DUTTON BOOKS 22 страница

“Ky,” I say. “You’re the Pilot.”

He smiles.

“You are,” I say. “Look how you fly. It’s like Indie.”

His smile turns sad.

“You must think of her when you fly,” I say, a little sharp pain cutting through me even though I understand. There are places, times, when I will always think of Xander. Whenever I see a blue pool, a red newrose, the roots of a plant pulled up from the ground.

“Yes,” Ky says. “But all the time, I think of you.”

I lean over and press my hand against his cheek, not wanting to distract him too much from what he’s doing.

The flight, with the man I love, is gorgeous, glorious. But there are so many people trapped below.

We drop lower, out of the clouds, and the mountains wait for us. The evening light on their faces turns white snow pink and gray rock gold. Dark trees and water, flat at first and then glinting and gaining dimension as we come closer, cling to the sides of the mountain; ravines of tumbled stone cut into green foothills.

Hand in hand, we walk up the path from the landing meadow to the village to find and speak with Anna and Eli. I hope they’ll come with us, I think. We need them in the Provinces. But they might want to go to the Otherlands, or stay in the mountains, or go out to look for Hunter, or back to the Carving. There are many choices now.

Ky stops on the path. “Listen,” he says. “Music.”

At first I hear only the murmur of the wind through those tall pine trees. And then I hear singing from the village.

We all quicken our pace. When we come into the village, Ky points at someone. “Xander,” Ky says. He’s right. Xander’s ahead of us—I see his blond hair, his profile. He must have flown in on one of the other ships.

He’s going to try to go to the Otherlands.

Xander must know we’re here, somewhere, but he’s not looking for us. All he’s doing, right now, is listening.

The villagers aren’t just singing, they are also dancing around the stone, in a farewell. Fire dances, too, and somehow, with things carved of wood and strung with string, the villagers are making music.

One of the officers moves to break it up, but Ky stops him. “They saved us,” he reminds the officer. “Give them a little time.”

The officer nods.

Ky turns to me. I brush my fingers along his lips. He’s so alive. “What now?”

“Dance with me,” he says. “I told you I would teach you.”

“I already learned how,” I say, thinking of that time back at the Gallery.

“I’m not surprised,” Ky whispers. His hands go down around my waist. Something sings inside me and we begin to move. I don’t ask if I’m doing this right. I know I am.

“Cassia.” He says the word like a song. His voice has always had that music in it.

He says my name, over and over as we move together, until I’m caught in a strange place between weak and strong, between dizziness and clarity and need and satiety and give and take and “Ky,” I say back.

For so long, we cared about who saw us. Who might be watching, who might be hurt. But now, we are only dancing.

I come back to myself as the song ends, when the strings make a sound like hearts breaking. And then I can’t help but look for Xander. When I find him, I see that he watches us, but there’s no jealousy in his gaze. There is nothing but longing, but it’s not for me anymore.

You will find love, Xander, I want to tell him. The firelight flickers across Leyna’s face. She is very beautiful, very strong. Could Xander love Leyna? Someday? If they go to the Otherlands together?

“We could stay out here,” Ky says, low in my ear. “We don’t have to go back.”

It’s a conversation we’ve had before. We know the answer. We love each other, but there are others to think of, too. Ky has to look for Patrick and Aida, in case they are still alive. I have to be with my family.

“When I was flying,” Ky says, “I used to imagine that I came down and gathered everyone up and flew us all away.”

“Maybe we can do that someday,” I say.

“It might be,” Ky says, “that we won’t have to go so far to look for a new world. Maybe the vote really will be a beginning.”

It is the most hopeful I have ever heard him sound.

Anna walks over to Xander and says something to him, and he follows her toward Ky and me. The light from the fire shades and lightens, flickers and holds, and when it does, I see that Anna holds a piece of blue chalk in her hand. “You did it,” she says to the three of us. “You found the cure, and you each had a part.” Anna takes Ky’s hand and draws a blue line on it, tracing one of his veins. “The pilot,” she says. She lifts my hand and draws the line from Ky to me. “The poet.” Then Anna takes Xander’s hand and draws the line from me to him. “The physic,” she says.

