That is how the letter opened. He sees its contents everywhere: written in pitted concrete, in beetle-bitten bark. A centipede tracks a sentence in the sand. Smoke from a chimney wisps into words.
Your dreams are true. You are not alone. I don’t mean there are others alive. There are, of course, but you have always guessed that to be the case. I mean there are others like you—gifted, special—including the girl I have sent to you, Gawea. She will guide you in more ways than one. Come west. I insist.
Aran Burr
He asks where Gawea is and York throws up a hand, his thumb indicating the square of space behind the counter. Lewis slowly approaches. He does not know what to expect from her, what she might look like or how she might greet him. She does not appear in a shaft of sunlight. She does not levitate several feet off the ground. She does not shout out his name. When he rounds the counter, he finds her lying on the floor, curled up in a nest of blankets, asleep. She is just a girl, not much older than Ella. Her skin is tanned and drawn tight over her bones, offset by the white bandages that wrap her wounds. Her black hair falls over her cheek like a tattered wing.
“Leave her alone,” York says. “She needs her rest.”
At that her eyes snap open. They seem at odds with the daylight. Their blackness reflects his looming figure, as if he were an amorphous pupil floating in them. He takes his hands out of his pockets and then puts them back in and says, at a stutter, “I’m the one you’re looking for.”
*
When Clark exercises, jacking out push-ups or lunging to the floor, rather than rushing through fifty reps, she focuses on intervals of five. It cures her of her impatience and makes the overall sum seem more manageable. For this reason she keeps her eyes on the Witness Tree. It is like some giant bony hand escaping the underworld, its bare branches reaching up to claw the sky. She rides toward it, and only it, knowing if she thinks only about the horizon, about the many months and thousands of miles that lie ahead of her, she may go mad with impatience. One step at a time. She will focus on a tree, then a building, then a hill, maybe a mountain, whatever increments might draw her forward.
But first, the Witness Tree. This, she knows, is where she will lose sight of the wall and the wall of her. And now, with one last dig of her heels, she hurries past it, and the dark-eyed buildings pinch around her. She slows her horse, and the others match her speed, clopping over broken bits of asphalt, threading around cars, kicking through tongues of sand, trotting down tree-lined avenues with the branches knit loosely overhead and the sunlight falling through them to brighten the ground like shards of glass.
They make their way through a business district and enter a neighborhood of ruined bungalows corralled by chain-link fences clotted with leaves and needles and rust. Today they are supposed to return with screws and nails and lumber, two-by-fours and two-by-sixes especially. She can hear the cart twenty yards behind her, bouncing along and rattling with hammers and saws and screwdrivers and crowbars. With these tools they check decks and porches for treated cedar or polyethylene, tear open drywall for the studs hidden beneath, coffined all this time, only some of them free from rot by weather or termites. But not today.
To their right, the houses fall away into a park whose lush green lawn long ago gave way to patches of yellowy cheatgrass. A rag-tangled body with a thatch of hair still clinging to its skull lies on a bench and gapes at them. A plastic slide has faded from red to a faint pink, cracked like a dried-up tongue. The jungle gym is hairy with weeds. A flower-patterned bike lies abandoned, half-buried in the dirt.
She leads her horse into the park and the others follow. She knows what she needs to do, but for the moment she can only stare at the jungle gym and imagine this as a place where children once played.
A voice calls behind her. “Is something the matter?” When she doesn’t answer, the voice calls out again, “What are we doing?”
She hopes they won’t fight back. She wants them to make their way home safely, to tell everyone what has happened, to spread the dream of their mission and the promise of their return—before Thomas can warp Clark into a traitor. She plans to cuff their ankles and wrists, to steal their horses. They are only a little more than a mile from the wall and should be able to hop or crawl home before dark. Unless something—spiders or snakes or worse—finds them.
Clark swings her horse around and nods at Reed. The two of them separate from the nine, their horses slowly retreating. Reed withdraws two revolvers. She does the same. Their hands shake. The nine rangers—two women, the rest of them men—stare at the sunlight gleaming from the gunmetal and then settle their gaze on Reed.
“It’s time for us to say good-bye,” he says.
*
Gawea might smile at Lewis, but her face has a woodenness that makes it difficult to read. She stands. She walks toward him and he can’t help but take a step back. A bloodied bandage scarves her neck. She motions to it, excusing her lack of voice. He is more than a foot taller than she, but there is something about her that makes them seem the same height.
She reaches out both her hands, one of them bandaged, the wrappings looping her palm and binding her wrist. It takes him a moment to realize he should respond in kind. He is not used to touching others, not to embrace, not to shake hands, not even to brush up against on the street. It’s more than the intimacy—it’s the sense of getting rubbed away. But in this case, when his hands fall into hers, he does not feel drained so much as he feels charged, fuller. More confident and excited than ever about what might lie ahead.
“It’s true? It’s really true? You’re going to take us—you’re going to take me to him?”
She nods.
“Why?”
Again she motions to her neck. Then she brings a finger to the counter and cuts through the thick dust, writing out: U R THE NEXT.