On the third day of their visit, they’d been in the fields outside of town and passed a long, low building made of white brick, with thin slats on the roof for ventilation. A Hassan had entered the building carrying a cattle prod. A wild shout soon echoed from inside, followed by the rasping noise of the activated prod and a voice yelling a curse.
Jonah had been in Copan at that time. Thinking of Jack being held in that white-brick warehouse made her shudder.
They approached the Althea dorm, a solid brick building facing east, away from Vispera. Yellow curtains hung from the arched windows, adorning the structure with the Altheas’ color.
Althea-298 left after Althea’s sisters met her at the door. As soon as she climbed the front steps, they all circled her. The anger burning inside her about Copan and Jonah eased away almost instantly as they stroked her back and hair, leading her inside. At first Althea resisted. Surely anger wasn’t always bad. Surely sometimes there was a reason to hang on to it. But it felt good to hear their murmurs of sympathy as they absorbed Althea’s frustration and diffused it throughout their group. The sisters undressed her, and she lifted her arms to let them slip a cotton nightgown over her head. She closed her eyes as they tied the yellow ribbons at her throat and brushed her hair. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she felt them around her so close their breath was on her face.
“Tell us about Jack,” they said. It didn’t matter that it was Althea-318 speaking. The appeal came from all of them, their voices joined as one in her mind. “Think about him now,” they whispered. “And then we’ll feel it too.”
Most of what Althea felt was confusion. The Inga’s words rang in her ears. Her sisters knew her, cared about her. Her secrets had created distance between them, and they wanted to bridge that distance, that was all. Her body relaxed against their stroking hands and their senses wove more deeply with hers.
On the way to school once, Althea had found a caterpillar, a fat, emerald-green thing. She’d cupped it in her palms and carried it with her. It had wriggled, and its feet tickled, sticking dryly to her skin all through class. When recess came, her sisters finally realized she was keeping something from them. They’d opened her hands and sighed and exclaimed over it, passed it around, given it a name, and then kept it in a jar with leaves until it was forgotten about and died. Althea imagined her hands cradling memories of Jack the way they had the caterpillar, her palms cupping them in darkness.
The brush tugged at her hair, and the fingers, caressing softly a moment ago, tightened against her. A longing that had no words seeped into her as her sisters sought to draw her feelings out.
Althea shifted away from them. “I’m tired,” she said.
Their faces darkened as their touch and minds pulled away. Althea breathed in relief even as the emptiness and distance she’d created between them frightened her. But something about the brief times she’d spent with Jack made her want to hang on to those moments and keep them for herself. She’d begun to feel that if she communed, the feeling she had when she was with him wouldn’t be hers anymore. It’d change and be lost, like the caterpillar.
Althea noted the significant looks her sisters passed to one another as they drifted off to their own beds, realizing they would get nothing more from her about Jack. Her thoughts went back to him. She ran her finger along the scar on her wrist, relishing the feel of the soft white skin, and it came to her suddenly that she was, in fact, fracturing. She’d denied it to herself as much as to the Council, but she knew. Her sisters were only just beginning to fear it. Despite the lingering anxiety hovering in the room that emanated from them like a heady perfume, they hadn’t yet let the word creep into their consciousness. But Althea knew what they didn’t.
The night closed in, black and foreboding. Her sisters moaned softly in their sleep, sensing the sudden and chilling disquiet that had come over her. Even in the midst of her fear, however, she knew it was true that she was fracturing. She knew, because she didn’t want a cure.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack
Jack had spent the entire day working in the fields, the massive thrashing combines churning on either side of him. They trundled through the rows like great lumbering beetles, their teeth gnashing into the earth, lifting roots and rocks. More than once, he’d been put to work tinkering with a slowed or stalled machine, but mostly he’d been cutting wheat and barley with nothing but a curved blade. It was such a joke that he was out there for six hours doing work that took a machine twenty minutes. Tired and hungry, he returned in the evening to the yellow barn where a meager plate of food awaited him.
The Hassans who supervised the fields kept an eye on him most of the time, and occasionally a Viktor walked past. Jack didn’t know why the Council cared whether he ran away or not. The Carson who’d come to the barn had certainly thought he was pretty useless. If they would just give him some supplies, he’d leave, and they’d never have to deal with him again. But he had nothing, only the clothes he wore, and he didn’t love the idea of trying to survive in the jungle without food or even a proper knife. Anyway, he couldn’t leave. He needed to see Althea.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, eating from a tin plate, and then she was there, standing at the bars. He stood, wiping his blistered, dirt-smeared hands on his pants, but those were filthy as well. It was hopeless. Althea gave no sign of noticing his appearance. She smoothed her hair, which had curled in the humid air, and placed her hand on a bar of the cell.
“I found you,” she said. “You okay?”
When he nodded, coming close to her, her grasp on the bars relaxed.
“What took you so long?” he teased.
“My sisters. They won’t let me out of their sight.”