Evening in the mountain, with its fresh pine and burning wood smells, its lights and music, gathers around us as Anna steps back. I hold on to Xander and Ky at the same time, the three of us standing in a little circle at the edge of the known world, and even as the moment exists I find myself mourning its passing.

The little girl Xander and I saw in the village dances over, wearing the wings we saw her in before. She looks up at the three of us. It’s plain she wants to dance with one of the boys, and Ky lets her lead him away, leaving me alone with Xander to say good-bye.

The music, this time lively, runs along us, over us, into us, and Xander is here with me. “You can dance,” he says. “And you can sing.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I can’t,” Xander says.

“You will,” I say, taking his hands.

He moves smoothly. Despite what he thinks, the music is in him. He’s never been taught to dance, and yet he’s guiding me. He doesn’t notice because he’s concentrating so hard on what he doesn’t have—what he thinks he can’t do.

“Can I ask you about something?”

“Of course,” he says.

“I remember something I shouldn’t,” I say. “From a day when I took the red tablet.” I tell him about the way I reclaimed the red garden day memory.

“How could I get part of my memory back?” I ask him.

“It might have something to do with the green tablet,” Xander says. His voice sounds very kind and very tired. “Maybe your not taking it, ever, means you could get your memories back somehow. And, you walked through the blue. Oker told me that the blue tablet and the Plague are related. Maybe you helped yourself become immune.” He shakes his head. “The Society made the tablets like a puzzle. Everything is a piece. I’m learning from the pharmics and scientists how complicated it all is. The way medications work together, and the ways they work differently in different people—it’s something you could spend your whole life trying to figure out.”

“So what you’re saying,” I tell him, “is that I might never know.”

“Yes,” he says. “You might always have to wonder.”

“‘It’s all right to wonder,’” I say. Besides the words on the microcard, that was the last thing Grandfather said to me before he died. He gave me the poems. And he told me that it was all right to wonder. So it’s fine that I don’t know which poem he meant for me to follow. Perhaps that’s even what he intended. It’s all right that I can’t figure everything out right here, right now.

“It might also just be you,” Xander says. I think he’s smiling. “You’ve always been one of the strongest people I know.”

Eli has joined Ky and the little girl in their dance. They have linked hands and are laughing, the firelight shimmering on the girl’s wings. She reminds me of Indie—the abandoned way she moves, the way the fire turns her hair to red. I wish Indie was here, I think, and my father, and everyone else we’ve lost.

Xander and I stop dancing. We stand very close and still in the middle of people moving. “Back in the Borough,” he says, “I asked you, if we could choose, would you ever have chosen me?”

“I remember,” I say. “I told you that I would.”

“Yes,” he says. “But we can’t go back.”

“No,” I agree.

Xander’s journeys happened in those walled rooms and long hallways of the sick, when he worked with Lei. When I saw him again in the Pilot’s air ship, Xander had already been places I would never go and become someone else. But I didn’t see it. I believed him unchanging, a stone in all good senses of the word, solid, dependable, something and someone you could build upon. But he is as we all are: light as air, transient as wisps of cloud before the sun, beautiful and fleeting, and if I ever did truly have hold of him, that has ended now.

“Xander,” I say, and he pulls me close, one last time.

The ships lift into the sky, dark on stars. The bonfire burns; some of the villagers, mostly those from the Carving, have decided to stay in the mountains.

Xander is going out to a place that is Other, a place so distant I can’t even be certain there is a coming back.

CHAPTER 62

XANDER

It sounds like a million birds beating their wings against the sky, but it’s only the ships flying above me. At the last minute, I realized I couldn’t go with them to the Otherlands. But I also couldn’t make myself go back to Camas. I’m stuck here in the middle, as always.

Morning comes. I climb up to the stream near the field where Oker and I dug the camassia, skirting the village so I don’t have to talk to anyone. Later, I’ll come back and ask them if there’s something I can do: maybe work in Oker’s old lab.

