Reached

in the Society was thinking. “Exactly. You would write the same books that other people have written. You’d write the same poems: they’d be about love.”
    She’s right. We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have been heard in some form before. But it would be
our
first time feeling and telling.
    I remember what Anna called the three of us.
    The Pilot. The Poet. The Physic.
    They are in
all
of us. I believe this. That every person might have a way to fly, a line of poetry to put down for others to see, a hand to heal.
    Xander sent a message to let us know where he is now. He wrote it out by hand. It was the first time I ever saw his writing, and the neat rows of letters brought tears to my eyes.
    I’m in the mountains. Lei’s here, too. Please tell my family that I’m fine. I’m happy. And I’ll be back someday.
    I hope that’s true.
    My mother and Bram wait for us on the steps down to the river.
    “You’re finished voting,” Bram says. “How was it?”
    “Quiet,” I say, thinking back to that large Hall full of people and the sounds of pencils on paper, names being written slowly and carefully.
    “I should be able to vote,” Bram says.
    “You should,” I agree. “But they decided on seventeen.”
    “Banquet age,” Bram says. “Do you think I’m going to have a Banquet?”
    “You might,” I say. “But I hope not.”
    “I have something for you,” Ky says. He holds out his hand and there is Grandfather’s tube, the one we found in the Cavern, the one that Ky hid for me in a tree.
    “When did you get this?” I ask.
    “Yesterday,” Ky says. “We were in the Outer Provinces again, looking for survivors.” After the mutated Plague was under control, the Pilot let Ky and some of the others try to find those who are still lost, like Patrick and Aida. The hope was that some of them might have found their way to the Rising’s old camp, the one on the map near the lake.
    So far, we’re still looking.
    “I brought this back, too,” he says. “It’s the one Eli saved.” He holds out his hand and I see the label on the tube.
Roberts, Vick.
    “I thought you didn’t believe in the tubes,” Bram says.
    “I don’t,” Ky says. “But I think this one should be given to someone who loved him so they can decide what to do.”
    “Do you think she’ll take it?” I ask Ky. He’s talking about Lei, of course.
    “I think she’ll take it,” Ky says, “and then let it go.”
    Because she loves Xander now. She’s chosen to love again.
    Sometimes, I felt angry that Grandfather hadn’t told me exactly which poem he wanted me to find. But now I see what he did give me. He gave me a choice. That’s what it always was.
    “It’s hard to do this,” I say, holding Grandfather’s tube. “I wish I’d kept the poems. That would make it easier. I’d have something of him left.”
    “Sometimes paper is only paper,” my mother says. “Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don’t be afraid to remember that.”
    I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing—it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
    “Good-bye,” I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.
    Then I unstop the tube and hold it in the water, letting it take the last little bit of Grandfather away, just as he wanted and asked my father to do.
    I wish the two of them could see all of this: green field planted with cures for the future; blue sky; a red flag on top of City Hall signaling that it is time to choose.
    “Like climbing the Hill,” Ky says, catching my eye and pointing to the flag.
    ”Yes,” I say, remembering the feel of his hand on mine as we tied the scraps to the trees to mark where we had been.
    Beyond the City of Camas, the mountains rise blue and purple and white in the distance.
    Ky and I climbed the Hill, together. Xander is in the mountains.
    Even though Xander is gone, even though all cannot be as everyone would wish, there is satisfaction in knowing that something