Reached

by Ally Condie

  Ephedra, Anna wrote. Underneath she drew a spiky-looking bush with small, cone-like flowers. She painted it yellow and green.

  Paintbrush. Red. This one I’ve seen, in the canyons.

  Mariposa lily. It’s a beautiful white flower with red and yellow coloring deep down inside its three petals.

  My hands know what I’ve seen before my mind does; I’m reaching into my pocket and pulling out the paper my mother sent, recognizing the meaning in its shape. I remember Indie’s wasp nest, how it had space inside, and I pull the edges of the paper out and then I know.

  I hold a paper flower in my hand. My mother made this. She cut or tore the paper carefully so that three pieces fan out from the middle, like petals.

  It is the same as the flower in the picture; white, three-petaled, the edges crimped in and pointed like a star. I realize that I also saw it printed in the earth.

  This is what Oker was trying to find.

  He saw me take out the paper flower when I put the voting stone inside.

  Anna’s picture tells me that the name of this flower is mariposa lily. But I never heard my mother speak that name. And it’s not a newrose or an oldrose or a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace. What other flowers did she tell me about?

  I’m back in the room in our house in Oria, where she showed me the blue satin square from the dress she wore to her Banquet. She’s recently returned from traveling out into different Provinces to investigate rogue crops for the Society. “The second grower had a crop I’d never seen before, of white flowers even more beautiful than the first,” she says. “Sego lilies, they called them. You can eat the bulb.”

  “Anna,” I say, my heart racing, “does mariposa lily have another name?” If it does, that might account for the problem in the data. We’ve been counting this flower as two separate data points, but it was, in fact, a single variable.

  “Yes,” Anna says, after a pause. “Some people call it the sego lily.”

  I pick up the datapod and search for the name. There it is. The properties are all the same. One flower, reported under two different names. Now, with its names combined, it rises right to the top of potential ingredients. It was a critical, elemental mistake made by those gathering the data, but we should have noticed it earlier. How did I miss it before? How could I fail to recognize the name, when my mother had told it to me? You only heard it once, I remind myself, and that was long ago. “Where does it grow?” I ask.

  “We should be able to find some not far from here,” Anna says. “It’s early in the season, but it could be in bloom.” She looks at the paper flower in my hand. “Did you make that?”

  “No,” I say. “My mother did.”

  It’s almost dark when we finally find them, in a little field away from the village and the path.

  I drop down to my knees to look closer. I’ve never seen a flower so beautiful. It’s a simple white bloom, three curved petals coming out from a sparsely leaved stalk. It’s a little white banner, like my writing, not of surrender but of survival. I pull out the crumpled paper flower.

  Though my hands shake, I can tell that it’s a match. This flower growing in the ground is the one my mother made before she went still.

  The real thing is much more beautiful. But that doesn’t matter. I think of Ky’s mother, who painted water on stone, who believed the important thing was to create, not capture. Even though the paper lily isn’t a perfect rendering, it’s still a tribute to its beauty that my mother tried.

  I don’t know whether she intended the flower as art or message, but I choose to take it as both.

  “I think,” I say, “that this might be the cure.”

  CHAPTER 46

  XANDER

  I can’t see Cassia herself, but the solar-cell lamps cast her shadow on the prison wall. Her voice carries from the entryway to my cell. “We think we have found a possible cure,” she tells the guards. “We need Xander to make something for us.”

  The guard laughs. “I don’t think so,” he says.

  “I’m not asking you to release Xander,” Cassia says. “We just need to give him the equipment and have him prepare the cure.”

  “And then what are you going to do with it?” another guard asks.

  “We’re going to give it to one patient,” she says. “Our patient. Ky.”

  “We can’t go against Colin,” one of the guards says. “He’s our leader. And we’d lose our chance at the Otherlands.”

  “This is your chance at the Otherlands,” Cassia says. Her voice is low, quiet, full of conviction. “This is what Oker was going to find.” She pulls something out of her bag. “Mariposa lily.” I can see from her shadow that she’s holding a flower. “You eat the bulb, don’t you? You eat it when it blooms in the summer, and store it for the winter.”

  “Are they already in bloom?” one of them asks. “How many did you pull up?”

  “Only a few,” Cassia says.

  Another shadow moves into view and I hear Anna’s voice. “We had these flowers in the Carving, too,” Anna says. “We also used them for food. I know how to gather them so that they’ll come back again next year.”

  “What does it matter if they take all the plants, anyway?” one of the guards says to the other. “If we’re gone to the Otherlands, we won’t need to harvest.”

  “No,” Anna says. “Even if everyone is gone, the flower must come back. We cannot take it all and leave nothing.”

  “The bulbs are so small,” another guard says dubiously. “I don’t see how it could be a cure.”

  Cassia comes into view, and I see that she holds the real flower and the paper that her mother sent her. They’re a perfect match. “Oker saw me take out this flower—the paper one—during the vote. I believe this is the flower he was going to find.” She sounds confident that she’s sorted everything. She could be right: Oker did change his mind right after he saw her take out the paper.

