DUTTON BOOKS 17 страница

But I also know we can’t plan on anyone else rescuing us. We have to do it ourselves. There can be no one Pilot. We have to be strong enough to go without the belief that someone can swoop down and save us. I think about Grandfather.

“Do you remember what I said once about the green tablet?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “You said I was strong enough to go without it.”

“Greenspace, green tablet,” he says, quoting himself from that long ago day. “Green eyes on a green girl.”

“I’ll always remember that day,” I tell him.

“But you’re having a hard time remembering this one,” he says. His eyes are knowing, sympathetic.

“Yes,” I say. “Why?”

Grandfather doesn’t answer me, at least not outright. “They used to have a phrase for a truly memorable day,” he says instead. “A red-letter day. Can you remember that?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. I press my hands to my head. I feel foggy, not quite right. Grandfather’s face is sad, but determined. It makes me feel determined, too.

I look around again at the red buds, the flowers. “Or,” I say, something sharpening in me, “you could call it a red garden day.”

“Yes,” Grandfather says. “A red garden day. A day to remember.”

He leans closer. “It’s going to be hard to remember,” he says. “Even this, right now, won’t be clear later. But you’re strong. I know you can get it all back.”

I remembered another part of the red garden day. And I can get it all back. Grandfather said so. I tighten my fingers around Ky’s and keep singing .

Wind over hill, and under tree.

Past the border no one can see.

I will sing to him until people stop dying and then I will figure out the cure.

CHAPTER 39

KY

Past the border

No one can see.

I’m in the sea.

I go in and out. Over and under. And under. And under.

Indie’s there in the sea.

“You are not supposed to be here,” she says, annoyed. Exactly like I remember. “This is my place. I’m the one who found it.”

“All the water in the world can’t be yours,” I say.

“It is,” she says. “And the sky. Everything that’s blue is mine now.”

“The mountains are blue,” I tell her.

“Then they’re mine.”

Up and down we go, on the waves next to each other. I start to laugh. Indie does, too. My body has stopped hurting. I feel light. I might not even have a body anymore.

“I like the ocean,” I tell Indie.

“I always knew you would,” Indie says. “But you can’t follow me.” Then she smiles. She slips below the waves and is gone.

CHAPTER 40

CASSIA

Cassia,” Anna says, standing in the doorway of the infirmary, “come with us.”

“I can’t,” I say, paging through my notes, looking up the flowers Anna mentioned. Mariposa lily. Ephedra. Paintbrush. Anna said she’d bring me pictures of the flowers. Did she forget? I’m about to ask her when she speaks again.

“Not even to see the vote?” The people of the village and the farmers have gathered outside to decide what to do with the cures Oker and Xander and the other assistants have made. There’s some disagreement about what to try first and how to proceed.

“No,” I tell Anna. “I need to keep thinking. There’s something I’ve missed. And I have to do it here. Someone’s been taking the medicine from Ky. I’m not leaving.”

“Is that true?” Anna asks one of the medics.

He shrugs unhappily. “It could be,” he says. “But I don’t see how. We always have medics in attendance. And who in the village would want to harm the patients? We all want to find a cure.”

Neither Anna nor I state the obvious. Perhaps not everyone in the village feels this way.

“I made your stone myself,” Anna says to me. She hands me a tiny stone with my name written on it. Cassia Reyes. I glance up at her for the first time and see that she has the blue lines painted all over her face and arms. She notices my glance. “On a voting day, I dress with the ceremonial marks,” she tells me. “It’s a Carving tradition.”

I take the stone from her. “I have a vote?” I ask.

“Yes,” Anna says. “It was decided by the village council that you and Xander could each have one stone, just like everyone else.”

The gesture touches me. The people here have come to trust the two of us. “I don’t like to leave Ky,” I say. “Can someone put my stone in for me?”

“They could,” Anna says, “but I think you should see the vote. It’s something every leader should witness.”

What does Anna mean? I’m not a leader.

“Would you trust Hunter to stay here and keep watch?” Anna asks. “Just for a few moments, so you can cast your vote?”

