“No,” I said.
“Maybe they don’t have access to red tablets,” Xander said. “I work at the medical center, and I don’t even know where the Society keeps the red ones. It’s somewhere away from the blue and the green.”
“Or it might be that the rebellion only asks people to join who won’t turn them in,” I said.
“How could they know that?”
“Some of them are still in the Society,” I reminded him. “They have our data. They can try to predict what we’ll do.” I paused. “And they’re right. You won’t turn them in because you joined. I won’t turn them in because I didn’t.” And because I’m an Aberration, I thought but didn’t say. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself. Especially with a report about a rebellion.
“Why don’t you join?” Xander asked. There wasn’t any mockery in his tone. He only wanted to know. For the first time since I’d known him I saw something like fear in his eyes.
“Because I don’t believe in it,” I told him.
Xander and I were never sure if the rebellion had approached Cassia. And we didn’t know if she’d taken a red tablet. We couldn’t ask her either question without putting her in danger.
Later, when I saw her reading those two poems in the forest, I thought I’d made the wrong choice. I thought she had the Tennyson poem because it was a Rising poem, and I’d missed my chance to be in the rebellion with her. But then I found out that the poem she truly loved was the other one. She chose her own way. And I fell even more deeply in love with her.
“Do you really want to join the Rising?” I ask Indie.
“Yes,” Indie says. “Yes.”
“No,” I tell her. “You want it now. You might be happy there for a few months, a few years, but it’s not you.”
“You don’t know me,” she says.
“Yes, I do,” I say. I lean in fast and close and touch her hand again. She holds her breath. “Forget about all this,” I say. “We don’t need the Rising. The farmers are out there. We’ll all go together, you and me and Cassia and Eli. Somewhere new. What happened to the girl who wanted to leave and lose sight of the shore?” I grab her hand tight and hold on.
Indie looks up, her face stunned. When Cassia told me Indie’s story, I realized what had happened. Indie had told the version about her mother and the boat and the water so many times that she began to believe it too.
But now she remembers what she’s trying to forget. That it wasn’t about her mother. It was about her. After hearing her mother’s song all her life, Indie built the boat and caused her own Reclassification. She failed to find the Rising. She never even lost sight of the shore. And, eventually, the Society sent her away from the ocean to die in the desert.
I know it happened that way because I know Indie. She’s not the kind of person to watch someone else build a boat and set sail without her.
Indie wants to find the Rising so badly she can’t see anything else. Certainly not me. I’m even worse than she thought I was.
“I’m sorry, Indie,” I say, and I feel sorry. I ache all over with how sorry I am for what I’m about to do. “But the Rising can’t save any of us. I’ve seen what happens when you join with them.” I strike a match at the edge of the map. Indie cries out but I hold her off. The fire licks the edge of the fabric.
“No,” Indie cries, trying to snatch the map again. I push her away. She looks around but we both left our canteens back in the cave. “No,” Indie cries out again, and pushes past me out the door.
I don’t try to stop her. Whatever she tries to do — catch the rain or go to the river for water — will take too long. The map is as good as gone. The air fills again with the scent of burning.
CHAPTER 38
CASSIA
It’s hard to concentrate on the words before me when I wonder what is being said outside the cave in the night. I find myself reading poetry again, the next part of the I did not reach Thee poem:
The poem ends there, though I can tell other stanzas come after. The next page is missing from the book. But even in these few brief lines I hear the poet speaking to me. Though gone, but she or he still has a voice.
Why don’t I?
Suddenly, I realize that this is why I’m so drawn to this author’s poetry. Not only the words themselves, but a sense of how she could put them down and make them her own.
There’s no time for this now, I remind myself. The next box is full of books that look similar to one another; they all have the word LEDGER carved into the leather of their covers. I pick up one and read some of the lines inside:
Thirteen pages of history, for five blue tablets. Trader fee: one blue tablet.
One poem, Rita Dove, original printing, for information regarding the movements of the Society. Trader fee: access to information exchanged.
One novel, Ray Bradbury, third printing, for one datapod and four panes of glass from a Restoration site. Trader fee: two panes of glass.
One page of the Book, for three vials medicine. Trader fee: nothing. Trader was executing a personal trade on his own behalf.
So this is how the trades were done and why so many of the books here are torn, the pages loose. The farmers put books back together, but they also had to take them apart, determine their worth, trade them away in bits and pieces. The thought makes me sad, though of course it was what they had to do.
It’s like what the Archivists do, and what I did when I kept the tablets and traded the compass.
The tablets. Xander’s notes. Did he hide something secret inside? I tear into the packet and put the contents out on the table in two rows: one of blue tablets, one of scraps.
None of the papers say anything about a secret.
Predicted occupations: Official.
Predicted chance of success: 99.9 %.
Predicted life span: 80 years.
Line after line of information I already know or could have guessed.
I feel eyes on me. Someone stands in the door of the cave. I look up, shine my light across the sandy floor, begin to push the tablets and scraps into my bag. “Ky,” I begin. “I was just—”
The figure is too tall to be Ky. Frightened, I move the light up to his face and he shields his eyes with his hands. Dried blood runs down his blue-marked arms.
“Hunter,” I say. “You came back.”
“I wanted to escape,” Hunter says.
At first I think he means from the Cavern, and then I realize he’s answering the question Indie asked before we climbed—Which did you want?
“But you couldn’t go,” I say, realizing. The papers left on the table in front of me flutter as he comes closer. “Because of Sarah.”
“She was dying,” Hunter said. “She couldn’t be moved.”
“The others wouldn’t wait for you?” I ask, shocked.
“There wasn’t time,” Hunter says. “It could have compromised the whole escape. Others who weren’t fast enough to cross decided to fight, but she was a child, and she was far too ill.” A muscle in his cheek twitches and when he blinks tears run down his face. He ignores them. “I made an agreement with the others who stayed. I helped them rig their explosives up on the Carving, and they let me leave to be with Sarah instead of waiting for the fight.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know why it didn’t work. The ships should have come down.”