I stop. I’m standing in the glowing purples and greens of the cave passage, but half of my mind has fallen into the dark of my terrace balcony, where one by one, I am putting out the lamps. I struggle, fight, claw to stay where I am. In the cave. With the aliens. But the memory pulls again, and I fall …
… and Nita is lying half over the stone-carved railing of my balcony, her blue lips matching her lifeless eyes, her forehead still warm when I kiss it. A small push, and she goes over, tumbling to the wild surge of water below. And I cannot cry. I can only feel the scream …
I shoot back into the present, and there is the scream, still inside me, and the sickening wave of horror and revulsion. Grief. Loss. And the rage. All of it burning like the day I killed her. Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and I am nearly doubled in my effort not to yell. I can feel Jillian and Beckett, waiting in silence somewhere behind me. And then I straighten my back, wipe my face, and move my feet forward again. I hear the aliens follow.
There’s fatigue beneath my pain, a deep ache in my bones. The Knowing can go for a long time without food or rest, but we are not unlimited, and I haven’t slept or fully cached in days. I don’t think I can afford to sleep. I can’t trust them.
I also can’t afford to lose control.
I move faster. The wafting flowers are starting to thin, the light dimming, and every two or three meters I see an old glass jar, dirty and opaque, hanging in a metal sconce riveted to the wall of rock. The way must have been lit once. And then there’s a new passage, smaller, with rougher walls, branching off to darkness on our left.
There’s murmuring behind me, and then Jillian says, “Beckett thinks there could be people down that passage.”
I glance at him, and he shrugs a shoulder. If Beckett says he sees people, they’re probably there. Craddock said the entrances to the underground were being watched. But not that last entrance. I don’t think they Know about that one. “Close?” I ask Beckett.
“No.”
I move my gaze back to Jill. “We’re not going that way.”
“Will they come in here, looking for you?” Beckett asks.
“They will not expect me to Know this way.” Which isn’t really an answer.
“But … ” Jillian begins.
“We need to gather light,” I say, lifting one of the old glass jars from its sconce. I reach between a set of feelers and pluck a fuzzy, bright glowworm from between the flowers. When I gently close my fist, it looks like I’m holding one of the moons.
“So the walls aren’t … glowing by themselves?” Jillian asks.
I raise a brow, and then I say, “We should not talk.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Beckett. They just rinse their jars in the river water, like I show them, and I’m not too tired to enjoy Jillian’s squeamishness while she collects her light. Half-full and the jars become squirming lanterns, bright and undimming.
Beckett kneels again on the stone of the riverbank when he’s done with his jar and takes off the magnifiers. It makes him look so much more … human. Then he does something completely alien, pulls a little fastener at the top of his baggy clothes, and makes the cloth split like it was cut with a knife. He sticks his whole head in the water, washing away the dirt and blood, and when he lifts it out again, I can just see that beneath the outer clothes he’s wearing some kind of tight, white tunic. And yes, he’s hiding the body of a harvest worker under there.
Beckett shakes his head, spraying droplets into the light, and in some miraculous way, sews the cloth of his clothes back together. And I feel guilty. Alien or no, I should have looked at that gash on his head. I glance at Jillian, who was also looking at Beckett, and who is now looking at me. Looking at Beckett.
And my memory flashes. To Sonia in an unguarded moment, the way she looked at Jane Chemist when Jane noticed the pretty face of Sonia’s boy from Outside. I Know that expression on Jill’s face. And it changes the way I was thinking about the two of them completely.
“What are they called?” Beckett asks.
I start. I think I was just staring at the walls. The magnifiers are back on, blue and purple light reflecting on the glass. And then he smiles, and that is as familiar to me as the clinging plants.
“Wafting flowers,” I say. “They clean the air.” I turn away. “We should hurry.” I said the Council wouldn’t expect me to Know this path, and I don’t think they’re looking for me to come back to the city. But that doesn’t mean they won’t travel this way once the sun is down. I push our pace.
The flowers thin and disappear, the river gushing dark outside the circle of our blue-white lights, and we pass more empty sconces, the beginnings of a stairway cut into stone, now choked with fallen rock. Water drips, running down the walls, and when I go back in my memory and compare the steps, I’m certain we’re beneath the lake that must have been the lower end of the city.
Beckett catches up, walking just behind me. I think he wants to talk. Ask me questions. I walk a little faster. And now my mind skips to him standing in the hidden room, the technology off his face, arms over his head in the hazy beam of light. And in a blink that’s gone and I’m wrapped in a blanket, surrounded by Mother’s arms, and there is the Beckett of my dream, with the different eyes and shorter hair.
And then Nita is sitting cross-legged on the end of my bed, telling me about a weaver that kissed her, and how she prefers a metalworker instead. And I’m clutching my cup of tea, hugging the pillow that would one day take her life close beneath my chin, drinking in her words like spoiled honeymead, sweet with the bitter. Because if I ever loved, I thought, it would only be once …
I jerk myself into the present, let out a tiny puff of breath. I am in the caves, holding a jar of light, leading two aliens in a row of silence. But the memories are there, lurking, and the boundaries inside my head are dissolving like mist. I need to cache. Order my mind. Sleep.
I can’t. Adam used to tell me to run when memories came. Occupy my mind. That’s what he did with his rope swing. I walk faster, keeping Jillian at a trot, climbing over and around boulders that are irregular, and yet somehow monotonous. The way beside the Torrens begins to climb, narrowing, the river squeezed into a smaller, deeper channel of white water and froth. Glimpses of spray get caught in the range of my light, and the water noise funnels into a single, constant roar. The pack weighs heavy on my back, the jar cool in my hand. I blink. Blink again, and I am drifting down, soft …
… into darkness and heat. I am underwater, held tight, and there is noise, muffled sounds that reverberate through and around my body, a deep thrum and whoosh, rhythmic, like water. And I Know where I am. I am unborn, and while the feeling is one of safety, of being embraced, my adult mind Knows that I cannot move. That I am pressed in on all sides, trapped, breathing liquid …
I gasp, lungs burning, and when I open my eyes I’m on the ground and Beckett has his hand on my neck, peering deep into my face with the magnifiers. I scramble backward over the rocks, out of his grip.