I look at Hunter. I remember the first time I saw him. He was burying his daughter, and he put that beautiful poem to mark her place. “Yes,” I say. It won’t take long, and this way I can ask Anna about the flowers again.

Hunter hands his stone to Anna. “I vote with Leyna,” he says.

Anna nods. “I’ll put it there for you.”

Anna was right.

What I see is so extraordinary, I almost forget to breathe.

Everyone has come with a choice in hand. Some, like Anna, carry two stones, because they have been asked by someone else to cast a vote by proxy. So much trust must exist for this to work.

Oker and Leyna stand near the troughs, and others, including Colin, watch to make certain no one moves stones from one place to another. There are two choices today: to vote with Oker or to vote with Leyna. Some stand in indecision, but most walk right up and cast their stones into the trough near Oker. They think we should give Oker’s camassia cure to all of the eligible patients. The more cautious ones cast their stones with Leyna, who wants to try several different cures.

Oker’s trough is almost full.

The decision is made in the shadow of the large village rock, and as everyone clutches their little named stones, I think of Sisyphus, and of the Pilot story, the one I traded the compass for months ago. Beliefs and myths are tied so closely together that you’re never sure which is tale and which is true.

But perhaps that doesn’t matter. Ky said that once, after he’d told me the Sisyphus story on the Hill. Even if Sisyphus didn’t live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it’s true anyway.

Xander makes his way through the crowd to find me. He looks both exhausted and illuminated, and when I reach out with my free hand to hold his, he grips my fingers tight. “Have you voted already?” I ask.

“Not yet,” he says. “I wanted to ask you how certain you are about the list you last sent us.”

We’re close enough to Oker that he can hear what we say, but I answer Xander honestly anyway. “Not certain at all,” I say. “I missed something.” I see a little flash of relief cross Xander’s face; my saying this has made his choice easier. Now it’s not as if he has to choose between Oker and me.

“What do you think you missed?” Xander asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say, “but I think it has something to do with the flowers.”

Xander tosses his stone into the trough near Oker. “What will you do?” Xander asks.

I’m not ready to vote yet. I don’t know enough about the choice I’d be making. Maybe for the next vote I’ll be ready, if I’m still here. So I reach into my pocket and take out the paper that my mother gave me and I put the stone inside, next to the microcard. “I’m saving mine.” I’m careful to preserve the shape, to fold along the lines my mother made. When I look back up, my gaze meets Oker’s. His expression is sharp and thoughtful, a little disconcerting. I look away, to Xander.

“Which way do you think Ky would have voted?” Xander asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“The plan is to give the cure that wins to Ky,” Xander says gently. “Because he’s the most recently still.”

“No,” I say. “They can try it on the other patients first.” But how will I stop them?

“I think this cure will work,” Xander says. “Oker was so certain. I think—”

“Xander,” Oker says, his voice cutting between us. “Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you staying for the flooding?” Leyna asks Oker, sounding surprised.

“No,” Oker says.

“The farmers will see it as a slight,” she says. “This is their part of the voting ceremony.”

Oker waves a hand in the air, already moving. “No time,” he says. “They’ll understand.”

“You’ll be in the infirmary?” Xander asks me.

“Yes,” I say. I will stay with Ky, protecting him, until I know we have a cure that works. But I can’t seem to leave. I have to see the way this plays out.

Colin moves forward and holds up his hand to silence the crowd. “The last stone has been cast,” he says.

It’s clear that Oker’s won. There are far more stones in his trough than in Leyna’s. But Colin doesn’t announce that yet. Instead, he stands back as some of the farmers come forward, holding buckets of water. Their arms are marked in blue. Anna follows them.

“The farmers vote with stones, too,” Eli whispers to me, “but they also use the water. The villagers have added it as part of their voting ceremony now.”

Anna stands in front of the crowd and speaks to us. “Like the floods that came through our canyon home,” she says, “we acknowledge the power of our choice, and we follow the water.”

The farmers pour the water into both troughs at the same time.

