We the faithful of the NWSE have never forgotten our original directive: to create a new civilization, to populate the perfect society, to advance the knowledge of the human race. We have dared to build a world superior to the Earth from which we come …
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN
Beckett stares down into the dotted sparkle of the torches and lamps of the Outside, then up at the surrounding mountains, where the glowworm threads are shining, like webs of moonlit string. I wonder what he’s seeing through his technology. I wonder what he’s seeing in his mind. If the Outside looks anything like Earth. Or nothing at all. He sees me watching him, but he avoids my eyes. He doesn’t trust me. Why should he? I wouldn’t trust me. And I’m not sure I can trust him. He couldn’t answer back there when I asked him about Earth.
His anger feels like a knife tip grazing my skin.
“I need to change our clothes,” I tell him.
He lays Jillian down beneath a blacknut tree without a word, cradling her head, and then I want to Know just how many times he’s kissed her the way he kissed me. Which is infuriating. He walks away into the grove in his tight Earth clothes, stretching out on the sloping ground, facing the lights of the Outside.
I think that knife tip is going to make me bleed.
I wrestle Jillian into the tunic and leggings of undyed cloth, the clothes I wore the day Nita died, retrieved from the bushes before we went up the last cliff. And twice I have to pull back and cache, to keep from falling into the memory of the cave. I even let myself fall when I was sitting beside Aunt Letitia’s broken body.
It made me angry at Aunt Letitia, seeing her like that. She might as well have been holding Uncle Towlend’s hand when she jumped off that cliff. And then my anger fanned my rage. Which is why I have to get back into the city. To break the Council that killed my brother. Into pieces. To fix this, if I can. For all of us. But I have to find a safe place for Beckett and Jillian first. I owe them that much at least.
I put one of the blankets over Jillian, slip farther back into the blacknut grove, and change back into my tunic. The cloth of the Knowing will immediately draw the eye, but at least these clothes aren’t inexplicable, like the ones from Earth. Beckett sits where I left him, propped on his elbows, legs stretched out in front of him, watching the sunset deepen over the Outside. And he’s taken off the glasses, holding them to one side. A gesture to tell me I’ve had privacy. Without having to ask. A kindness, even when he’s hurt.
And right then, I think I could tell him everything. All the terrible things I’ve done. What I was going to do and why. Maybe he would understand. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would be worse than angry, and be disgusted.
I don’t want to remember his disgust.
Then, without turning around, Beckett asks, “What will happen, if we’re caught?”
I Know exactly what will happen to me. I’m not as sure about him. “If we’re caught,” I say, “you should do whatever you can to get away.”
“And what is your Reddix going to do with his information?”
I don’t argue his incorrect possessive. “He said he wouldn’t tell.”
“And do you believe that?”
“It’s … possible.” But I would very much like to Know how Reddix was aware of Earth’s presence in the first place.
Beckett slides the glasses back onto his face and gets to his feet, and I help hoist Jillian up onto his back. She’s not any better, but she’s not worse, either. I get all three of the packs, and then we are on the move again, skirting the perimeter of the Outside on the level of the groves, hidden by the shadows.
There are steps cut every so often, leading down to the next level of the barren fields, but I don’t want to take them yet. I want to stay out of sight, until we are as close as possible to Nita’s house. If we go in after curfew, just a little more than a bell from now, there will be only four supervisors to avoid. I Know the changing patterns of their patrol. The danger is in someone not sticking to their route, like going inside that unused supply hut on the day Nita died.
I’m not sure what Annis is going to say to me when I come knocking after curfew, ragged and bedraggled, with two strangers in tow. I’m not sure what I’m going to say to any of them. How much will they blame me for what happened to Nita? They should blame me, probably more than they know. And now I am nervous, guilty. Pained by the grief I Know I will see. And that means memories are lurking. Ready to jump up and snatch me. I try to measure my breaths.
“We should wait here,” I whisper to Beckett, “until the resting bell rings. I’ll have to tell them you’re one of the Knowing, so … do your best to act like you have memory.” His brows go up. “And they might call me Nadia. Or they might say Samara.”
