by Ally Condie
That bare, brown place is the Hill.
I start to bring the ship down. We get closer and closer to the ground. Trees along the streets turn large. The ground rushes at us. The buildings become familiar instead of generic.
At the last second, I pull the ship back up.
I feel Indie looking at me. I’ve never done this before in the months we’ve been running in supplies.
“Landing wasn’t right,” I say into the speakers. It happens. It will go down on my record as an error. But I have to see the Hill again, closer.
We come up in the opposite direction and head for the Hill, dropping lower than I should so I can get a good look.
“Is something wrong?” one of the fighters asks over the speaker.
“No,” I say. “I’m bringing it in.”
I’ve seen what I needed to see. The ground is bare. It’s been completely bulldozed. Burned. Butchered. It’s like the Hill never knew trees. Parts of the Hill have sloughed downward, no longer anchored by the roots of living things.
The little piece of green silk from Cassia’s dress is no longer tied to a tree on the top of the Hill, wearing out into white with wind and rain and sun. Our buried scraps of poems have been exhumed and reburied and pushed farther under.
They’ve killed the Hill.
I land the ship. Behind me, I hear Caleb open the hold and start dragging out the cases. I sit and stare straight ahead.
I want to be back there, on the Hill, with Cassia. I want it so much I think it might destroy me. All these months have passed and we’re still apart. I put my head in my hands.
“Ky?” Indie asks. “Are you all right?” She puts her hand on my shoulder for a second. Then she lets go and, without looking at me, goes down to help Caleb.
I’m grateful to her for both the touch and the solitude, but neither lasts long.
“Ky?” Indie calls out. “Come see this.”
“What?” I ask, climbing down into the hold. Indie points at a spot near the floor, concealed earlier by the cases. Someone has scratched into the metal of the ship and carved images into the walls. It reminds me of the pictures back in the Carving.
“They’re drinking the sky,” Indie says.
She’s right. It’s not rain that the picture shows, not like one I drew once back in the Borough. It’s different—broken pieces of sky falling to the ground and people picking them up and tipping water out of them.
“It makes me thirsty,” Indie says.
“Look,” I say, pointing to the figure coming down from the sky. “Who do you think this is?”
“The Pilot, of course,” she says.
“Did you draw these?” I ask Caleb, who’s appeared at the top of the hold, ready for more cargo.
“Draw what?” he asks.
“The pictures carved into the side of the ship.”
“No,” he says. “It must have been one of the other runners. I’d never vandalize the Rising’s property.”
I hand up another case.
We finish our delivery and head for the ship. As we walk, Indie falls back. I turn around to see her talking to Caleb. He shakes his head. Indie steps closer to him. She’s lifted her chin and I know exactly what her eyes must look like.
She’s challenging him about something.
Caleb shakes his head again. His posture looks tense.
“Tell me,” I hear Indie saying. “Now. We should know.”
“No,” he says. “You’re not even the pilot on this flight. Leave it alone.”
“Ky’s flying,” she says. “He had to come all the way here, back to his home Province. Do you know how hard that must be? What if you had to go back to Keya, or wherever it is that you’re from? He should at least know what we’re doing.”
“We’re bringing in supplies,” he says.
“That’s not all we’re doing,” she says.
He steps around her. “If the Pilot wanted you to know,” he says over his shoulder, “you would.”
“You know you’re nothing more than a runner, even to the Pilot,” Indie says. “He doesn’t think of you as his.”
Caleb takes a step back and I see hatred on his face for Indie.
Because she’s right. She knows what Caleb hopes for. It’s the dream of every parentless, orphaned worker of the Rising—to make the Pilot so proud that he’d claim them as his own kin. It’s Indie’s dream too.
Indie finds me later out in the field near the camp. She sits down and takes a deep breath. At first I think she’s going to try to make me feel better by talking about things that don’t matter, but Indie has never been very good at that.
“We could try it,” she says. “We could make a run for Central if you want.”
“It’s not an option,” I say. “The fighters would shoot us down.”
“You’d try it if it weren’t for me,” Indie says.
“Yes,” I agree. “And Caleb.” I’m finished with the selfishness that let me leave everyone behind on the plains and take only Vick and Eli into the Carving. Caleb is part of our group. When I fly, he’s my responsibility. I can’t risk him either. Cassia wouldn’t want other people to die just so I could find her.
And if the Pilot is telling the truth, it doesn’t matter. The Plague’s under control. Everything will be all right soon, and I can find Cassia and we can be together. I want to believe in the Pilot. Sometimes I do.
“Back in camp, when we were training,” I say, “did you ever fly with him?”
“Yes,” Indie says simply. “That’s how I knew he was the Pilot, even before they told us. His flying . . .” She stops, at a loss for words, and then her face brightens. “It was like the picture we saw today carved into the ship,” she says. “It felt like I was drinking the sky.”
“So you trust him?” I ask.