The water rushes down, floods flashing through. Some of it slips through the rocks at the end. Even Oker’s trough lets some out. But it has the most stones; it holds the most water.

“The votes have been cast,” Colin says. “We’ll try Oker’s cure first.”

I slip through the crowd as fast as the water through the rocks, racing for the infirmary to protect Ky from the cure.

When I push open the door to the building, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s raining, inside. I hear a sound like water hitting the floorboards.

The bags are all unhooked, and they drip onto the floor.

All of them, not only Ky’s. I go straight to Ky. He takes a shallow, watery breath.

The line has been pulled out and then looped neatly over the pole next to his bed. It drips out onto the floor. Drip. Drip. Drip.

And it’s happening to everyone else. For a moment, I don’t know what to do. Where are all the medics? Did they leave for the vote? I don’t know how to hook Ky’s line back up.

I hear a movement at the other end of the room and I turn. It’s Hunter, down near the patients who the Pilot first brought to the village. Hunter stands there, a dark shadow at the back, and he doesn’t move. “Hunter,” I say, walking toward him slowly, “what happened?”

I hear someone at the door behind me and I turn to see who it is.

Anna.

Her face is stricken. She stops a few feet away from me and stares at Hunter. He doesn’t look away, and his eyes are full of pain.

Then I notice the crumpled bodies of the medics near him. Are they dead?

“You tried to kill everyone,” I say to Hunter, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’m wrong. If he wanted to kill them, it would have been easy while we were all gone.

“No,” Hunter says. “I wanted to make it fair.”

I don’t understand what he means. I thought I could trust him, and I was wrong. Hunter sits down and puts his head in his hands, and I hear the sounds of Anna crying and the bags dripping onto the floor.

“Keep him away from Ky,” I say to Anna, my voice harsh. She nods. Hunter is much stronger than she is, but he looks broken now. I don’t know how long that will last, though, and I need to find people to help the still. I need Xander.

He and Ky are the only people here that I can trust. How could I forget?

CHAPTER 41

XANDER

Oker locks the doors behind us in the lab. “I need you to do something for me,” he says, picking up the bag he used when we dug camassia bulbs and sliding it over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

Oker peers out the window. “I have to leave now. They’re all still distracted.”

“Wait,” I say. “Won’t you need me to help you?” He can’t dig on his own. Is that what he has in mind?

“I want you to stay here,” Oker says. He reaches into his pockets and takes out the metal ring with the keys to the cabinets where he’s locked the camassia cure. “Destroy all of the cures. I’ll be back with something else we can use.”

“But you won the vote,” I say.

“This cure won’t work,” Oker says. “But now I know what will.”

“We don’t have to destroy everything,” I say.

“Yes, we do,” Oker says. “The people voted on this cure. They’re not going to take a substitute. Do it. Dump it all down the sink. Get rid of the cures Leyna had me make, too. They’re all useless.”

I don’t move because I can’t believe what he’s saying. “You were so sure about the camassia. We can still try it on some of them.”

“It won’t work,” Oker spits. “We’ll waste time. We’ll waste lives. They’re already dying. Do what I tell you.”

I don’t know if I can. We worked so hard on the cure, and he was so sure.

“You think I’m the Pilot, don’t you,” Oker says, watching me. “Do you want to know what the real Pilot is?”

I’m not sure that I do anymore.

“We used to laugh at the Pilot stories back when I worked in the Society,” Oker says. “How could people think that someone was going to come from the sky to save them? Or from the water? Stupid stories. Crazy. Only weak-minded people would need to believe in something like that.” He drops the keys to the cabinet into my hand. “I told you the Society named the viruses.”

I nod.

“When we found out that we’d be dropping it from the sky and sending it on the water, we thought it would be funny to name the Plague after the people’s stories. So we called the Plague the ‘Pilot.’”

The Plague is the Pilot.

Oker didn’t only help engineer the cure. First, he helped create the Plague. The Plague that is now mutated and turning everyone still.

“You see,” Oker says, “I have to find a cure.”

