She stands on top of the hill again. A small round piece of gold in her hands: the compass. A disk of brighter gold on the horizon: the sun rising.
She opens the compass and looks at the arrow.
Tears on her face, wind in her hair.
She wears a green dress.
Her skirt brushes the grass when she bends down to put the compass on the ground. When she stands up again her hands are empty.
Xander waits behind her. He holds out his hand.
“He’s gone,” he tells her. “I’m here. ” His voice sounds sad. Hopeful.
No, I start to say, but Xander tells the truth. I’m not there, not really. I’m only a shadow watching in the sky. They’re real. I’m not anymore.
“Ky,” Eli says, shaking me. “Ky, wake up. What’s wrong?”
Vick flicks on the flashlight and shines it in my eyes. “You were having a nightmare,” he says. “What about?”
I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say, looking down at the stone in my hand.
The arrow of this compass is locked into place. No spinning. No alteration. Like me with Cassia. Locked on one idea, one thing in the sky. One truth to hold to when everything else falls to dust around me.
Chapter 16
CASSIA
In my dream he stands in front of the sun, so he looks dark when I know that he is light. “Cassia,” he says, and the tenderness in his voice brings tears to my eyes. “Cassia, it’s me. ”
I can’t speak; I reach out my arms, smiling, crying, so glad not to be alone.
“I’m going to step away now,” he says. “It will be bright. But you have to open your eyes. ”
“They’re open,” I say, confused. How else could I see him?
“No,” he says. “You’re asleep. You need to wake up. It’s time. ”
“You’re not leaving, are you?” That is all I can think of. That he might go.
“Yes,” he says.
“Don’t,” I tell him. “Please. ”
“You have to open your eyes,” he says again, and so I do, I wake up to a sky full of light.
But Xander is not here.
It’s a waste of water to cry, I tell myself, but I can’t seem to stop. The tears stream down my face, making paths in the dust. I try not to sob; I don’t want to wake Indie, who still sleeps in spite of the sun. After seeing the blue-marked bodies yesterday, we walked all day along the dry streambed of this second canyon. We saw nothing and no one.
I put my hands up to my face and leave them there, feeling the warmth of my own tears.
I’m so afraid, I think. For me, for Ky. I thought that we were in the wrong canyon because I couldn’t see any trace of him. But if they turned him into ash, I would never know where he had been.
I always hoped I would find him—through all those months planting seeds, when I rode in that windowless air ship piloted through the night, during that long run over to the Carving.
But now there might not be anything left to find, a voice in my head nags at me. Ky might be gone and the Rising, too. What if the Pilot died and no one took his or her place?
I glance over at Indie and find myself wondering if she is really my friend. Maybe she’s a spy, I think, sent by my Official to watch me fail and die in the Carving so that the Official knows how her experiment played out all the way to the end.
Where are these thoughts coming from? I wonder, and then it hits me. I’m sick.
Illness rarely happens in the Society, but of course I’m not in the Society. My mind sorts through all the variables at play: exhaustion, dehydration, excess mental strain, insufficient food. This was bound to happen.
The realization makes me feel better. If I’m sick, then I’m not myself. I don’t truly believe these thoughts about Ky and Indie and the Rising. And my mind is so muddled I’m forgetting that my Official wasn’t the one who started this experiment. I remember that flicker in her eyes as she lied to me outside the Museum in Oria. She didn’t know who put Ky’s name in the Matching pool.
I take a deep breath. For a moment, the feeling from my dream of Xander comes back to me and I am comforted. “Open your eyes,” he told me. What was it Xander would expect me to see? I look around the cave where we camped for the night. I see Indie, the rocks, my pack with the tablets inside.
The blue ones, at least in some way, were given to me not by the Society, but by Xander, whom I trust. I’ve waited long enough.
It takes me a long time to open up the compartment because I can’t seem to get my fingers to work. Finally, I pop out the first blue tablet in the package, shove it in my mouth, and swallow, hard. It’s the first time I’ve ever taken a tablet—to my knowledge, anyway. For a moment I picture Grandfather’s face in my mind, and he looks disappointed.
I look back down at the hollow where the blue tablet was, expecting to see empty space. But there’s something there—a small strip of paper.
Port paper. I unfold it, hands still trembling. Sealed in its compartment, the paper stayed safe, but it will disintegrate soon now that it’s reached the air.
Occupation: Medic. Chance of permanent assignment and promotion to physic: 97. 3%.
“Oh, Xander,” I whisper.