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000.160.04.21.59

I lie under the pink dogwood tree on the knoll. The stone that held me captive during my amputation shines beneath the morning sun. This is the only pink dogwood in the village, as if stained by years of spilled blood. How many other people have been shackled beneath this gorgeous tree? How many screams for mercy have taken place on this knoll and not been heard? It’s like the sacrifice of Radicals, but in a different culture. Why is the sound of a human voice ignored?

I fold my right arm behind my head for support and stare at the tree. Hundreds of blossoms curl out from the branches—white in the center and pinkish-red on the four tips. Even more buds still wait to open. The old joy I used to find when these trees bloomed is too buried to surface now. How can something so beautiful exist when my heart weighs so heavy?

I look over the village. No one seems to mind that I’m up here. This little haven is stunning—dark moss, flawless trees, scattered cottages, and sun that tingles the skin. A small pond rests in an indentation of the earth, reflecting the tall tree trunks and the blue sky. How can such a beautiful village be so dark?

“Are you going to do anything for us?”

I jump at the tiny voice and sit up. Willow stands on the other side of the dogwood, peeking around the bark. Her white skin has lost its bruise. Her lips are parted, allowing small breaths to escape. She’s expectant. Staring with those light, stark purple eyes.

“Why should I? You didn’t do anything for me.” I close my eyes and force myself to tame my tone.

Willow wiggles her splinted fingers. “I took a broke finger for you. So did other people. Well, Elm took some toes, too. We distributed your atonement so you only had to lose a hand.”

I allow no outward response to this, but my anger squeezes a fist around my emotions. I never asked them to do that. Why couldn’t they distribute enough broken fingers to keep me whole?

“What do you want me to do?”

She shrugs and steps from behind the tree. Green vines from a willow tree are woven into the tiny braids scattered through her long hair. The tiny leaves poke between white strands.

“Why are plant strands in your hair?”

“A willow tree fell two days ago from the wind. Because of my name, I honor its death by attaching its legacy to myself.” Her voice is feathery, like a musical chime heard on the street corners of Unity Village during holidays.

“People just come and go.” She looks at me with a tilt to her head. “Why do they come only to go?”

“Who else has come here, Willow?”

“Lots of people. Last was a lady and a girl, but they didn’t stay long.”

I almost can’t breathe past my hope. “Did they have names?”

“Newton-lady and Newton-girl.”

They survived! At least two of the Newtons survived.

I lie back down to keep the sudden spring of tears under control. My voice comes out hoarse. “Do you know where they are?”

Willow shakes her head and her hair makes a soft swooshing sound through the air. “Gone now. Why did you come here?”

“I’ve been searching for Independents. I thought I’d find guidance from your village. I didn’t know they would punish me for something I didn’t even know was wrong.”

“Alder says that’s how we learn what’s wrong.”

I curb my urge to argue with the little girl. “How old are you?”

“Spring eleven.”

“What’s that mean?”

She wiggles her pale toes in the moss. “I was born in spring and I’m eleven.”

I grin. “I’m spring eighteen.”

Willow links her arms around the trunk of the dogwood and swings back and forth, pivoting on her small feet. Her splinted fingers are unable to curve around the bark with the others. She leans her head back so she’s looking at me upside-down.

I reach out with my palm, allowing the tips of her woven hair to tickle my fingers. “Do your fingers hurt?”

“Not anymore. Ash gave me white pills for the hurt at first.” She sucks on her bottom lip for a moment. “I cracked some branches on a new tree. It was my first accident since I hit bloom. I was afraid, so I ran away. Then I found you.” Her voice turns soft and hesitant. “Were you afraid?”

I close my eyes. “More terrified than any other time in my life.”

“Do you hate us?”

My anger boils at the instant mental flash of Alder and Black, but then I look at Willow. Her upside-down purple eyes watch my face. I don’t hate her. I thought I hated the boys who called me “Empty Numbers” during my childhood, but the feeling I have toward Alder is so much stronger. Is this hate?

“I don’t know.”

Willow straightens, reaches around to the opposite side of the tree, and produces my pack of belongings. “Here you go.”

“Oh, um, thanks.” Did she go into my hut to get this? Why did she bring it to me?

“Welks.”

“Welks?”

She skips down the knoll. “It’s what Jude-man says.” And she’s gone, traipsing through the rest of the village and out of sight. I stare after her for a while—she was raised here and seems so opposite from Alder. Will his crooked beliefs turn her into an angry axe-swinger?

I use my teeth and fingers to undo the ties on my pack. My left arm aches with sickening pulses. I take a deep breath, keeping my eyes away from seeing the wound. The first item I pull out is my NAB. I’ve neglected it and Skelley Chase must believe me dead.

Sure enough, no less than twelve messages blink on his bubble. Hawke’s bubble has three. I open Skelley Chase’s, but don’t read any of the messages; instead, I send him my own.

~I’m alive in a village full of albino people who cut off my hand. I’ll send you a journal entry soon.

Hawke is a different story. I open the earliest message. It’s sent the same time my hand was chopped.

~Parvin, did Jude reach you? Are you okay? Please answer me.

The next one is timed twenty minutes later.

~I am so . . . so sorry I didn’t read your message sooner. I could have prevented this. I thought Jude would reach you in time. Thank God, you’re not dead, but I doubt this brings you much comfort. I asked Jude to stay with you and protect you until you are well enough to leave.

His next message is shorter, but brightens my morning more than any other words could.

~Jude says you are faring well. I have taken the liberty to inform your family of the little I know regarding your survival. They miss you.