Indie nods.
“But you’d still run the risk of going to Central with me.”
“Yes,” Indie says, “if that’s what you wanted.” She looks at me as if she’s trying to see inside me. I’d like her to smile. That beautiful, wide, wise, innocent, devious smile of hers.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“I want to see you smile,” I tell her.
And then she does—sudden, delighted—and I grin back.
The grass rustles with the breeze. Indie leans a little closer. Her face is radiant and hopeful and raw. It feels like some new hole has been torn in my heart.
“What’s to keep us from flying together?” Indie whispers. “You and me?” I can barely hear her above the wind rustling the grass, but I know the way this question sounds from her. She’s asked something like it before.
“Cassia,” I say. “I’m in love with Cassia. You know that.” There’s no uncertainty in my voice.
“I know,” she says, and there’s no apology in hers.
When Indie wants something badly enough, her instinct is to jump.
Like Cassia.
Indie breathes in and then she moves.
She moves to me.
Her hands slide into my hair, her lips press against mine.
Nothing like Cassia.
I pull back, breathless. “Indie,” I say.
“I had to,” she says. “I’m not sorry.”
CHAPTER 17
CASSIA
Someone’s coming into the Archivists’ hiding place; I hear their feet on the stairs. Since I’m waiting in the main area with the others, I shine my flashlight up like the rest. The figure stops, expecting us.
Once I see who it is—a trader I’ve passed down here before—I drop my light. But many of the others don’t. She’s trapped there like a moth. A nearby Archivist signals for me to bring my light back up and so I do, blinking, though the girl standing in th
e doorway is the one caught in the glare.
“Samara Rourke,” the head Archivist says. “You should not be here.”
The girl laughs nervously. She wears a bulky pack and she shifts it down a little.
“Don’t move,” the head Archivist says. “We’ll escort you out.”
“I’m allowed to trade here,” Samara says. “You’re the one who showed me where this place is.”
“You are no longer welcome,” the head Archivist says. She’s somewhere in the shadows, and then she steps forward, pointing the beam of her flashlight right into the girl’s eyes. This is the Archivists’ place. They decide who stays in shadows and shades and who has to face the light.
“Why?” Samara asks, her voice finally faltering a little.
“You know why,” the Archivist says. “Do you want everyone else to know as well?”
The girl licks her lips. “You should see what I found,” she says. “I promise you’re going to want to know . . .” She reaches for the pack at her side.
“Samara cheated,” the Archivist says, her voice every bit as powerful as the Pilot’s. It resonates around the room. None of the lights waver and when I close my eyes I can still see their bright spots and the girl’s nervous, blinded expression. “Someone gave an item to Samara to trade on their behalf. She brought it here. We assessed its value, accepted it, and gave an item in return, with a separate, smaller item for the trader fee. And then Samara kept both.”
There are crooked traders in the world, plenty of them. But they don’t usually dare to try to work with the Archivists.
“You’re not out anything,” Samara says to the Archivist. “You got your payment.” Her attempt at defiance makes me ache with pity. What made her do this? Surely she knew she’d get caught. “If anyone should get to punish me, it’s the person I stole from.”
“No,” the head Archivist says. “You undermine us when you steal.”
Three of the Archivists drop their lights and move forward.
My heart pounds and I step back a little farther into the shadows. Though I come down here often, I’m not an Archivist. At any time my privileges—which are more than those afforded to most traders—could be revoked.
I hear the click of scissors and the head Archivist steps back, holding Samara’s red bracelet up in the air. Samara looks ashen but unharmed, and in the lights still directed on her, I can see her sleeve pulled up and her bare wrist where the bracelet used to be.
“People should know,” the Archivist says to the room at large, “that they can trust when they trade with us. What has happened here undermines everything. Now we will have to pay the price of the trade.” The others have dropped their lights down now and so her voice is the most recognizable part of her; her face is in shadows. “Paying the price for another is not something we like to do.” Then her tone changes and the incident is over, finished. “You may all go back to your trades.”
I don’t move. Who’s to say I wouldn’t do what Samara did, if something passed through my hands that I needed for someone else? Because I think that’s what happened. I don’t think Samara risked this for herself.
I feel a hand on my elbow and I turn to see who it is.
It’s the head Archivist herself. “Come with me,” she says. “There’s something I need to show you.”
She brings me through rows of shelves and through a long dark hall, her grip firm on my arm. And now we’re in another vast room ribbed with metal shelves, but these are all filled. They’re lined with everything anyone could ever want, every lost piece of a past, every fragment of a future.
Other Archivists move among the shelves while some stand guard. This room has other lights, strung along the ceiling and glowing faintly. I catch a glimpse of cases and boxes and containers of uneven sizes. You would need a map to find your way through a place like this.
I know where we are before she tells me, even though I’ve never been here before. The Archives. It’s a little like seeing the Pilot for the first time; I’ve always known of the existence of this place, but to confront it face to face makes me want to sing or weep or run away; I’m not certain which.
