by Unknown
“Maybe. It would be an interesting experiment indeed.” Moses stares at me for a long while, then looks to Gabe, contemplating the both of us for what seems like forever. “Are you two finished with your dinner? It seems you have much to think about now. I can have Lee show you back to your tent.”
I nod my head. “Yes. I think we are quite done.” I have hardly touched a thing on my plate, and I’ll be sorry for it later when my stomach is growling in the middle of the night, but I want nothing more than to be out of this tent. To clear my mind. To stop thinking of myself like a chalice. An empty, worthless chalice, all dressed up for nothing.
Gabe starts to stand, indicating that he’s finished, and I follow his lead and push myself up to my feet. My dress falls around my form and down to my knees in graceful ripples of gentle fabric. It catches Moses’ attention, and he watches me with renewed interest. It’s not the leering that Lee tends to do, but something different. I catch his gaze for an instant, and it’s enough to make me blush. I turn quickly and walk after Gabe, who is already on his way out of the tent.
“Think about it, my little seedling. You can be the change the City needs.” Moses’ words catch me just as I leave the tent, and I pause and almost turn around, but force myself to keep walking.
I could be the change the City needs.
If only he really knew.
Chapter 16
Dinner leaves me feeling exhausted. I am mentally worn down and want nothing more than to go back to my tent and sleep. That is exactly what I plan to do.
Gabe puppy-dogs after me but doesn’t say a word. The tension between us is taught, and we are strung out on emotions that the both of us can’t bear to understand, or want to understand, for that matter. We know that whenever we return to the City, it will be different. I am already mourning my friendship with Gabe and wishing that I never had to become the Keeper. I don’t want to lose what I have with him.
I hold the tent flap up until Gabe is inside, then yawn loudly. “I think I am going to turn in for the night.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s been a long day and we have a lot to talk about tomorrow.” Gabe doesn’t mean about our relationship, though. He wants to address the fact that Lee let slip that the plant might have been found already. We could be shipped back to the City at any moment, and that would take us farther away from Aura, where we actually need to end up.
“I suppose we do, don’t we?” I don’t even bother to change out of my intricate sari before I curl up in a mass of plush pillows, choosing a puffy one to rest my head on.
“You look exhausted.” Gabe kneels down next to me and puts his hand on the curve of my hip. When I don’t answer, he lies down the rest of the way, spooning the length of my body so that I fit snuggly against his broad form. I welcome the embrace. It makes me feel safe, and it doesn’t take long before I drift into sleep. This happens shortly after I feel Gabe kiss the back of my head, his lips in my hair, his breathing hot against my scalp. I could get used to falling asleep like this.
***
Echo is never too far away from me. As soon as I drift into my dreams, he is standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, lips pursed in a frown.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him as I casually glance about, taking note that we are standing in his chambers, which are bright from the sunlight that floods the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“I can sense him, you know.” Echo’s words are, as always, level and soft. It’s like anger doesn’t know how to get through him, he controls it so well. Even without the tone, I can tell that he’s not happy, though. It radiates through his being almost as brightly as the sunlight.
I frown in return. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Echo. Gabe has been in my life for far longer than you have … and he is here with me because I am trying to find something to save your life.”
Echo’s features soften a touch. “True.” Though I don’t know which statement he is agreeing with. “I still don’t like it.”
“And he doesn’t like the fact that I am married to you either, Echo, but it’s just how things are.” I brush my hair back behind my shoulders and sigh, looking off toward the windows. “Honestly, being stuck in the middle is getting to be tiring.”
“Well, you can’t have us both.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I snap.
Echo doesn’t flinch. He’s so patient and calm and everything that I wonder if I can ever be when I pick up my position as the Keeper again. I have to learn from Echo, observe him, mimic him. Those are things I can ask him for another time, though.
“Are you well?” I change the subject because I’m tired of Echo asking about Gabe and Gabe asking about Echo.
Echo crosses to where I am and takes both of my hands up in his, brushing his thumbs over the bumps of my knuckles. “You need to hurry, Beatrice. There’s not much time.”
“For … for everyone? Or, just for you?”
“Both.” The one word sends an electric jolt down my spine, and it opens an empty hole inside my stomach. Echo’s not been in my life for too long, but I can’t imagine him not being there, waiting for me in my dreams. Will it have to be that way when I return back to the City anyway?
I grip his hands in mine and stare up into his pale, blue eyes. “Please hold on, Echo. We are so close … there’s even rumor that the plant has already been found. We just need to come up with a plan to get it and run.”
“And if you get caught?” Echo drags his teeth over his bottom lip. “Maybe I shouldn’t think that way.”
I smile in an effort to lighten the mood. “Probably not.”
He leans down and presses his mouth to mine in a light kiss. As I kiss him back, I imagine myself drinking him in, like smoke swirling through a fan and dissipating on the other end. If only I could envelop him, possess him and never have to let him go. If he could live in my dreams forever, and I could just close my eyes and be there with him. As I think about these things, I realize that it’s probably a very real possibility that I could always have Echo with me, and I’d not have to let him go.
But would it be fair to Gabe?
