Reached

voice; it’s not something I’ve heard often before.
    “They flew in the same Rising camp,” I say. “She saw him all the time.”
    “You don’t seem angry at her,” Xander says.
    And I’m not. There was the moment of shock and hurt when Ky said that she’d kissed him, but it vanished when Ky went still. “She makes her own way,” I say. “She does what she wants.” I shake my head. “It’s hard to stay upset with her.”
    “I don’t understand,” Xander says.
    And I don’t think he can. He doesn’t really know Indie; has never seen her lie and cheat to get what she wants, or realized how among all of that is a strange inexplicable honesty that is only hers. He didn’t see her push through the silver water and bring us to safety against the odds. He never knew how she felt about the sea or how badly she wanted a dress made of blue silk.
    Some things cannot be shared. I could tell him everything that happened in the Carving and he still won’t have been there with me.
    And it’s the same for him. He could tell me all about the Plague and the mutation that followed and what he saw, but I still wasn’t
there.
    Watching Xander’s face, I see him realize this. He swallows. He’s about to ask me something. When he does, it’s not what I expect. “Have you ever written anything for me? Besides that message, I mean.”
    “You did get it,” I say.
    “All except for the end,” he says. “It got ruined.”
    My heart sinks. So he doesn’t know what I said, that I told him not to think of me anymore in that way.
    “I wondered,” Xander says, “if you’d ever written a poem for me.”
    “Wait,” I say. There is no paper here, but there is a stick and dark dirt on the ground and it is, after all, how I learned to write. I hesitate for a moment, glancing back at the infirmary, but then I realize
The time for keeping this to ourselves is long past. And if I tried to share it with everyone out in Central, why would I keep it from Xander?
    All the same, it feels intimate to write for Xander. It means more.
    I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think of something, and then it comes to me, an extension of the poem with a word that made me think of Xander. I begin to write. “Xander,” I say, pausing.
    “What?” he asks. He doesn’t lift his eyes from my hands, as if they’re capable of a miracle and he can finally witness what it is.
    “I thought about
you
in the Carving, too,” I say. “I dreamed of you.”
    Now he does look at me and I find I can’t hold his gaze; something deep I feel makes me look down, and I write:
     
    Dark, dark, dark it was
    But the Physic’s hand was light.
    He knew the cure, he held the balm
    To heal our wings for flight.
     
    Xander reads it over. His lips move. “Physic,” he says softly. His expression looks pained. “You think I can heal people,” he says.
    “I do.”
    Just then, some of the children from the village come down the path across from us. As if we’re one person, Xander and I stand up at the same time to watch them go by.
    They are playing a game I’ve never seen before, one where they pretend to be something else. Each child is dressed as an animal. Some used grass to make fur, others used leaves for feathers, and there are still more with wings lashed together, made of branches and of blankets that will be used again to warm at night. The repurposing of nature and scraps for creation reminds me of the Gallery, and I wonder if the people back in Central have found another place to gather and share, or if they don’t have time at all for this anymore, with a mutation on the loose and no cure in sight.
    “What would it have been like if we could do that?” Xander asks.
    “What?” I ask.
    “Be whatever
we
wanted,” he says. “What if they’d let us do that when we were younger?”
    I’ve thought about this, especially when I was in the Carving.
Who am I? What am I meant to be?
I think how lucky I am, in spite of the Society, to have dreamed so many, such wild things. Part of that is, of course, because of Grandfather, who always challenged me.
    “Remember Oria?” Xander asks.
    Yes. Yes. I remember. All of it. It’s all clear and close again; the two of us, Matched, holding hands on the air train on the way home from the Banquet. My hand on the nape of his neck as I dropped the compass down his shirt so he could save Ky’s artifact from the Officials. Even then, the three of us were doing our best to keep faith with one