“When the council cast you out, it broke my heart.”
Lev turns to see Elina coming out onto the terrace, carrying a tray with a teapot and a mug, setting it down on a small table.
“I knew you weren’t responsible for what happened to Wil,” she tells him, “but there was a lot of anger back then.”
“But not now?”
She sits in the chair beside his and hands him a mug of steaming tea instead of answering. “Drink. It’s getting chilly.”
Lev sips his tea. Bitter herbs sweetened with honey. No doubt a potent brew of healing steeped by the modern medicine woman.
“Does the council know I’m here?”
She hesitates. “Not officially.”
“If they know officially, will they cast me out again?”
Unlike her tea, her answer is honest and unsweetened. “Maybe. I don’t know for sure. Feelings about you are mixed. When you became a clapper, some people thought it heroic.”
“Did you?”
“No,” she says coldly, then with much more warmth says, “I knew you had lost your way.”
The understatement is enough to make Lev laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.”
She turns to look across the ravine at the lengthening shadows and the neighbors trying to look as if they’re not looking. “Pivane took it very hard. He refused to even speak of you.”
Lev is not surprised. Her brother-in-law is very old-school when it comes to dealing with the world outside of the rez. While her husband, Chal, seems to spend more time off the rez than on, Pivane is a hunter and models his life much more on ancestral ways.
“He never liked me much,” Lev says.
Elina reaches out to touch his hand. “You’re wrong about that. He wouldn’t speak of you because it hurt too much.” Then she hesitates, looking down at his hand clasped in hers rather than in his eyes. “And because, like me, he felt partially responsible for you becoming a clapper.”
Lev looks to her, thrown by the suggestion. “That’s just stupid.”
“Is it? If we had gone against the council. If we had insisted you stay—”
“—then it would have been horrible. For all of us. You would look at me and remember how Wil sacrificed himself to save me.”
“And to save Kele and all the other kids on that vision quest.” The doctor leans back in her chair. Still unable to look at him for any length of time, she looks across the arroyo and waves to a staring neighbor. The woman waves back, then self-consciously adjusts the potted plants on her terrace.
“Look at me, Elina,” Lev says, and waits until she does. “When I left here, I was on my way to a terrible place. A place where all I wanted to do was share my anger with the world. You didn’t make that anger. My parents did. The Juvies did. The lousy parts pirates who took Wil did. Not you!”
Lev closes his eyes, trying to ward off the memory of that one awful day. Like Pivane, Lev finds the pain of it too much to bear. He takes a deep breath, keeping the memory and all the emotions it holds at bay, then opens his eyes once more. “So I went to that terrible place inside . . . . I went to hell. But in the end I came back.”
Elina grins at him. “And now you’re here.”
Lev nods. “And now I’m here.” Although he has no idea where he’ll be tomorrow.
• • •
Lev comes out to the great room after the sun sets.
“You’re alive,” Connor says when he sees him. Connor is tense, but his stress level does look a little bit lower.
“Surprised?”
“Yeah, every time I see you.”
Connor wears a designer Arápache shirt with a coarse weave and a tailored fit, to replace the rank shirt he had taken from the deputy. It looks good on him, but it’s also an odd disconnect. Lev finds it hard to allow Connor and the rez to share the same space in his mind.
“Love the ponytail,” Connor says, pointing at his hair.
Lev shrugs. “It’s just because my hair is so tatted. But maybe I’ll keep it.”
“Don’t,” Connor tells him. “I lied. I hate it.”
That makes Lev laugh, which makes his side hurt, and he grimaces.
The greetings now begin to feel like a receiving line. Kele comes up to Lev, looking awkward. He was a head shorter than Lev when they last saw each other. Now he’s almost the same height.
“Hi, Lev. I’m glad you came back and that you didn’t come back dead.”
Kele will continue to grow, but Lev will not. Stunted growth. That’s what he gets for lacing his blood with explosive chemicals.
Pivane is there, cooking dinner. A stew of fresh meat—something he probably shot in the wild today. Pivane’s greeting, reserved at first, ends in a hug that hurts, but Lev doesn’t let on. Only Grace keeps her distance, ignoring Lev. Even after their desperate road trip here, she’s still not sure what to make of him. It isn’t until the middle of dinner that she finally speaks to him.
“So how do you know you won’t still blow up?”
And in the awkward silence that follows, Kele says, “I was kinda wondering that too.”
Lev makes his eyes wide. “Maybe I will,” he says ominously, then waits a few seconds and shouts “BOOM!” It makes everyone jump—but no one quite as much as Grace, who spills her stew and lets loose a stream of curses that makes everyone burst out laughing.
After dinner everyone goes about their own business, and Connor gets him alone.
“So what’s the deal here?” he asks quietly. “How do you know all these people?”
Lev takes a deep breath. He owes Connor an explanation, although he’d rather not give it. “Before I showed up at the Graveyard, I came here, and they gave me sanctuary for a while,” Lev tells him. “They almost adopted me into the tribe. Almost. It all got ruined by parts pirates. They cornered a bunch of us out in the woods, and Elina’s son—”
“Wil?”
“Yes, Wil. He offered himself in exchange for the rest of our lives.”
Connor considers this. “Since when do parts pirates negotiate?”
“They were looking for something special. And Wil was something special. I’ve never heard anyone play guitar like he played. Once they had him, they didn’t care about the rest of us. Anyway, since I was there, and I was an outsider, I kind of became the scapegoat. There was no staying after that.”
Connor nods and doesn’t press for more details. Instead he looks toward the window. Outside not much can be seen in the dark but the lights of other homes across the ravine. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” Connor warns.
“I’m already comfortable,” Lev tells him, and leaves before Connor can say anything more.
• • •
The cliff-side home is spacious. The individual bedrooms are small but numerous, and all of them open to the great room, which serves as living room, dining room, and kitchen. Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, Lev checks out the room that was Wil’s. He thinks they might have kept it as it was, but they haven’t. They haven’t redesigned it for anyone else either. Wil’s room is now empty of furniture and decorations. Nothing but bare stone walls.
“No one will use this room again,” Elina tells Lev. “At least not in my lifetime.” As everyone begins to settle down for the night, Lev goes looking for Pivane. There’s been more awkwardness between them than Lev has found with anyone else, and Lev hopes he can bridge the gap. He expects to find the man down on the first floor, creek-bed level, in the workroom, tinkering with something. Perhaps preparing hides for tanning. Instead he finds someone he wasn’t expecting.
She sits there at the workbench, her hair pulled back in a colorful tie, looking exactly the same as Lev remembers. Una.
Una was Wil’s fiancée and must have been more devastated than anyone when Wil was taken by the parts pirates and unwound. After that, his petition to join the tribe was quickly denied, Pivane had driven him to the gate, and Lev was set loose without ever saying good-bye to Una. Lev had been glad for that at the time. He’d had no idea what to say to her then, and he has no idea what to say now, so he lingers in the shadows, not wanting to step into the light.