chapter 15
As I walk to the air-train stop the next morning, things feel crisp, less weighted. The cool of the night accomplished what the rain yesterday did not; the air feels fresh. New. The sun blinking through the last of the clouds dares the birds to sing, and they do. It dares me to let the light in, and I do. Who wouldn’t rage against the death of something so beautiful?
I’m not the only one who feels it. At hiking, Ky finds me standing at the front of the group, just as the Officer begins speaking. Ky presses the compact into my hand. I feel the touch of his fingers and I think he leaves them there, on mine, the smallest bit longer than necessary.
I put the compact into my pocket.
Why here? I wonder, still tingling. Why not give it to me at home?
I’m glad I lent it to Em, but I’m glad I have it back, too. The compact is the one link that I have left to my grandparents and I vow never to let it out of my hands again.
I think maybe Ky will wait for me to go in the woods, but he doesn’t. When the Officer blows the whistle, Ky takes off without a backward glance, and all at once my new-bright feeling dissolves a little bit.
You have your compact back, I remind myself. Something returned.
Ky disappears completely into the trees ahead of me.
Something lost.
Three minutes later, alone in the woods, I realize that Ky didn’t give me back my compact. It’s something else—I can tell the moment I pull it out of my pocket to make sure it looks all right. The object is similar: gold, a case you can snap open and shut, but it’s definitely not my artifact.
There are letters—N,E,S,W—and an arrow on the inside. It spins and spins and keeps pointing back to me.
I didn’t think that Aberrations could have access to artifacts, but Ky obviously does. Did he give it to me on purpose? By accident? Should I try to give it back or wait until he says something to me?
There are far too many secrets in these woods, I decide. I find myself smiling, polished bright again, ready for the sun.
“Sir? Sir? Lon’s fallen. We think he’s injured.”
The Officer swears under his breath and looks at Ky and me, who are the only two up on the top of the hill except for this boy. “You two stay up here and keep track of who comes when, all right?” The Officer gives me the datapod and, before I can say anything, he disappears back into the forest with the boy.
I think about telling Ky that we need to exchange artifacts, but before I say the words, something stops me. For some reason I want to hold on to the mysterious spinning arrow in its gold case. Just for another day or two.
“What are you doing?” I ask him instead. His hand moves, making shapes and curves and lines in the grass that seem familiar.
His blue eyes flash up to me. “I’m writing.”
Of course. That’s why the marks look familiar. He is writing in an old-fashioned, curved kind of writing, like the script on my compact. I’ve seen samples of it before but I don’t know how to do it. No one does. All we can do is type. We could try to imitate the figures, but with what? We don’t have any of the old tools.
But I realize as I watch Ky that you can make your own tools.
“How did you learn to do this?” I don’t dare sit down next to him—someone could come through the trees at any moment and need me to enter them in the datapod—so I stand as close as I dare. He grimaces and I realize I am standing right in the middle of his words. I take a step back.
Ky smiles but doesn’t answer; he keeps on writing.
This is the difference between us. I live to sort; he knows how to create. He can write words whenever he wants. He can swirl them in the grass, write them in the sand, carve them in a tree.
“No one knows I can do this,” Ky says. “Now I have a secret of yours and you have one of mine.”
“Just one?” I say, thinking of the spinning arrow in the gold case.
Ky smiles again.
Some of the rain from last night pooled in the heavy, drooping petals of the wildflowers here. I dip my finger in the water and try to write along the slick green surface of one of the broad leaves. It feels difficult, awkward. My hands are used to tapping a screen, not to sweeping and swirling in controlled movements. I haven’t held a paintbrush in years, not since my days in First School. Because the water is clear, I can’t really see my letters but I still know that they aren’t formed correctly.
Ky dips his finger into another droplet and writes a glistening C on the leaf. He makes the curve smoothly, gracefully.
“Will you teach me?” I ask.
“I’m not supposed to do that.”
“We’re not supposed to be doing any of this,” I remind him. Sounds drift up from the tangled trees and undergrowth below us. Someone is coming. I feel desperate to make him promise to teach me before anyone gets here and this moment vanishes. “We’re not supposed to know poems or writing or ...” I stop myself. I ask again. “Will you teach me?”
Ky doesn’t answer.
We’re not alone anymore.
Several people have reached the top, and from the wails I can hear through the forest, the Officer and Lon’s group are not far behind. I have to enter these names into the datapod, so I step away from Ky. I look back once at where he sits with his arms folded, looking out over the hills.
It turns out that Lon will survive. Once the Officer cures the melodrama accompanying the injury, they find that all Lon has is a slightly twisted ankle. Still, the Officer warns us to take it slow on our way back to the bottom of the hill.
I want to walk down with Ky, but he attaches himself to the Officer and makes himself useful in getting Lon back down the mountain. I wonder why the Officer bothered hauling Lon to the top at all until I hear him muttering something to Ky about “making quota so they don’t get after me.” It surprises me, even though I know Officers must report to people, too.
I walk with a girl named Livy who is getting better and better at hiking as the days go on and who acts enthusiastic about everything. She talks and talks, and I imagine Ky’s hand making that sweeping curve of the C for my name and my heart beats faster.
We’re late getting back; I have to rush to the train bound for the Borough, and Ky has to rush to the one that will take him to the City for work. I’ve given up on talking to him again today when I feel someone brush past me. At the same time I hear a word so soft and quiet I wonder if he said it up on the hill and the wind has just now carried it down to me.
The word is yes.