I do see. It’s the only thing that can redeem him. “I’ll destroy the camassia cure,” I say. “But before you go, tell me: What plant is it you’re going to find?”

Oker doesn’t answer. He walks over to the door and glances over at me. I realize he can’t let go of being the only pilot for the cure. “I’ll be back,” he says. “Lock the door behind me.”

And then he’s gone.

Oker believes I’ll do what he told me to do. He trusts me. Do I trust him? Is this the wrong cure? Would it set us too far back to try it out?

He’s right that we’re out of time.

I unlock the cabinet. Did the Rising know the Plague was once called the Pilot? How were we ever going to succeed against these odds?

The Rising was never going to work.

I don’t know if I can do this, I think.

What can’t you do, Xander, I ask myself.

Can’t keep going.

You’re not even still. You have to keep going.

I do the right thing. I don’t give up. I do it all with a smile on my face. I’ve always believed that I’m a good person.

What if I’m not?

There’s no time to think like that now. I trusted Oker and when it comes down to it, I trust myself to make the right call.

I open the cabinet and pull out a tray of cures. When I unseal the first one and pour it down the sink, I find myself biting down so hard on the inside of my lip that I taste blood.

CHAPTER 42

KY

It’s raining. So I should remember.

Something.

Someone.

The water is gathering inside of me.

Who do I remember?

I don’t know.

I’m drowning.

I remember to breathe.

I remember to breathe.

I remember.

I.

CHAPTER 43

CASSIA

People still mill about in the village circle, talking about the result of the vote, so I hurry around the back of the buildings at the edge of the village to try to get to Xander. It’s dark and dank here, hemmed in by trees and mountain, and as I come up behind the research lab, I almost step on something twisted in the mud. Not something, someone—

Oker is here.

He’s lying on the ground, his face caught in a grimace or a smile; it’s hard to tell with his skin stretched tight over his old sharp bones.

“No, no,” I say, and I stop and bend down to touch him.No air comes out of his mouth and when I put my ear to his chest I don’t hear his heart beating, even though he is still warm. “Oker,” I whisper, and I look at his open eyes, and I see that one of his hands is muddy. Why? I wonder, irrationally, and then I see that he made something there in the mud, a shape that seems familiar.

It looks like he pressed his knuckles into the earth three times, making a sort of star.

I sit back on my heels, my knees dirty and my hands shaking. There’s nothing I can do for him. But if anyone can help Oker, it’s Xander.

I stand up and stagger the last few steps to the research lab, pleading, Xander, Xander, please be here.

The door is locked. I pound and pound and call out his name. When I stop to take a breath, I hear the villagers coming up the path on the other side of the building. Have they heard me?

“Xander,” I cry out again, and he opens the back door.

“I need you,” I say. “Oker’s dead. And Hunter disconnected all of the still.” I’m about to say more, but then Leyna and the others come around the back of the building and stop short.

“What has happened?” Leyna asks, looking down at Oker. Her face doesn’t change at all and I understand why, because this is beyond comprehension. Oker cannot be dead.

“It looks like a heart attack,” says one of the medics, his face ashen. He kneels in the mud next to Oker. They try to bring him back by breathing for him and pushing on his chest to get his heart beating again.

Nothing works. Leyna sits back on her heels, wiping her face with her hand. She’s muddy now. She pulls the bag from Oker’s shoulder and searches inside. The bag is empty, except for a dirty shovel and traces of soil. “What was he doing?” she asks Xander.

“He wanted to go find something,” Xander says. “He didn’t tell me what it was. He wouldn’t let me come with him.”

For a moment, it is completely silent. Everyone stares down at Oker. “The still in the infirmary,” I say. “They’ve all been unhooked.”

The medic looks up. “Are any of them dead?” he asks me.

“No,” I say. “But I don’t know how to start their lines again. Please. And you shouldn’t go alone. The medics there were attacked.”

Colin signals to several of the others, who then leave with the medic. Leyna stays behind, looking at Xander with the same flat expression she’s had since she first saw Oker.

