Crossed

CHAPTER 20 CASSIA

My breathing sounds wrong. Like little waves of a stream lapping up against rock and making small tired sounds, hoping to wear away at the stone.

“Talk to me,” I say to Indie. I notice she carries two packs, two canteens. How did that happen? Are they mine? I’m too tired to care.

“What do you want me to say?” she asks.

“Anything.” I need to hear something besides my own breath, my own tired heart.

Somewhere, before Indie’s words turn into nothing sounds in my ears, I realize that she’s telling me things, many things; that she can’t stop herself from talking now that she thinks I’m too far gone to really listen. I wish that I could pay better attention to the words, that I could remember this. I only catch a few phrases

Always at night before I slept

and

I thought everything would be different after

and

I don’t know how much longer I can believe

It almost sounds like poetry, and I wonder again if I will ever be able to finish that poem for Ky. If I will know the right words to say when I finally see him. If he and I will ever have time for more than beginnings.

I want to ask Indie for another blue tablet from my pack, but before I can say anything I remember once again how Grandfather told me that I was strong enough not to take the tablets.

But, Grandfather, I think, I didn’t understand you as well as I thought I did. The poems. I thought I knew what you intended. But which one did you want me to believe?

I remember the words Grandfather said when I took the paper from him that last time. “Cassia,” he whispered, “I am giving you something you won’t understand, yet. But I think you will someday. You, more than the rest.”

A thought flitters into my mind like one of the mourning cloaks, the butterflies that string their cocoons along the twigs both here and back in Oria. It’s a thought I’ve almost had before but I haven’t let myself finish it until now.

Grandfather, were you once the Pilot?

And then another thought comes, one light and fast and that I don’t grasp completely, leaving me with another impression of gently moving wings.

“I don’t need them anymore,” I say to myself. The tablets, the Society. I don’t know if it’s true. But it seems that it should be.

And then I see it. A compass, made of stone, sitting on a ledge exactly at eye level.

I pick it up, although I’ve dropped everything else.

I hold it in my hand as we walk even though it weighs more than many of the things I have let fall to the ground. I think, This is good, even though it’s heavy. I think, This is good, because it will hold me to the earth.