If thats true, theres plenty of intelligence here on the ground that would be of use to them, Nimble says. There are men in King Ingrams court who are disgruntled enough to help. Its just a matter of finding who to trust, and I know those boys. You could leave that to me.
How would we get ourselves sent back to Internment, though? Pen says.
We could go to King Ingram and pretend wed like to help him, I say. We can make him think that he can use us the way he used Celeste. As leverage or a sort of hostage. And hell send us back home. I look at Nim. Do you think he would do that?
Pen laughs and grabs my face in her hands and kisses my temple. Brilliant, she says.
Really?
Really, Nim says. That might work. The hope in his eyes is too much to take. I dont tell him that if the people of Internment are as stubborn as were hoping, King Ingram may have gotten desperate and gone for the jugular. And there are only two things on Internment that could be taken from King Furlow that are of any value: his children. Prince Azure, and Princess Celeste. They may already be dead.
3
Pen is not ready to divulge her findings to Thomas or the others, but she understands when I insist on telling Basil. If Im going to attempt to return to Internment, he deserves to know.
In the morning I meet him in his room as everyone else is going to breakfast. I close the door behind me. We sit on his bed and I tell him everything in a hushed tone. Through it all, he doesnt say a word, listening patiently to my eager, harried rambling.
When I get to the end, it takes all my willpower not to look away from him when I say, And Pen and I want to convince King Ingram to send us back. If we make him think were on his side, and that we want to try to talk the engineers back home into helping him, were hoping hell go along with it.
He is the first to break our gaze. He looks down at my hand as he covers it with his own and then he looks back at me. When we were back home, your mind wandered toward the ground. But now that were on the ground, your mind wanders back home. Sometimes I think what you want is to be away from wherever it is youre standing.
Maybe theres some truth to that, I admit.
I think about home, too. He speaks with great caution. Not just my parents and Leland, but the life I had there. The sounds. The future I might have had. He shakes his head. It was enough for me, staying there. I didnt mind it. But for as long as I can remember, there has been this current leading me away. You, he says.
I tried, Basil. I tried to stay within the train tracks, to do what was expected of me.
I know you did. I was there with you.
I stare down at our hands. I didnt want to be the current pulling you away from all the things that you loved.
Morgan, he says, in that practical way of his. You were the thing I loved.
The words feel both wonderful and painful at the same time. The truth is that I had to pull you along with me, I say. I couldnt untangle myself from you if I tried. Weve always just sortve gone together. Its as though someone mixed us up until we were a secondary color, and theres no way to tell which one of us started out which color.
I am terrible with words. My brothers the writer. Im only clumsily trying to come up with words for things Ill never have the skill to say.
Basil laughs, but he isnt making fun of me. I know he understands.
I am going to live my life worrying about you, he says. But I do think youre right that there is unrest on Internment. Its a peaceful city. It has nothing to protect itself against a kingdom like Havalais, much less the ground itself. If nothing is done, and Pens calculations are correct, Internment will crash-land on the ground before King Ingram ever has a way to refine his phosane.
A lose-lose, I say.
If you were to go back home, you would need something that would give Internment a fighting chance against King Ingram. Do you have anything like that?
Nim thinks he can get us some allies on the ground. A lot of King Ingrams men are disgruntled after the bombing. And on Internment well have an ally in Princess Celeste. If shes still alive.
Shell be alive, Basil assures me. If King Ingram wants something from Internment, he wont go killing King Furlows children before he has it.
I hope youre right.
What if I go with you? Basil says. No matter what information or power you may be able to gather, the fact remains that both Havalais and Internment are patriarchies.
Pen would hate him for saying it, but I know that hes right. Kings are more reasonable with men than they are with girls. King Ingram is more likely to believe that Basil could influence the engineers.
But is that what you want? I say.
I could never sit idly by while you disappear into the clouds, leaving me to wonder if youre alive each day, he says, and despite everything, I cant help but indulge in that beautiful thing hes just said to me. He goes on, I also dont want Internment to come crashing down on our heads, killing us all and my family too.
