Reached

someone out to glean the field,” Leyna says. “That will be faster than you going yourself.”
    “No,”
Oker says. “No.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want anything to compromise this cure. I’ll see it through from start to finish.”
    Now that sounds like something a real Pilot would say. I follow Oker out the door.

    I don’t trick myself that Oker’s picked me to come with him because he trusts me the most. He can count on Noah and Tess to prepare the medicated nutrient bags for the patients, but he can’t trust me to manage that yet without supervision. He just needs someone to dig for him.
    And he likes to talk to me about the mutation because I’m the most recent person to work firsthand with the still. I’ve seen the mutation up close. Of course this would all be intriguing to him. He’s the one who came up with the first cure. He knew about the Plague before almost anyone else.
    “How far are we going?” I ask.
    “A few miles,” he says. “The field I want isn’t near here. It’s closer to the other stone villages, toward Camas.”
    I follow him. It all looks like grass and rock to me. Nothing stands out as a pathway. “People must not go to the other villages often anymore,” I say to Oker.
    “Not after this last gathering to Endstone,” Oker says. “We’ve sent people out to harvest different wild crops since then, but it doesn’t take long for the mountain to reclaim the path.”
    Every now and then we pass a round stone pressed flat into the ground. Oker says the stones indicate we are on the right track. “I walked all the way out here,” Oker says. His voice sounds peaceful, contemplative, but he moves as fast as he can. “Back then, the pilots often flew you as far as the first stone village and then it was up to you where you went after that. I decided on Endstone since it was the farthest away. Thought I might not make it, since according to the Society I was old enough to be dead, but I kept going.” He laughs. “I walked through the day of my own Final Banquet.”
    “That’s what my friend tried to do,” I say to Oker. “He tried to keep walking through the mutation. He was convinced that if he kept moving, he wouldn’t go still.”
    “Where’d he get an idea like that?” Oker asks.
    “I think it’s because Cassia walked through a blue tablet once. She took one and kept on going.”
    I expect him to say that’s impossible, but instead he says, “Maybe your friends are right. Stranger things have happened.” Then he smiles. “Cassia is an unusual name. It’s botanical. The bark is used as a spice.”
    “Is it any relation to the plant we’re looking for now?” I ask. “The names sound so similar.”
    “No,” Oker says. “Not to my knowledge.”
    “She helped with that list,” I say. “You should look at it again after we’re done with the camassia.” I don’t bring up the fact—yet—that she, not Oker, should be the one who decides which cure Ky gets.
    Oker stops to get his bearings. I could go faster than this, but he’s in excellent shape for someone so old. “The camassia should be near here,” he says. “This is where the villagers come to harvest. But they won’t have taken it all. Always have to leave some to grow for next year, even if you hope you won’t be here.” He leaves the path and starts down through a stand of trees.
    I follow him. The trees on the mountainside are pines and some others I don’t know. They have white bark and thin green leaves. I like the sound when we walk under them.
    Oker points down. “See it?”
    It takes me a moment, but I do. The flowers are a little dead and dry, but they’re purple like he said.
    “You can dig here,” he says. “Don’t take them all. Dig up every other plant. We don’t need the flowers, just the roots. Wrap the roots in burlap and wet them at the stream.” He points to a tiny rivulet of water winding through the grass, turning it marshy. “Be as fast as you can about it.”
    I kneel down and start digging around the plant. When I pull up the bulb, it’s brown and dirty, with tangles of roots coming out. It reminds me of Cassia, and how the two of us planted those flowers the day we kissed in the Borough. That kiss has kept me going for months.
    At the stream, I wet the strips of burlap and wrap up the bulbs one after the other. I keep digging, and the sun shines down on me, and I decide that I like the smell of the dirt. My back aches a little, so I