“I’ll be out front. Hurry up.”
Trembling, Katie closed the window. Her stomach had twisted into knots, as it always did when she knew she could get into trouble. She felt as though she might throw up.
“What are you doing?” she whispered to herself, drawing on her thick wool pants and warmest shirt. “Why are you doing this?”
There was no answer. Katie thought again of Jonathan Tear, his father, Mum, books . . . but these were things of the daytime, and now it was night.
“So stupid,” she whispered, swinging a leg over the windowsill. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
She dropped to the ground and swung the window closed behind her. The hinges screeched a bit, making her wince. Without the bolt shot the wood would not lay flush, leaving a gap of perhaps half an inch, but there was no help for that. The grass under her window was wet with night dew, and she could already feel it beginning to soak through her thick wool shoes. But her feet seemed to carry her forward of their own accord, out into the lane in front of the house, where Row waited silently, cloaked and hooded. He took her hand, and Katie felt an odd thrill course through her veins.
“Come on.”
They hurried up the lane and then down, toward the southern end of town. Mist had covered the hillside, obscuring all but the occasional brightly lit lamppost. Everything was quiet, and the silence brought home to Katie, as nothing else had today, the strange hybrid status of her age, right on the cusp of growing up. All of the children were in bed, but here were she and Row, neither children nor adults, darting through the streets without permission, interlopers in a deep blue world.
After a few minutes the lane began to slope downward for good. Katie had lost her bearings in the mist, but Row seemed to know where they were going, for he tugged at her hand, leading her off the road and into the space between a cluster of houses. Katie didn’t know how he could be so sure of their path; she couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. Her shoes were soaked through, the tips of her toes going numb. The houses ended and they were into the woods now, trees and shrubs that Row darted around, pulling Katie with him. The mist began to clear as they continued downward, and soon Katie was able to find her own footing. They were in the Lower Bend, the last section of town before the eastern slope went back into forest. Row did his internship down here, at Jenna Carver’s metal shop, and Katie soon realized that was their destination.
“Row, what—”
“Shhh.”
Jenna’s shop was a rickety wood building, unprotected from the relentless wind that battered the eastern slope. Katie assumed that the door would be locked, since Jenna had many people’s valuables in there, but as they climbed the worn steps, Row produced a key.
“Where did you get that?”
“I duped it.”
Katie shook her head at the foolishness of her own question. Among many other metal items, Row and Jenna also made locks and keys. Not many people locked their doors in town, but all of them had locks. Katie suspected that this oddity, like so many others, had something to do with the pre-Crossing, but she could not be certain. All of the adults were the same: happy enough to talk about the Crossing itself—though they were maddeningly vague about geography—or about world history, but the period immediately before the Crossing, some thirty or forty years, was a dark hole in the Town’s consciousness. Whatever had driven them all here, they had decided to bury it.
She followed Row inside the shop, then waited, shivering, as he lit a lamp.
“This had better be good, Row. I’m freezing.”
“It is,” Row replied, rummaging through a drawer in Jenna’s desk. “Look here!”
He held up a dark gemstone, its many facets gleaming. Even in the dim light, Katie had no trouble recognizing this stone as William Tear’s, the same one she had held in her fist more than a year before, but she stared at it as though it was new to her.
“What is it?” she asked. Part of her felt sorrow, the same sorrow she experienced when she lied to Row about where she had been in the afternoons. There were so many secrets now!
“It’s William Tear’s,” Row replied. “He gave it to Jenna, wants her to set it in a necklace with a silver setting. I’m not supposed to know.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I eavesdropped,” Row replied, grinning. Katie knew that grin well, but in this moment it struck her as almost grotesque. She didn’t like seeing William Tear’s sapphire in Row’s hand.
“That’s what you dragged me out here to show me?”
“It’s not just any stone!” Row protested. “Here, take it.”
Katie took it. She felt none of the sensations she remembered from that night on the bench, only the cold heft of the thing, its many points biting into her palm. Row stared at her eagerly, but after a moment his brow quirked.
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Magic,” Row replied.
“Magic,” Katie replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.