Nim is hoping to get an audience with the king this afternoon, I say. Lets hope he can come through. Oh, and, Basil, about all this. Pen doesnt want Thomas to know about it.
He frowns. It isnt our business to get involved, then. But I do wish shed be more forthright about things. It would be healthier for her.
You and me both, I say. But for now I think its best we keep this to ourselves until we know more.
Agreed, he says.
Nim is gone after lunchtime, off to King Ingrams castle to play the good son to Jack Piper for once, in an attempt to stay in his graces.
Pen and Thomas are playing a board game. Theyre leaning toward each other on opposing sides of the coffee table, the crowns of their blond heads almost touching.
Its a beautiful day, and Alice has taken Amy and the youngest Pipers outside. Through an open window I can hear them laughing in the garden. This Havalais air has had a positive effect on Amy; she hasnt had one of her fits in months.
Basil is trying to engage me in a game of cards. The decks they use on the ground are similar to our own, and with a bit of compromise we can duplicate most of the games we played back home. But I am having the hardest time sitting still. My leg shakes anxiously. My mind is spinning out dozens of scenarios about Nims efforts at the castle.
Should I tell Judas and Amy any of this?
The thought of Judas brings a rush of heat to my cheeks. Weve barely spoken in weeks, and I dont see him anywhere now, but somehow I feel his presence hiding nearby, as always, just out of frame. We have scarcely spoken since our kiss, save for a few benign polite exchangesgood morning; yes, please; thank youbut time has done nothing to extinguish my curiosity about him. Time has not assuaged my guilt, and the sight of him still confuses me. I do not know what it will take to rid myself of that kiss, but I would pay any price to undo it. I would pay any price to stop wanting another.
Basil lays his stack of cards on the table and then gently takes the cards from my hands too. I blink dumbly at him.
Basil lays his stack of cards on the table and then gently takes the cards from my hands too. I blink dumbly at him.
Would a walk help take your mind off it? he says.
I shake my head. I dont want to be gone when Nim gets back.
We wont go far, he says. Come on. The air will do you some good.
Hes right. As soon as weve stepped outside, I feel less anxious. Theres some comfort in hearing the living things in the grass and in the sky. A blue bird shoots from one tree to the next, and I wish I could capture a perfect image of him to take back home. There are no birds on Internment, only speculation as to what they must be like.
Basil and I walk a lap around the hotel, past the charred altar where Nim burnt his beloved car in offering so that his sister might live. Whether or not it was an answered prayer, Birdie did pull through. It makes me wonder if their god is real. It makes me wonder if any god is real, or if its only easier to believe in that than in the arbitrary series of events that make up all our lives.
What do you think its like back home? I say, to break the silence.
Basil is not one to lie about the way of things. Ugly. I wonder what King Furlow is doing to reassure everyone. If hes able to do anything at all.
I never realized how small Internment was until we came here, I say. From down here it just looks like a big clot of dirt in the sky. If I had lived down here all my life, I would never have suspected there was any life up there. I would think it a mistake of nature, something small enough to fit into my palm if only I could reach out and take it.
How strange that Ive lived so much of my life on a clump of dirt in an infinite sky. After all these months, I can feel myself starting to forget how alive it was up there, how bright and cheerful.
Weve stopped walking, and as I shield my eyes and stare up at Internment, I can feel Basil watching me. My heart is fluttering in my chest, anxious and frightened and strangely thrilled. It is an act of bravery for me to look at him when he makes me feel this way.
I was wrong, all those times I said your eyes might be the same color as the sea down here, he says.
No?
No, he says. Theyre still the brightest blue Ive ever seen.
I look at the ground, flustered, smiling. Without looking at him, I can feel his victorious smirk.
Youre being too kind, I say.
Ridiculous accusation. When have you ever known me to be kind?
