Reached

says. “I understand.”
    Rebecca moves slightly and Anna takes the hint. She smiles at me. “After I’m finished, I’ll tell Eli that you’re here. He’ll want to see you. And so will Hunter.”
    “Thank you,” I say, not quite believing that I’ve met her. This is
Anna
, the woman who I heard about from Hunter and whose writings I saw in the cave. When she begins reading her list, I can’t tune out the sound of her voice.
    “Mariposa lily,” Anna says to Rebecca. “Paintbrush flowers, but only in small quantities. It can be toxic otherwise. We used sage to season, and ephedra for tea . . .”
    Words as beautiful as songs. And I realize why I knew Anna’s voice. It sounds the smallest bit like my mother’s. I pull a scrap of paper toward me and write down the names Anna says. My mother might already know some of them, and she will love to learn the others. I’ll sing them back to her when I bring her the cure.

    “It’s time for you to rest for a little while.” Rebecca presses a piece of flatbread wrapped in cloth into my hand. The bread is warm and the smell of it makes my stomach rumble. They make their own food here. What would that be like? What if I had time to learn that, too? “And here,” she says, handing me a canteen. “You should eat while you visit him.”
    She knows where I’m going, of course.
    As I walk down the path to the infirmary, I breathe in the forest. Wildflowers grow in all the places where people don’t walk; purple and red and blue and yellow. The clouds, a stirring and startling pink, soar in the sky above the trees and peaks of the mountains. And a conviction comes to me in this moment:
We can find a cure.
I have never felt it so strongly.
    When I arrive, I sit down next to Ky and look at him, touch his hand.
    The victims of the Plague don’t close their eyes. I wish that they did. Ky’s look flat and gray; not the colors I’m used to seeing, blue, green. I put my hand on his forehead, feeling the smooth expanse of skin and the understructure of bone. He seems hot. Could he be infected? “He doesn’t look good,” I say to one of the medics on duty. “His nutrient bag is already empty. Do you have the drip turned up too high?”
    She checks her notes. “This patient should still have one working.”
    I don’t move. It’s not Ky’s fault something went wrong. After a moment she stands up and goes to get a new bag to attach to his line. She seems harried. There are only two medics on duty. “Do you need more help in here?” I ask.
    “No,” she says sharply. “Leyna and Oker only want those of us with medical training to work with the still.”
    After she finishes, I sit next to Ky and rest my hand on his, thinking of how alive he was on the Hill, in the canyons, and, for a moment, in the mountains. And then he was gone. I think of how I spent all that time puzzling out the color of his eyes when I started to fall in love with him. I found him changeable and difficult to put into one finite set, one clear description.
    The door opens and I turn, expecting to see someone coming to tell me that my time’s up, that I need to return to work. And I don’t want to leave. It’s strange. When I was sorting, I felt certain it was the most important thing I could be doing. When I’m here, I know that being with the still matters most.
    But it’s not someone from the research lab. It’s Anna.
    “May I come in?” Anna asks. After she’s washed her hands and put on her face mask, she comes toward me. I stand up, ready to offer her my chair, but she shakes her head and sits on the floor near the bed. It’s strange to be looking down at her.
    “So this is Ky,” she says. He’s turned on his side and she looks into his eyes and touches his hand. “Eli wants to see him. Do you think it’s a good idea?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. It might be a good idea for Eli to come because then Ky could hear more than only my voice speaking to him, calling him back. But would it be good for Eli? “You would know better than I.” It’s hard to say, but of course it’s true. I only knew Eli for days. She has known him for months.
    “Eli told me that Ky’s father was a trader,” Anna says. “Eli didn’t know his name, but he remembered that Ky told him his father learned to write in our village.”
    “Yes,” I say. “Do you remember him?”
    “Yes,” Anna says. “I wouldn’t forget him. His name was Sione Finnow. I helped him learn to write it. Of