SIX
THE NEXT WEEK FLIES BY. I spend mornings hunting and afternoons with Emma, passing my knowledge of archery to her in the empty fields behind the livestock pens. We start with the basics: understanding the curve of the bow, the form of the arrow. I teach her how to hold them, when to release, the posture to possess. She squirms impatiently for two days because I refuse to let her shoot until she can nock an arrow with her eyes closed. When she finally takes her first shot, she is terrible, but only because she’s forgotten everything I managed to teach her. Excitement pushed it from her mind and anxiousness took hold of her muscles. She improves over the following days, her arrow flying straighter, her aim more precise.
As happy as I am to spend so much time with Emma, the words of my mother’s letter continue to haunt me. I turn the house upside down, searching for the slightest of clues. I read Blaine’s diary from front to back, but nothing further is revealed. I try to forget I even discovered the letter, and yet I can’t. I want to know what secret Ma shared with Blaine. I want the truth the way I crave to breathe. It is subconscious and it plagues me.
On a hot afternoon, when the weather is muggy and heavy and the air presses in on my lungs with vicious intent, I decide it is time for Emma to shoot at her first real target. Sending arrows into open fields is one thing. Hitting a mark is another.
We make our way to the eastern portion of town, past the crop and livestock fields, to our normal shooting grounds. I set up a basic target and hand Emma some arrows and my childhood bow—I have since outgrown it and it better suits her frame. As I’m slinging my quiver across my back, I hear the thump of an arrow hitting grass. I look over to see Emma’s discouraged face.
“You’re rushing,” I tell her. The arrow is burrowed in the soft earth in front of the target.
She frowns. “It seemed so easy when we were just shooting and there was no mark to hit.”
“Everything’s simpler without constraints. Keep your arm parallel to the ground as you pull it back. Remember your stance, too.” I draw my bowstring back in illustration. She attempts to mimic me and fails impressively. I suppress a laugh.
“Here, I’ll show you.” I move behind her, hold her bow hand in mine and wrap my other arm around her so that I, too, am grasping the string.
“Now focus,” I say. “Nothing exists in the world except for the target.” I drop my arms and step away from her. She lets the arrow fly, and this time it strikes true. It barely manages to hang on to the outermost ring, but nonetheless, it is there.
She jumps in excitement, turning to face me. “Did you see that?”
“Course I did. I’m standing right here.”
She nocks another arrow and reaims. I watch her muscles clench as she focuses, admire how her eyes narrow. I wonder how she hasn’t caught me staring at her like this, not even once since we started hanging out. Perhaps archery has been a worthy distraction.
Emma releases her bowstring. This time she does much better, missing the bull’s-eye by only a single ring.
With a triumphant yelp she throws her arms around my neck and hugs me. It takes me by surprise. She feels small in my arms, even though she never seems small in person. When she breaks away, I can see how truly proud she is.
“I think you’re a natural,” I tell her.
“I think you’re a good teacher.”
“No, seriously. Teaching and correcting form can only do so much. The rest is either in a person or it’s not.”
She walks up to the target, twists the arrows free, and returns them to her quiver. “Let’s have a match,” she says.
“You really think you can beat me after hitting a target twice?” I ask skeptically.
“Oh, come on. Let’s play. Besides, I’m not the one that challenged you to a match that day back at the lake.”
I smirk. “Fine, have it your way. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
And with that, we play, shooting three arrows from twenty paces, then three more from forty, and then a final set at sixty. Emma does extremely well at twenty paces, but her arrows start to stray at forty. From the farthest distance she misses entirely, all three arrows landing in the soft ground around the target. I shoot a perfect game without even trying. We retrieve our arrows and then sit down in the grass, our foreheads lined with sweat.
“Okay, you’re right,” Emma admits. “When it comes to shooting, you can absolutely crush me.”
“Told you.” I take a swig from my waterskin and then pass it to her. I watch as a bead of sweat trickles down her neck and across her collarbone, disappearing beyond the neckline of her shirt.
“If I tell you something, do you promise to not repeat it?” she asks, handing the water back to me.
“Sure.”
“Have you ever read the scrolls from the library that document the beginnings of this place?”
“The history of Claysoot? Yeah, I’ve read them.”
“Don’t you find them odd?”
“How so?”
“For starters, their memories were so shoddy after the storm destroyed Claysoot. They remembered certain skills—like how to tend crops and work a loom and rebuild collapsed buildings—but they forgot the names of their neighbors. And their own town. And anything they might have been doing before the weather hit. How does something like that happen? And where were their parents? The scrolls don’t mention having to bury the deceased, and if the adults weren’t lost to the storm, it means they weren’t here when it rolled in.”
“So you think their parents were somewhere else?” I ask, taken aback by the idea.