I want to run to be with Ky. But I suddenly have a terrible feeling that Xander is the one in the most danger now, and I can’t leave him alone.

“Everything isn’t lost,” Leyna says. “Oker left us the cure.” This strikes me as funny, though nothing should in a moment like this. Minutes ago we were voting between Leyna’s plan and Oker’s, and now Leyna has come around to believing that we should do what Oker suggested. His death changed her mind.

I have to sort out what has happened with Xander, and I have to find out what can cure Ky, and why Hunter was letting patients go, and what Oker was trying to tell us with the star he made in the mud that the villagers have now trampled into oblivion and no one but me has seen.

“Let’s get the cure,” Leyna says to Xander, and I take one of his hands and hold on tight as he walks back into the research lab. He lets me touch him but something is wrong. He doesn’t hold on to me like he used to, and his muscles are tensed.

“What have you done?” Leyna asks. For the first time since I’ve known her, her voice sounds small. And shocked.

“Oker asked me to get rid of them,” Xander says.

The sink is full of empty tubes.

“Oker told me that he’d been wrong about the camassia cure,” Xander says. “He was planning to make something new, and he didn’t want us to waste time trying out anything else before he had his new cure ready.”

“So what was he going to put in this new cure?” Colin asks. He wants to know. He, at least, appears to be listening, instead of automatically assuming that Xander destroyed the cures for his own reasons. Anna would listen, too, if she were here. What is she doing now? What’s going to happen to Hunter? How is Ky?

“I asked Oker,” Xander says, “but he wouldn’t tell me.”

But then, saying this, he loses Colin. “You’re saying that Oker trusted you enough to ask you to ruin all the cures, but he didn’t trust you enough to tell you what he was going to find? Or how he planned to make the new cure?”

“Yes,” Xander says. “That’s what I’m saying.”

For a long moment, Leyna and Colin look at Xander. In the sink, one of the empty tubes clinks and settles.

“You don’t believe me,” Xander says. “You think I killed Oker and ruined the cure on my own. Why would I do that?”

“I don’t have to know why you did it,” Colin says. “All I know is that you’ve cost this village time, which we don’t have.”

Leyna turns to the other two assistants. “Can you make more of the camassia cure?”

“Yes,” Noah says. “But it’s going to take some time.”

“Get started,” Leyna says. “Now.”

The villagers take both Xander and Hunter to the prison building. The medics in the infirmary weren’t dead; only unconscious. None of the other still have died, but the villagers will hold Hunter accountable for the earlier two deaths, and for disconnecting the other patients and compromising their health.

And Xander, of course, has destroyed the camassia cure, the villagers’ best and last chance at the Otherlands. Some believe that Xander harmed Oker, but since there’s no evidence to support that, Xander is only being held accountable for the cures. The people look at him like he’s killed something, which I suppose to them, he has, even if it is only the cure and not its creator. It’s true that the still, and the chance of saving them, seems much further away with Oker gone.

“What are you going to do to Xander and Hunter?” I ask Leyna.

“We’ll have another vote after we’ve had time to gather evidence,” Leyna says. “The people will decide.”

Out in the village circle, I see the villagers and farmers taking back their stones. The water in the troughs spills away.

CHAPTER 44

KY

CHAPTER 45

CASSIA

Suspicions trickle through the village, cold and creeping like winter rain. The farmers and the villagers whisper to each other. Did anyone help Hunter disconnect the still? How much did Cassia know about Xander destroying the cure?

The village leaders decide to keep Xander and Hunter locked away while evidence is gathered. The next vote will decide what happens to them.

I am split into three segments, like Oker’s muddy star. I should be with Ky in the infirmary. I should be with Xander in the prison. I should be sorting for a cure. I can only try to do all three and hope these pieces of myself are enough to find something that can make whole.

“I’m here to visit Xander,” I say to the prison guard.

