a unique position to be anything you want.”
“I doubt that.”
“You have the benefit of learning from others’ experiences. You don’t have to make the same mistakes we did in the beginning, or the ones we’re still making.” He led Shaggy to the side of the road and looped the rope around a low cottonwood branch, leaving enough slack for the pony to nose around in the sparse foliage. “And who you are isn’t already cast in everyone’s eyes. No one knows what to expect from you. Some would say society is in a rut. Stagnant. By virtue of being new, you have the power to shake us out of that.”
He was crazy if he saw that in me. A nosoul couldn’t do that. “What if I don’t want to? De-stagnate you, that is.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” He spread a blanket on the road and motioned me to sit. “But I don’t believe you want to be just another person, doing the same thing every generation. You have more power than anyone, Ana. It’s up to you whether or not you use it.”
“I don’t feel very powerful.” My hands hurt, I could barely feed myself, and Sam kept rescuing me. “I feel like the smallest, most insignificant person.”