As he waits for the fullness of dark, Jonah enjoys watching the alterations of light—the decay of color, the way the day strips itself from the surface of the sky. He likes things in flux.
There is an object that he hopes to see. A star, perhaps. Or a galaxy. It behaves oddly, appearing and disappearing at will. Lately, the object has been coming closer and closer to a star known locally as the Eye of Ashra, though it has a different name in different towns—his favorite star—approaching, vanishing, approaching, vanishing. He has tracked the odd object’s movements. He has documented the quality of its light. He has scratched through equations and theorems. He has an idea. It is too stupid to even write down.
The dew clings to his clothes. He shivers. He has a locket around his neck. His hand grips it absently. Most days, he has forgotten that he has it.
His spyglass is of his own design—a polished wood casing, cast-brass hardware that he poured himself in the hidden workshop in the barn. The glass was tricky—it took him years harvesting the broken glass windows from the munitions factory, the patient and precise work of grinding lenses and convex mirrors, experimenting with thickness and curve until landing on the right combination, polishing each piece until it gleamed. There was one particularly excellent piece of glass that he snatched from a landship. He was never caught. If it was ever found, he would have surely been killed.
He gives the outer lens of the spyglass a wipe with the chamois in his pocket, clearing off the damp. He positions his face against the eyepiece and waits.
The Sparrow approaches from behind. Her feet are silent on the dampening ground. The dogs and the butterfly are waiting for her in the shadows. They will not come until they are called. They hold watch and do not move.
“Are you real?” Jonah asks. He does not pull away from the eyepiece. He keeps his gaze upon the stars.
The Sparrow says nothing. She is right behind him, so close she can feel the heat from his body, so close she could let her fingers drift in the soft clouds of his breath. So close she could kiss him if she wanted to.
“I think you’re real,” he says, adjusting the second lens. Tipping the whole of the spyglass slightly upward on its hinged tripod.
“How do you know?” the girl whispers.
Jonah yelps in surprise, and scrambles to his feet. He faces the Sparrow, breathing hard. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. He reaches his hand toward her, but thinks better of it, and shoves both hands into the mop of his hair, hanging on tight.
The Sparrow feels her heart in her throat. She smiles. Her body feels more discombobulated than usual. As though each particle is only barely hanging on to the others. As though she may fly apart at any moment. She is hot. She is cold. She shivers all over.
“You’re shaking,” the boy says. “Are you cold?”
“Yes,” she whispers. Her voice wobbles. It is a dry leaf on a windy day. She pinches her face and shakes her head. “No,” she corrects herself.
“You are real,” the boy says. “Aren’t you? You’ve been real this whole time.”
She says nothing. Her skin is heat and light and sweat and goosebumps. Her face is tight with hope.
He stands. Brushes the grass and damp from his knees. There will be no moon tonight. The sky will be so dark it will hurt to look at it. The stars will stab the eye. The girl is beautiful in the fading light. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Her skin glows orange and pink and damp gray. She is an opal in the gloom. He is dizzy. He wants to touch her but he doesn’t.
He has seen her before. He has talked to her before—and she to him. He remembers it now, standing in front of her. He remembers it all. He remembers that each time he sees her, he has a similar flood of remembering—that each meeting vanishes when she vanishes, and unfolds again before him when she returns. That her presence opens his mind like a map. And when she leaves it flutters away, as though snatched by a strong wind.
He knows that the last time he saw her, he nearly kissed her.
Nearly.
“Will I forget you this time?” he asks, a sob hiding in his throat. He feels a needle in his heart, and he sees her wince.
Is it the same needle? he wonders. Is it the same thread, pulling at my heart and her heart? He does not say it out loud. She takes a step closer.
“I don’t know,” she says. There is too much breath in her voice. As though she is already fading. He reaches out his hand, palm up. An invitation. She accepts, lays her palm on his, as light and hot as ash. He nearly blisters from the heat of it.
“Are you sick?” he asks.
“I am,” she says. “But not for long. Soon I will never be sick again—but I need you to help me.”
“What can I do?” His breath comes in quick, short gasps, his soul escaping in sigh after sigh after sigh. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t want to miss her for a second. With everything in him, he tries to stitch her in place in his mind.
“Leave a note for your mother. Tell her you’ll be back when everything changes. And tell her to cover for you.”
The Sparrow waits for a long time in the growing dark. She lays her hand on the homemade spyglass. She knows that Jonah had a brother, two years younger than he, who was taken away by soldiers on the day that she was left on the trash heap. She knows that his family does not talk about the lost boy—worked and squeezed away to nothing by now. Drained. The Sparrow has no idea what happened to the