Althea observed everything with slow deliberation, as if she were forming a puzzle of the minute details surrounding her. Her mouth turned down as she took in his cell. The pile of metal chain in the corner, the filthy pallet he slept on, and the tin platter for food.
He shifted uncomfortably. She chewed her lip. “This is where you sleep?”
Jack could only shrug.
“It’s horrible,” she said.
“It’s not like I can go back to the lab. I burned it down, remember?”
Her eyes darted back to him. “Don’t joke about that.”
“I just meant, maybe when they figure out I’m innocent, they’ll let me out of here.”
“They won’t,” she said decisively. Her eyes focused on him. “I need to tell you something, Jack. You have a brother.”
She said it so quickly, so matter-of-factly, it took him a moment to absorb the words. He must’ve appeared dazed, because Althea’s voice sharpened, drawing his attention back to her. “Jack?”
She was watching him, and he wanted to say he was okay, but his thoughts were so jumbled his mouth wouldn’t form the right syllables. The word brother sounded over and over in his head, blazing and loud.
He sat heavily. “What?” he managed to get out.
“I saw him in the banana grove,” she said. “His name is Jonah.”
Althea recounted what had happened since Jack had been locked up. While she talked, he didn’t ask why she’d been in the grove with Carson-312, of all people.
He tried to hold back a smirk when she described how Jonah had knocked Carson to the ground and taunted him. Carson had it coming. Jack wished it could have been him defending Althea, making the other boy look scared and foolish. But then Althea said Jonah had threatened the Council, and actually shot Carson with an arrow before running away.
“He acted like it was fun, hurting Carson, scaring us. He said he would hurt the Council.”
Althea was leaving out some part of the story, but there was already so much information to consider that he didn’t press her.
The blue-gray eyes he’d seen outside the barn wall—he hadn’t been dreaming.
He had a brother.
He’d brought Jack water, helped him. He’d moved the bag dropped by Carson-292 s
o Jack could reach it. His brother. Jonah, he said the name to himself.
Althea waited for Jack to respond, like she expected something from him, some insight or explanation for the other boy’s actions, but Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t mention the water or the parcel. Althea seemed to have already formed an opinion about this other boy, and Jack wasn’t ready to form his own.
“I should get back to the dorm,” Althea said eventually.
She tucked her dark hair behind her ear, uncertain what to do with her hands. He wanted to ask her to visit him again, but that was what he’d always said to the Nyla before she left, and he didn’t want to say the same thing to Althea.
Then she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack.”
The next time she came, she brought a clean blanket, and he recognized the soft yellow that was the Altheas’ color. The blanket belonged to her, and he could smell the scents of vanilla and lavender on it.
After that, every time she came, she brought some small comfort for him. She gave him a bar of pink, flowery-smelling soap. She brought him his guitar from the cottage, and having it again made the nights alone more bearable.
She also brought food. Jack would have been happy simply with larger portions of the meat, potatoes, and carrots he usually had at the end of the day. She brought exotic creams whipped into icy clouds that tingled on his tongue, and cubes of meat grown like vegetables in gardens. Once she brought a little pod like milkweed. She sat outside the bars with her feet tucked under her and opened it, revealing a ball of golden cotton. She held it out to him.
“Try it,” she said.
He held the bit of fluff uncertainly, and then put it on his tongue, where it melted into sugary air, leaving a taste of lemon in his mouth. It was so sweet he wasn’t sure he liked it, but he liked the way she leaned forward, waiting for his reaction.
On this night, a breeze blew from the east, and laughter drifted to them from Vispera’s Commons. The moon painted the distant mountains silver and blue. Jack wanted to ask her to bring him more useful things—a pack, tools, food for a journey. Then he noticed her yellow dress and the knit shawl bundled in her lap.
“It’s a Pairing night,” he said. He tipped his chin at her, a question stalled on his lips.
She pulled at the fringe on her shawl before stating the obvious. “I didn’t go.”
After a long pause, he asked, “Won’t they miss you?”
She’d been coming to see him every night. She’d certainly be missed during a Gen-310 Pairing Ceremony. He was indescribably glad she was with him instead of Pairing with one of the clones, but no clone ever missed that ceremony. It would mean trouble for her, and because of him.
She didn’t answer, but met his eyes, communicating something he couldn’t quite make out.
“I have something for you,” he said. He fetched it from his pallet and came back, taking both of her hands and dropping into them a small bead. He’d decorated it with scrolling lines in the outline of a ginger flower and tied it on a leather string as a bracelet.
“It’s like the one you wear,” she said. He nodded. “Are you giving me this so I look different from my sisters? So you can tell us apart?”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, but he flinched anyway, thinking of the many Nylas who’d come to his room. He realized now, however, that he’d been blind with them. He could no more mistake Althea for one of her sisters than one of the Ingas for his dead mother.
“That’s not why I made it,” he said, pulling the bead back from the bars.
“No,” Althea said, grabbing his hands. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” She bit her lip. “Can I still have it?”