  “Please,” Cassia says to the guards. “Let us try.” Her voice is gentle, persuasive. “You can feel it, can’t you?” she asks, and now she sounds wistful. “The Otherlands are getting farther and farther away.”

  Everything goes quiet as we realize that Cassia’s right. I do feel the Otherlands receding for me, like the real world probably did for Lei and Ky when they went still. I feel everything slipping out of my grasp. I’ve followed the Pilot, Oker, and Cassia, but things didn’t go as I’d hoped. I thought I’d see a rebellion, find a cure, and have someone love me back.

  What if they all left? What if everyone else flew to the Otherlands or went still and I was here alone? Would I keep going? I would. I can’t seem to treat this life I have as anything but the only thing.

  “All right,” one of the guards says. “But hurry.”

  Anna has thought of everything. She’s brought equipment from the lab: a syringe, a mortar and pestle, clean water that’s been boiled and treated, and some of Oker’s base mixtures, with a list of the ingredients in each. “How did you know what we’d need?” I ask her.

  “I didn’t,” she says. “Tess and Noah did. They think it’s possible that Oker changed his mind. They’re not sure they believe you, but they’re not sure that they don’t, either.”

  “They gave all of this to you?” I ask.

  She nods. “But if anyone asks, we stole it. We don’t want to get them in trouble.”

  Cassia holds the flashlight for me while I scrub my hands with the sterilizing solution. I use the edge of the pestle to split the bulb in half. “It’s beautiful,” Cassia says.

  The inside of the bulb looks white and luminescent like the camassia bulbs. I grind it down, pulverizing the bulb until it’s a paste. Then Anna hands me a tube. Cassia watches and I find myself hesitating. Maybe it’s the memory of the night back in Oria when I traded for the blue tablets. I took blood when I shouldn’t have
, and when I did, I implied promises that no one was in a position to keep. I did exactly what the Society and the Rising have done—I took advantage of people’s fears so that I could have something I wanted.

  Am I doing that again by making this cure? I look at Cassia. She trusts me. And she shouldn’t. I killed that boy in the Carving with the blue tablets. I didn’t do it on purpose, but if it wasn’t for me, he would never have had the tablets in the first place.

  I haven’t let myself think about this, even though I’ve known about it since we came in on the ship. Panic and bile rise together in my throat and I want to run away from what I’ve been asked to do. I can’t make a cure: I’ve made the wrong call too many times.

  “You know that I can’t guarantee that this will work,” I tell Cassia. “I’m not a pharmic. I might not put in the right amount, or there might be a reacting agent in the base that I don’t know about—”

  “There are a lot of ways it could go wrong,” she agrees. “I might not have found the right ingredient. But I think that I have. And I know you can make the cure.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “You always come through for the people who need you,” she says, and her voice sounds sad. Like she knows this is going to cost me but she’s asking me to do it anyway and it breaks her heart.

  “Please,” she says. “One more time.”

  CHAPTER 47

  CASSIA

  Inside the infirmary, Anna distracts the medics while I inject the cure into Ky’s line. It doesn’t take long; Xander told me how to do this. Before, I might have been afraid to try, but after seeing Xander compound a cure in a prison cell and Ky labor to breathe on through the stillness, there is no room left for my own fears.

  I cover the needle back up and slide it and the empty vial that held the cure into my sleeve, next to the poems I always carry. As I sit down next to Ky, I pick up the datapod. I pretend to keep sorting, though my eyes are really on Ky, watching, waiting. He is taking the biggest risk; it’s his veins the cure runs through. But we all have so much to lose.

  I have sometimes seen the three of us as separate, discrete points, and of course we are that, each individuals. But Ky and Xander and I all have to believe in one another to keep each other safe. In the end, I had to trust Xander to make a cure for Ky, and Ky trusted us to bring him back, and Xander trusted my sorting, and around and around we go, a circle, the three of us, connected, always, in the turning of days and the keeping of promises over and over again.

  CHAPTER 48

  KY

  not in the water anymore

  why not

  where is Indie

  tiny lights come in and out of the darkness.

  I hear Cassia’s voice.

  She’s been waiting in the stars for me.

  CHAPTER 49

  CASSIA

  Ky,” I say. I’ve seen a lightening like this on his face before, but this time it keeps coming, growing brighter, as he returns to us.

  I did not reach Thee,

  But my feet slip nearer every day;

  Three Rivers and a Hill to cross,

  One Desert and a Sea—

  I shall not count the journey one

  When I am telling thee.

  Ky and I took the journey in our own order. We began with the Hill, together. We crossed a desert to get to the Carving and streams and rivers inside the canyons and again when we came out. There has been no sea, no ocean, but there has been a great expanse for both of us to navigate without the other. I think that counts.

  And I think, looking at him, that the poem is wrong. He will count this journey, and so will I.

  Anna comes in later and hands me several more cures from Xander. “He says it will take more than one dose,” she whispers. “This is all he could manage for now. He says to give the next dose as soon as possible.”