Outside of my dream, Gabe is still holding me. I wonder if he knows what I’m dreaming of? Will he know when I wake up, flushed and breathless? Will he understand that I can’t help the fact the Echo comes to me in my dreams? It’s the way of the Dreamcatcher. Normally, I would be dead by now if I was Caught. Echo wouldn’t have bothered to waste all this time on me if he were another sort of Dreamcatcher. But Echo needs me. He loves me. He’d never kill me.
But he might refuse to ever leave me.
Echo wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me close to him. I continue to kiss him back, and can taste a faint, coppery taste of blood. I try to ignore it, but it becomes more and more noticeable, and finally, I have to break the kiss.
I lower my eyes in apology. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Echo assures me and kisses my cheek. “I need to go.”
When I look at him again, I realize that he’s getting paler, and his eyes look like they’ve sunken into his skull. This is probably what he looks like back home, and if this is any indication of how quickly I need to move, I obviously need to hurry it up.
“Please hold on, Echo.”
“For you, Beatrice?” Echo grins a lopsided, somewhat pained grin. “Anything.”
***
When I wake up, Gabe is sure enough still holding me. My cheeks are flush, but thankfully, he is still sleeping, and won’t ever know that my dreams were the culprit. Or rather, that Echo was.
Urgency races through my veins, and I’m restless. I shift in Gabe’s arms and try to think of a way we can break out of here with our precious plant … if we can even find it. So far, we are only running on rumors and not much more, and there’s really no trying to find out. The gossip is all we have. No one is going to talk to a couple of sideshow Seers. At least, no one will without telling someone else first.
Ou
r guards are the best source of information that we have. They forget that tents aren’t made of brick, and when they drink too much, they talk too much, and Gabe and I find out all sorts of interesting things. The other day, one of the guards told a whole story about a secret speeder path that leads to a ravine with fresh water running through. They keep it secret because if everyone knew, they’d deplete the water source, and there are so very few that are good enough to drink from anymore.
The speeders.
They are small enough and fast enough to get away on. If we could get to the speeders and somehow destroy the rest of them, the Rogues would have no other way of catching up with us. I haven’t seen any ships around, and it’d be a small wonder if they were able to maintain one all on their own.
Gabe stirs next to me, nuzzling his chin into my hair. I turn onto my back and look at him and how his hair falls over his eyes and onto his face. Gently, I reach out and tuck the strands back behind one of his ears, smiling faintly at his peaceful, sleeping expression.
That’s when it occurs to me that things could change when I get back to the Institution. I am in charge of it now, so why does everything have to stay the same? Why can’t I just change what I want to change and move on?
Then, I wouldn’t have to lose Gabe. All I’d have to say is that Keepers are allowed to have one partner in their lives—after all, how am I supposed to have the next Keeper if I don’t have a partner to be with?
How did the last Keeper? Or the Keeper before that?
I lock away these thoughts for another time and promise myself that I will revisit them later. I forget, sometimes, that I am the leader of the City, even if I’ve barely had the chance to actually lead it.
Gabe’s eyelids flutter open, and he squints his violet eyes, covering them with his hand to protect them from the light. “Bea? Have you been lying there staring at me for a while now?” He smiles, peeking at me through his fingers.
“Something like that.” I won’t lie. I could stare at Gabe forever.
“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind.” Gabe yawns and snuggles in closer to me.
“I do. I’ve been thinking of all sorts of things, but mostly, I’ve been thinking about what we have to do to get back to where we came from.” I’m careful about saying too much, because just like the guards forget that the tent is made from fabric, sometimes I have the habit of forgetting that they can hear us, too. They’ll think nothing of us wanting to get back to the City, but if I mention Aura, then I’m sure they’ll freak out.
“And what have you thought of?”
“The speeders.” I whisper the words between Gabe and I, our mouths already close to each other’s. “We need to get to them.”
Gabe is watching my mouth more than he’s listening to my words. When I fix him with a look and knee him in the leg, he glances back up into my eyes. “Huh? Oh. Right. That’s a good idea … except they probably have a ton of them or something. That’ll make them easy to find, but it’ll also make it easy for them to catch up to us.”
“Then we have to destroy the other ones so they can’t chase us.”
Gabe’s foot trails up my ankle. “Right.”
I don’t think he’s paying me his full attention. “Gabe, concentrate on what I am saying. This is important. We are running out of time.”
“Okay, okay. So, we have to get to the speeders and destroy them. But how? We don’t even know how many there are, or where they are, or if they are under guard or not. I mean, we are taking a huge shot in the dark here.”
“It’s the only shot we have, Gabe.”
“We’ll have to try to find out more about where the bikes are kept, then. I don’t know how we’re going to do that, because as soon as we start asking, they’ll be on to us.”
This is true. It’s not like we can directly ask someone about the speeders. We have no business asking anyone anything at all. “What if you made sure to really look out for them during one of your tours around the camp? You can keep an eye out for people who look like they are about to go on a speeder ride, or for buildings that look like they might house speeders.”
“It’s the least I can do, but what if it isn’t good enough? I mean, I don’t know ahead of time where they are going to take me whenever we are paraded around the camps.”