“Nadia? Why?”
“It’s … Just don’t be surprised.”
Beckett doesn’t question me anymore. He’s staring down at the roofs of the houses. They look pretend. Like toys. “Are you sure you Know when the bell rings?” he asks. “There’s nobody near us that’s not inside a house.”
I look down, startled. Of course I Know when the bell rings. But I think he’s right. It’s too quiet. No shadows in front of the streetlamps. Fear builds in the pit of my stomach. But if there’s no one on the streets, we should go. Now.
“Come on,” I whisper, and we slip down a set of stone steps to the level of the fields, and then to the next level, and the next. Two more and we are among the workshops and houses of the Outside.
Glowworm lamps shine at the street corners, but I avoid these, sticking to the pools of darkness along the house walls. We flit to the intersection of two lanes. It’s so quiet I can hear Jillian’s breath, a hollow kind of wheeze. I think we’re going to have to dose her again. Soon. But I shouldn’t be able to hear her at all. Not on a street like this. There should be voices from inside the houses at least, the clang of cooking or conversation. Singing. But the Outside is silent. It’s eerie.
Beckett is sweating, struggling to hold up Jillian. I hurry us across the rutted street, to the pillar of an open workshop. I can feel the heat of the glassblowing furnaces, their doors dark and shut. And then I do hear voices, a metal-capped stick thumping on wood.
I hold up a hand to stop Beckett, get an eye around the corner of the workshop. Four supervisors stand in the yellow light of a mirror maker’s opening door. Not Craddock, but one of his sisters, and three of his cousins. They go inside, indistinct words coming soft before the door latches shut behind them. I don’t understand what’s happening or what the mirror maker could have done, but we need to get off this street. We round the corner to Nita’s house, one lamp shining behind a closed curtain.
I knock, very soft. There’s a rustle inside that stills to quiet. Beckett slides Jillian to the ground, holding her upright. I knock again and say, “Annis!” right into the crack of the door. It jerks open.
Nita’s mother has round cheeks, their color a little faded like the hair that hangs loose past her shoulders. But her expression leaps at the sight of me, gaze darting behind me, where Beckett stands with Jillian, and I watch her face fall. My insides do the same. Either she doesn’t know Nita is dead, or had hoped against hope that she wasn’t.
She grabs my arm and pulls me inside, Beckett coming after, now just carrying Jillian in his arms. Annis shuts and bars the door, then turns to face me. She has shadows beneath her eyes. “Where is Nita?”
I drop the packs and glance around the room. Grandpapa is rising from his chair, in its place beside the rounded corner made by the clay heating furnace, the central pillar of the house, and when I look up to the loft, there are four sets of eyes gazing over the edge. Nathan, nearly grown, Luc, Ari, and Jasmina, the smallest, who is four. I feel the attention of the family like a weight, the pull of Nita’s memory so heavy I want to fall through the floor.
“Annis,” I whisper, “Nita is dead.”
I watch her eyes close, a spasm of pain, and after a long moment she says, “Thank you.
We were so afraid she wasn’t.” She crosses the room to Grandpapa as he sinks back to his chair, and kisses the top of his head. “Was she … alive long?”
I shake my head, mute. She looks relieved again, comes to me, and holds my face once before kissing each cheek. I am choking on my guilt. Then her eyes snap to the door. “You have to go.”
“I can’t—” I begin.
“You have to. No argument.”
“But—”
“We’re being counted! Right now!”
I stare at her. It’s ten days early for counting.
“They’re not admitting that Nita didn’t come back aboveground,” Annis whispers. “We’re one short, and they’re going to say she ran. They’ll have their excuse.”
And they’ll take them Underneath, I think. All of them.
“They can’t find you here, too … ” Annis says.
“Who are they?” asks Grandpapa. His blue eyes are on Beckett, who I’m relieved to see has had the sense to take the glasses off.
