Reached

decision is made in the shadow of the large village rock, and as everyone clutches their little named stones, I think of Sisyphus, and of the Pilot story, the one I traded the compass for months ago. Beliefs and myths are tied so closely together that you’re never sure which is tale and which is true.
    But perhaps that doesn’t matter. Ky said that once, after he’d told me the Sisyphus story on the Hill.
Even if Sisyphus didn’t live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it’s true anyway.
    Xander makes his way through the crowd to find me. He looks both exhausted and illuminated, and when I reach out with my free hand to hold his, he grips my fingers tight. “Have you voted already?” I ask.
    “Not yet,” he says. “I wanted to ask you how certain you are about the list you last sent us.”
    We’re close enough to Oker that he can hear what we say, but I answer Xander honestly anyway. “Not certain at all,” I say. “I missed something.” I see a little flash of relief cross Xander’s face; my saying this has made his choice easier. Now it’s not as if he has to choose between Oker and me.
    “What do you think you missed?” Xander asks.
    “I’m not sure yet,” I say, “but I think it has something to do with the flowers.”
    Xander tosses his stone into the trough near Oker. “What will you do?” Xander asks.
    I’m not ready to vote yet. I don’t know enough about the choice I’d be making. Maybe for the next vote I’ll be ready, if I’m still here. So I reach into my pocket and take out the paper that my mother gave me and I put the stone inside, next to the microcard. “I’m saving mine.” I’m careful to preserve the shape, to fold along the lines my mother made. When I look back up, my gaze meets Oker’s. His expression is sharp and thoughtful, a little disconcerting. I look away, to Xander.
    “Which way do you think Ky would have voted?” Xander asks.
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    “The plan is to give the cure that wins to Ky,” Xander says gently. “Because he’s the most recently still.”
    “No,” I say. “They can try it on the other patients first.” But how will I stop them?
    “I think this cure will work,” Xander says. “Oker was so certain. I think—”
    “Xander,” Oker says, his voice cutting between us. “Let’s go.”
    “Aren’t you staying for the flooding?” Leyna asks Oker, sounding surprised.
    “No,” Oker says.
    “The farmers will see it as a slight,” she says. “This is their part of the voting ceremony.”
    Oker waves a hand in the air, already moving. “No time,” he says. “They’ll understand.”
    “You’ll be in the infirmary?” Xander asks me.
    “Yes,” I say. I will stay with Ky, protecting him, until I
know
we have a cure that works. But I can’t seem to leave. I have to see the way this plays out.
    Colin moves forward and holds up his hand to silence the crowd. “The last stone has been cast,” he says.
    It’s clear that Oker’s won. There are far more stones in his trough than in Leyna’s. But Colin doesn’t announce that yet. Instead, he stands back as some of the farmers come forward, holding buckets of water. Their arms are marked in blue. Anna follows them.
    “The farmers vote with stones, too,” Eli whispers to me, “but they also use the water. The villagers have added it as part of their voting ceremony now.”
    Anna stands in front of the crowd and speaks to us. “Like the floods that came through our canyon home,” she says, “we acknowledge the power of our choice, and we follow the water.”
    The farmers pour the water into both troughs at the same time.
    The water rushes down, floods flashing through. Some of it slips through the rocks at the end. Even Oker’s trough lets some out. But it has the most stones; it holds the most water.
    “The votes have been cast,” Colin says. “We’ll try Oker’s cure first.”
    I slip through the crowd as fast as the water through the rocks, racing for the infirmary to protect Ky from the cure.
    When I push open the door to the building, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s raining,
inside
. I hear a sound like water hitting the floorboards.
    The bags are all unhooked, and they drip onto the floor.
    All
of them, not only Ky’s. I go straight to Ky. He takes a shallow, watery breath.
    The line has been pulled out and then looped neatly over the pole next to his bed. It drips out onto the floor.
Drip. Drip.