Hunter looks up as I pass and I stop. It seems wrong to walk by. Besides, I would like to talk to him. So I face him through the bars. His shoulders are strong and his hands are, as always, marked in blue. I remember how he snapped those tubes in the Cavern. He looks strong enough to break through these bars here, I think. Then I realize that he’s past breaking through—he seems broken, in a way I didn’t see even in the Carving when Sarah had just died.

“Hunter,” I say, very gently, “I just want to know.Were you the one who disconnected Ky all those times?”

He nods.

“Was he the only one?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I disconnected the others, too. Ky was the only one who had someone visiting him often enough to notice.”

“How did you get past the medics?” I ask.

“It was easiest at night,” Hunter says. I remember how he used to track and kill and stay hidden in a canyon to survive, and I imagine that the infirmary and the village were child’s play to him. And then, left alone in broad daylight, something snapped.

“Why Ky?” I ask. “You came out of the canyon together. I thought the two of you understood each other.”

“I had to be fair,” Hunter says. “I couldn’t disconnect everyone else and leave Ky alone.”

The door opens behind me, letting in light. I turn a little. Anna has come in, but she stays out of Hunter’s line of view. She wants to listen.

“Hunter,” I say, “some of them died.” I wish I could get him to answer me, to tell me why.

Hunter stretches out his arms. I wonder how often he does the markings to keep them so bright. “People dying is what happens if you don’t have the right medicines to save them,” Hunter says.

And now I do understand. “Sarah,” I say. “You couldn’t get the medicine for her.”

Hunter’s hands tighten back into fists. “Everyone—Society, Rising, even people here in the village—we’re all doing everything to help these patients from the Society. No one did anything for Sarah.”

He’s right. No one did, except Hunter himself, and it wasn’t enough to save her.

“And if we find the cure, then what?” Hunter asks. “Everyone flies away to the Otherlands. There’s been too much of that, people going away.”

Anna comes a little closer so that Hunter can see her. “There has,” she agrees.

Then tears come to his eyes and he puts his head down and weeps. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know,” she tells him.

There’s nothing I can do. I leave them and go to Xander.

“You left Ky alone in the infirmary,” Xander says. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

“There are medics and guards watching,” I say. “And Eli won’t leave Ky’s side.”

“So you trust Eli?” Xander asks. “The way you trusted Hunter?” There’s an uncharacteristic edge to Xander’s voice.

“I’ll go back soon,” I say. “But I had to see you. I’m going to try to figure out what the cure could be. Do you have any idea what Oker was looking for?”

“No,” Xander says. “He wouldn’t tell me. But I think it was a plant. He took the same equipment that we used when we gathered the bulbs.”

“When did he change his mind about the cure?” I ask. “When did he decide that the camassia was wrong?”

“During the vote,” Xander says. “Something happened while we were out there that made him change his mind.”

“And you don’t know what it is.”

“I think it was something you said,” Xander tells me. “You talked about how you felt like you were missing something, and said it had to do with the flowers.”

I shake my head. How could that have helped Oker? I reach into my pocket to make sure that I still have the paper from my mother. It’s there, and so are the microcard and the little stone. I wonder if the villagers will still let me vote.

“It’s lonely,” Xander says.

“What is?” I ask him. Does he mean that it’s lonely in the research lab now that Oker is gone?

“Death,” Xander says. “Even if someone is with you, you still have to do the actual dying all alone.”

“It is lonely,” I say.

“Everything is,” Xander says. “I’m lonely with you sometimes. I didn’t think it could ever be that way.”

I don’t know what to say. We stand there looking at each other, sorrowful, seeking. “I’m sorry,” I say finally, but he shakes his head. I’ve missed the point somehow; whatever it was he wanted to say, I did not listen the way he had hoped.

The light coming in through the infirmary windows is gauzy, gray. Ky’s face looks very still. Very gone. The bag drips neatly into his veins. He and Xander are both trapped. I have to find a way to free them.

And I don’t know how.

I look at the lists again. I’ve gone over them so many times. Everyone else is working on re-creating Oker’s camassia cure. But I think Oker was right, and that we were all wrong. The sorters, the pharmics—we have all missed something.