Once, my thoughts of Koen had been half-formed, nebulous. But after I told Silvan my plans, Koen’s image solidified. The idea of
I thought about other things too. I thought about kissing Koen. I thought about the way his breath might feel against my lips and wondered how I’d ever manage to close my eyes with his face, his beautiful face, so close to mine. I thought about how he was taller than me, how he’d have to scoop an arm down around my waist to pull me close. I thought about things I’d never tell anyone about. I thought about his hand on my lower back—and on other places too.
Bashert, bashert, I said to myself, as if chanting the word in my mind would make it true. The boy I dreamed about looked no more like Koen than he ever had. But that didn’t stop me from telling myself that they were one and the same, that I would feel the same wild warmth when I pulled Koen’s body against mine.
I did my best to keep my thoughts about Koen a secret, but I know that they showed. Even the mood at supper changed. It used to be that I sometimes spoke and even laughed along with Koen and Abba, but now I only listened. I withdrew, pulling into myself. I watched Koen with nervous bird eyes, flitting them up and then away. When he looked at me, I’d just turn beet red. I could feel the burning heat over my face and throat and ears and even my chest beneath the itchy wool of my mother’s sweater.
Seeing this, Father would give a hungry grin, like he’d done something wonderful. And Koen would watch him watching me, then look at me over the table. In those moments there seemed to be a tiny glimmer of a question beneath his lifted eyebrows. But if he’d hoped for any sort of connection, he’d hoped wrong. Koen would look at me and I’d just blush deeper, then force my gaze down to my plate.
It might seem like amid all of this—with Koen and his hands weighing so heavily on my mind—that I’d forgotten all about Mar Jacobi.
But I never forgot. That strange gargle of noise, his death rattle, stayed with me whenever I took the long way home from work. Every night, without fail, I remembered the way the knife had flashed in the light, and the sudden explosion of red, red blood.
Thinking of Koen didn’t help matters any. Because every passing day that I distracted myself with thoughts of Koen’s hands, of Koen’s smile, my belly grew more twisted with guilt. I had seen the captain’s guard kill the librarian—a kind man, a father, my mother’s friend. And because I was afraid, I’d done nothing. Just pushed it further and further back in my mind.
But the truth was that I didn’t know any other way to stay afloat. This was how I’d survived after Momma had died, keeping the pain and the guilt stuffed down inside me.
What was the weight of one more dead body?
We turned sixteen. The morning of our Birthing Day, I stayed in my bed for a long time, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, ignoring Pepper’s cries. I took quick stock of my body—fingers, check; rib cage, check; nose, and mouth, and jaw, still there too—and did my best to note any changes. I knew logically that I took up more space in bed and that my body weighted the mattress differently, bowing the material beneath my hips. But other than the strange heat that sometimes flared up from inside me, I felt the same. Unchanged.
“Terra!” My father called me from the bottom of the stairs. Pepper wanted me to get up too. He head- butted my shoulder and let out a rattling purr. So I pulled myself from bed and down our narrow staircase.
To my surprise, my father stood at the stove. The whole galley was perfumed by the scent of yeast and flour—it had to be challah, fresh-baked egg bread. It was Momma’s smell, and it brought a lump to my throat. I gripped the banister.
“You’re making breakfast?”
“You’re sixteen,” my dad said, as if that were an answer. “A grown-up. I figured it was a special occasion.” He stooped down to scratch Pepper behind the ears. He laughed, warm, genuine laughter. I made my way warily across the galley and sat down at the table.
My father brought over a scratched glass bowl shrouded with a damp cloth. I lifted it. Steam rose up the lumpy roll of knotted bread. It wasn’t as pretty as what Momma used to make, but it was fresh and warm. I tore into it with both hands.
Meanwhile my father poured a cup of sludgy black liquid from our kettle, then another. He brought one over to me. It was potsum—an ersatz brew made of chicory root and bran.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I said. My father took a long draw from his own steaming mug, then smacked his lips.
“You don’t now. But you will soon enough.”
I peered down into my cup, eying the oily liquid. Then I took a tentative sip. It tasted like the charred bottom of a burnt piece of cake.
“That’s terrible!” I said. My father only smiled.
“Eat your breakfast. I have a present waiting for you when you finish.”
My father’s expression was cryptic, closed. I had no idea how to read the faint lift of his lips. It had been so long since I’d seen my father happy. I was afraid that if I breathed wrong, the whole facade would fall apart.
Abba’s gift was a pair of boots. They were knee high, made out of leather the color of the honey candies we ate at harvest celebrations to ring in a sweet season. They were used, of course, with slight creases wrinkling the toe box and circling the heels. But they were beautiful, and they fit perfectly. I laced them up—Pepper, purring, rubbed his mouth against my hands as I did—and then I stood, looking down at them.
“I know that your old ones were falling apart,” my father said. “They probably don’t even fit you anymore.”
He was right. Just the week before, my big toe had finally pushed a hole through the left one. I admired my new boots, how long and narrow my feet looked in them and how the leather had been polished to a high shine.
“Rachel helped pick them out,” my father admitted, an apology in his voice. I couldn’t bear to look up at him.
“They’re . . . perfect,” I said. But I kept my voice low. Part of me was afraid that if I showed too much enthusiasm, then the morning would shatter into a million pieces like a dream. But he looked so hopeful and happy that I couldn’t quite help myself. I went to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek, making sure not to linger too long by his side in case his mood tumbled south.
“All right,” he said at last, letting out a gruff, short laugh. “Best get to work. Wouldn’t want you to invoke Stone’s wrath.”
But things had gone better with Mara since the day Alyana was born. She let me stay in the lab now, so long as I didn’t ask too many questions. For the past few weeks I’d watched as she’d worked her way through the blight problem, first identifying the affected plants, then isolating the mold that was causing the spots, then combing through the greenhouse to uproot them before they could spread the disease any farther.
As she did all this, she kept up a sort of running monologue. Sometimes it seemed like she was talking as much to herself as to me, but then she’d stop, stare at me, and quiz me on what she’d just said. Her expression in those moments was meticulous, her thin lips pursed as she waited for my reply—she was testing me, and we both knew it.
Luckily, I always got the answers right.
But our relationship wasn’t exactly friendly. I knew that, too. So I wasn’t surprised when I clomped into the lab in my brand-new boots and Mara didn’t look up from her computer terminal.
