Reached

back. I failed him because I cannot do for him what Ky does for me. I can’t help Xander sing.

    When we land in Camas, I find that I am soon to fly again. We pause only long enough for Xander to make more of the cure so that I can bring it with me to Keya. And though this is a journey that I long to take, it is hard to leave Ky and Xander behind.
    “I’ll be back soon,” I promise the two of them, and I will, in a matter of hours, instead of days or weeks. But I see the worry in Ky’s eyes that I know is in mine. We are haunted by other good-byes, so many of them.
    And so is Xander. Hunter was right about one thing. There has been too much of leaving.

    We land in a long field, not even a runway, near the small town where my parents lived in Keya. As the pilot, the medic, and I leave the ship, I see several figures on the ground walking to meet us. One of them, smaller than the others, breaks into a run and I begin running, too.
    He throws his arms around me. He’s grown, but I am still taller, and the oldest, and I was not here to protect him. “Bram,” I say, and then my throat aches so much I can’t speak anymore.
    A Rising officer comes up behind Bram. “We found him right before you were due to land.”
    “Thank you,” I manage, and then I pull back to look at Bram. He stares up at me. He’s so dirty, very thin, and his eyes have changed and darkened. But I still know him. I turn him around and breathe a sigh of relief when I find the red mark on his neck.
    “They both got sick,” Bram says. “Even with the immunizations.”
    “We think we found a cure,” I say. I take a deep breath. “Is it too late? Do you know where they are?”
    “Yes,” Bram says, and then he shakes his head. His eyes fill with tears, and I can tell he’s pleading with me not to speak any more, not to ask which question he’s answering.
    “Follow me,” he says, and he begins again to run, just as he always wanted to do, right out in the open, down the streets of the town. No Official stops him, or the rest of us, as we hurry through the empty streets under a brilliant, careless sun.

    To my surprise, Bram takes me to the town’s tiny Museum, not to the medical center. Inside the Museum, the display cases have all been broken into, and the glass swept up. Any artifacts that were stored are now gone; the map of the Society has been drawn on, altered. I would like to look closely to see what is marked there now, but we don’t have time.
    There are many of the still, lying on the floor throughout the room. A few people look up when we come in, and their faces relax slightly at the sight of Bram. He belongs here.
    “They ran out of space at the medical center,” Bram says, “so I had to bring her here. I was lucky, because I had things to trade. Other people had to do the best they could at their homes. Here, at least they have the nutrient bags some of the time.”
    Her
. My mother. But what about
him
? What about my father?
    Bram kneels down.
    She looks very gone. I try not to panic. Her face is so pale against her scattering of freckles; there is more gray in her hair than I remember, but she looks young with her eyes open like this, young and lost to us.
    “I turn her every two hours like they told me,” Bram says, “and her sores have healed. They were bad, though.” He speaks very fast. “But look. She has one of the bags now. That’s good, isn’t it? They’re expensive.”
    “Yes,” I say. “It’s very good.” I pull him close again. “How did you manage it?” I ask.
    “I traded with the Archivists,” Bram says.
    “I thought the Archivists were all gone,” I say.
    “A few came back,” Bram says. “The ones that had the red mark started to trade again.” I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course some of the Archivists would not have been able to resist coming back, seeing the void into which they could bring their trades and their trinkets.
    I lean closer to Bram so that I can whisper to him. “We’re taking her back with us,” I say.
    “Is it safe?” Bram whispers back.
    “Yes,” the Rising medic says. “She can be transported. She’s stable, and shows no sign of infection.”
    “Bram,” I say softly, “we don’t have very much of the cure yet. The Rising thinks Mama might be able to help them, so they agreed she could be one of the first to have it.” I glance over at my mother, with her staring-ahead eyes. “And I bargained for him, too, since we were coming here. But