CHAPTER 24
I COME BACK BIT by bit. One bright dot appears, growing larger, eating up the darkness.
At first, I’m only aware of the pieces—my frozen feet, my aching head, my arms crossed over my chest. There’s a pebble stuck under my hip. A rough wool pad under my head. My stomach is empty, and I’m starving.
I’m so tired. I go away for a while, but when I come back there’s a noise breaking through the crackling of the flames. A voice I recognize. He has a funny way of talking. Kiran, that’s his name. Kiran.
“… She always wanted to do whatever I did, and our mother stuck her with me, too. ‘Don’t you leave Kyna,’ she’d say. Every single time I left our house. I didn’t always mind. Well, maybe I did. But I was just a kid myself, you know.”
Kyna. Behind my closed lids I can see her in the buckskin dress with the boards on her legs. Her hair shimmers in the sun. It’s golden. Just like Kiran’s. They resemble each other, now that I think of it. The same nose. The same lanky build.
Kiran’s telling me stories. Like the stories I used to tell him in the city. In the Garden. I remember now. Long nights, when I talked and talked, thinking he didn’t know what I was saying. I remember.
“She was four and I was seven when I let her ride for the first time. My father wanted her to wait until she was bigger, but he was working in the city and my mother was cooking, so I took her out back and set her up on this old paint gelding we had. It seemed harmless enough. Kyna loved it. She was laughing.” He clears his throat. “Neither of us saw the snake on the ground until it was too late. It spooked the gelding, and she fell. He ran her over trying to get away.”
Kiran says nothing for a while. I wish he would talk again. I wish I could do something to make him feel better but my shoulder’s begun to throb. I can’t remember why it hurts, though I feel like I should.
“I carried her back to camp, to the doctor, but her legs were crushed. During the operation I thought of all the times I’d told her to stop following me and leave me alone, and I promised to take care of her from then on. I still try, though she doesn’t need me much these days. I wouldn’t have left home, but the city medicine helps her legs. I took that job at the rental barn in Glasscaster so I could get it.”
He sighs.
“I wish you’d wake up already, Aya.”
My name. Aiyana. Aya. I was supposed to die, but I didn’t. I was sold, but I escaped.
A moan whispers from my throat, but it takes too much work and grows quiet.
“Aya?”
A cool hand presses against my neck, searching for my pulse. It must take a long time for those fingers to find what they’re looking for because they linger through more than a dozen throbbing beats of my heart.
“If you can hear me, they’re gone, Aya. The mayor’s brother and his men. You were right. And that’s the last time I’m going to ever say you were right about that, because you’re not talking me into shooting you ever again.”
He moves the hair from my forehead, leaving a tingling sensation wherever his fingertips brush.
“You’re safe now. It’s been discussed by the elders. You and your family, even Strawberry. We’re taking you all in. The outcast—your father, I mean—they’re still not sold on him, but the rest of you, you’re going to live with us now. If you want, I mean.”
He waits a beat.
“I hope that’s what you want.”
In the quiet, the rest of my memories return, beginning with the past and catching up to the present. Kiran has followed the plan, and now we’re all safe. My family is free. Tam. Nina. Lorcan. Even Daphne. They’re waiting for me in the mountains. Or maybe they’re already at the Driver camp.
We’re going to be safe.
I think of Salma’s last words to me in the shop—that we are just women. As if that weren’t enough. It makes me sad—not angry, not bitter. She always wanted more and in the end settled for nothing.
I see all of it then. Watchers, Pips and their beaters, the medical check. All the fights, all the running, every time I should have given up but didn’t. I see a gray wolf and a boy in the solitary yard with gold flecks in his eyes and a man with a scar on his throat who was there for me when it mattered.
I see Daphne and am proud of the friend she’s become. I see us age—see our hair grow long and wild and our skin tan in the sun as the last of the treatments from the Garden fade away. We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth.
I will honor my mother and take care of my family.
Yes, I think. I am just a woman.
I’m awake now. I could open my eyes and tell Kiran I’m back, but something in his tone tells me we have time, so I keep them closed.
I think I’ll let him talk a little longer.