Whenever I can, I write letters. I’ve made them in many ways: a K out of strands of grass; an X with two sticks crossed over each other, their wet bark black against a silvery metal bench in the greenspace near my workplace. I set out a little ring of stones in the shape of an O, like an open mouth, on the ground. And of course I write the way Ky taught me, too.
Wherever I go, I look to see if there are new letters. So far, no one else is writing, or if they are, I haven’t seen it. But it will happen. Maybe even now there’s someone charring sticks the way Ky told me he did, preparing to write the name of someone they love.
I know that I’m not the only one doing these things, committing small acts of rebellion. There are people swimming against the current and shadows moving slowly in the deep. I have been the one looking up when something dark passed before the sun. And I have been the shadow itself, slipping along the place where earth and water meet the sky.
Day after day, I push the rock that the Society has given me up the hill, over and over again. Inside me are the real things that give me strength—my thoughts, the small stones of my own choosing. They tumble in my mind, some polished from frequent turning, some new and rough, some that cut.
Satisfied that the poems don’t show, I walk down the hallway of my tiny apartment and into the foyer. I’m about to open the door when a knock sounds on the other side of it, and I start a little. Why would anyone be here now? Like many of the others who have a work assignment but who have not yet celebrated their Marriage Contract, I live alone. And, just like in the Boroughs, we aren’t encouraged to visit one another’s residences.
An Official stands at the door, smiling pleasantly. There’s only one, which is strange. Officials almost always travel in groups of three. “Cassia Reyes?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“I’ll need you to come with me,” she says. “You’re required at the sorting center for extra work hours.”
But I’m supposed to see Ky tonight. It seemed that things were, at last, aligning for us—he was finally assigned to come to Central, and the message he sent telling me where we could meet arrived just in time. Sometimes, it takes weeks instead of days for our letters to go through, but this one came quickly. Impatience floods over me as I look at the Official, with her white uniform and her impassive face and her neat insignia. Don’t bother with us anymore, I think. Use the computers. Let them do all the work. But that goes against one of the Society’s key tenets, one that they tell to us from the time that we’re small: Technology can fail us as it did the societies before ours.
And then I realize that the Official’s request might hide something more—could it be time for me to do what the Rising has asked? Her face remains smooth and calm. It’s impossible to tell what she knows or for whom she really works. “Others will meet us at the air-train stop,” she says.
“Will it take long?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer.
As we ride in the air train, we pass by the lake, dark now in the distance.
No one goes to the lake here. It still suffers from pre-Society pollution and isn’t safe for walking in or drinking. The Society tore out most of the docks and wharves where people long ago used to keep boats. But, when it’s light, you can see that there are three piers left in one spot, jutting out into the water like three fingers, all equal length, all reaching. Months ago, when I first came here, I told Ky of this place and that it would be a good spot to meet, something he could see from above that I have noticed from below.
And now, on the other side of the air train, the dome of Central’s City Hall comes into view, a too-close moon that never sets. In spite of myself, I have a little stirring of pride and hear the notes of the Anthem of the Society singing in my mind whenever I see the familiar shape of a Hall.
No one goes to Central’s City Hall.
There’s a tall white wall around the Hall and the other buildings nearby. The wall has been here since before I came. “Renovations,” everyone says. “The Society will open the stillzone back up again soon.”
I’m fascinated by the stillzone, and by its name, which no one seems to be able to explain to me. I’m also intrigued by what’s on the other side of the barrier, and sometimes after work I take a small detour on my way home so that I can walk next to the smooth, white surface. I keep thinking of how many paintings Ky’s mother could have put along the length of the wall, which curves back in what I imagine is a perfect circle. I’ve never followed it all the way around, so I can’t be sure.
Those I’ve asked are uncertain about how long the barrier has been here—all they say is that it went up sometime in the last year. They don’t seem to remember why it’s really here, and if they do, they’re not saying.
I want to know what’s behind those walls.
I want so much: happiness, freedom, love. And I want a few other tangible things, too.
Like a poem, and a microcard. I’m still waiting for two trades to come in. I traded two of my poems for the end of another, one that began I did not reach Thee and tells of a journey. I found the beginning of it in the Carving and knew I had to have the end.
And the other trade is even more expensive, even more risky—I traded seven poems to bring Grandfather’s microcard from my parents’ house in Keya here to me. I asked the trader to approach Bram first with an encoded note. I knew Bram could decipher it. After all, he’d figured out the games I made for him on the scribe when he was younger. And I thought he’d be more likely to send the microcard than either of my parents.
Bram. I’d like to find a silver watch for him to replace the one the Society took. But so far the price has been too high. I rejected a trade for a watch earlier today at the air-train stop on my way to work. I will pay what’s fair, but not too much. Perhaps this is what I learned in the canyons: What I am, what I’m not, what I’ll give, and what I won’t.
The sorting center is filled to capacity. We are some of the last to arrive, and an Official ushers us to our empty cubicles. “Please begin immediately,” she says, and no sooner have I sat down in my chair than words appear on the screen: Next sort: exponential pairwise matching.
I keep my eyes on the screen and my expression neutral. Inside, I feel a little tick of excitement, a tiny skip in the beat of my heart.
This is the kind of sort the Rising told me to look for.