“More of the Knowing,” I say quickly. “And she’s sick … ”
Jillian half opens her eyes, and for a moment, Annis is transfixed. I need to cache, desperately, but I’m also trying to think. We could try to get out, get back up to the groves, but what about Grandpapa? The children? Fists pound on wood, and we all jump. It’s the house next door. Annis comes alive. “Who’s in the street?” she asks me. “Quick! Did you see them? Which supervisors? Are there any from the gates?”
I check my memory. “No, it’s—”
Annis points at Beckett. “Take her through that door and put her on the bed.” She’s whispering, but the words come out as a command anyway. Beckett gathers up Jillian. “You,” she says collectively, looking to the loft, “your sister is in my resting room and she’s sick. Do you understand me? And you’ve never seen any of these people. Nathan, take care of it. Don’t move, Daddy. Nadia, with me.”
I follow Annis and Beckett into the second of the three rooms, where Nita and her mother slept. There are two beds on low platforms, huddled near the warm, rounded corner that is the wall of the heating furnace. “There,” she says to Beckett. “Quick!”
He lays Jillian down, and I Know I’ve made a mistake. Her face is swelling, her breathing labored. We should have dosed her in the blacknut grove.
“How sick is she?” Annis asks. “Will she talk? And what happened to her hair?” I open my mouth to speak, and she says, “Never mind. Hurry!”
She runs to the opposite corner of the resting room, drops to her knees, and digs her fingers into a crack between the floor planks. Three planks come free, lifting at an angle like a misplaced door. There’s a space beneath, dug out from the ground.
“In!” she says. Beckett slides inside, I go next, and then Grandpapa comes shuffling over with the packs. “Get down … ”
And there’s a metal-capped stick pounding at the door.
Beckett pulls me down. The space is not as long as either one of us, and not quite wide enough for two. The packs land on our feet, the planks drop into place, and we are in semidarkness, the light of the hanging lamp in the room above us glowing between the cracks.
We try to find a way to fit, a position we’ll be able to hold. There’s not actually room for it. I put an elbow in Beckett’s ribs twice before I end up half on my back, my legs bent and braced against the dirt wall with his beneath, his arm under my head. My heart is thudding in my chest, and I am struggling. Sinking. Jillian’s wheezing is loud in the room, but it’s Nita’s muffled breath that I’m hearing, that I’m trying to stifle with my pillow.
“Look at me,” Beckett whispers. He gets a hand beneath my chin, turns my face to him. “Look at me and stay right here.” There are voices in the other room. “Stay here, Samara.”
I do look at him, and I’m half in the Cursed City, Beckett pushing down my shoulders, hiding me in the ruined house, and then my memory shifts and I see a sliver of his face from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, the corner of his mouth turned up just before he kisses me. And then I’m back in the hole in the floor and the resting room door is opening. Beckett’s fingers move to my mouth, keeping me quiet. In case I make a noise. In case I fall. Feet move across the cracks above our head, darkening the light.
“Who is this?” a voice asks. It’s Kayla, Craddock’s sister, and she’s walking toward Jillian. I feel Beckett’s body tense.
“Nita, Weaver’s daughter,” says Annis.
“Confirm your name,” says Kayla. I don’t Know if Jillian has been awake enough to understand what’s going on. I listen, heart thudding, for her to speak. For her to say Jillian. I don’t think I can lie here and listen to Nita’s entire family—and Jillian—being carried to the flogging post. Or worse.
I’m not sure I’ll have a choice.
“She’s sick,” Annis says quickly. “You might not want to get too close … ”
That won’t work. The Knowing don’t fear sickness. Unless it’s Forgetting.
“Confirm your name,” demands Kayla.
The light changes, darkens again, the planks above my head creak, and a fine sprinkle of dust rains down. Someone is standing directly above us. Beckett’s fingers move from my mouth to the back of my head, and he pulls me into his neck. I can smell his skin, feel the thud in his chest. I close my arms around him.
Annis whispers, “She’s too ill for that.”
“What happened to her hair?”
“We cut it. To help with the healing.”
That might work. The Knowing think the Outsiders are ignorant.
“Can we have the description, please, Oman?” Kayla asks.
Oman will have read each description, will Know each person that should be here. Why don’t they have Himmat from the gates? He would Know them by their faces. No descriptions needed. No wonder Annis was so frightened. I’m frightened. Beckett tightens his grip on my head.
