“I’m sure they are,” I tell him.
Vick looks at me. “Really?”
“If the Society gets rid of Aberrations and Anomalies, that’s one thing. If they get rid of everyone connected to them, there won’t be anyone left.” This is what I hope—then Patrick and Aida might be all right, too.
Vick nods, lets out his breath. “You know what I thought?”
“What?” I ask.
“You’ll laugh,” Vick says. “But when you said that poem the first time, I didn’t just wonder if you were part of the Rising. I also hoped that you’d come to get me out of there. My own personal Pilot.”
“Why would you think that?” I ask.
“My father was high up in the Army,” Vick says. “Very high up. I thought for sure he’d send someone out to save me. I thought it was you.”
“Sorry to have disappointed you,” I say. My voice sounds cold.
“You didn’t disappoint,” Vick says. “You got us out of there, didn’t you?”
In spite of myself I have a small feeling of satisfaction when Vick says that. I smile in the darkness.
“What do you think happened to her?” I ask after a few moments.
“I think her family ran away,” Vick says. “The Anomalies and Aberrations around us were disappearing, but I don’t think the Society got them all. Maybe her family left to try to find the Pilot.”
“Do you think they did?” I wish now that I hadn’t said so much about the Pilot not being real.
“I hope so,” Vick says. His voice sounds hollow now that the story is told.
I give him the piece of cottonwood carved with her name. He looks at it for a moment and then puts it in his pocket.
“So,” Vick says. “Now. Let’s think about getting across this plain and back to whoever we can find. I’m going to keep following you for a while.”
“You have to stop saying that,” I tell Vick. “I’m not leading. We’re working together.” I look up at the sky with all its stars. How they shine and burn I don’t know.
My father wanted to be the person who changed everything and saved everyone. It was dangerous. But they all believed in him. The villagers. My mother. Me. Then I grew older and realized he could never win. I stopped believing. I didn’t die with him because I no longer went to any of the meetings.
“All right,” Vick says. “But thank you for getting us this far.”
“You too,” I say.
Vick nods. Before he falls asleep, he takes out his own piece of stone and carves another notch in his boot. One more day lived without her.
Chapter 18
CASSIA
You don’t look right,” Indie says. “Do you think we should slow down?”
“No,” I say. “We can’t.” If I stop I’ll never start again.
“It doesn’t do anyone any good if you die on the way,” she says, sounding angry.
I laugh. “I won’t.” Though I’m exhausted, hollow and dry and aching, the idea of dying is ridiculous. I can’t die now when I might draw closer to Ky with every step I take. And besides, I have the blue tablets. I smile, imagining what the other scraps inside might say.
I search and search for another sign from Ky. Though I’m not dying, I may be more ill than I first thought, because I find signs in everything. I think I see a message from Ky in the pattern of cracked mud on the canyon floor, where it rained once and then hardened into something that I think could be interpreted as letters. I crouch down to look at it. “What does this look like to you?” I ask Indie.
“Mud,” she tells me.
“No,” I say. “Look more closely.”
“Skin, or scales,” she says, and for a moment I am so taken with her idea I pause. Skin, or scales. Maybe this whole canyon is one long winding serpent that we walk along, and when we reach the end, we can step right off the tail. Or we’ll get to the mouth and it will swallow us whole.
I finally see a true sign when the sky above the canyon shifts from blue into blue-and-pink, and the air begins to change.
It’s my name: Cassia, carved into a young cottonwood that grows in a patch of soil near a thread of a stream.
The tree won’t have a long life; its roots already grow too shallow from trying to soak up the water. He carved my name so carefully into the bark that it almost looks as if it is part of the tree.
“Do you see this?” I ask Indie.
After a moment, she says, “Yes.”
I knew it.
Near the stream I see a small settlement, a little black orchard of twisted trunks and golden fruit hanging low on the trees. Seeing the apples on the branches like that makes me want to bring some to Ky as proof that I followed him every step of the way. I’ll have to find something else to give him besides the poem—I won’t have time to finish it, to think of the right words.
Then I look back at the ground near the cottonwood and see footprints leading farther into the canyon. I didn’t notice them at first; they are mingled with the tracks of other creatures that came to the stream to drink. But there among the clawed and padded prints are the distinct marks of boots.
Indie climbs over the fence into the orchard.
“Come on,” I say to her. “There’s no reason to stop here. We can see where they went. We have water and the tablets.”
“The tablets won’t help us,” Indie says, and she tears an apple from a tree and takes a bite. “We should at least bring these.”
“The tablets do help,” I say. “I’ve taken one.”
Indie stops chewing. “You’ve taken one? Why?”
“Of course I’ve taken one,” I say. “They’re as good as food for survival.”
Indie hurries over to me and hands me an apple. “Eat this. Now.” She shakes her head. “When did you take the tablet?”
“In the other canyon,” I say, surprised at her expression of concern.
“That’s why you’ve been sick,” Indie says. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“The blue tablets are poisoned,” she says.
“Of course they’re not poisoned,” I say. How ridiculous. Xander would never give me something poisoned.
Indie sets her mouth in a thin line. “The tablets are poisoned,” she says. “Don’t take any more.” She opens my pack and puts a few of the apples inside. “What makes you think you know where we should go?”