Krymzyn (The Journals of Krymzyn Book 1) (6 page)

Based on the direction of light overhead, Sash and I walk northwest, towards what’s obviously the tallest hill on the Krymzyn Delta. Her pace is brisk, leaning forward into an incredibly long, graceful stride. Even with my longer legs and walking as fast as I can, I have to almost trot to keep up with her.

“Thanks again for helping me,” I say. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“It was my honor to help you,” she replies.

“Honor’s a big thing around here, isn’t it?”

“Honor provides balance, and balance is the purpose of our existence,” she says. “What’s your purpose on your plane?”

“I’m a student,” I answer, somewhat surprised that the word translates.

“What do you learn?”

“Lots of things. I’m not sure what I want to do yet. Maybe be a
graphic artist
.”

“I don’t know of that task,” she says.

“I
draw
things,
pictures
,” I reply.

“
Pictures
?” she asks.

I realize that I’ve never seen a pen, pencil, or piece of paper in Krymzyn. Not a book or work of art anywhere.

“A
picture
is a
drawing
. . . or a
painting
—an image a person creates of something else, like a mountain or a river or another person.”

“For what purpose?”

“So people can see things they wouldn’t get to see. Or see people who are interesting or
famous
—well-known—or an emotion that the
artist
sees.”

“I apologize, but I don’t understand.”

“Look at what I’m doing,” I say as I stop walking.

She stands still and watches me. I clench my hand into a fist in front of me, extend my forefinger, and trace one side of a tree trunk in the air. As I return my hand to the base of the imaginary trunk, I pull in my forefinger, and extend it again each time I add something to the image. I gradually create branches spreading out from the trunk, most reaching up high but a few falling down to the ground.

“What do you see?” I ask when I finish my invisible painting in the air.

“A tree,” she says with mild surprise.

“What kind of tree?”

“A sustaining tree.”

“Was it a healthy tree, or was it damaged?”

“A healthy tree,” she answers, nodding her head.

“So in my world, we have things called
paper
and
canvas
—thick white rectangular fabric—and
pencils
and
paint
—things that make dark lines or colors. I
draw
like I did with my finger using the
paint
, and the
paint
leaves the shapes and colors on the
paper
or
canvas
that end up being what I
draw
.”

“Why would you do that?” she asks as we start to walk again.

“Just to make people feel good when they look at it. Or to inspire an emotion. Like how you knew that was a healthy tree. I wanted you to see it that way.”

“Or you could have made me see a damaged tree?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, “but the sustaining trees seem pretty important to you, so I wanted you to see a healthy tree.”

“They are important,” she replies. “Thank you for showing it to me that way.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t you have ways to record things that happen here or show what things look like?”

“All is recorded in our minds,” she explains.

“What if you need to, like, solve a math problem or show somebody where something is?”

“We do so in our minds or with our words.”

I remember the way she instantly told me my age in snaps.

“If you multiply twelve hundred and eleven by thirty-seven, divide that by seventy-three, then multiply again by one hundred and twenty-three, what do you get?” I ask.

“Seventy-five thousand, four hundred ninety-six, with a remainder of seven hundred and twenty-six one-thousandths,” she answers without hesitation.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I chuckle. “In my world, we need to
write
that all down on
paper
or use a thing called a
calculator
to do it for us.”

“That seems inefficient,” she says before increasing her pace when we reach the base of the hill.

“We’re not quite as quick in the mind as you.”

It takes us fifteen minutes to climb the hill at an extremely fast walking pace. I’m completely out of breath when we reach the top, though Sash never seems winded at all. Once on the crest, the constant silence I’m used to hearing in Krymzyn is replaced by the echo of rushing water. I marvel at the panoramic view surrounding me. All I’ve really seen of Krymzyn is a small area in the south-central portion of the Delta.

An enormous black marble wall lines the edges of the football-shaped Delta, occasional green-haired Watchers walking along the top. Forking at the north, a broad river viciously flows down either side and rejoins at the south. Furious raging rapids swell through the river. Silvery blue waves smash against a few giant, black granite rocks spiking out of the surface. The water churns like torrents of semitransparent liquid metal reflecting the scarlet and orange light from overhead.

Across the river, red grass gradually dissipates into an expanse of black dirt. Occasional sustaining trees with charcoal-black bark, gangly and old, are scattered across the rocky, hilly plains. Many are stripped bare of branches, just towering stumps of black rising from the ground. The few that have limbs are laced with sparse gray leaves. The light in the sky fades from red and orange over the Delta to tones of gray in the Barrens.

To the east, a narrow, gradually rising black road leads through the bleak hills. In the distance, a black mountain reaches up to the sky. It’s as tall as any mountain I’ve ever seen, the peak hidden in the clouds. Rays of green light shine around the mountain, creating a verdant luster in the rocky black slopes.

I look from the northernmost point of the Delta down to the south, recognizing the hill I’m pretty sure is the Telling Hill we just came from. A broad, circular meadow slightly farther south, obviously the largest field in the Delta, is home to a gargantuan oak-like tree three times the size of any of the others. The bark glows deep red as the branches gently sway in the static air. Lemon-yellow leaves, not red like those of the sustaining trees, garnish the limbs.

