There’s a shadow at the edge of the moonlight, a person-shaped shadow, looking at the pool. I try to remember if I could see our pile of rocks from there, through the fern thicket, if it was obvious they’d been pulled down. I’m not sure I ever looked. But I’m hyperaware of that wall of metal behind me, like a gaze on my back, blocking up a hole into the mountainside. Maybe there’s another way out. Maybe this is who was writing the words of light, raising and lowering the little door. I let my breath out slow, afraid it can be heard, but then there’s a faint echo on the canyon walls. A bell.
The figure by the pool lifts its head, indistinct; I think they must be wearing a hood. Another bell, and then five more. The shadow person turns and walks quickly away, taking the same route Gray did among the rocks.
This is not someone from inside the mountain. This is someone from the city, someone who listens for the bells. My fear leaves me, only to be instantly replaced by another. Our books are up there, alone at the top of the cliff. Unprotected. I half stand and stretch a leg over the rock pile, pushing away Gray’s restraining hand. Crouching low beneath the branches of the ferns, I creep up to the rocky strip beside the pool, find a line of sight around a boulder, and there is the shadow person, hazy but with a quick gait, the movement of long cloth rhythmic around the ankles.
Whoever this is, they know where they’re going. Straight to the break in the canyon wall, up the mountainside and to the cliff. Or down the slope to Canaan. I remember how easy it was to see Gray’s white shirt in the dark, so I step back into the branches to wait, and as soon as the shadow figure enters the glittering ferns below the canyon break I run. Just along the edge of the trees, away from the noisy stones that could cut my bare feet, around the pool, then straight into the forest.
I pause inside, listening, but I can’t hear any movement. I inch forward in the light from the treetops, wary, climb the narrow gorge that takes me to the rim of the canyon. The city gleams in the open grassland before the walls. And in the light of the three moons I can also see my shadow figure, already down the slope and walking quickly through the grasses, but in the other direction, away from my ladder. Someone else, evidently, climbs Canaan’s walls. And comes to my pool. The grasses rustle and then Gray is behind me. We both sit, in case the shadow decides to look back. Whoever it is, they’re just a black patch in the moonlight now, almost to the city.
“Who do you think that is?” I ask before he can say anything about running off to chase people in the dark that I prefer not to hear. I watch the shadow disappear into the deeper shade beneath the walls.
“I never saw a face. But those were robes, I think. Black robes.”
Council, then. Which Council member climbs the walls? And where? “Were you seen?”
“I don’t think so. I was in the ferns when they came down from the gorge. Were you seen?” His whisper is tense.
“No.”
He’s relieved. Very relieved. So relieved that he’s angry with me. “I’m going back up the cliff to get our books and our shoes. If I asked you to wait, is there any reason to think you would?”
My first reaction is to say no, there isn’t, and I’ll get my book myself. And then I look at Gray, wild-headed and shirtless, brows down and accusing, and I realize two things: First, that it doesn’t frighten me to think of him touching my book, or carrying it down the mountain. Second, that Gray expects me to be frightened by this, and that the expectation hurts him. I don’t know how much.
“I’ll wait here,” I tell him.
I hear him exhale twice before he says, “Okay. Then we’ll go back down and try the numbers, yes?”
I nod.
“I’ll be quick.” And he’s off through the grasses.
If the forest was lit like the city, then the city is lit like the forest, with hundreds of tiny, twinkling lights, white stone shining beneath the triangle of the moons, stars spattering the sky beyond them. I should think about what might happen when we try the numbers around my neck, about Anson and his questions, the Council member outside the walls, what kind of unimaginable force could make words out of lights, and how close we came to being caught. About stealing the First Book tomorrow. About the Forgetting. Instead I lie back in the grasses, out of the breeze, and watch the flashflies, thinking how the Nadia of the sunlight days would have never let another human touch her more than a pat on the hand. How Nadia of the sunlight had to force herself to speak. How Nadia of the sunlight would have never let the glassblower’s son untie her book, would have never leaned down and kissed him in a warm and misty pool. Maybe Nadia of the dark days is more like she would’ve been if she’d never been forgotten. Or maybe not. That Nadia would have never been over the wall.
