My head comes up. There’s a noise again, but different this time, soft on the wind, like a cry. And now that I am up high, closer to the canopy, I can see that the whole city is actually sloping downward, the treetops becoming more and more visible the farther I let the glasses zoom. In the distance, a flock of the little lace-winged insects are rising like a cloud from the treetops. Disturbed.
And then the stone under my foot shifts, loosens, rocking to one side. I look down, hear a rumble, Jillian’s scream, and before I can move or even think, the whole world drops away from beneath my feet.
I put a hand on the hot white walls of the Cursed City, and the relief is like the first deep breath after a long swim. Like leaving a bad memory. I don’t even bother to look over my shoulder. There’s only a day of light left, and the Council won’t dare enter a city that could make them Forget. They can’t stop me. No one can.
I hoist my pack and climb, fast, and I wonder if I’m already Forgetting, because I hardly notice my aches and pains or the fact that I’m tired. The suncrickets have seen me, though, chanting chick, chick while I shinny up a low, thick vine, louder and louder, dustmoths rising as I step onto a tree limb, up the trunk, and plant my sandals on top of the white stone wall.
But I don’t see a city. Not even a ruined one. I see a lake, like the Darkwater, where we boat beneath the mountain, only this water glimmers with the sunlight. Trees grow thick along a faraway shore, roots twisting down into the water. Where I stand, the lake laps the wall stones. No buildings, no streets. Just a wilderness inside walls.
I don’t Know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. If there’s no city, then maybe there’s no Forgetting, either. Maybe I’ve come here for nothing. And the rage inside me flares. Blazes. I am so angry. That Adam is dead. That Nita is dead. That I can’t fix it. That I’m standing here, in the middle of nowhere, alone with memories I will never, ever escape in a world I cannot change. And so I shout. With everything I’ve got. Like the Knowing are never allowed. One word that sums up my life.
“Why?”
The word comes back to me like another question, bouncing over water and trees and stone. I decide I like yelling, and am thinking about doing it again, but when the last echo of my word comes back to me, it carries something else. A distant, desperate, and very human scream.
I jump, startled, eyes darting over the lake and trees. But there’s nothing to see. The sound fades, the breeze blows, dustmoths settle, and the suncrickets take up their song. Like the scream never existed. But it did. My pulse races.
I drop my pack off my shoulder, pull out my book, and unwind the scarf Nita used to bind my hair. Holding my balance on top of the wall, I work the scarf through the book’s inner stitching, tying the ends together to make a loop that hangs over one shoulder, resting at my hip. This book is the truth. Everything I would need to understand about Samara Archiva. In case I Forget.
And then I turn, and start working my way along the top of the wall, using the spreading limbs for balance, all the way around the curve and to the shoreline of the water, thinking about that scream. How could there be people here? Maybe I’m not the first to survive jumping the cliffs. Maybe we’re not the only ones on this planet. Maybe these people can explain the Forgetting to me. Or maybe they’ve already Forgotten.
The limbs grow thick on both sides of the wall now, and I’m walking mostly on trees instead of stones, like traveling through a forest, only ten meters in the air. Branches snap, scratching at my face, leaves obscuring my vision. I’ve never seen anything like these trees, but what do I Know about things that grow in the sun? They’re fat with buds. I think that means they bloom. This place might be beautiful when the light comes again. A good place for Forgetting. Or it could be that this isn’t Canaan at all, and the Cursed City is only a story.
Maybe lies can be written, as well as remembered.
And then I see something white, far off and to my right, peeking through the foliage. Stone. The white wall of a building, and buildings are in cities. I take a deep breath, choose a branch, and climb down it, hanging for a moment before I drop to the ground, pack on my back and book bouncing against my thigh.
It’s darker here beneath the buds and leaves. Hot and damp, almost misty. Even the mud squelching between my toes is warm. I’m sweating in an instant, and not just from the heat. I’ve been careful not to dwell on my isolation until now. Having memory can make a negative emotion reflect over and over, like a feeling caught between two mirrors. But here, in this place, it’s impossible not to sense the solitude.
When I Forget, will I remember that I am alone?
Or am I not alone?
The wall I saw through the trees is an ancient building, stained and overgrown, a huge, white circle held up by columns carved with flowers and what I think are plants of the fields, living vines twisting down from the roof and around the carvings. A doorway yawns beyond them, and in the swath of light I can see a room I almost recognize. Broken stone benches, rotted cabinets, the sound and smell of water trickling. This is a bathhouse, like the ones beneath my city, built on a hot spring, which would explain the mist and the mud. And it is empty. So very empty.
Grandpapa Cyrus told me a story once, about how a piece of a person can go on living even after they’ve been burned. An invisible piece, floating unseen, doing either good deeds or bad, though usually bad, he’d said, because it was the bad ones that tended to not die properly. This was supposed to be a story from Earth, so I knew it wasn’t true. But that scream, and this place, this feeling of people that were and now are not, makes me step back.
A branch cracks somewhere behind me, and I turn, startled, but there’s nothing there. Just trees, thick with hanging buds and the thinnest veil of mist. I decide not to run, but I do hurry, thumbs under the straps of my pack, through a natural gap in the trees, sloping upward, deeper into what must have been Canaan. And then I realize I’m not following a natural gap. I’m on a road.
I pass more white stone, piles that might have been buildings once, and then the road narrows, the trees encroaching. I take another step, pushing aside the branches. But there’s no ground beneath my feet. I scramble, gripping a handful of wood and leaves, only just keeping my balance. I let out a breath. I’ve nearly stepped off a cliff.