Roots from the trees at the edge of the stream dangle down into the water. They are tiny and red. I never knew roots could be that color.

And then I see a larger glimpse of red. Another. Another. They’re almost hideous—strange jaws, round eyes—but the color is so brilliant.

They’re the redfish Lei told me about. I’m seeing them at last.

My throat aches and my eyes burn. I come down closer to the water.

Then I hear something behind me. I turn around, change my expression to a grin, ready to talk to whatever villager found their way out here.

“Xander,” she says.

It’s Lei.

“Are they back?” she asks me. “The redfish?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she says. “I didn’t see you on the ships from Camas.”

“We must not have been on the same ship,” I say. “I meant to go to the Otherlands.”

“I did, too,” she says. “But I couldn’t leave.”

“Why not?” I ask, and I don’t know what I hope the answer will be, but my heart pounds in my chest and in my ears there’s a sound like rushing water or those ships lifting into the sky.

She doesn’t answer, but she looks toward the stream. Of course. The fish.

“Why do they come all the way back?” I ask her.

“To find each other.” Her eyes meet mine. “We used to come to the river together,” she says. “He looked a little like you. He had very blue eyes.”

The rushing in my ears is gone. Everything feels very quiet. She came back because she couldn’t leave the country where she knew him. It has nothing to do with me.

I clear my throat. “You said these fish are blue in the ocean,” I say. “Like a completely different animal.”

“Yes and no,” she says. “They have changed. We’re allowed to change.” She’s very soft with me. Her voice is gentle.

And then Lei is the one to close the distance. She moves right to me.

I want to say something I’ve never said before, and it won’t be to Cassia, the way I always thought it would be. “I love you,” I say. “I know you still love someone else, but—”

“I love you,” she says.

It’s not all gone. She loved someone before and so did I. The Society and the Rising and the world are all still out there, pressing against us. But Lei holds them away. She’s made enough space for two people to stand up together, whether or not any Society or Rising says that they can. She’s done it before. The amazing thing is that she’s not afraid to do it again. When we fall in love the first time, we don’t know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again.

There is something extraordinary about the first time falling.

But it feels even better to find myself standing on solid ground, with someone holding on to me, pulling me back, and know that I’m doing the same for her.

“Remember the story I told you?” Lei asks. “The one about the Pilot and the man she loved?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Who do you think had to be more brave?” she asks. “The Pilot who let him go, or the man who had to start all over in a new world?”

“They were both brave,” I say.

Her eyes are level with mine. So I see when she closes them and lets herself fall for me: right when my lips meet hers.

CHAPTER 63

CASSIA

Ky and I stand together at the top of the steps of City Hall, holding hands and blinking in the brightness of an end-of-summer day in Camas. No one notices us. They have other things to think about on their way up the stairs. Some look uncertain, others excited.

An older woman stops at the top of the steps and glances at me. “When do we write our names?” she asks.

“Once you get inside to vote,” I tell her.

The woman nods and disappears into the building.

I look at Ky and smile. We have just finished putting our names to paper, making a choice about who we want to lead.

“When people chose the Society, it was almost the end of us,” I say. “It might be the end of us again, forever this time.”

“It might be,” Ky agrees. “Or we might make a different choice.”

There are three candidates offering to lead the people. The Pilot represents the Rising. An Official represents the Society.

And Anna represents everyone else. She and Eli came back to Camas with us. “What about Hunter?” Ky asked Anna, and she said, “I know where he’s gone,” and smiled, sadness and hope mixed together in her expression, a feeling I know all too well.

This voting is such a large and impossible task, such a beautiful and terrible experiment, and it could go wrong in so many ways. I think of all those little white papers inside, all those people who have learned to write, at least their names. What will they choose? What will become of us, and our lands of blue sky and red rock and green grass?

But, I remind myself, the Society can’t take it all again unless we let them. We can get our memories back, but we will have to talk with each other and trust one another. If we’d done that before, we might have found the cure sooner. Who knows why that man planted those fields? Perhaps he knew we’d need the flowers for a cure. Maybe he just thought they were beautiful, like my mother did. But we do find answers in beauty, more often than not.

