Reached

unfinished. My microcard never came in.”
    She laughs a little, the sound echoing through the empty Archives. “That one has come through, too,” she says. “You’ll receive the microcard in Camas.”
    “I don’t have enough to pay for passage to Camas,” I say.
How did she find out that’s where I want to go?
Does she really have a way for me to get to Camas, or is she playing a cruel joke on me? My heartbeat quickens.
    “There’s no fee for your journey,” the head Archivist says. “If you go to your Gallery and wait, someone from the Rising will arrive to bring you out.”
    The Gallery. I’ve never kept it hidden, but something about it being used like this feels wrong. “I don’t understand,” I say.
    The Archivist pauses. “What you’ve traded,” she says, very carefully, “has been interesting to some of us.”
    It’s like my Official, again. I was not interesting to her, but my data was.
    When my Official said that the Society had put Ky into the Matching pool, I saw the flicker of a lie in her eyes. She wasn’t sure who had put him in.
    I think the head Archivist is keeping something from me, too.
    I have so many questions.
    Who put Ky in the pool?
    Who paid for my passage to Camas?
    Who stole my poems?
    This, I think I know.
Everyone has a currency.
The Archivist told me that herself. Sometimes, we might not even know what our price is until we are confronted with it, face to face. The Archivist could resist everything else in that treasure trove of the Archives, but my papers, smelling of sandstone and water and just out of reach, were irresistible to her.
    “I’ve already paid my passage,” I say. “Haven’t I? With my pages from the lake.”
    It’s so quiet, here underneath the ground.
    Will she admit to it? I’m certain I’m right. The impassive stone of the Archivist’s face looks entirely different from the flicker I saw on the Official’s face when she lied to me. But both times, I feel the truth. The Official didn’t know. The Archivist took my papers.
    “My obligation to you is finished now,” she says, turning to leave. “You’re aware of the chance for passage to Camas. It is yours to keep or refuse.” She moves away from the beam of my flashlight into the dark. “Good-bye, Cassia,” she says.
    And then she’s gone.
    Who will be waiting for me at the Gallery? Is the passage to Camas real, or is it one final betrayal? Did she arrange it for me, perhaps out of guilt for taking my papers? I don’t know. I can’t trust her anymore. I pull off the red bracelet that marked me as one of the Archivists’ traders and put it on the shelf. I have no need of it, because it does not mean what I thought it did.
    I find my case sitting alone on its shelf. When I open it and see the contents inside, I find I want none of them. They are part of other people’s lives, and it feels that they no longer have place in my own.
    But I will keep the poem the Archivist gave me.
Because this,
I think,
is real
. The Archivist might have stolen from me, but I cannot believe she would forge something. This poem is true. I can tell.
     
    We step like plush, we stand like snow—
     
    I stop at that line and remember when I stood at the edge of the Carving, in the snow looking out for Ky. And I remember when we said good-bye at the edge of the stream—
     
    The waters murmur now,
    Three rivers and the hill are passed,
    Two deserts and the sea!
    Now Death usurps my premium
    And gets the look at Thee.
     
    No.
    That can’t be right. I read the last two lines again.
     
    Now Death usurps my premium
    And gets the look at Thee.
     
    I switch off my light and tell myself that the poem doesn’t matter after all. Words mean what you want them to mean. Don’t I know that by now?
    For a moment, I’m tempted to stay here, hidden among the warren of shelves and rooms. I could go above ground now and then to gather food and paper, and isn’t that enough to live on? I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could write paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.
    In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more.
    That doesn’t work in real life. And I love my real people the most. Bram. My mother. My father. Ky. Xander.
    Can I trust anyone?
    Yes. My family, of course.
    Ky.
    Xander.
    None of us would ever betray the other.
    Before I came here, Indie and I ran