Reached

believe that.
    When I was working in Tana Province, before I ran away to the Carving, Bram was the one who sent me a message about the microcard, and made me want to view it again. In his message, Bram described some of what he’d seen when he viewed the microcard again:
    At the very end is a list of Grandfather’s favorite memories.
He had one for each of us. His favorite of me was when I said my first word and it was “more.” His favorite of you was what he called the “red garden day.”
    Back in Tana, I convinced myself that Grandfather had made a small mistake—that he had meant to say “red garden days,” plural, those days of spring and summer and autumn when we sat talking outside his apartment building.
    But lately I’ve been convinced that that is not the case. Grandfather was clever and careful. If he listed the red garden
day
, singular, as his favorite memory of me, then he meant one specific day. And I can’t remember it.
    Did the Society make me take the red tablet on the red garden day?
    Grandfather always believed in me. He’s the one who first told me not to take the green tablet, that I didn’t need it. He’s the one who gave me the two poems—the Thomas one about not going gentle and the Tennyson one about crossing the bar and seeing the Pilot. I still don’t know which one Grandfather meant for me to follow, but he did trust me with both.

    Someone waits outside the Museum—a woman standing forlornly in the gray of a spring afternoon that has not yet decided for rain.
    “I want to find out more about the Glorious History of Central,” she says to me. Her face is interesting, one I’d know if I saw her again. Something about her reminds me a little of my own mother. This woman looks hopeful and afraid, as people often do when they come here for the first time. Word has spread about the Archivists.
    “I’m not an Archivist,” I say. “But I am authorized to trade with them on your behalf.” Those of us who have been sanctioned to trade with the Archivists now wear thin red bracelets under our sleeves that we can show to people who approach us. The traders who don’t have the bracelet don’t last long, at least not at the Museum meeting place. The people who come here want security and authenticity. I smile at the woman, trying to make her feel at ease, and take a step closer so that she can better see the bracelet.
    “Stop!” she says, and I freeze.
    “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I noticed—you were about to step on this.” She points to the ground.
    It’s a letter written in the mud; I didn’t leave it. My heart leaps. “Did you write this?” I ask.
    “No,” she says. “You see it, too?”
    “Yes,” I say. “It looks like an
E
.”
    Back in the Carving I kept thinking I saw my name, which wasn’t true until I found the tree where Ky had carved for me. But this is real, too, a letter written deep in the mud with strong, rough strokes, as though the person who wrote also wanted to communicate intent, purpose.
    Eli
. His name comes to my mind, although as far as I know he never learned to write. And Eli’s not here, even though this is where he grew up. He’s out beyond the Outer Provinces, all the way to the mountains by now.
    People
are
watching
, I think.
Maybe they, too, will put their hands to the stone.
    “Someone can write,” the woman says, sounding awed.
    “It’s easy,” I tell her. “You have the shape of things right before you.”
    She shakes her head, not understanding what I mean.
    “I didn’t write this, but I do know how,” I tell her. “You look at the letters. Make them with your hands. All it takes is practice.”
    The woman looks worried. Her eyes are shadowed, and there is something restrained about the way she holds herself, something tense and sad.
    “Are you all right?” I ask her.
    She smiles; she says the answer that we grew accustomed to giving in the Society. “Yes, of course I am.”
    I look out toward the dome of City Hall and wait. If she wants to say something, she can. I learned that from watching first Ky, and then the Archivists—if you don’t walk away from someone’s silence, they just might speak.
    “It’s my son,” she says quietly. “Ever since the Plague came, he hasn’t been able to sleep. I tell him over and over again that there’s a cure, but he’s afraid of getting sick. He wakes all night long. Even though he’s been immunized, he’s still afraid.”
    “Oh no,” I say.
    “We