I sigh. “Something has to give, Gabe. Right?” It’s not the answer he is looking for. It’s not good enough, and I know it. We have to do better. We have to get out of this place and back to Echo before he dies.
The morning sun is already hot, and our tent has become humid and nearly unbearable. I unwrap myself from Gabe and crawl over to the trunk filled with foreign clothing to see what it is that I’ll wear today. I rifle through the fabric and find an emerald-green tank top made from soft silk. To go with it, I choose a black, floor length skirt that won’t stick to me because of the heat.
“Close your eyes, and don’t peek,” I instruct Gabe, who only smiles at me, but does as he is told.
“As you wish,” he grins, and I catch it just before I turn and slip out of my dress and into the tank top. I pull the skirt on and let it rest on my hip bones, then turn back to Gabe.
“Okay. Your turn.” I switch places with Gabe and lay back down in the pillows with my arms tucked under my head. I stare up at the ceiling as Gabe changes, thinking about how we are going to manage to break out of this place, and if it can be done at all. What if Lee was tricking us by leading us on to believe the plant was already found? What if it is what they want? And how are we going to get to something that’s kept in Moses’ tent anyway?
“There.” Gabe announces that he is finished, and I look to see what he has chosen. His pants are baggy, much like the ones from the previous night, though this time they are a dark tan color. His shirt is what draws my attention, tight and form-fitting, so much so, I wonder why he is bothering to wear a shirt at all. “You are staring.”
“I’m not.” I quickly glance away, blushing.
Gabe is probably enjoying the fact that he’s caught me looking at him that way, but I don’t look back at him to find out. Before I can even return to our conversation about scoping out the speeders, Lee’s voice calls to us from the outside. “Are you two ready for your walk today?”
“He treats us as if we are dogs.” I frown.
“In a way, I guess we are just pets to them.” Gabe offers me his hand, and I slip mine into his firm grasp as he tugs me up off the ground. “Remember to keep an eye out, okay?”
“I wonder where they will take us today.” Through the past week, it seems as if they have taken us almost everywhere the camp has to offer. To the mess hall, a long tent set up for community dining, to the residential areas, to the training course, and everywhere else. There can’t be much more for us to see in this Maker-forsaken place. It’s hardly anything at all to begin with.
“Let’s go find out.” Gabe escorts me to the tent flaps and pulls one of them back, revealing Lee, ever so cocky, with one hand on his hip, and his greedy eyes on my form.
“You look beautiful today. Moses sure knows how to clothe his ladies, doesn’t he?” Lee holds out his hand, and I realize that he expects me to let go of Gabe and follow his lead instead.
I look back at Gabe, and he offers me a single nod. It’s best if I just go along with Lee’s act than fight against it, and I think Gabe has come to understand that, too. So, I let go of his hand, and I let Lee take hold of my fingers instead.
“I am not his lady.”
“Of course not, my darling. You and Seer Gabe here seem to be quite the thing … but I think we’ve already discussed this, and it didn’t quite go over so well, now did it?” Lee grins so I can see all his yellowed teeth, and I don’t offer back any sort of response. He wants to get a rise out of me, and I’m not going to give it to him.
“Moses wanted me to take you to our graveyard today. He said that he thinks it’s time for you to see what our suffering eventually leads to.” Lee gestures to the west, w
here the residential area is.
Gabe presses his lips together disapprovingly. “Why doesn’t Moses ever take us on these little walks of ours?”
“He’s a very busy man, Seer Gabe. Moses has a whole camp to run, people to keep happy, business to manage. He devotes every supper to you two, and that within itself should be an honor. He doesn’t usually share his dinner with anyone.” Lee begins to lead us in the direction that he gestured, and we start through the dusty paths that snake around tents of every sort, some designated as stores, some as homes, each with its own purpose.
As we pass by, people peek out of their homes to get a better look at us. Though it feels like the whole of the camp has already seen us, there also seems to be more and more Rogues tucked away in corners of the camp that we’ve not seen before. I’ve underestimated how many there actually are. I would think, if they all banded together, they could easily march on Aura or the City to make their demands. It would be a huge risk, but the Rogues are known for taking risks. It’s not like they haven’t tried the approach before, in the past, when their numbers might not have been so big.
It doesn’t take long before we come to the edge of the residential area, standing before a plot of dry, arid earth marked with dusty stones that are spaced apart. The graveyard isn’t traditional in any sense at all. It’s hard to tell one plot from the next, and there aren’t any fancy headstones or tombs to be found. Lee pauses at the perimeter and stares out over the many, many graves that stretch out and out until I can no longer tell where the graveyard ends.
“This is it.”
“Seems rather droll.” Gabe puts himself between Lee and me and crosses his arms over his chest. “What was the point of bringing us here?”
This angers Lee, and his face screws up into a scowl as he violently gestures out to the land in front of us. “The point of it is so you can see just how many people suffer and die in our camps.” Lee grabs Gabe by the back of his neck, his fingers locked in a powerful grip, and shoves Gabe toward about a dozen graves that have been dug recently. “These ones are fresh. Most of them children. Sometimes we don’t have enough food and the heat is too much for them to hold on.”