Reaping (39 page)

As I strum and relish the bite of the strings and the warmth of the wood, I am comforted that some things never change no matter how tumultuous and terrible the times may be. Chan-Yu is still the same calm presence with a quicksilver but unpretentious intelligence, the same quiet, steady, reliable man I knew when he was my aide. On the other hand, there’s Linnea. The first words out of her mouth when she came to were not “Thank you, Chan-Yu for rescuing me out in the Wilds” or “Vale! I’m so glad you’re alive.” No. Her first words were, “Where the hell is Eli?”

Linnea’s presence among the Outsiders has made an already tenuous situation even more fragile. Even though they don’t watch Sector broadcasts out here, they know who she is and they don’t like her. Not one bit. Her running commentary about the food, the accommodations, and even her hosts’ “unsavory” hygiene hasn’t won her any friends. Miah and I have been the least antagonistic toward her, so naturally she’s been following us. It’s trying even Miah’s patience.

The biggest question about Linnea’s sudden appearance was how she got out of Okaria and ended up somewhere she would be found. Chan-Yu had been hiding out, not communicating with any Outsiders or Outsider assets within the Sector for months and had finally decided it was safe to make his way back home. Not two days into his journey he came across Linnea, in what he described as an all-too-convenient location, obviously looking to be found.

“What does that even mean?” Remy had demanded.

Chan-Yu turned his enigmatic gaze on her. “If her goal was to stay out of sight, camping at the intersection of three well-trod paths in the Wilds was not the wisest choice.”

He watched her for almost thirty-six hours, until he was certain she was alone. Then he approached her.

She was cold, hungry, and ill-prepared for an extended stay in the Wilds, which Chan-Yu said made him even more suspicious.

“Playing the pity game is easy enough. She wanted someone to pity her and care for her, offer to take her somewhere safe. When I showed no signs of doing what she wanted, she demanded to be taken to Resistance headquarters.”

Chan-Yu walked off and left her right where she was. Doggedly, she followed him. Even when he set a difficult pace through the woods, she somehow managed to keep up. Impressed, he finally relented and decided to at least bring her back to the Outsiders, to let them decide what to do with her. But not before he knocked her out using some kind of drug combination he wouldn’t divulge, and then searched her from head to toe.

“She was wearing a transponder, as I suspected,” Chan-Yu said. “Undoubtedly hoping someone would lead her to the Resistance team, thus transmitting the coordinates of their base to someone in the Sector. When she came to, she was none too happy.”

“Where was it?” his sister had asked.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t say.”

Soo-Sun had arched her eyebrow and glanced at me. “You know me better than that, brother.”

“Use your imagination,” he’d said. And we did. After all, how many orifices are there in which to hide something like a transponder? But now we know that whatever game the Sector’s playing by sending Linnea out here, we’ve at least countered one of their moves.

“Are you sure there are no more devices?” I asked.

“As sure as I can be.”

Chan-Yu hesitated before continuing.

“I found something else, too. A knife wound by her hip, in her thigh. An ugly wound by the looks of it, but clean. No infection, crudely stitched. Certainly not a Sector job. When I asked her about it, she spat at me.”

“No other injuries anywhere?” I asked, surprised.

“Nothing. I asked her about it later, when we were on mildly better terms. She still refused to say a word.”

“She never mentioned a fight or anything? An animal?”

“She said nothing.”

It was only a few days later that she managed to get them into a fight with a couple of unsavory loners in the woods looking for food, which is how he came away with a knife wound in the calf and an unconscious girl to drag another twenty kilometers before he found a friendly face.

I’ve been spending as much time as possible with Chan-Yu and Soo-Sun, trying to figure out what Soo-Sun was referring to when she said they were “bound to the same goal.” No luck so far. They have, however, along with Osprey, decided to return with us to Resistance headquarters—wherever that may now be. For Osprey, I don’t think it was a difficult decision since she and Soren move in tandem around the camp as if they were two parts of the same whole and are only now complete. I still feared that Remy might be more upset than she let on about Soren and Osprey’s fast-developing relationship, but she doesn’t seem to care. If anything, she seems more comfortable, more 
natural
, around him than before.