“Nita, Weaver’s daughter, working Underneath,” Oman replies. “Light hair, pale complexion, blue eyes.”
“Blue?” says Kayla.
I let out a slow breath against Beckett’s skin. Blue is such an unusual color. Except in this house.
“They are blue,” Kayla says, incredulous. “Have any of you ever seen her Underneath? What level, Oman?”
“Three,” he replies.
“That would account for it,” she sighs. It’s not the supervisors’ level. The planks groan, the feet shadows move, and Beckett tucks his head against mine, escaping the dust. The door shuts, the talk going on in the next room as the supervisors begin questioning the children.
Beckett pulls my head back, so he can see my face in the dim. “Still here?”
The words are barely breathed. I nod. Some of the tension has gone out of his body, but not all of it. It would be nothing to touch his face, like I did last time. I don’t. And it would be nothing for him to lean forward, just a little, like he did before. But he doesn’t.
And I think I am ruined. I can’t help it.
And then I blink in the sudden light. Annis is pulling up the planks, lifting the packs so we can scramble out, and for the first time it occurs to me to wonder just what this hidden hole might be for. I get to my feet, stiff, and I watch Annis watch Beckett do the same, in his bizarre clothes, not to mention the foot coverings, looking rumpled and dirty and thoroughly beautiful.
“Here,” Annis says, handing him a wad of undyed cloth. They’re probably Nathan’s.
“Thanks,” he replies, and the accent I’d almost stopped noticing jumps out, clipped and stark. I don’t have the first idea what to tell Annis. I hurry to Jillian. She’s lying very still, her eyes closed, and I don’t like her breathing. Her pulse is rapid.
“We’ll let you dress,” I say to Beckett. Annis hesitates, like she wants to say something but decides against it, and goes out the door. “Give her half of what you gave her last time,” I whisper. “And go barefoot.”
Beckett nods, but he doesn’t look at me, and I feel the space be
tween us stretch as wide as between the mountains.
In the main room, the two younger boys are hurrying up the ladder to the loft again, Ari, who is nearing ten, and Luc, three years younger. Their faces are solemn. They don’t speak to me, or hug me like they sometimes do. Nathan is openly hostile, arms crossed, leaning against a wall beside Grandpapa. He’s as tall as Grandpapa now, his eyes a warm hazel. Other than that, he looks just like Nita. Except that he needs to shave. When did Nathan start needing to shave? Annis has an arm around him, and they all look a little stunned. I think she must have prepared them to be taken.
Jasmina comes to me, though, holding up her arms, sleepy and oblivious to the atmosphere. I pick her up and sit in the room’s only other chair, facing the group from the other side of the furnace. The light is warm and yellow, the matting a well-worn green, and I can smell the dried herbs. Jasmina settles against my shoulder, murmuring something about jam, while Grandpapa leans forward, throwing another brick of biofuel through the open furnace door. I like listening to Jasmina. When the children of the Knowing get their memories, they lose the childlike softness of their speech.
I ask, “Is it safe for you to have us here, Annis? For the time being?” We both know it’s not safe. The question is the degree of danger.
“Until one of the Knowing hears Nita’s name on that list,” she replies, “one who’s aware her name shouldn’t be on it.”
They have four supervisors who will remember every person, age, occupation, and description, and they will recite those to one of the administrators Underneath. But what will that administrator Know?
“Did you ask a supervisor about her,” I ask Annis, “when she didn’t come back?”
“The second resting, yes. I talked to Himmat, at the gates. He said everyone was accounted for, and to go home and count my children.”
Then he wasn’t admitting, or wasn’t being told, the truth, and that in itself is suspicious, because the Knowing cannot miscount. If someone is hiding the fact that there’s a missing Outsider, then they already Know that Outsider is missing. And probably how. And why. I rock Jasmina side to side in my arms. I don’t think this early counting had anything to do with Nita or her family at all. I think it had everything to do with me, and possibly the two aliens in the resting room. Reddix said they were coming for me.
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