  I nod. “Thank you,” I say, and she slips back out the door, nodding to the medics as she goes.

  They’re conducting their morning rounds. One of the village medics turns Ky from his side to his back to change the areas of pressure on Ky’s body. “He’s looking better,” the medic says, sounding surprised.

  “I think so, too,” I say, and right then we hear something outside. I turn to the window, and through it I see that the guards are bringing Hunter and Xander out to the village circle.

  Hunter.

  Xander.

  They both walk on their own to stand in front of the voting troughs, but their hands are tied and they’re flanked by guards. I wish I could see Xander’s eyes from here, but all I can see is the way he walks and how tired he seems. He’s been up all night making cures.

  “It’s time for the vote,” says one of the medics.

  “Open the window,” the other says, “so we can hear.”

  For a split second they are both engaged with pushing open the window and that’s when I empty the syringe into Ky’s line. When I finish slipping the evidence into my sleeve, I glance up to find one of the medics watching me. I can’t tell what he saw, but I don’t miss a beat. Xander would be proud. “Why are they having the trial so soon?” I ask.

  “Colin and Leyna must feel that they’ve gathered enough evidence,” the medic says. He looks at me for a second longer and, as the morning smell and fresh air from the window rush in, Ky takes a deep breath. His lungs sound better. He’s not all the way back yet, but he’s coming, I can tell. I feel him, more than I did before; I know he listens even if he can’t yet speak.

  People fill the village circle. I’m not close enough to see the stones in their hands, but I hear Colin call out, “Is there anyone here who will stand with Hunter?”

  “I will,” Anna says.

  “The rules are that you may only stand with one person,” the medic tells me. And I understand what he’s saying: if Anna stands with Hunter, she can’t stand with Xander.

  Anna nods. She walks up to the front and faces out to the crowd. As she speaks, I notice them drawing closer to her. “What Hunter did was wrong,” Anna says, “but he didn’t mean to kill. If that was his intent, he could have done it easily and escaped. What Hunter wanted was to make things fair. He felt that since the Provinces denied Anomalies access to any of their medications for years, we should do the same for their patients.”

  Anna doesn’t play on the crowd. She says the facts and lets the crowd weigh them. Of course, we all know that the world isn’t fair. But we all understand how it feels to wish that it were. Many of these people know too well what it’s like to be tossed aside—or worse, sent out to die—by the Society. Anna says nothing of all the losses Hunter has suffered that would lead him to this point. She doesn’t have to. They’re written on his arms and in his eyes.

  “I know you can require more,” Anna says, “but I ask for exile for Hunter.”

  The lesser of the two sentences. Will the crowd give it?

  They do.

  They drop their stones in the trough near Anna’s feet instead of the one near Colin’s. The farmers come with the buckets and pour the water. The decision holds.

  “Hunter,” Colin says, “you must leave now.”

  Hunter nods. I can’t tell if he feels anything. Someone hands him a pack and there’s a disturbance as Eli comes running for Hunter, wrapping his arms around Hunter to say good-bye. Anna embraces them both, and for a moment they are a little family, three generations, connected not by blood but by journeys and farewells.

  Then Eli steps back. He will stay with Anna, who must remain with the rest of her people. Hunter walks straight into the forest, not taking the path, not looking back. Where will he go? To the Carving?

  And now the crowd murmurs and Xander comes forward. In that moment, I realize that the people have spent their mercy on Hunter. They lived and worked with him for the past few months. They knew his
story.

  But they don’t know Xander.

  He stands in front of the village stone, alone.

  Xander will do anything for those he loves, whatever the cost. But, looking at Xander now, I think the cost has become too high. He looks like Hunter, I realize. Like someone who has been driven too far and seen too much. Hunter kept himself together long enough to deliver Eli safely to the mountains. For a long time, he did what he had to do to help others, but then he broke.

  I can’t let that happen to Xander.

  CHAPTER 50

  XANDER

  Who will stand with Xander?” Colin asks.

  No one answers.

  Anna looks at me. I can tell that she’s sorry, but I understand. Of course she had to use everything she had for Hunter. He’s like a son to her, and it was right for her to have spent everything on him.

  But there is no one else. Cassia has to stay in the infirmary with Ky, to give him the cure and make sure he wakes up. Ky would stand with me: but he’s still.

  People shuffle their feet and look in Colin’s direction. They’re impatient with him for letting the moment go on so long. I’d like it to be over, too. I close my eyes and listen to my heart, my breathing, and the wind high up in the trees.

  Someone calls out: a voice I know. “I will.” I open my eyes to see Cassia pushing her way through the crowd. She came after all. Her face is all lit up. The cure must be working.

  Something’s wrong with me. I should be glad that Cassia’s here and that the cure could be viable. But all I can think about are the patients in the Provinces, and Lei when she went down, and I worry that it’s too late. Will we be able to bring enough people back? Will the cure work again? How will we find enough bulbs? Who will decide which people get the cure first? There are a lot of questions and I’m not sure we can find the answers fast enough.