I hear Gray coming through the grasses. I turn my head and see that his white shirt is back on, though he hasn’t bothered to tuck it or tie the collar, his book strap back across his chest. He must have left the bottle at the waterfall. I sit up at the last moment, make him stop short.
“I just about stepped on you. Here.” He hands me my book, which I set beside me since I’m too damp to tie it on, and then my sandals. He’s over being mad at me, I see. Or just happy to actually find me where he left me. He gives me a hand up after I tie my shoes and doesn’t let it go, like he did in Rose’s room. “Let’s hurry.”
Now that I know what to do we get the little door open quickly. I felt nervous before, that someone might be behind me, inside the mountain. Now it feels like someone might be behind us at the pool. But I crouch down, holding the metal close to my eyes in the glow of the green light, calling out the numbers one by one while Gray touches the corresponding square. The false note of music comes each time he does. I get to the x scratched on the bracelet and pause. There are no options for letters on the green squares. But there’s still a 2 scratched after the x.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“I don’t know. There’s no room for any more.” The numbers of light have filled their space. Then the numbers disappear, exchanged instantly for a word in red: “Invalid.” I hear Gray suck in a breath. It’s uncanny, watching writing appear and disappear like that. Then “Invalid” is suddenly gone, replaced by “Enter Code.”
“I guess it doesn’t work,” I say. I don’t know whether I’m disappointed by this or secretly glad.
“Let’s do it again,” Gray suggests. “See if the same thing happens twice.”
His words “again” and “twice” shake my thinking. “No, wait. Not an ‘x.’ Multiplication. ‘x2.’ Times two.”
Gray thinks about this. “Push the numbers twice, or do we multiply it by two?”
“Can you multiply that in your head?”
“Not a chance.”
“Me neither. Do it twice.”
I call out the numbers and he pushes each one twice. Before we even get to the end the numbers disappear and the word “Invalid” takes their place, then “Enter Code.”
“Okay,” I say. “The whole thing, then, twice in a row.”
We do that, and when we reach the end of the black space, instead of “Invalid” the space just keeps receiving numbers. I call out the last number, 1, and when Gray pushes it, all the numbers fade to black. It didn’t work. I sigh, and then suddenly there’s a new word on the screen: “Open.”
We both turn to a noise, a clank that echoes over the roar of the falls. It echoes inside the mountain. And from inside the cave opening comes a streaking glare of pure white light.
I have been taught to write the truth. But is it still the truth when I cannot believe it?
NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER
BOOK 7, PAGE 104, 8 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING
I stand, let the metal bracelet dangle from the string around my neck, blinking, our pile of tumbled stone etched into sharp relief by the sudden bright light. I can’t believe that worked. It gives me the same feeling in my stomach as jumping over the waterfall. I take Gray’s offered hand, my other still clutching my book in the cloth Genivee cut for it, a
nd we step over the rock pile into the cave opening. The wall of metal has opened just a little, like a door swung on its hinges. I think it is a door now, though I can’t see a latch, or anyone who could have opened it. I’m hardly even surprised by this. Gray looks to me, and I nod. He puts his hand flat on the metal and pushes.
The door creaks. Beyond is a kind of hall, rough rock walls that look like a natural shaft in the cliff, but the light, as always, is brilliantly unnatural. It comes from long tubes strung high up in rows along the passage. We step inside. The floor is dirt, smooth and polished with the passing of feet, air smelling of damp rock and stale soil. It’s warmer in here, but other than an odd buzzing noise just on the edge of hearing, it’s silent like the dead.
