by Ally Condie
“Don’t look down,” Indie says.
It takes much longer to climb than it does to fall.
It strikes me how much of this is holding on and waiting, deciding the next move and then committing to it. My fingers grip tightly into the rock and my toes curl as much as they can. I focus on the task at hand, and somehow that means that, even though I don’t think of Ky, I’m completely immersed in thinking of him. Because I’m being like him.
The canyon walls here are reddish-orange, drizzled with black. I’m not sure where the black came from; it’s almost like an ocean thick with tar lapped against the sides long ago.
“You’re doing fine,” Indie tells me as I come up next to her on a ledge. “Now this will be the hardest part,” she says, pointing. “Let me try it out first.”
I sit on the ledge, lean my back against the rock. My arms ache from holding on so tightly. I wish the rock would hold us, cradle us back as we cling to it, but it doesn’t. “I think I’ve got it,” Indie calls down softly. “When you come up here—”
I hear the sound of falling rocks, of flesh scraping stone. I’m on my feet. The ledge is small and my balance uncertain. “Indie!”
She dangles above me, holding onto the rocks. One of her legs hangs down near me, scraped, bloody. I hear her swear softly.
“Are you all right?” I call up.
“Push,” she says, her voice ragged. “Push me up.”
I put my palms under the tread of her boot, worn from the run across the plain and dusty-soled from the canyon and the rocks.
There is a terrible moment when she rests there on my hands, so heavy, and I know she can’t find anything to grab above. Then she is gone; the weight of her boot leaves my hand; the imprint of it is left on my palm.
“I’m up,” she calls down. “Come around to your left. I can talk you up from here.”
“Is it safe? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“It’s my own fault. These rocks are softer than the ones I’m used to climbing. I put too much weight on that piece and it broke off.”
The scrapes on her leg belie her statement that the rock is soft, but I know what she means. Things here are so different. Poisoned rivers, softened stone. You never know exactly what you’re getting into. What will hold and what will give way.
The second half of the climb goes more smoothly. Indie was right; the sheer part was the hardest to navigate. I clutch thin edges of rock using only the pads of my fingers, willing my knuckles to stay bent and my feet not to slip. I wedge my arms and knees into slots running vertically up the face of the rock, using my clothes and skin the way Indie taught me — as friction to keep my body close to the wall.
“We’re almost there,” she says above me. “Give me a minute and climb on up. It’s not bad.”
I try to catch my breath, pausing for a rest in a crevice. The rock does hold me here, I realize, and I smile, exhilarated by how high we are.
Ky would love this. Maybe he’s climbing, too.
Time for the last push to the top.
I will not look down or back or anywhere but up and forward. My empty pack shifts a little and I waver, my fingernails digging into the stone. Hold on. Wait. Something light and winged flies past me, startling me. To calm myself, I think of the poem Ky gave me for my birthday, the one about the water:
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
Here on this stony shore, I feel like a creature left behind after the water has pulled back to the sea. Trying to climb over into someplace where Ky might be. And even if he’s not there, I’ll find him. I’ll go over again and again until I’ve finally crossed to where he is.
I pause for a moment to get my balance back, and then, in spite of myself, I look over my shoulder.
The view is completely different from what Ky and I saw together at the top of the Hill. No houses, no City Hall, no buildings. It is sand and rock and scrubby tree; but it is still something I have climbed, and once again, it feels like Ky has climbed it with me somehow.
“I’m almost there,” I whisper to him, to Indie.
I pull myself over the edge of the cliff, a smile on my face, and then I look up.
We are not alone.
I know now why they call this a firing. Ash, everywhere. A wind sails across the Carving, blowing the debris into my eyes and making them blur and water.
It’s just the last of a big fire, I try to tell myself. Sticks laid end to end, smoke gone to the sky.
But the look on Indie’s face tells me that she sees the truth and in my mind I know it too. The blackened figures strewn across the ground are not sticks. They are real, these dozens of bodies on the top of the Carving.
Indie bends down and then straightens up, holding something. A charred length of rope, most of it good. “Let’s go,” she says, the ash on the rope blackening her hands. She reaches up to brush back a piece of her red hair floating loose in the breeze and accidentally marks her face.
I glance at the people. They have markings on their skin, too, blue ones, twisting lines. I wonder what they mean.
Why did you come up here? How did you make this rope? What else have you learned out here while the rest of us forgot about you? Or never knew you existed at all?
“How long have they been dead?” I ask.
“Long enough,” Indie says. “A week, maybe more. I’m not sure.” There’s a hard edge to her voice. “Whoever did this might come back. We have to leave.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement and turn. Tall red flags set along the ridge whip furiously in the wind. Though staked into the ground instead of tied to trees, they remind me of the red scraps Ky and I left on the Hill.
Who marked the land up here? Who killed all thsee people? The Society? The Enemy?
Where is the Rising?
“We have to leave now, Cassia,” Indie says behind me.
“No,” I say. “We can’t leave them here.”
Were they the Rising?
