Ezekiel had nodded for me to leave the elder’s meeting place after his revelation about the City. Had he wanted to shock me? Or was he sincere that I know the truth? I barely registered the looks the Prims gave me as Gideon escorted me through the clearing. “I can’t believe the City would do that,” I said shaking my head. “It’s so,” I tried to think of the right word. “Savage.”
Gideon looked at me thoughtfully. “We’ve heard about balancings, where you kill the old and weak.”
“But that’s because they don’t produce energy. A city can’t run if its own Citizens can’t support it.”
Gideon stopped walking and held on to my elbow. “We help each other. We survive.”
“It’s different here,” I replied.
“How?”
“Because you’re—” The word ‘desperate’ was on the tip of my tongue, but that was a lie. No one here looked desperate. They lived simply, but that wasn’t the same. None of the Prims had expressed any interest in going to the City. To them, we were the ones to be pitied.
“Gideon?” a boy from across the clearing called. “Is that you?” He walked tentatively with a stick in front of him, tapping it on stones embedded in the ground. I hadn’t noticed before, but they ran all over the Prim camp. The boy came closer and I saw he was older than I thought, maybe fifteen or sixteen. His skin was burnished a deep brown and his hair was streaked with blond. He was lean and almost my height, but would grow taller; I saw how his neck had already stretched and was waiting for the rest of his body to catch up and fill out.
He stared straight past me, like I wasn’t there. One eye was cloudy green, as if the white had bled into the colour, and the other was a marled, brownish colour, fixated on something in the distance.
“What’s wrong with him?” I whispered to Gideon.
“He’s blind.”
I took a step back, revolted. “A defective.”
Gideon shook his head. “No, just blind.”
“I’ve never seen one before.” But I’d heard of anomalies in my training. We’d done our best to eradicate weaknesses like his from our genetics. I thought of the female I’d lied to about her fetus. What if he was born like this Prim? The City would balance the infant—and with good reason. A sudden flash of regret filled me. I shouldn’t have been so soft with her. The truth would come out eventually and then she’d have to deal with the consequences.
“It’s me, Sepp. Over here. Take the path to the left.”
Sepp’s stick tapped, looking for the stone path that would lead him to us.
I moved away, behind Gideon, but he pulled me forward. “I want you to meet Kaia.”
“The girl from the City? I heard about her.”
“She’s never seen a blind person before. I think she’s a little nervous.”
Sepp smiled. “I won’t bite. At least, I don’t usually.”
At first, I looked away, not wanting to see him face to face. But then I remembered he couldn’t see me. I stared at him unabashedly, getting an eyeful.
“Does she talk?” Sepp asked.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. “I talk.”
“Good!” Sepp sounded happy. How could he be though? Living a life without eyes? What kind of a cruel progenitor would want this life for their offspring?
“So your mother’s back too?” Gideon asked. “Kaia has a wound on her knee that we need her to look at.”
“He belongs to the healer?” I asked incredulous.
“Yes.” Sepp turned his head in my direction. It was unsettling the way they looked through me.
“Is she at home?” Gideon asked.
“She was when I left. I’m going to check the garden. I’ll see you later.”
Gideon guided him towards a different path. I turned to watch him go. A group of children yelled greetings to him.
“It’s like he’s one of you,” I said when Gideon came back to me.
“He is one of us.”
“I know, I mean you accept him as one of you.”
Gideon took a deep, irritated breath. “You’re going to have to let go of your City ideas. He’s not contagious, he’s blind. You should see the carvings he does. They’re incredible.”
Gideon pulled at a thin cord under his shirt. “Sepp made this for me.”
Intricately carved, it was the face of the bird that had hung over Ezekiel.
“It’s a whistle. We all have them. It’s how we let others know if there’s danger.” He put the whistle to his lips and blew gently. A high-pitched noise pierced the air. I had to admit, I was impressed. “The sound stuns beasts too,” he said.
“The beasts? They’re real?”
“They roam the north side of the Mountain. They’re vicious,” he said warningly, “and travel in packs. As long as you don’t cross the stream, they’ll leave you alone. If the healer’s back, we should go to her.”
“So she can look at my knee?” It felt hot to the touch, but it didn’t look any worse.
“And,” he gave my finger a meaningful look. “My grandfather’s right. It has to come out.”
“How?”
Gideon took my hand and held it palm up. “The healer will make an incision here,” he drew a line along my fingertip. It sent a shiver up my arm. “And take it out. I’m sure it will hurt, but if you survive the wound on your knee…” He shrugged and I pulled my hand away.
I tucked my arms around my body.
“No one’s forcing you to. You could go back to the City,” he said.
His mention of the City reminded me that I wasn’t the only Citizen on the Mountain. The overseers. Were they still looking for me? Or had they gone back to the City. Why had they even come? Sy wouldn’t have told them about my escape—not willingly. With a start, I realized that they could have found him returning from the underland alone and questioned him. If he’d been forced to admit the truth, the overseers might have come after me.
Oh, Sy, I thought with regret. What have you done?
If Raina had been here, like Sy believed, things would have been different. I would have had a reason to stay, but as it was, I was trapped in a place I didn’t belong, with a people I didn’t understand.