Gray lets me go, which I don’t like, and turns back to the door we just came through, looking at it all around. I see what he’s thinking. If we close the door, can we get back out again? If we leave it open, who might follow us inside? He finds something near the floor, like a small, upside-down cup made of red glass, set in a kind of base, colorful strings running out of it and along the rocks. He squats down, studying this. Then he pushes the door shut. I hear a click, like a lock, and the red glass glows with sudden light. Gray pushes on it, like we did with the numbers outside, and the door clicks and swings open again. He grins at me over his shoulder. These things are inexplicable. Impossible. Except that obviously they are not.
Gray stands up, shuts the door, lets the red light glow. I take his hand, and we start down the narrow hall inside the mountain. It’s dark ahead, but never for very far, because as soon as we step near, another light springs into existence, and then the one behind us is gone.
“It’s like they know we’re here,” Gray whispers. “Exactly where we are.”
I don’t like this thought. “Who does?”
“I think I mean the lights.”
That doesn’t make sense. We move forward, step by step, and I can’t shake the feeling of hidden things. Of hidden eyes. Hidden people lighting the lamps, blowing them out again as we pass. Of someone or something waiting for us at the end of this hall. The last tube above us ignites, and then I can see another door. A regular door. Like ours, except the metal is not so shiny, no inner sparkles. This one has a latch.
“Ready?” Gray says. I can feel the tension in the muscles of his arm. I think my body is the same. I nod. He pushes down on the latch, there’s a whoosh of air, and we step inside a room that is blacker than the moon shadows.
Until it isn’t. Lights spring to a blaze, not only the glaring ones overhead but all around us. Blue lamps glow in flat, black squares, three large ones high up, a huge one as tall as I am on the opposite wall. Four smaller squares of blue light are on stands across the length of a long white table that is the wrong shape, curved like a scythe. I hear humming, whirring, buzzing, all soft or only just discernible, feel a faint breath of air that smells like … nothing. The walls aren’t rock anymore, they’re something shiny and solid, like the floor, overly bright, overly clean.
The blue squares high on the wall fade quickly to a black-and-white haze, little dots that move and crawl like insects. I’m reminded of Jin’s walls, how he’d hung cloth in patterns, just for the look of it. I wonder if this is the same, though I’ve never seen cloth change colors before my eyes. Of the four squares of light on the curving table two have gone black, two have remained blue, and the huge one on the wall now says a word: “Welcome.”
That word, so familiar, so human, and coming so obviously from nowhere, is more frightening than anything I’ve experienced. I don’t feel welcome. I feel dizzy, disoriented, like a child, a little like I did on the night of the Forgetting. There isn’t a single familiar object in this room; even the two chairs are large, cloth covered, oddly shaped. Gray lets his breath out slow. I’m holding on to his hand like someone might yank him away.
He checks for a latch, and the door shuts behind us. There are two more doors in this room. He takes the first step forward and I let him go.
“Let’s not touch anything yet, okay?” he says.
I’m not going to. Or at least not anything that seems dangerous. The floor is white like the walls, but not white like stone. It’s impossibly white, like everything. I step across the shining floor, run a hand over the table, smoother than stone. No dust. It makes my fingernails look dirty by comparison.
“Two seconds,” I hear Gray mutter, referring, I think, to my touching. I continue to run my hand along the length of the curving table while he looks underneath it. He’s interested in how these things work. I want to know what this place was for. Then I glance back the way we came.
“Look,” I whisper. Just down from the door we entered the entire wall is made of glass, from floor to ceiling. My eyes had been so full of everything else I hadn’t even seen it. Behind the glass are things I don’t have words for, things that remind me of the glowing number squares, only there’s a wall of them, a mass of them, contained in some sort of silvery cabinet that’s much taller than Gray and several times as wide. Colorful strings are twisted together in thick ropes, tubes going up and sideways to places I can’t see. Tiny lights extinguish and ignite, extinguish and ignite. Like flashflies.
Gray is already at the glass, and I see that the center of the wall is a door. Made of glass. He tugs on the handle, but it doesn’t open, and I’m a little glad. Gray got worried when I touched the table, when it’s absolutely everything behind that glass wall that seems like the danger to me. He peeks through instead, blocking the reflections with his hands.
