But I realize as I watch Ky that you can make your own tools.
“How did you learn to do this?” I don’t dare sit down next to him—someone could come through the trees at any moment and need me to enter them in the datapod—so I stand as close as I dare. He grimaces and I realize I am standing right in the middle of his words. I take a step back.
Ky smiles but doesn’t answer; he keeps on writing.
This is the difference between us. I live to sort; he knows how to create. He can write words whenever he wants. He can swirl them in the grass, write them in the sand, carve them in a tree.
“No one knows I can do this,” Ky says. “Now I have a secret of yours and you have one of mine.”
“Just one?” I say, thinking of the spinning arrow in the gold case.
Ky smiles again.
Some of the rain from last night pooled in the heavy, drooping petals of the wildflowers here. I dip my finger in the water and try to write along the slick green surface of one of the broad leaves. It feels difficult, awkward. My hands are used to tapping a screen, not to sweeping and swirling in control ed movements. I haven’t held a paintbrush in years, not since my days in First School. Because the water is clear, I can’t real y see my letters but I stil know that they aren’t formed correctly.
Ky dips his finger into another droplet and writes a glistening C on the leaf. He makes the curve smoothly, graceful y.
“Wil you teach me?” I ask.
“I’m not supposed to do that.”
“We’re not supposed to be doing any of this,” I remind him. Sounds drift up from the tangled trees and undergrowth below us. Someone is coming. I feel desperate to make him promise to teach me before anyone gets here and this moment vanishes. “We’re not supposed to know poems or writing or ...” I stop myself. I ask again. “Wil you teach me?”
Ky doesn’t answer.
We’re not alone anymore.
Several people have reached the top, and from the wails I can hear through the forest, the Officer and Lon’s group are not far behind. I have to enter these names into the datapod, so I step away from Ky. I look back once at where he sits with his arms folded, looking out over the hil s.
It turns out that Lon wil survive. Once the Officer cures the melodrama accompanying the injury, they find that al Lon has is a slightly twisted ankle.
Stil , the Officer warns us to take it slow on our way back to the bottom of the hil .
I want to walk down with Ky, but he attaches himself to the Officer and makes himself useful in getting Lon back down the mountain. I wonder why the Officer bothered hauling Lon to the top at al until I hear him muttering something to Ky about “making quota so they don’t get after me.” It surprises me, even though I know Officers must report to people, too.
I walk with a girl named Livy who is getting better and better at hiking as the days go on and who acts enthusiastic about everything. She talks and talks, and I imagine Ky’s hand making that sweeping curve of the C for my name and my heart beats faster.
We’re late getting back; I have to rush to the train bound for the Borough, and Ky has to rush to the one that wil take him to the City for work. I’ve given up on talking to him again today when I feel someone brush past me. At the same time I hear a word so soft and quiet I wonder if he said it up on the hil and the wind has just now carried it down to me.
The word is yes.
CHAPTER 16
I’m getting good at C. When I arrive at hiking I practical y sprint to the top of the hil . After I check in with the Officer, I hurry to my spot next to Ky.
Before he can say anything, I pick up a stick and draw a C right there in the mud next to him.
“What’s next?” I ask, and he laughs a little.
“You know, you don’t need me. You could teach yourself,” he says. “You could look at the letters on your scribe or your reader.”
“They’re not the same,” I tel him. “They don’t connect like yours do. I’ve seen your kind of writing before, but I don’t know what it’s cal ed.”
“Cursive,” he says softly. “It’s harder to read, but it’s beautiful. It’s one of the old ways of writing.”
“That’s what I want to learn.” I don’t want to copy the blocky, flat symbols of the letters we use now. I like the curves and sweeps of the ones Ky knows.
Ky glances over at the Officer, who stares fiercely into the trees as though daring someone else to fal and get hurt today. We don’t have long before the others arrive.
“What’s next?” I ask again.
“A,” says Ky, showing me how to make a smal letter a, embraced by a little swoop at the beginning and at the end, to attach it to what comes before and after. “Because it’s the next letter in your name.” He reaches and takes hold of the stick above my hand.
Up, around, down.
Guiding, gentle, his hand presses against mine on the downward strokes, releases a little on the upward ones. I bite my lip in concentration; or maybe it’s that I don’t dare to breathe until the a is finished, which it is, al too soon.
The letter looks perfect. I exhale, a little shakily. I want to look up at him, but instead I look down at our hands, right next to each other. In this light, his don’t look so red. They look brown, strong. Purposeful.
Someone is coming through the trees. We both let go at the same time.
Livy bursts into the clearing. She’s never been third before, and she’s almost beside herself with excitement. While she chatters at the Officer, Ky and I stand up and casual y trample what we’ve written into oblivion.
“Why am I learning to write the letters in my name first?”
“Because even if that’s al you learn to write you’l stil have something,” he says, bending his head down to look at me, making sure I know what he’s saying, what he’s about to ask. “Was there anything else you wanted to learn to write instead?” I nod and his eyes brighten with understanding.
“The words from that paper,” he whispers, his eyes moving to Livy and the Officer.
“Yes.”
“Do you stil remember them?”
I nod again.
“Tel me a little every day,” he says, “and I’l remember it for you. Then there wil be two of us who know.” Even though the time is short before Livy or the Officer or someone else comes over to talk to us, I pause for a moment. If I tel Ky these words, I step into an even more dangerous place than I was before. It wil put Ky in danger. And I wil have to trust him.