“Maybe? I don’t know. The children must have been born in Claysoot, to mothers that were living here also, because nothing can cross the Wall and live to tell the tale. But at the same time, it seems very unlikely that every single mother died in a storm that small children survived.”
I’ve never thought of it this way, but she has a point.
“It’s unlikely,” I say, echoing her. “But possible.”
She wrinkles her forehead. “It still feels off.”
“We’ll never really know, I guess. The scrolls could be incomplete or poorly written. They could have left out burying the adults because it was too difficult to write.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she says, but I can sense the doubt in her voice. Emma’s questions remind me of Ma’s letter and her mention of how mysterious life is. Like my mother, Emma is obsessed with inexplicable details.
I take another swig of the water. It’s warm now, but it’s still nice to wet my lips.
“So why can’t I repeat any of this?” I ask.
“You know how the Council freaks out every time someone suggests there’s something else beyond the Wall. But there has to be. I just don’t see where all those children could have come from otherwise. Every living thing inside this Wall was born to a mother. And if those kids didn’t have mothers here, they had mothers someplace else.”
Again, a valid point.
“You’re quiet,” Emma says. “You think I’m crazy.”
I laugh. “I don’t think you’re crazy. Not one bit.”
“And you won’t repeat this?”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks, Gray.” She smiles—it’s a crooked one, only one corner of her mouth pulling up—and then flops into the grass with a heavy sigh. The sky is cloudless today, a giant stretch of blue filled with nothing but a glaring sun. Emma wriggles about to get comfortable, and ends up closer to me than when she first lay back. I can feel her hip pressed against my side. Every muscle in my body yells at me to roll over, to grab her face in my hands and kiss her, but I lie there motionless. What we have is almost perfect, so comfortable I’m afraid to ruin it. I want it to be more, but this is manageable. For now.
“All right. My turn to ask something you promise not to repeat.”
“Okay,” she says, still staring at the sky.
“What would you do if you discovered that someone was keeping a secret from you?”
“Confront them, probably.”
“What if you can’t? What if they’re gone?”
“Then I guess I’d confront whoever else made sense. Or start digging for answers.”
“And what if you found no answers?”
“Then you’re not looking hard enough.”
I snort, thinking of the still upturned state of my bedroom. If answers exist, they are certainly not in my home. But maybe there are other places to look. Maybe, as Emma suggests, I’m simply not searching hard enough.
“Does the Clinic keep patient records?”
“What kind of records?”
“I don’t know. Anything, really. Births? Deaths? Stuff a patient said during a visit?”
“Sure,” she says, rolling onto her side to face me. “But that information is not exactly available to the public.”
“Look, Emma, I need to peek at one record. It will only take a few minutes.”
“Whose record?”
“My mother’s.”
“Is she the one that kept something from you?”
“Yes. Her and Blaine.” I know I can trust Emma, and so I pull the letter that has been haunting me for days from my pocket and pass it to her. She reads it carefully, her eyes widening, and then her hands flip it over, searching for more words as she comes to its end.
“Where’s the rest?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it won’t be listed in her scroll, I can tell you that much.”
“But some answers might be.” I take the scroll, fold it, and return it to my pocket. I can feel a headache starting between my eyes and I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I really don’t think you’ll find anything,” Emma says.
“I still have to try. I need to know what she’s talking about, or I’m going to go crazy.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning my mother has a house visit. We can check then, but quickly.”
“Thank you, Emma.”
She stands and offers me an arm. “We should head back. Mohassit’s ceremony is tonight and the feast is probably starting soon.”
Another boy turning eighteen. Another life to be lost. I’m not close to Mohassit, but I know him well enough from the market. He works in the livestock fields, tending sheep and cattle. He’s thin and frail and manages to get sick more often than anyone I know in Claysoot. The odds seem always stacked against him, and yet somehow, he refused to give in to them. Unfortunately, I know he will not beat the odds tonight.
We gather up the gear and head back to town. By the time we’ve dropped everything off at my place, the sun is starting to set. As we approach the Council Bell, it becomes obvious that something is wrong. People are gathered as usual, but the group is quiet. No one is huddled around the bonfire or feasting on the food. Instead, everyone is standing rigid and staring up the road toward the hunting trailhead. Emma and I follow their gaze and when we see it, we freeze.
Two boys are carrying a stretcher from the woods. On it is a body, black and crisp, the features scorched beyond recognition. But there is no mistaking that frail, thin frame, no second-guessing who would have risked the Wall today. He was likely late to arrive at his ceremonial dinner. And then the search party went out. And found him somewhere along the base of the Wall, where all the climbers reappear. Dead.
There will be no Heist tonight but a funeral instead.