This is going to be very difficult. But we came through the Plague and its mutation together, all of us. Those who believed in the Rising and those who believed in the Society and those who believed in something else entirely all worked side by side to help the still. Some didn’t. Some ran and some killed. But many people tried to save.

“Who did you vote for?” I whisper to Ky as we walk down the steps.

“Anna,” he says. He smiles at me. “What about you?”

“Anna,” I say.

I hope she wins.

It’s time for the Anomalies and Aberrations to have their turn.

But will we let them?

In the debates on the ports, the Official was clear and concise, statistical. “Don’t you think we’ve seen this before?” she asked. “Everything you do has been done before. You should let the Society help you again. This time, of course, we will allow for greater increase of expression. Give you more choices. But, left too much to your own devices, what would happen?”

I thought, We’d write something. We’d sing something.

“Yes,” said the Official, as if she knew my thoughts, as if she knew what everyone in the Society was thinking. “Exactly. You would write the same books that other people have written. You’d write the same poems: they’d be about love.”

She’s right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.

I remember what Anna called the three of us.

The Pilot. The Poet. The Physic.

They are in all of us. I believe this. That every person might have a way to fly, a line of poetry to put down for others to see, a hand to heal.

Xander sent a message to let us know where he is now. He wrote it out by hand. It was the first time I ever saw his writing, and the neat rows of letters brought tears to my eyes.

I’m in the mountains. Lei’s here, too. Please tell my family that I’m fine. I’m happy. And I’ll be back someday.

I hope that’s true.

My mother and Bram wait for us on the steps down to the river.

“You’re finished voting,” Bram says. “How was it?”

“Quiet,” I say, thinking back to that large Hall full of people and the sounds of pencils on paper, names being written slowly and carefully.

“I should be able to vote,” Bram says.

“You should,” I agree. “But they decided on seventeen.”

“Banquet age,” Bram says. “Do you think I’m going to have a Banquet?”

“You might,” I say. “But I hope not.”

“I have something for you,” Ky says. He holds out his hand and there is Grandfather’s tube, the one we found in the Cavern, the one that Ky hid for me in a tree.

“When did you get this?” I ask.

“Yesterday,” Ky says. “We were in the Outer Provinces again, looking for survivors.” After the mutated Plague was under control, the Pilot let Ky and some of the others try to find those who are still lost, like Patrick and Aida. The hope was that some of them might have found their way to the Rising’s old camp, the one on the map near the lake.

So far, we’re still looking.

“I brought this back, too,” he says. “It’s the one Eli saved.” He holds out his hand and I see the label on the tube. Roberts, Vick.

“I thought you didn’t believe in the tubes,” Bram says.

“I don’t,” Ky says. “But I think this one should be given to someone who loved him so they can decide what to do.”

“Do you think she’ll take it?” I ask Ky. He’s talking about Lei, of course.

“I think she’ll take it,” Ky says, “and then let it go.”

Because she loves Xander now. She’s chosen to love again.

Sometimes, I felt angry that Grandfather hadn’t told me exactly which poem he wanted me to find. But now I see what he did give me. He gave me a choice. That’s what it always was.

“It’s hard to do this,” I say, holding Grandfather’s tube. “I wish I’d kept the poems. That would make it easier. I’d have something of him left.”

“Sometimes paper is only paper,” my mother says. “Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don’t be afraid to remember that.”

I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing—it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

“Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.

Then I unstop the tube and hold it in the water, letting it take the last little bit of Grandfather away, just as he wanted and asked my father to do.

I wish the two of them could see all of this: green field planted with cures for the future; blue sky; a red flag on top of City Hall signaling that it is time to choose.

“Like climbing the Hill,” Ky says, catching my eye and pointing to the flag.

”Yes,” I say, remembering the feel of his hand on mine as we tied the scraps to the trees to mark where we had been.

Beyond the City of Camas, the mountains rise blue and purple and white in the distance.

