Our front door opens and Mother gets up to greet Martina Tutor and Jane Chemist. Jane won’t look at me, either. And then comes Craddock, and his sister, holding her newest baby. Himmat from the gates. Marcus and Reddix Physicianson. Some of these are not our usual guests. Reddix goes to stand with my father, near the mirrored wall just beyond my chair. Reddix, who all my mother’s hopes were pinned on, who was going to eat a resting meal with us. Has he told what he Knows?
I try to catch his eye, but I can’t do anything without drawing the attention of the room. It’s too quiet, only the slightest murmur of conversation. Then my mother stands again, heels clicking across the floor stones, dress swishing as she walks to our front door and quietly turns the lock. And faint inside my head, Adam is screaming and screaming …
“It’s good to be together,” Mother says, loud and to the whole room, “united in memory and in our pursuit of beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice. Thorne, would you make sure everyone has a glass?”
This should be the job of our help, but for the first time I realize that there is no Outsider in this room. No one coming in and out to take care of our needs. But Thorne says nothing about this subtle slight, doesn’t protest as he approaches the table. We all watch him pour ten glasses of the pale green amrita, sparkling in the light of the table lamps, in the reflections of the mirrors, the smell wafting across the room. He hands a glass to each person. The eleventh glass was already filled. And it’s this one he hands to me.
I will drink nothing from the hand of Thorne Councilman.
Everyone who wasn’t already standing gets to their feet. Except for me. Thorne lifts his glass and says the words for the dark days. The words we could all say ourselves, if we wanted to, that he is supposed to be saying seven bells from now, in the Forum. His voice is somehow smaller than my mother’s.
“Those who remember now remember the stars, from beyond which we came, because our Knowing is our history, never to be forgotten. When we have Knowing, we Know our truth.”
“Know our truth.” The room says it together, a soft murmur. But instead of drinking, Thorne goes on, his voice slow and deliberate.
“And we, the noble wardens, the guardians of memory, the architects of Knowing, the builders of the Superior Earth, honor beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice, and drink to the dark of the new world.”
“To the dark,” they say together, and ten glasses are drained in unison.
I do nothing. I don’t Know these words. I don’t Know what they mean.
“Darling,” says Mother. “You didn’t drink.”
I feel the weight of every eye in the room. Mother’s necklace, engraved “NWSE,” winks in the light. I lift the glass, tip it against my mouth, but I don’t let the liquid touch my lips.
“You must drink, Samara,” my mother says.
“Why?”
The atmosphere of the room tenses, tightens. “Because you are one of the Knowing. Drink.”
I look at Mother, at Thorne, her son’s killer, at the solemn faces of the people who hunted me in the Cursed City. I can’t see Reddix, or my father. Mother waits, one painted nail tapping against the glass. I raise my eyes to her.
“No.”
She nods once, and the room erupts. Thorne snatches my glass, and Craddock and Marcus Physicianson each grab one of my arms before I’m aware of what’s happening. I scream, kick, thrash until I get one arm free, but Martina Tutor comes to help, and Jane, and it doesn’t take them long to pin me to the chair. I’m still fighting, and I’ve kicked someone hard at least twice. But it’s not doing me any good.
Mother comes into the range of my vision. “Samara, this is unnecessary and unhelpful. It’s time to drink now.” Her tone is the same she used when I was a child, when my memories came.
I shake my head. Thorne brings the glass and someone forces my mouth open. He pours it in, but I don’t swallow. I spit it in his face. I taste amrita. And something a little bitter.
“Prepare another glass, Thorne.”
“Father!” I yell. “Daddy!” I haven’t said that since I was two.
“You’ll have to drink now, Samara,” Reddix whispers near my ear. He must be one of the ones holding my arms now. “I promise, it will be all right … ”
I don’t think he can promise me that this will be all right in any way at all. I’m helpless, and Adam is screaming while his bones break, and Nita is dying, and I cannot fix it and I cannot change it. And there is no one to help me. No one at all. Where is my father? The new glass is coming.
“Marcus,” says my mother, nodding.
This time, hands take my face and tilt my head back, so that the light of the ceiling lamp wavers through my tears. My nose is pinched, mouth forced open, and the amrita goes down. I choke, gag, and they let me go, let me fall forward onto my hands and knees, coughing. I taste the bitter with the amrita, a warmth spreading down my throat and into my stomach. Is this what Adam felt, and Nita, when they ate bitterblack?
I look up, a circle of faces staring back at me, then spring to my feet and stumble backward, knocking a wall mirror to the floor, where it shatters. Mother folds her hands. And only now do I realize just how little my hope can live on. Because only now have I found a single sprig of it, a tiny hidden sprout in a stony dark, the hope that one day, my mother might love me. And I have only just found it, because I have just felt it die.
I do not want these people to watch me die, and I will not let them enjoy my suffering. I won’t show it to them.
“Today is not just one day of celebration, Samara,” my mother says, as if I’m not standing dripping and bruised and poisoned in a glitter of broken glass. “Today we change the seasons, but it is also a special year. A twelfth year, and as you Know, that is the time for Judgment.”
“It’s not time for Judgment yet.”
“But it is time. You have made it so.”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I can’t believe Craddock’s sister is going to let her baby remember this. “Who are you to judge me?”
There’s a spatter of soft laughter. The warmth is spreading through me, but there’s no pain in my fingers. Yet.
“You have not been an asset to the Knowing, Samara. You lack control and the willingness to participate in our society.” She pauses, and I wonder why I ever wanted this woman to love me. “You have stolen Knowing, written Knowing, shared Knowing, and mixed with the Outside. But most of all, you have betrayed us.”
I am surrounded by faces, eyes, my mother in the center with her perfect braids. Betrayed them. To Earth. They Know about Beckett. I slide down the wall, feel the sting of glass cutting into my knee.
“You have turned against your people, Samara, your birthright, by aiding and assisting the rebels of the Outside. You have shared our most precious weapon … ”