“This is how Anomalies die,” Indie says, her voice cold. “The two of us alone can’t change it. We have to find someone else.”
“Maybe these are the people we were trying to find,” I say. Please. Don’t let the Rising be gone before we’ve even had a chance to find it.
Oh, Ky, I think. I never knew. So this is the kind of death you’ve seen.
Indie and I run across the top of the Carving and leave the bodies behind. Ky’s still alive, I tell myself. He has to be.
Only the sun is in the sky. Nothing flies. There are no angels here.
CHAPTER 15
KY
We don’t stop moving until we’ve put distance between us and whoever’s in the township. None of us speak much; we go fast and follow the main canyon. After a few hours I get out the map to check our position.
“We seem to be climbing up all of the time,” Eli says, a little out of breath.
“We are,” I say.
“Then why don’t we seem to be getting any higher?” Eli asks.
“The canyon walls are rising too,” I say. “Look.” I show him how the farmers marked elevation on the map.
Eli shakes his head in confusion. “Think of the Carving and all its canyons like a big boat,” Vick tells Eli. “The part where we entered was low in the water. The part where we’re coming out is high. See? When we climb out, we’ll be above that huge plain.”
“You know about boats?” Eli asks.
“A little,” Vick says. “Not much.”
“We can rest for a minute,” I tell Eli, reaching for my canteen. I take a drink.
Vick and Eli do too. “Remember that poem you say for the dead?” Vick begins. “The one I asked you about before?”
“Yes.” I look at the mountain settlement marked on the map. There’s where we need to be.
“How did you know it?”
“I came across it,” I say. “Back in Oria.”
“Not in the Outer Provinces?” Vi
ck asks.
He knows I know more than I’m saying. I look up. He and Eli stand on the opposite side of the map, watching. The last time Vick challenged me was out in the village when I talked about the way the Society killed Anomalies. I see the same flint-hard look in his eyes now. He thinks it’s time to talk about this.
He’s right.
“There, too,” I say. “I’ve heard about the Pilot all my life.” And I have. In the Border Provinces, in the Outer Provinces, in Oria, and now here in the Carving.
“So who do you think it is?” Vick asks.
“Some think the Pilot is the leader of a rebellion against the Society,” I say, and Eli’s eyes light up with excitement.
“The Rising,” Vick agrees. “I’ve heard that, too.”
“There’s a rebellion?” Eli asks eagerly. “And the Pilot’s the leader?”
“Maybe,” I say. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“Of course it does,” Eli says, sounding angry. “Why didn’t you tell the rest of the decoys? Maybe we could have done something!”
“What?” I ask Eli wearily. “Vick and I have both heard of the Pilot. We don’t know where he or she is. And even if we did, I don’t believe the Pilot can do anything but die and take too many people with him.”
Vick shakes his head but doesn’t say anything out loud.
“It could have given them some hope,” Eli says.
“What good is that if it there isn’t anything to back it up?” I ask Eli.
He sets his jaw stubbornly. “It’s not any different than what you tried to do with rigging the guns.”
He’s right. I sigh. “I know. But telling them about the Pilot wouldn’t have done any good either. It’s just a story my father used to tell.” Suddenly I remember how my mother would paint illustrations while he talked. When he finished telling the story of Sisyphus and the paintings dried up, I always felt like he finally had some rest.
“I heard about the Pilot from someone back home,” Vick says. He pauses. “What happened to them? Your parents?”
“They died in a firing,” I tell him. At first I think that’s all I’ll say. But I keep talking. I have to tell Eli and Vick what happened so they’ll see why I don’t believe. “My father used to gather all the villagers together for meetings.”
I think of how exciting it always was, everyone sliding in along the benches and talking with one another. Their faces would light up when they saw my father come into the room. “My father figured out a way to disconnect the village port without the Society knowing. That’s what he thought, anyway. I don’t know if the port still worked or if someone told the Society about the meetings. But they were gathered together when the firing started. Almost everyone died.”
“So was your father the Pilot?” Eli asks, sounding awed.
“If he was, he’s dead now,” I say. “And he took our whole village with him.”
“He didn’t kill them,” Vick says. “You can’t blame him.”
I can and do. But I also see Vick’s point.
“Was it Society or Enemy who killed them?” Vick asks after a moment.
“The ships looked like the Enemy,” I say. “But the Society didn’t come until it was all over. That was new. Back then, they usually pretended to fight for us, at least.”
“Where were you when this happened?” Vick asks.
“Up on a plateau,” I say. “I went to see the rain come down.”
“Like the decoys who tried to get the snow,” Vick says. “But you didn’t die.”
“No,” I say. “The ships didn’t see me.”
“You were lucky,” Vick says.
“The Society doesn’t believe in luck,” Eli says.
“I’ve decided it’s the only thing I do believe in,” Vick says. “Good luck and bad luck, and ours always seems to be bad.”
“That’s not true,” Eli says. “We got away from the Society and made it into the canyon. We found the cave with the maps and we escaped the township before anyone found us.”