We’ve decided to stay three more days to give Chan-Yu time to heal. Since they arrived, Linnea’s been able to aggravate everyone within shouting distance, but Remy and I have also found ourselves alone more than once. Well, not 
alone
 alone, there’re always people milling about. But alone enough. Still, every time I feel we might be making progress, like she sits a little closer or talks a little softer, someone intrudes with some order of business and we’re yanked back to the looming reality of war on the horizon.

As I strum, I think of Remy and Tai and Brinn and Jahnu and the Resistance and war. I think of my parent’s starring role in the whole, wretched tragedy and find myself comparing my memories of them, of their characters and personalities, of 
mom
 and 
dad
 with Philip, Chancellor, and Corine, Director of the OAC. 
How blind could I have been? 
I was distracted. Growing apart from them. A young man busy with graduate school, eager for independence, for a life to call my own. I paid no attention to them, except when their actions concerned me. In a word, I was selfish. Self absorbed.

But, I remind myself, now I am here. I am changing—
changed
. I am on the right side.

“It’s so sad.” Remy’s voice startles me, and I clutch at the guitar like a weapon.

“How long have you been here?” It’s a stupid question, but my face is hot at the thought of her hearing me singing like some lovesick troubadour. I’d been trying to pick out a song I’d written long ago for the piano, something I’d never let anyone hear even when I played it on an instrument I had mastered. I called it 
Tuqburni
, an untranslatable Old Arabic word for a love so deep one cannot imagine living without the beloved. I’d never tried it on a guitar, for good reason.

“Long enough,” she says and my heart clutches.

“Yeah, well….” The flush reaches the tips of my ears.

“You have a nice voice. And the song is beautiful.”

Oh.

“I wrote it after you left.” The words slip off my tongue, and at first I want to grab them and stuff them back down my throat, but then her face softens and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and I’m glad the words are out there hanging in the air for her to feel. My mother called my songs maudlin and childish. 
You’re not some Old World bard, Vale. The rigor of the classics suits you more than sentimental love songs, 
she’d said. Admitting now that the song was something I’d conjured up in a moment of loneliness feels like I’m stripped naked, standing soul-bared in front of Remy. Even though I am sitting. And most definitely fully clothed.

She sits next to me, 
close enough to touch
, tucking her legs up under her chin and wrapping her arms around her knees. I start to set the guitar aside, but her fingers dart out and touch my arm. “Don’t stop. It’s nice.”

“If you insist.” I pull it back against me and strum some basic chord progressions, just to keep my fingers moving, to fill the silence between us.

“You and Soren are lucky,” she says after a while, as I try and fail to come up with another tune.

“Lucky? How?”

“Miah.”

“Yeah. There’s no one like him.”

“What he said the other day, when he found out about his mom … the way he just turned to you and told you not to apologize. There was no need for forgiveness because he knew you weren’t a part of all that.”

After a few more chords while my stomach churns and I try to think of what to say, I give up, set the guitar aside and turn to face her.

“I 
was
 a part of it. I went along. Blindly. 
Blithely
. Unable or unwilling to ask hard questions until I had no choice.”

She looks up at me, eyes wide, earnest, encouraging. “But don’t you see? That’s what we all did. Soren when his mom was voted out. Jahnu’s family, Kenzie’s family, they had their reasons. Eli and my parents after Tai was killed. I can’t even be sure I would have left if my parents had made it a choice. Even Miah: he knew his dad was in the Resistance and didn’t do anything about it till he had to make a choice. We all arrived at our own pivot points … eventually.”

“I should have done more.”

“Such as?”

“I could have demanded answers about your disappearance. I could have tried to find you.”

She looks up at me, skin like burnished copper, brown eyes framed by the most curiously alluring freckles....

“We all could have done more. We’ve all suffered as a result. There’s plenty of pain and guilt to go around.” Somehow her hand is resting on mine and she gives it a whisper-soft squeeze that shoots a white-hot pulse through me. “We don’t need to divvy it up and weigh it on some cosmic pain scale to see who’s suffered the most. I thought we did, but we don’t. Not anymore.”

