I watch Cassia as she clips onto Hunter’s line. Then I check Eli to make sure he’s hooked up right. When I look up, Hunter is ready to begin. Cassia’s jaw is set.
I’m not worried about the ascent. Hunter’s the best climber. And he needs Cassia safe to help him in the cave. I believe Hunter when he says he needs to know why the Society did what they did. He still thinks that knowing why might help. He doesn’t yet know that the reason will never be good enough.
Once we all reach the top of the Carving, we run. I hold on to Eli with one hand and Cassia with the other and we all move, our breath quiet and fast and our feet flying along the stone.
We’re exposed and bare out on the rock under the sky for several long seconds.
It’s not nearly long enough. I feel like I could run out here forever.
Look! I want to call out. I’m still alive. Still here. Though your data and your Officials want it otherwise.
Feet fast.
Lungs full of air.
Holding on to people I love.
I love.
The most reckless thing of all.
When we get closer to the edge we let go of each other. We need our hands for the ropes.
The second canyon is a true slot canyon—tiny and narrow—smaller than the farmers’ canyon. After we’ve all arrived at the bottom of the cliff, Cassia points to a long smooth surface. It looks like sandstone but there is something odd about it. “That’s where we noticed the entrance,” she says. Her lips tighten. “The boy’s body is over there, under those bushes. ”
The freedom I felt earlier is gone now. The feeling of Society hangs in this canyon like the torn and streaming clouds that linger after a thunderstorm.
The others notice it too. Hunter’s face turns grim and I know it’s the worst for him because he feels the Society in a place that used to be his.
Hunter leads us to a tiny cave in a spot where the canyon wall folds back in on itself. All five of us can barely crouch inside. The back of the cave ends in a pile of rocks. “We made a way in through here,” he says.
“And the Society never found it?” Indie asks, sounding skeptical.
“They didn’t even know how to look,” Hunter says. He lifts up one of the rocks. “There’s a crevice behind all these stones,” he tells us. “Once we’re inside, we can go through to a corner of the Cavern. ”
“How do we do it?” Eli asks.
“Move the earth,” Hunter says. “And hold your breath in the tight spots. ” He reaches for one of the boulders. “I’ll go first when it’s time,” he says over his shoulder. “Then Cassia. We’ll talk each other through the turns. Go slowly. There’s a place where you need to lie on your back and push yourself through with your feet. If you get stuck, call out. You’ll be close enough to hear me. I can talk you through. It’s the tightest just before the end. ”
I hesitate for a moment, wondering if this is a trap. Could the Society have set it? Or Indie? I don’t trust her. I watch her help Hunter with the rocks, her long hair flying wildly around her in her eagerness. What does she want? What’s she hiding?
I glance over at Cassia. She’s in a new place where everything is different. She’s seen people who died in terrible ways and she’s been hungry and lost and come into the desert to find me. All things a Society girl should never have had to experience. I see a glint in her eye as she looks at me and it makes me smile. Hold our breath? she seems to say. Move the earth? We’ve been doing that all along.
Chapter 32
CASSIA
The crevice is barely wide enough for Hunter to climb into. He disappears without looking back. I’m next.
I glance over at Eli, whose eyes have gone wide. “Maybe you should wait for us here,” I say.
Eli nods. “I don’t mind the cave,” he says. “But that is a tunnel. ”
I don’t point out that he’s the smallest of all of us and the least likely to get stuck because I know what he means. It seems counterintuitive, wrong, to worm our way into the earth like this. “It’s all right,” I say. “You don’t have to come. ” I put my arm around him and squeeze his shoulders. “I don’t think it will take long. ”
Eli nods again. He already looks better, less white. “We’ll be back,” I say again. “I’ll be back. ”
Eli makes me think of Bram and how I left him behind, too.
I’m all right until I think too much, until I start calculating how many tons of rock must be above me. I don’t even know how much one cubic foot of sandstone weighs, but the total amount must be enormous. And the ratio of air to stone must be small. Is that why Hunter told us to hold our breath? Does he know that there’s not enough air? That I might breathe out and find nothing left to breathe back in?
I can’t move.
The stone, so close around me. The passage, so dark. There are only inches between the earth and me; I’m pressed tight and lying on my back with blackness ahead and behind and the immovability of rock above and below and on every side. The mass of the Carving presses all over me; I’ve been afraid of its vastness and now I’m afraid of its closeness.
My face is turned to a sky that I cannot see, one blue above the stone.
I try to calm myself, tell myself it’s all right. Living things have flown from tighter spaces than this. I’m just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blind eyes and sticky wings. And suddenly, I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.
A sob escapes my throat.
“Help,” I say.