As soon as the door to the resting room shuts behind Beckett, my mind begins to tilt, teeter—pulled down on one side, jerked to the other, memories vying for the privilege of dragging me under.
There is a humanness to our facial expressions, and the Knowing learn to recognize them. Quickly. It’s why we work so hard at hiding our own. And there is one I’ve seen before, a reflex, like a hand coming up to cover a cut, a kind of looking inward at unexpected pain. I saw it on Sonia’s face, the first time her boy from Outside did not come to the Level Eight storage rooms. On Uncle Towlend, when he learned Aunt Letitia was no longer in the city. And I saw it on the face of Beckett Rodriguez, when I told him he could not come with me Underneath. My answer hurt him. And I think a deep part of my mind Knew what that meant before I did.
Beckett loves me. At least a little. Whether he realizes it or not.
And I am so angry about it.
I stop pacing, sit on the bench, and put my head in my hands. Why? Why would he feel like that? How did this happen? All my life I’ve been able to avoid this. It wasn’t even hard. And then I meet a boy from Earth, the enemy, who is inexplicable, whose planet I can’t even trust, and I go to him like a dustmoth to lantern flame. It doesn’t make sense. And yet here it is. My “once.” Ruining me. And now it’s him, too, until he can forget. I never will. Unless I’m healed. Or dead.
I cannot let Beckett go Underneath.
Michael wakes up then, hardly even groggy, with none of the aching sickness he would’ve had with a sleeping draught from the city. He’s sore, though, and very willing to lie where he is. I get him dressed, gently, and then Angela, his mother, comes back from the fuelmaking sheds. Michael’s arms cling to my neck while I give her instructions for his eating and rest. They feel warm. Trusting. I hand him over to Angela. Lurking memories seize me. I seize myself back.
At least I will always be able to remember one thing: The time my Knowing did some good.
Unless I Forget it.
I walk Michael’s mother to the door, smile, struggle to stay present. And at the click of the latch, I plunge, like the floor planks opened up beneath my feet, and I am …
… in the Archiva receiving rooms, and there’s a lamp lit beside the mirror, shining down on my mother in a blue-silver chair, my father in the one opposite. Mother has a low table set in front of her, sprinkled with the multicolored picture tiles. The pieces tap sharp on the wood as Mother picks them up, sets them down, making patterns, or a picture, and then doing it all over again.
This game is supposed to distract the mind while promoting creativity, which the Knowing lack. Mostly the Knowing just remember what someone did before, rather than thinking of something new. And it’s the sort of game Mother likes. Orderly. With pieces that are predictable and do not change. Where she can construct what she wants, and then take it apart again.
I have a set of tiles, too, spread out on the floor. There are nine marks on my arms, and my hands are already lanky, skinny as I move them back and forth. But I keep making the same picture Mother does.
“Mother,” I say. “Do you love anyone?” I’m curious because we’ve just come back from a partnering, and the man looked so happy.
“Samara,” Mother says, her voice gone sharp. And I freeze. I Know I’ve done wrong. My father, who I think was pretending to sleep when he was really in a memory, opens his eyes. “Retrieve the memory of your last visit to your uncle,” she says.
I find the memory, and then I am eight years old, and there is Uncle Towlend, thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.
“That,” she says, when I open my eyes, “is the result of love. Your uncle was happy at his partnering, too. Now retrieve the memory again.”
I don’t want to, but I do it. It’s worse to tell her no. And Uncle Towlend is thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.
“Again, Samara.”
Uncle Towlend is thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.
“Eight more times.”
Mother’s tiles slide and click, and my own tears are spilling.
And then my father says, “I remember love … ”
I rise inside my mind, and fall …
… and Nita is writhing with happiness, blushing as she talks about her metalworker …
… and then I rise and fall again, a gentle wave …
… and it is the waking, and I am laying a brand-new baby in its father’s arms …
I fall and I rise, and fall …
… into the Bartering Square, where Josef is tied to the post, and I am sick, sick, and Carma Planter is holding his head in her hands, spattered by every crack of the whip, because she will not leave him …
… and I am falling, and I Know this descent, because I’ve taken it so many times. I welcome it, pull it closer …
… and the pain of Adam is inside me, hot and searing, but Beckett’s arm is around me, too, his other hand cradling the back of my head. My face is against warm skin, tucked beneath the roughness of a jaw, and I breathe his smell, feel his pulse beneath my hand, his breath across my hair, the tightening of his hold. And my grief is soothed, comforted …
I retrieve the memory again. And again. And the last time I let it go on, and I feel Beckett’s mouth, his cheek beneath my palm, my fingers in his hair. And I retrieve it again, only this time sooner, drifting down until I am crying in the crook of Beckett’s neck, my soul ripped to shreds by watching Adam die, whispering …
“There is a way … to Forget. I ran to the Cursed City looking for it.”
And Beckett whispers back, “Did you find it?”
“No.”
“Then let me help you find it … ”
I open my eyes. Ari is running pell-mell through the front room from the workshop, wet from the pond, and I am on the floor, knees to chest, back against the wall below the window. There are voices above me in the loft. Nathan, Jasmina. Jillian. And when I sort back through my memory, I realize that Nathan came home, made tea with Jillian, and took her up to the loft while I sat here, lost on the floor with Beckett.
I let my embarrassment slide away like it’s been cached. Beckett thinks I don’t have to be Knowing. That I might not need to Forget. But I want to live without pain. Without grief. I also don’t want to lose my memories of him. I want to remember how to fix things, like Michael. And yet, I’m not sure if I can live with the memories I’ve got.
And none of this, I realize, is why I was angry. I was angry because I am afraid.
Annis comes in then, a little out of breath, holding her hair off her neck. I think she’s been chasing Ari. She looks me over. “Are you well?”
I don’t answer. I’m huddled on the floor. But she’s seen me like this before. Only that was for Adam.
This is different.
We eat the resting meal together, all of us, and I’m only half present. I don’t speak to Beckett, even when he tries to talk to me. And I don’t go Underneath, either. I have one more waking, one more resting before the Changing of the Seasons, and for all my Knowing, I can’t decide what to do.