He’d found the cohune nut on the path to the barn, and he’d wanted her to have something from him that only he could give. She held out her arm through the bars, and he wrapped the ends of the string around her wrist. They were close enough that he could feel her soft breath on his face.
“You can put it on my other wrist if you want,” she said. He stopped and looked up. “So it could cover the scar. I know it’s ugly.”
Jack shook his head. “No,” he said simply.
The laughter outside had stilled, though the breeze lingered. The clones were in the midst of their ceremony, selecting those they were going to spend their evening with in the tents. She hadn’t answered when he asked if they would miss her, because of course they would. It wasn’t as simple as choosing him over some brief evening’s entertainment. The choice she’d made was like a stone dropped in water, leaving ripples across a deep pool. She must be aware there’d be repercussions. Jack thought about his mother and was afraid for Althea. If they tried to hurt her . . .
As if to put aside thoughts of what the future would bring, Althea smiled and her hand brushed the line of his jaw, her touch as light as the sugary cotton. She stood and wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. She spun, letting the skirt of her dress undulate in a wide circle. It was the Pairing dance, the same dance the clones were doing at that moment on the Commons in Vispera.
Her movements were light and graceful, and Jack could see without really trying the structure and timing of the dance, and also the story in it, ancient yet alive. Without taking his eyes from her, he took up his guitar. He’d tried for a long time to be one of them, and he’d only suffered for it. He was done pretending he was something he wasn’t.
He waited for a quick tap of her toe in the dirt, and then he played. He plucked at the strings, sensing the flow of her body in the vibrations of the instrument. His music settled into the beat of her dance. At first she hesitated as if confused, but she kept dancing until they were each in time with the other, and after a while, her face beamed with realization.
She could hear the music.
He saw the comprehension not just in her face, but in the fluid ease with which she moved. It was in her limbs, in the pulse and twist of her turns, in the joy enfolding her whole being.
When the dance ended, sweat glowed on her skin and her breath was quick. She knelt down, and with tears, she touched his face. They leaned together through the bars and their lips met, warm and slow. The last thrum of the guitar lingered in his body before it grew into something more.
Althea took his hands through the bars. She held them with reverence, like he’d just performed some otherworldly magic. From the pocket of her skirt she pulled a long yellow ribbon. She wrapped the end around his wrist, and then crossed his palm to loop around his fingers. She kissed him again as the silky ribbon glided over his skin. His lips parted from hers to speak, but then he stopped and, wordlessly, he halted her elaborate movements with a hand over hers. He unwound the ribbon and coiled it back into her palm. Her hand closed around it, and he felt a pang at the confusion he was causing her, knew she was thinking he didn’t want her.
It was too hard to explain. He didn’t want to Pair with her. That was what the clones did. They did it ceremonially, as a performance of something human and long past. He didn’t think less of them for it. But as often as he’d wished to be a part of their world, he wasn’t and never would be. He was human, and he was learning more and more about what that might mean. It was a human longing that made him ache to press his lips against hers again, to feel her skin on his, to get lost in her soft, delicate touch.
He didn’t want ribbons and rituals.
He wanted her.
The next day, Jack was tired. He’d been unable to sleep during the night and now, working in the fields, he labored in frustrated exhaustion.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Althea. Part of him wished he’d just taken the damn ribbon. Althea had known they wouldn’t Pair, not while he was locked in a cage. The ribbon had been only a token, a symbol. He should have tried harder to make her understand. She’d left quickly and awkwardly after they’d kissed last night, and what if she didn’t visit him again? She must think he was inept and ignorant, a primitive creature who couldn’t comprehend their most basic rituals.
&nb
sp; Jack hacked at the stalks of wheat with the small sickle. The sunny, cloudless sky was such a contrast to his mood, it made him feel the world existed only to spite him. After all, he wasn’t supposed to be here. If the earth noticed his presence at all, it was only to wonder why he was laboring in a field that wasn’t his instead of dead with the rest of his kind centuries ago.
Jack hurled the sickle aside in disgust. There was no Hassan in sight, so he lay back with his arms behind his head. On clear days like this, the mountains seemed to stretch on forever, and Jack imagined he could see the curve of the earth in their distant ridges. He closed his eyes, letting the hot air prickle his skin and feeling the energy in the ground beneath him and the rumble of the engines in the distance. He’d almost drifted off when a group of voices came from across the field above the noise of the threshers. Jack sat up, expecting to see the Hassans checking on him, or maybe the Viktors. Now that the Council knew Jonah was alive and in Vispera, they’d ordered patrols of the surrounding fields and jungle. Jack had been looking for Jonah himself, staring into the corn at night trying to see if someone was out there, but he’d seen no one. It was frustrating, knowing Jonah had been right outside the barn, could still be nearby, but was keeping his distance. Jack wanted to see him, talk to him, find out what his life had been like. They were brothers, after all.
Instead of Hassans, it was the Gen-310 Carsons crossing the field in a line and heading straight for him. Carson-312 led the grim-faced group, a cut across his nose and a bandage-wrapped shoulder showing beneath his shirt.
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