handsome than the prince. The prince, like his sister, is always at the height of fashion. He’s always polished and there are rumors that he wears cosmetics in his images. But there’s nothing more real than sunlight on skin.
Feeling brave, I push forward and kiss him. He pulls me on top of him, and, laughing, we fall into the grass.
I rest my forehead on his, trying to line up our noses and mouths so we’re at a perfect parallel. He slides his hands up my sleeves and I have the distant sense that Judas is watching us. I wonder if he and Daphne were ever like this.
I try to dismiss the thought, but too late I’m thinking of her body on the train tracks and how awful her final moments must have been.
“Kiss me?” I say, and he does. It’s so easy now. It roots me to this place, makes me feel at home.
I rest my arms on his chest and draw back so I can look at him. He pushes my hair behind my ears and says, “You look worried.”
“I’m only thinking about what sort of person I am,” I say.
“What sort of person?” he says.
“It’s something my brother said. He told me that I’m the sort of person who doesn’t think Internment is enough.” It sounds crazy now that I’ve said it aloud, but I trust Basil now with the things that make me sound unhinged.
“He’s right. Internment isn’t enough for you,” Basil says, surprising me. “Neither is the ground. Neither is the sky.”
I smile. “Being betrothed to me has made you lose your mind,” I say.
He looks around us to be certain we’re alone, and then he says, “With all that’s happened lately, I’m beginning to understand why you’d fantasize about the ground.”
I roll over so that I’m lying beside him. “Maybe I wouldn’t even like the ground. Maybe it would be cruel or ugly. Maybe it would be exactly like here. I just want to know.”
“It wouldn’t be like here,” Basil says. “Think of how much land there must be.”
“That’s just it. I can’t even imagine it.” I hold my arms over my head, watching the way the sunlight fills the spaces between my fingers. “All my life, the more I’ve been told not to think about it, the more I can’t resist. It’s like … like …”
“Like being in love,” Basil suggests.
I turn my head to look at him. “I think you may be right.”
He looks back at me.
“I can stop talking about it so much,” I say. “The ground, I mean. If it bothers you.”
“I do think we should be careful what we say, and where,” Basil says. “There’s too much fear right now, and I worry.”
He turns his face skyward and shields his eyes from the sun, but I think he’s just trying to hide from my stare.
“Worry about what?”
“About what will happen to you,” he says. “Even when we were children, I thought that something like what happened to Daphne could happen to you. One day you’d say something that upset the wrong person, and—We’re supposed to keep each other safe. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Basil.” I move his hand away from his eyes. I want to tell him there’s nothing to be afraid of, but after the honesty he has just given me, I can only give him the same. “We have each other, and we always will, whatever happens. And if someone does murder me, you needn’t worry, because I’ll come haunt you.”
He smirks. “Rattling the windows and tipping glasses and things?”
“I’d say nice things while you slept so you’d have good dreams,” I say. “Or maybe mean things if I get jealous.” I shove his shoulder.
“But we aren’t ghosts,” he says.
“No,” I say. “Not for a long time.”
“Sixty years,” he says.
“A thousand,” I counter, and tug him by the collar until he’s kissing me, and anything we believe is true, and everything in the world is ours.
The short season takes more light from each day. Judas is scarce. I haven’t seen him at all this week, but Amy will still meet me in the cavern. She says he’s hiding in the farm and mining section. She says he has a plan. When I ask her what this plan could be, she tells me that he won’t tell her. It’s too important and she’s too unpredictable.
And one night, I find her sitting out in the starlight at the mouth of the cavern. She’s toying with the strips of cloth tied around her wrists.
“Amy?” I say.
She doesn’t answer, and when I kneel in front of her I see the sheen of tears on her cheeks.
“Suppose it was painful,” she whispers. “All that broken skin.”
She has been so steely that I could almost forget she’s in mourning. She’s never talked about what happened to her sister. Barely mentioned Daphne at all.
“She was going to do something important.” Her voice cracks. “She wasn’t there yet, but it was happening. The things she wrote and the thoughts she had. She was going to prove things are wrong on Internment, and someone didn’t want that, and that’s why she was killed.” She uses the cloth to dab at her eyes. “And now she’s gone, and no one will ever get to hear what she had to say.”
Gently, I ask, “Is that why you were putting up her essay?”
She nods. “It was a draft she didn’t turn in. Instead, our parents made her write about the ecosystem and turn that in. But I had to give her a voice. My parents blamed Judas for her thoughts and the things she said. Before her death, my parents went to the king asking for Daphne and Judas’s betrothal to be undone. They would have preferred that she be alone—rather than tied to him.”
“I didn’t think undoing a betrothal was possible,” I say.
“It isn’t.” She swipes the heel of her hand against her nose, sniffling. “That’s probably why they blame him so much. They were practically the first in line to have him arrested once she was killed. But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” I say.
She looks at me, eyes glistening in the moonlight. I see a girl who has been to the edge, and who has nothing left to fear. “Because I’m going to finish what my sister helped start. I’m going to find a way off of this place.”
I can’t help the pitying expression that surely comes over me. She raises her chin in defiance. “I can’t tell you everything,” she says. “But you’ll hear about it, and when you do, I’ll already be gone.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to me after that. She gets up and busies herself trying to climb one of the trees.
“You like to climb?” I say.
“I’m not allowed,” she says. “I can get away with it only when Judas isn’t around.”
I can’t imagine why he would worry about Amy climbing trees. She appears to be quite good at it.
“When I was little,” I say, “I used to climb trees, too. It took me months before I could reach the top of the highest tree I could find here in the woods. And once I’d climbed it I realized there was nowhere else to go.”
Amy’s expression is thoughtful. “Did you ever think about what it would be like to climb in the opposite direction? Instead of going above Internment, to go beneath it?”
“Like a tunnel,” I say. “Yes, I think so, now that you mention it. I could burrow along the roots that go all the way to the bottom of the city, and then I’d be dangling high above the ground.”
“You’re kind of strange,” Amy says, swinging from a low branch.
“You are, too,” I say.
Before she hoists herself up to the next branch, she smiles at me. “Go away now,” she says. “I have important things to consider.”
I leave her to her ascent for the stars.
Somewhere around the block, I hear a sweeper. They always come sometime after dinner. Men driving machines propelled by giant round brushes, gathering all the debris from the street so that it can be recycled.