I admit nothing. I don’t believe in the Society or the Rising or any Pilot or good and bad luck. I do believe in Cassia. If I had to say I believed in anything more than that, I’d say I believe in it is, or it isn’t.
Right now I am, and I intend to keep it that way.
“Let’s go,” I tell the other two, and I roll up the map.
At dusk, we decide to camp in a cave marked on the map. When we duck through the opening, our flashlights illuminate a series of paintings and carvings on the walls inside.
Eli stops in his tracks. I know how he feels.
I remember the first time I saw carvings like these. In that little rocky crevice near our village. My mother and father took me there when I was small. We tried to guess what the symbols might mean. My father practiced copying the figures in the dirt. It was before he could write. He always did want to learn, and he wanted to find the meaning in everything. Every symbol and word and circumstance. When he couldn’t find the meaning, he made it for himself.
But this cave is amazing. The paintings are lush with color and the carvings etched along the surface are rich in detail. Unlike the dirt on the ground, when you carve into this stone it becomes lighter instead of darker.
“Who did this?” Eli asks, breaking the silence.
“A lot of people,” I say. “The paintings look more recent. They look like the farmers’ work. The carvings are older.”
“How much older?” Eli asks.
“Thousands of years,” I say.
The oldest carvings show people with splayed fingers and broad shoulders. They look strong. One seems to reach up to the sky. I look at the figure for a long time, at that reaching hand, and remember the last time I saw Cassia.
The Society found me in the early morning. There was no sun yet and the stars were almost gone. It was that nothing time when taking things is easiest.
I woke right when they leaned down for me in the dark with their mouths open to say the things they always said: There’s nothing to fear. Come with us. But I hit them before they could speak. I drew their blood before they could take me away to make me spill mine. Every instinct said to fight and so I did. For once.
I fought because I had found peace in Cassia. Because I knew I could find rest in her touch that somehow both burned me up and washed me clean.
The fight didn’t last long. There were six of them and only one of me. Patrick and Aida weren’t awake yet. “Come quietly,” the Officials and Officers said. “It will make it easier for everyone. Do we have to gag you?”
I shook my head.
“Classification always tells in the end,” one of them said to the others. “This one was supposed to be easy; he’s been compliant for years. But an Aberration is still an Aberration.”
We were almost out the door when Aida saw us.
And then we went along the dark streets with Aida screaming and Patrick talking low and urgent and calm.
No. I don’t want to think about Patrick and Aida and what happened next. I love them more than anyone in the world besides Cassia, and if I ever find her, we will look for them. But I can’t think about them for long — the parents who took me in and received nothing in exchange but more loss. It was brave of them to love again. It made me think I could do it too.
Blood in my mouth and under my skin in bruises waiting to show. Head down, hands locked behind me.
And then.
My name.
She cried out my name in front of everyone. She didn’t care who knew that she loved me. I called her name, too. I saw her tumbled hair, her bare feet, her eyes looking only at me, and then she pointed to the sky.
I know you meant that you would always remember me, Cassia, but I’m a fraid you might forget.
We clear away pieces of brush and smaller stones so we have a place to rest. Some of the stones are chert, likely cached here by the farmers for fires. I also find a piece of sandstone, almost perfectly round, and I think inst
antly of my compass.
“Do you think some of the farmers camped in here on their way out of the Carving?” Eli asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably. It looks like a place they used often.” Charry circles of old fires mark the floor, as do sandy, blurred footprints and, here and there, bones from animals cooked and eaten.
Eli falls asleep quickly, as usual. He’s rolled up right under the feet of a carved figure who has both arms raised high.
“So what did you bring?” I ask Vick as I pull out the bag where I stashed things from the library cave. In our hurry to leave the township, the three of us grabbed books and papers without having much of a chance to look at them.
Vick begins to laugh.
“What is it?”
“I hope you chose better than I did,” he says, showing me what he brought. In his hurry he grabbed a stack of plain little brown pamphlets. “These looked like something I saw once back in Tana. It turns out they’re all the same thing.”
“What are they?” I ask.
“Some kind of history,” he says.
“That still might prove to be valuable,” I say. “If not, I can give you some of mine.” I’ve done a little better. I have some poetry and two books full of stories that are not among the Hundred. I glance over at Eli’s pack. “We’ll have to ask Eli what he brought when he wakes up.”
Vick turns some pages. “Wait. This is interesting.” He hands me one of the pamphlets, opened to the first page.
The paper is pulpy. Cheap, mass-produced somewhere on the edges of Society with old equipment, likely scavenged from a Restoration site. I open the pamphlet and read it by the light of the flashlight:
THE RISING:
A Brief History of Our Rebellion against the Society.
The Rising began in earnest at the time of the Hundred Committees.
In the year before the Hundred Selections began, the Cancer Eradication Rate remained stagnant at 85.1 percent. It was the first occurrence of a failure to improve since the Cancer Eradication Initiative took effect. The Society did not take this lightly. Though they knew total perfection in all areas was impossible, they decided that closing the gap on 100 percent in certain areas was of utmost importance. They knew this would require complete focus and dedication.