My family. What did Mother and Father think when an Enforcer came to their door? Did Mother think Hawke would take Reid away? How did she react when he told her my arm was cut off? What did she say when she heard I’m still alive?

~Thank you, I type while resting the NAB on the ground. ~You’ve brought me more comfort than I’ve received from anyone else here. I’ll admit, I’m uneasy about Jude. How did you send him to me? How did he know where I was? Do others know where I am?

I sit up straighter, lean against the trunk of the dogwood, and then record a new journal entry. It’s the longest one yet and I go into as much detail as I can remember—the feeling of Alder coming with his axe, the muscular albino holding me down, the shock that I wasn’t saved in time, the sound of Jude’s desperate shout a moment too late.

A thin stream of emotional poison seeps out of my heart as I write, leaving me hollow, but a quarter-inch closer to healing. I finish the entry with my recent interactions with Alder and Willow and then take an emotigraph of the village. It can’t capture the mixture of emotions inside me when I look over its beauty. I also take one of the shackle stone. I hesitate over the send button.

I ache. Skelley Chase is to blame. He sent me here. How can I confide this to him? I want to send it to Hawke instead. My heart feels safer with this mysterious Enforcer.

But others need to know about my story. My hurt can’t be for nothing. They will see my bravery. My pain. People will feel for me, with me. I can’t hold this all myself.

I send the entry and emotigraphs to Skelley Chase. He responds several minutes later with a single sentence.

~It’s about time.

I hear his bored warble in my mind. The scent of lemon wafts from my NAB. I clench the cover so hard my fingernails leave crescent moon imprints in its leather. My story, my life, is just a deadline to him.

When did this thrum of hatred turn so solid?

A pop from the NAB steals my attention. It’s Hawke.

~Parvin, Jude is no threat to you. He has been to the albino village several times. We keep close contact. He is the only person I know in the West. To my knowledge, no one knows where you are and no one else is in the West. I’ll have to leave any other questions to Jude’s discretion. His story is his to tell.

I don’t know what to reply. Instead of calm, his message prods my anxiety deeper. Hawke avoided direct answers to my questions. Can I even trust him?

God, I’m afraid. I fold up the NAB. I’m among strangers—dangerous strangers. I don’t know who to turn to besides You. Are You still protecting me?

I return to the cluster of huts. A small fire burns in front of Ash’s and she sets an iron box with a long handle over the flame. In the breath I take to shout, “Hypocrite!” I spy the pile of coal feeding the flame.

I built a fire with wood and lost an arm. Ash builds a fire with coal and the world is her dinner table. Unjust.

“Did the Newtons have to atone for anything when they came through here?”

She glances up from the fire. “They did not stay long. I helped heal them of small injuries, but they left with the Ivanhoe traders.”

“Ivanhoe?”

She hands me three white pills from a pouch on the ground. “Yes. We trade with cities for medicine, technology, or resources. The larger cities are far from the Wall, across the Dregs. Ivanhoe is the largest city in the West.”

Ivanhoe. The name latches like a wood clamp to my mind. She opens the iron box, revealing a dinner of pheasant meat and a pile of strange blackened stalks.

“Cattails,” she says.

I scrunch my nose and lean away, imagining choking on hairballs of cattail fluff. My family lived off the land, but we never thought to eat the cattails clogging our ponds. Even Harman, the Master Gardener, never included cattails in his wares. No, thank you.

I pick the pheasant off the breastbone and drink a small mug of cold soup. “The cattails are good with butter and salt.” Ash holds one out.

“No thank you.” I still visualize white fluff in my throat. “What do you trade with Ivanhoe?”

Ash sets a stripped cattail stalk beside the cooking box. “Feathers and animal furs mostly. Because we are the keepers of this stretch of forest, we also grant permission to gather dead-standing.”

I discover what dead-standing means the next morning because it’s the first sentence shouted at sunrise. “Awake! Dead-standing gathering!”

It’s shouted once, but once is enough to rouse the entire village. Everyone leaves his or her hut with packs on their backs, boots on their feet, and an axe over one shoulder. Willow is among them. Her axe is short with a silver head like the rest. She bounces up and down on her tiptoes and looks up at a woman next to her who is dressed in similar fashion. She squeezes Willow’s shoulder and plants a kiss on her forehead.

The albinos gather for a few minutes, dispersing different belongings and counting heads. Alder takes the lead and they leave the village in single file. At the rear, Black looks back at me every few steps. His eyes narrow, but his emotion behind the mask of anger is concern.

Not a word is said to me or Jude, who leans against Alder’s hut, tapping his fingers on the stones like a drum. I look around. Are they leaving us alone in their village? Do they trust us to stay here? They continue walking, with Black glancing backward, until they’re out of sight.

Ash steps out of the hut, drying her hands on her brown tunic. “Are you staying behind?” Jude asks her at the same time I ask, “Where did they go?”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Obviously she’s staying behind—she’s pregnant.”

Jude folds his arms. “Obviously they’re going to gather the dead-standing.”

Ash clears her throat. “Dead-standing are the trees that died from beetles, age, winter, and such. We gather dead-standing on the first of every month and float them down river to our village to trade or use. This keeps the forest from growing too dense or at high risk for fire.”

The explanation is tamer than I expected. The word “dead”—and the way Alder walked out of the village with the axe over his shoulder—made me think of human beings, not trees. “How long are they gone?”

Ash shrugs. “A week. Sometimes two.” I look at her bulging stomach. She pats it. “I’ll be okay.”

Three days later, as she cooks a hearty dinner, her “okay” transforms into contractions.