Blue Window

everything outside, he said, a hum of life, and underneath it all there’s this lightning buzz, like a live wire, sparking. You can only hear it if you stay still for the longest time. I didn’t used to have patience for this much standing still, but it’s different now. When the Guide’s around, I can feel the weight of him, standing there near me. Sometimes, for just a second, it’s almost like I’ve jumped from my own self into him, and I can feel this crush of thoughts and power vibrating there. I wish I could describe it. It’s like standing near the heat of a fire and then suddenly being inside the fireball, all crackle and glow. The other thing I notice, lately, is this waiting. I get the idea he’s waiting for something. I asked him about it, and he said he is waiting, he’s always been waiting, but time is the one thing that can’t be changed with will. He seemed very sad when he said that. I hate to see him sad. It’s like feeling a fire go out.

Your brother,

Max

Susan had fallen asleep that night with her hands over her head, like someone in a crashing plane. When Nell finished reading, she felt like she was falling out of the sky right alongside her. She clutched the letter and thought about everything Max had said.

Maybe if she could teach Kate and Jean how to make the open-palm flowers, they could go to the old man together and show him, and he would want to teach them, too. Wouldn’t someone with a fire inside him want to know about other people who could do things? And if he knew how it was hurting Susan, he’d do something about the mist, too. She was sure he would.

But when she stepped back into the room, she saw Jean asleep with her doll propped on one cheek, its plastic hand tangled in her hair. Kate and Jean were small, still playing with dolls and stones. What help could they be?

She guessed that was how Susan saw her, too. And so Susan chanted her awful little song of tradition and obedience and patience, and expected Nell to wait the way the little girls waited — for someone to figure it all out and take them home.

Well, she was not going to wait. She was not small. Susan couldn’t see that. Max wouldn’t. But the old man would, if she could only show him. . . .

She had kept up her nightly ritual since their time in the woods. In the dark, sometimes, she found herself reaching for the blanket that was gone, longing for the smell of home. She’d lie there with a crater open in her chest, and to fight it, she’d close her eyes and walk herself through her house, always starting at the front door and moving on through the rooms, one by one, as if she’d just come home from a long trip.

But now the hollowed-out longing pushed her toward a different door. She let her mind’s eye wander over the halls of the first band, out through the gardens, and past the artisan booths. She walked herself through the working gardens and on, through the boys’ school, on, toward the last garden. She concentrated then, remembering hard. Did the gate have a lock?

Yes.

She’d seen it, and could see it now, in her mind’s eye. A great iron lock, twice the size of her hand, and surely too heavy to lift. Nothing she’d seen yet in the sanctuary had a lock, not even a small one. Not the bedroom she shared with her sisters, or the classrooms, or even the doors to the third band, where she knew she’d been forbidden to go.

But the inner garden had a lock.

Max had said even the old man worked only in the third band. Mistress Meva had said the inner garden held the great library, and the books of mystery.

And the council met there only once a year.

The next morning, she went to class as usual but told Mistress Leeta, halfway through the morning hour, that she hadn’t slept well and needed to be excused. Leeta smiled sympathetically and wished her well.

Nell nodded weakly and made her way slowly out of the classroom and down the long hall.

Then she ran.

She skipped through the first garden in the summer sunshine, aware of the heat on her head as she circled to a far door, one she hadn’t used before. Here she came out among the woodworkers. She breathed in the sweet sawdust and waved to a man who stood there, saw in hand.

“Checking on my garden!” she called to him, and he smiled and waved back.

She passed through the working gardens, slipped through the tunnel that cut through the third band, and dived into the thickest part of the scholars’ garden until she reached the stone wall that ringed the heart of the sanctuary. Careful to keep out of sight behind trees and bushes, she circled the wall until she reached the iron gate.

Just as she’d seen it in her head, it was there: a thick iron lock. She tried to lift it and couldn’t. She bent down to examine it, looking for a keyhole. There was none. The lock was a solid ring of metal, twice as wide as her hand.

Nell glanced behind her. The garden was empty in the light morning air.

She turned back to the lock.

Focus, she told herself. Concentrate.

She closed her eyes a moment and saw the metal ring again. Her mind wrapped around it, felt its weight, tested its density, measured the smooth warmth of it. This was not like making flowers. The lock existed. How could she change it?

She thought about what the Shepherdess had told the girls about their gardens. Everything, she’d said, was made of something else. Plants of water and soil, sun and seed.

It had seemed obvious when she said it, but now Nell reconsidered her words. The lock, too, was