I wander to the other side of the room, where there’s a door and another piece of glass in the wall, this time a window. Inside I can see a mattress raised half a meter off the floor. I feel some of the tension in my middle relax. A mattress I can understand. I open the door, and now I hear the little pop before the light comes on when I enter. There are blankets on the bed, rumpled, a little partitioned area with what can only be a latrine. One or two unfamiliar tools are scattered on the floor, clothes draped across a chair, like someone just stepped out. Like they’ll be right back. I don’t think they’ll be right back. On the table beside the bed is what I think was once an apple core, now dry and desiccated. Ancient.
I pick up the clothes. For a man or woman close to my height, I think, cloth sewn into one large combination of loose leggings and shirt with the whole front left open, the huge gap edged with tiny teeth of metal. It doesn’t look very modest, or useful, in my opinion, but the cloth is extremely fine. And there, on the chest, are the letters “NWSE.” Just like our knife. I set the clothes down exactly as I found them. Maybe someone lived here. I turn and see Gray in the doorway.
“Let’s find out what’s behind the other door,” he says. “Just in case.”
He means just in case someone or something might come through it. I follow him across the white room in silence. Gray tries the door latch. It’s not locked. A soft pop for the light, and we see a very short hallway, another door at the end. Everything is so white.
“I’ll hold this door,” I say, “while you open that one.” He nods. If we get locked in here, we’ll never be found. He opens the other door, while I try the latch of the one I’m holding. It doesn’t seem to be locked in any way. Gray nods again; I hold my breath and let the door shut. It clicks. I try the latch, and it opens again. I see Gray’s shoulders ease down. He waits for me at the end of the little hallway and we step through the door.
The lights ignite, one, two, three, four, on and on down the length of a huge, open cavern, columns of natural blue and gray hanging down from a ceiling too high to see. The air is different here, damp, more dirt-and-rock-scented, like the first passage. And it’s just as deserted. But where my eyes have landed is on a stack of white blocks. I run to them, put my hands on them.
“The stone!” I say. What the whole city is made of. Beside the stacked stone is a structure almost like a small building with an open room inside, made from more of the same smooth material as
the curving table. Only this is black and yellow, shiny where it isn’t covered in fine dust, huge molded letters saying “3-D Print Architect” across the top, almost too dusty to see. Gray is already beside it, doing his intent scrutiny without touching. We don’t know what might decide to spring to life in here.
I wander past heaps of soil and pale sand, a cart made of metal with no way to pull it, also full of sand. The lights don’t go all the way to the end of the cavern, leaving this area murky and dim, and when I look up I can just make out a broken tube hanging from the ceiling. I’m not looking at the wall of the cave, I realize, but an enormous pile of broken, tumbled stone. This whole side of the cavern has come down. Some of the boulders are huge, and blackened. They leave soot on my fingertips.
“Have you ever looked inside the water clock?” Gray calls. He’s climbed up inside the black-and-yellow building, in the open-room part. We’re not whispering anymore. It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone to disturb. I go back and peer upward, like he is.
He says, “The clock is just a machine, right? Cause and effect. You make one part do something, and that makes the next part do something, and the next, until you have a chain of things happening that makes the one thing you want to happen … happen. For the clock, it keeps up with the time. Rings the bell.”
I think I know what he means.
“Well, I’m saying that all these things are machines. In the white room, and what I’m standing inside. Look.” He jumps up, grabs hold of a metal bar that goes right across the open space. He hangs from it, wipes his hand across pieces and parts that are attached to it. When he drops down he shows me his hand, covered in the pale dust. It’s the same color as our stone.
“I don’t understand what causes what kind of effect,” Gray said, “or what all those things in the white room are meant to do. But I would say this”—he opens his arms to the machine he’s standing inside—“makes that”—he points at the piles of sand—“turn into that.” Now he jerks his thumb at the pile of finished Canaan stone. “They didn’t quarry it, Nadia. They created it.”
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