“Okay. Okay,” he said.
I don’t know how long we stayed there, Koen leaning against the control panel, silent, and me on the floor. The words kept ringing through my mind, as sure as any bell.
Gone. Gone. My father is gone.
Finally I put my hands against the boards, felt the cold of the dusty wood beneath my fingers, and pushed myself up. When I stood, it was on uncertain feet. I staggered for a moment, put a hand to my head. My hair was a tangled mess beneath my hand, but I patted it down.
“Terra,” Koen said. He was watching me, afraid I was going to fall. “You can come to my house if you want. You know . . .” He hesitated. Something in his expression told me that he doubted himself. And when he spoke, I knew that he was right to. “I’d still have you as my wife. It’s . . . it’s what he wanted, isn’t it? To make sure you have someone to take care of you. I’ll take care of you.”
I stared at him. Once, I would have wanted nothing more than to hear those words, to know that Koen still wanted me to be a part of his life. But something had changed for me in the forest.
“Why?” I said at last. “Why are you so hung up on this marriage thing? You don’t even want me.”
He looked down at his trimmed nails, at the broad fingers that clutched at one another in front of his stomach. In a low tone he said, “I just want to be normal.”
My gut gave a lurch. It was too much for me then—the tears that racked the new clock keeper’s voice, the ones that seemed to tighten my own throat but still wouldn’t come. With a slow shake of my head, I staggered down the stairs. I took them one at a time, the rhythm plodding inside me.
Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Koen followed. He kept his distance, but I could hear his feet on the steps behind me.
Gone. Gone.
We reached the open air. I sucked it in, letting the cold burn my lungs, letting the constant wind that cycled through the dome from fore to aft strike my face. I didn’t even bother to button my coat against it.
As we stepped into the pasture, I felt what must have been a thousand eyes turn to me. All those Asherati in their funerary whites. We were the only ones dressed in color. I was still in my work clothes. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to change. I wore my brown trousers, the hems torn around my heels, and one of Momma’s old unraveling sweaters, which was a deep pine green. Koen was in his clock keeper’s clothes. Abba’s clothes. Gone. Gone. I guess we attracted attention. We stepped out across the field.
As I moved through the crowd, I kept my head high. People murmured their consolations, but I didn’t look at anyone long enough to know who spoke to me or what they said. I didn’t stop when they began to reach out, touching their hands to my shoulders. I walked right through them.
“Terra!”
Koen’s voice reached out to me from somewhere in the thick of the crowd. He must have gotten lost in it. He must have lost me. I didn’t stop. People put their hands on my shoulders, my arms.
It was Captain Wolff who halted my progress across the field.
One moment I was marching forward. The next, the woman was in front of me, her silver hair sparkling in the artificial moonlight.
“Terra,” she said, gripping my hands in her hands. Inside I recoiled. I wanted to pull away, to snatch my hands back. But instead they just lay limply in her grasp. “The Council would like to extend to you their deepest apologies at the losses you’ve faced. Please feel free to come to me if you need anything.”
I tried to imagine it—pounding on Captain Wolff’s door in the middle of the night, crying on her shoulder as if she were my mother. Giving her every opportunity to plunge a knife into my back. I managed only a coarse syllable in answer—“Yeh”—and drew my hands away. Balling them into fists, as if the warm touch of my own palms would obliterate the sensation of Captain Wolff’s fingers, I stumbled away, looking only once over my shoulder to the crowd that watched me.
That’s when I spotted Silvan. He was standing off to the side, alone again, unguarded. With his arms crossed over his broad, white-clad chest, he gazed out into the foggy evening. Then he turned and looked over his shoulder at me. He squinted at me like he was trying to figure me out.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets again and hustled away.
My brother and Hannah managed to find me before I reached the pasture gate. Hannah clutched the baby to her chest. Even Alyana was dressed in white—a long gown of eyelet lace that looked clean against her peachy skin. Ronen grabbed me by the shoulder. I was surprised by the lines that deepened his features. Though he was barely twenty, he looked so old. And very much like my father.
Who is gone. Gone.
“You’re coming to our quarters, aren’t you?” His lips were pursed, worried. He still couldn’t bring himself to tell me what to do. Which meant that I didn’t have to agree to it, right? So I didn’t. I walked off through the field, my boots sinking into the mud.
20
Our quarters looked the same. The same doorjamb where Momma had marked our heights with a pencil. The same familiar galley counters, where she’d kneaded dough while Abba cooked. The table where Ronen and I had fought—where he’d brandished a fork at me and I’d stuck out my tongue—until Abba had slammed his hands down and bellowed, “Enough!” In those days it hadn’t been scary. Not with Momma there. When she rolled her eyes, we all just giggled. Abba gave her a withering look. Until his expression lost its icy edge and he smiled too.
It wasn’t the same place, not anymore. It no longer had the same heart. The people I loved were gone, and they’d taken my home with them.
I went to my room. There was a basket under my bed where I kept my old school papers, notes from Rachel, a certificate I’d gotten when I was seven, for the highest marks in math, the only school honor I’d ever received. I dumped them all onto my blankets and then, working in silence, began to fill the woven container again.
I took my pencils, of course. And my sketchbook. My work uniforms. The few sweaters that still fit me. Momma’s dress. And then I peeled the case from one of my pillows and got down on my hands and knees. Pepper was hunched up beneath the bed, his shoulders big and craggy, tensed in anticipation of my grasp.
“Come on,” I said. The sound of my voice against the empty walls seemed to startle him. Pepper flinched, his tail arching up, and scrambled along the wall. I let out a sigh. Fetching Pepper would have to wait. Instead I slipped my hand between the mattress and rusted bed frame and pulled out the journal.
My father had been looking for it just this morning. When he was alive. Now he was gone, and all that was left was the stupid book and the lie I’d told about not taking it.
Black thoughts. My mind was flooded with black thoughts. They blotted out everything else like clouds of ink spreading across damp paper. I don’t remember falling to the ground, setting my head on the cold floor, and crying into my hair. But it must have happened. Because later, much later, I picked myself up, my face a snot-slick mess, dirty-blond tendrils sticking to my cheeks and my lips.
I put the book in my basket. And I reached under the bed and grabbed my cat, ignoring the way his claws flexed as I stuffed him down into the pillowcase. I tied it closed behind him. Then I gathered my things and left the only home I’d ever known.
It was nearly dawn. The streets were dark and cold but not quite empty. Mar Schneider, dressed as he always was in a woolen tunic and a dusty tweed cap, sat on his front steps.