“One tree is moving,” I say with surprise. “The one with yellow leaves.”

“The Tree of Vision is always aware,” Sash says.

“That’s the Tree that tells you your purpose?”

“It reveals our purpose,” she replies.

“Where do I arrive?” I ask.

Sash points to a small hill in the center of the southern half of the Delta. In a meadow on one side of the hill sprouts the lone sustaining tree that almost killed me. The small hill—the Empty Hill, they call it—is surrounded by slightly taller hills and little else, explaining the name.

I’m pretty good at calculating distances from all the miles of cross-country training. I scan the length of the Delta again and estimate it to be twenty miles long by ten miles wide.

“This is really incredible,” I say, turning to Sash. “The beauty is amazing.”

“I often come to this hilltop to see the contrast between the Barrens and the Delta,” she replies. “It reminds me of what’s important.”

There’s not the slightest hint of happiness on her face, but there’s a look of deep appreciation in her eyes as they roam the crimson hills. When her eyes meet mine, I can’t look away.

“Doesn’t anyone ever
smile
here?” I ask.

“What’s
smile
?”

I curl the corners of my mouth up into a smile and point to my lips. “Something we do in my world when we’re
happy
,” I answer.

“
Happy
?”

“Satisfied. Just a good feeling inside. We call that
happiness
, or being
happy
.”

“We don’t need facial expressions to share our feelings of fulfillment,” she says.

I nod even though I don’t really understand her response. I feel, as I often do here, that she could explain in more detail if she wanted to.

“Do you remember the first time you met me?” I ask.

“Yes. On the Empty Hill, when we were much smaller. It was during Communal after my Ritual of Purpose.”

“I was really confused that I was here, but I felt safe once we started talking.”

“I remember,” Sash says. “You were frightened when you saw Tork, but still brave.”

“I saw you before that. Before we met. You were kneeling at the Tree.”

“I know,” she replies, holding my gaze. “I felt you watching me during my Ritual.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I know the way your eyes feel.”

Her answer actually makes sense to me. I know how her eyes feel when they peer inside me, as they do now.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper, almost under my breath.

“It’s odd to define a person as beautiful,” she says with a slightly more contemplative expression on her face.

“Where I come from, we do it all the time. How do you define someone here?”

“By their ability to fulfill their purpose with what’s inside them. Beauty isn’t a purpose.”

“You should tell that to some of the girls where I live,” I mumble.

“I don’t understand your meaning,” she says.

“Never mind. It’s not important. When I said you’re beautiful, I wasn’t talking about just the way you look. I meant what’s inside you.”

“In Krymzyn, we always look to the inside,” she replies.

Her eyes seem to reach even deeper to my core, the same way they did when we were twelve. For a split second, maybe in my imagination, I feel thousands of dull pinpricks inside me. My entire body feels like a leg that’s waking up after falling asleep, and the feeling seems to be coming from her.

“You know, Sash, as strange as this place is to me in some ways, there’s something really . . . I don’t know—peaceful about it. Kind of logical and calming.”

“Maybe you feel balance here,” she says.

“Maybe I do.”

Sash sits on the ground, lays her spear beside her, and rests her arms on her knees. “You should sit,” she says, motioning her head to the ground at her side. “You seem tired from the climb.”

I sit beside her with my legs stretched out in front of me. “I am a little,” I reply, then turn my head to her. “Sash, I want to ask you something kind of weird.”

“You may ask what you will.”

“Do you ever feel like . . . I don’t know. This sounds so
lame
. . . sorry, ignorant. Do you ever feel like you and I are connected somehow?”

“What do you mean by connected?” she asks.

I know she understands the meaning of the word because it translates, but she’s unsure of the context.

“Like, the way I arrive on the hill close to where you live instead of the Telling Hill and always seem to see you when I get here. The way I saw you before we ever met and you knew I saw you. The way you were there to rescue me. The Disciples told me that my visits are different than any other Teller before me. It’s like we’re meant to be sitting here together right now. Like part of our purpose is to know each other and share things together.”

She gazes into my eyes for several seconds as she deliberates how to respond. Before answering, she looks away to the bottom of the hill.

“When the Tree of Vision reveals our purpose, each of us is shown our own Vision of the Future. This Vision is something that will come to pass and is meant to guide us. We’re to tell no one of this Vision. It’s only for the mind of the one shown, so I shouldn’t reveal my Vision to you or anyone else.

“Your face,” she continues, returning her eyes to mine, “was in my Vision. I recognized you the first time I saw you on the Empty Hill, your blue eyes. I began to feel things from your world—emotions others here don’t feel and would define as extreme. Some of them feel good. Some are painful and difficult to control. I feel them all the time but understand them better through you. I feel how you balance them. That’s all I should say, but I believe it answers your question.”

I’m surprised by what she tells me but relieved that I’m not imagining something more than random coincidence between us.

I want to ask her more about what the emotions are she feels from my world, but my attention is drawn to movement over her shoulder. Two golden-haired figures, a man and a woman, with spears in their hands, walk up the hill towards us. Two children—one an adorable girl with straight jet-black hair framing her round face, maybe twelve or thirteen, and a handsome boy, ten or eleven, stocky, with curly black hair—suddenly dart past the adults. Sash turns to see what I’m looking at.