Its true; youre a real beast most days. Flat-out tyrannical.
He laughs. Somehow my arm ends up around his back, and his around my shoulders, squeezing me close. The sun burns the crown of my hair, and despite the warmth, my blood is running chills up and down my spine.
I want to tell him everything. About Judas kissing me in the grass, and the way he still haunts my thoughts even though he is surely using me to quell his loneliness. I want to tell Basil that Im sorry, that Ive made a mess of everything, that Im scared.
But here beside him, insects hopping around our feet, all the worlds have gone still. This planet has stopped rotating around its sun. Everything is calm. Were safe here. Well be okay.
4
After dinner, I help Alice with the dishes. For security purposes, Jack Piper has dismissed most of the hotels staff, and chores like these are supposed to fall to his children, but Alice always gets to them first. Years of being married to my brother have left her restless and with an endless desire to make things clean.
She hands me a clean white plate, and I go over it with the dishrag. Do you want to go back home? I say.
She shakes her head. I couldnt leave your brother, and hes told me he wont return. Not after what the king did to your parents, and especially to you.
I didnt ask you what Lex wants. I asked what you want.
She smiles. It is a kind, wistful smile. Should there be any difference?
What a thing to say. Of course theres a difference.
She hands me another dish. After your brother jumped, one afternoon while he was still in the hospital, I came home to tend to the plants, and there was a letter waiting for me at the door, from my parents. I was welcome to return home if I estranged myself from Lex. But if not, they felt it best for me not to associate with them anymore.
I suspected as much. Alices parents stopped coming around, and jumpers carry a stigma. With the exception of Pen and Basil, I lost virtually all my friends. Still, to hear it said out loud disgusts me. There is no one kinder than Alice, and no one who deserves kindness more.
Thats the thing about marriage, love. You hope you wont ever have to choose, but if theres a choice to be made, its the one whose blood is in your ring. It doesnt matter how many worlds there are; our place is with each other.
Lex doesnt deserve you, I say. Truly.
She smiles. But there is nothing left for me up there, she adds. Since you asked. Everything I need is here.
I dont know that theres much left on Internment for me either. I tell myself that my father is still alive up there, and that Ill be reunited with him. But when that happens, will he want to leave Internment behind? He risked his life trying to do just that.
After Alice and I have finished with the dishes, I slip outside unnoticed, and I walk to the oceans edge, where the boats bob along lengths of rope. This place is asleep, like all of Havalais, lying in wait for a solution to this war. I lie in the sand for what feels like hours, fixated on that dark shadow of earth in the sky.
Long after the sun has set, Nim still hasnt returned. The smallest Pipers are asleep.
I lie in bed while Pen reads one of Birdies catalogs by candlelight. Shes got a drawing pad resting on her knee, and she keeps returning to a sketch she started earlier this evening of Ehco, a divinity that lives in the sea and contains all the worlds sadness. Its Birdies favorite story from The Text, and I suppose the drawing will be a gift for Birdie when she returns home.
Pen?
I can hear the rapid strokes of the pencil on the page. Mm? Sorry, am I keeping you awake?
No. I turn onto my side so Im facing her. Its just that youve been so guarded with your secrets lately. Why did you tell me your theory about Internment sinking?
She goes on sketching. It wasnt the right time before now. No sense making you panic until King Ingram was back and we could do something about it.
Its just After I told Celeste about the phosane, and she went to the king, I thought you hadnt forgiven me. I thought Id been locked out of your head.
The pencil stills in her hand. She stares down at the page as she speaks, with difficulty. I thought about everything, she says in a soft voice. I thought about what it would have done to me to pull you out of the water, with you the one not breathing. I She draws a line on the page, feebly. I saw it all very clearly, and I understood why you did it. I cant say Id have done something different if the tables had been turned.
She clears her throat. And besides, you could strike a match and set Internment on fire. You could lose your wits and destroy it all. Id still be here. Theres nothing in the worlds that I couldnt forgive you for.