“But everything that’s gone wrong … it’s all connected to me, through my family.”

“We don’t need a giant scale of responsibility any more than we need a scale of pain. Chariya said it started long before we were born. You’re no more responsible than I am.”

“But my mom and dad—”

“Remember what my dad said the night you got to Normandy? That you—we, none of us—are responsible for the sins of our fathers. Or our mothers. What we’re responsible for is what we do now. We’re responsible for our own choices, for how we shape our future.”

Our choices? Our future?
 Is it possible she means more than the Resistance, more than the Sector? Is it possible she means 
us
? I want to lean forward and….

“I don’t want to hate you anymore, Vale.” Her voice is like a plucked string resonating throughout my body. “I never did hate you, not really,” she says and I meet the vibration of her voice with an equal frequency as I reach out and pull her to me as if the only reason I was given arms was to wrap them around her. Her head presses against my chest and my cheek rests on the top of her head and we sit in silence except for the trilling of the birds in the treetops, the rushing of the water in the streambed, and the building hum of shared hope. Hope that hate is not the answer, that it never was and never will be. That we can create something together that is greater than what we could create by ourselves. That love will always transcend our pasts.

By the time we left, the Outsiders had still made no promises. Chan-Yu's presence gave Squall an ally and Squall said he would take our case to the other Elders as soon as we left. Even Chariya seemed to soften her opposition, but we weren’t privy to their discussions, and I have no idea what promises were made or bargains struck among the Outsiders themselves. As for Chan-Yu and Soo-Sun, they are traveling with us to meet with the others. We gave them our destination coordinates and they have become our navigators. Chan-Yu is well-respected among the Outsiders, and everyone naturally defers to him. His leadership is so natural, so accepted, I can hardly believe there was a time when he took orders from me.

Our biggest challenge is dealing with Linnea’s constant complaining. We’ve all been tempted to gag her to keep her quiet. It’s been three weeks since she left Okaria and three weeks without a hot shower is apparently more than she counted on. She’s been treated as a convict under house arrest with the Outsiders, and we’re formally considering her a prisoner, even though it’s clear she’s not going anywhere. She wouldn’t survive three days on her own, anyway.

I glance over at her, her long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Back in Okaria, she wore it cascading down her back like shimmering strands of gold or piled on top of her head in some elaborate nest of curls. Remy charitably tried to convince her to cut it before we set out—“traveling is easier with short hair,” she told her—but Linnea wouldn’t hear of it. She put her hands over her head and refused to let anyone come near. Then she asked Remy to help her French braid her hair—whatever that means. Remy pocketed the scissors and stormed off.

“If she wants to keep playing the celebrity out here in the Wilds, let her. But I’m not going to be her goddamn makeup artist.”

“Can’t wait to see Eli’s face when you climb off that horse,” Miah repeats for the umpteenth time, shaking his head in astonishment at the mere fact that Linnea Heilmann is riding a horse beside him out here in the Wilds.

“Why are you out here, really?” Remy asks over and over. “If you thought you were going to lead the Sector to our base, you really should have realized someone would suspect you were wearing a tracker.”

“How many times do I have to tell you people? I want to find Eli. The tracker was just to shut up Corine.”

“Why the sudden interest?” Miah asks again, more insistently.

“It’s not sudden and it’s none of your damn business.” She shoots him a razor-sharp glare, one I know all too well. I wonder if he, too, is fighting the instinct to duck.

It’s true, though—Linnea’s been interested in Eli for as long as I can remember. It was one of the things that pushed her and Tai apart as friends, when Tai and Eli started dating. Linnea tried to act like she didn’t care. But for all her usual brilliance when it comes to lying, she couldn’t hide her dismay when Eli went for Tai instead.

I have to admit, even smudged with dust and her face downcast and unhappy, she’s still beautiful. If anything, the natural environment has taken some of the edge off her, and her beauty seems less dangerous now. Like Miah, I wonder what Eli will think when he sees her.