“The Archives are filled with treasures,” the Archivist says, “and I know every one.”
Her hair shines golden in this light, as if she is one of the treasures she guards. Then she turns to look at me.
“Not many people have been here,” she says.
Then why me? I wonder.
“There are many stories that have passed through my hands,” the Archivist says. “I always liked the one about a girl who was tasked with turning straw into gold. An impossible piece of work, but she managed it more than once. That’s what this job is like.”
The Archivist walks partway down an aisle and lifts a case from the shelf. She opens it and inside I see rows and rows of paper-wrapped bars. She takes one of them out and holds it up. “If I could,” she says,“I would stay in here all day. This is where I began my work as an Archivist. I sorted the items and cataloged them.” She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, and I find myself doing the same.
The scent coming from the case is familiar, a memory, but I can’t place it at first. My heart beats a bit more quickly and I have a sudden rush of remembered anger; unexpected, out of place. And then I know.
“It’s chocolate,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “When was the last time you had any?”
“My Match Banquet,” I say.
“Of course,” she says. She closes the case and reaches for another and opens it. I see glints of silver that at first I think are boxes from Banquets but instead are forks, knives, spoons. Then another case, this one handled even more gently than the others, and inside I see pieces of china, bone white and fragile as ice. Then we move to another aisle and she shows me rings with red and green and blue and white stones, and over again to another row, where she takes out books with pictures so rich and beautiful I have to hold my hands together so that I won’t touch the pages.
There is so much wealth in here. Even if I wouldn’t trade for silver or chocolate, I understand why someone else would.
“Before the Society,” the head Archivist says, “people used to use money. There were coins—some of them gold—and crisp green papers. They’d trade it with each other and it represented different things.”
“How did it work?” I ask.
“Say I was hungry,” the Archivist says. “I’d give someone five of the papers and they’d give me some food.”
“But then what would they do with the papers?”
“Use them to get something else,” she says.
“Did they have things written on them?”
“No,” she says. “Nothing like your poems.”
I shake my head. “Why would anyone do that?” Trading the way the Archivists do seems much more logical.
“They trusted each other,” the Archivist says. “Until they didn’t anymore.”
She waits. I’m not sure what she expects me to say.
“What I’m showing you,” the Archivist says, “are the things that most people find to be valuable. And we also have cases and cases full of very specific items for more eccentric tastes. We have been doing this for a long time.” She leads me back the way we came, to the rows where the jewels were stored. She stops for a moment to take down a case. She doesn’t open it, but carries it with her as we walk. “Everyone has a currency,” she says. “One of the most interesting ones is knowledge, when people want to know things, not possess them. Of course, what people want to know is a similarly varied and intricate business.” She stops near the end of one of the shelves. “What is it you want to know, Cassia?”
I want to know if my family and Ky and Xander are all right. What Grandfather meant by the red garden day. What memories I’ve lost.
&nb
sp; A pause, in that decadent, deliberate room.
Her flashlight glances off the shelves, sending slants and glints of light in strange places. Her face, when I can see it, looks thoughtful. “Do you know what’s extremely valuable right now?” she asks me. “Those tubes that the Society had, the secret ones. Have you heard of them? The samples they take long before the Final Banquet?”
“I’ve heard of them,” I say. I’ve seen them, too. All rowed and stored in a cave in the middle of a canyon. While we were there in that cave, Hunter broke some of the tubes, and Eli and I each stole one of the others.
“You’re not the only one who has,” the head Archivist says. “Some people will do anything they can to get their hands on those samples.”
“The tubes don’t matter,” I say. “They’re not real people.” I’m quoting Ky, and I hope the Archivist can’t hear the lie in my voice. Because I stole Grandfather’s tube from the Carving and gave it to Ky to hide, and I did that because I can’t seem to let go of the idea that those tubes could matter.
“That may be,” the Archivist says. “But others don’t agree with you. They want their own samples, and the ones that belong to family and friends. If they lose a loved one in the Plague, they’ll want the tubes even more.”
If they lose a loved one in the Plague. “Is that possible?” I wonder, but the minute I speak it I know it is. Death is always possible. I learned that in the Carving.
Almost as if she’s reading my mind, the Archivist asks, “You’ve seen the tubes, haven’t you? When you were outside the Society?”
For some reason I want to laugh. The Cavern you are asking about, yes, I have seen that, with rows and rows of tubes stored neatly in the earth. I have also seen a cave full of papers, and golden apples on dark trees twisted from growing in a place with great wind and little rain, and my name carved in a tree, and paintings on stone.
And in the Carving I have seen burned bodies under the sky and a man singing his daughter to her grave, marking her arms and his with blue. I have felt life in that place, and I have seen death.
“You didn’t bring back any of those tubes to trade, did you?” she asks me.