Ky and I climbed the Hill, together. Xander is in the mountains.

Even though Xander is gone, even though all cannot be as everyone would wish, there is satisfaction in knowing that something good and right and true was part of you. That you had the blessing, gift, good fortune, perfect luck, to know someone like this, to pass through fire and water and stone and sky together and emerge, all of you, strong enough to hold on, strong enough to let go.

I can already feel some things slipping through my fingers like sand and water, like artifacts and poems, like everything you want to hold on to and can’t.

But we did it. Whatever happens next, we managed to help find a cure and begin a vote.

The river looks alternately blue and green as it reflects grass and sky, and I catch a glimpse of something red swimming in it.

Ky leans in to kiss me and I close my eyes to better feel the moment of waiting and want before our lips meet.

There is ebb and flow. Leaving and coming. Flight and fall.

Sing and silent.

Reaching and reached.

For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit
www.penguin.com/condiechecklist

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Throughout the Matched trilogy, I have mentioned and/or quoted from several works of art. While most of the works are attributed in the text, I wanted to include a completed list here for those who are interested in reading or seeing more of these artists’ beautiful work.

PAINTINGS:

Chasm of the Colorado, by Thomas Moran (referred to as Painting Nineteen of the Hundred Paintings)

Girl Fishing at San Vigilio, by John Singer Sargent (referred to as Painting Ninety-Seven of the Hundred Paintings)

POETRY:

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

“Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas

“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

“They Dropped Like Flakes” by Emily Dickinson

“I Did Not Reach Thee” by Emily Dickinson

“In Time of Pestilence, 1593” by Thomas Nashe

In Crossed, I also mention Ray Bradbury and Rita Dove, whose work, along with that of Wallace Stegner and Leslie Norris, inspired me during the writing of this series.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank:

My husband, who sees beauty in both poetry and equations, and who never fails to believe and build up;

Our four children, who are the how and why of everything I write;

My parents and my brother and sisters;

Dr. Gregory F. Burton, (who generously let me use his Goldilocks/Xanthe analogy in the text, and who helped me with the immunology involved in the story) and Dr. Matthew O. Leavitt (who lent his expertise as a pathologist). Any science that works regarding the Plague, its mutation, and the tablets is due to Dr. Burton and Dr. Leavitt—the fiction is all my fault;

Ashlee Child, R.N., who answered many questions about nursing and patient care;

Dale Hepworth, fisheries biologist, who sent me information and photos of sockeye salmon (the “redfish” Lei tells Xander about in Reached);

My cousin Peter Crandall, a commercial airline pilot, who helped me with the flying scenes in the novel, and introduced me to the Osprey, the inspiration for the Pilot’s ship;

My ancestor, Polly Rawson Dinsdale, and the other pioneers who ate sego lily bulbs to survive hard times and inspired the use of that flower in this story;

Josie Lauritsen Lee, Lisa Mangum, and Robison Wells, who waded through early drafts and gave valuable and empowering feedback;

Lizzie Jolley, Mikayla Kirkby, and Mylee Sanders, who were unfailingly patient and kind with my children and with me;

My agent, Jodi Reamer, who piloted this series from beginning to end, guiding always with gusto and good humor back to where we needed to be (and on to places I hadn’t dreamed of);

My editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, who served as physic and poet, nurturing the manuscript and shaping it with her unparalleled intelligence and perception;

The wonderful team at Writers House, including Alec Shane and Cecilia de la Campa;

The fantastic people at Penguin: Scottie Bowditch, Erin Dempsey, Theresa Evangelista, Felicia Frazier, Erin Gallagher, Anna Jarzab, Liza Kaplan, Lisa Kelly, Eileen Kreit, Rosanne Lauer, Jen Loja, Shanta Newlin, Emily Romero, Irene Vandervoort, and Don Weisberg;

And you, the reader, for taking this journey with Cassia, Ky, and Xander, and with me.

is the author of the Matched trilogy. Before becoming a writer, she taught high school English in Utah and upstate New York. She lives with her husband and four children outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. Visit her online at www.allycondie.com.