My stomach is doing flip-flops, and I cant decide if its excitement or fear.
I force myself to look away from the window, and my eyes find Basils.
Some of the other passengers seem excited, others confused.
A man several seats down, in a black suit, has begun talking to Pen about how trains have emergency systems, and shuttles too. He says that the train has moved backward before, several years before she was born, when repair work needed to be done on the track.
So it could be that something just needs to be fixed, he says.
One of the pregnant women is staring past Basil and me, out our window at the sky. Her lips are moving. It takes me a few seconds to realize that shes talking to the god in the sky, something the people of Internment do only when theyre desperate.
All this backward motion is starting to make me dizzy, I say.
Its only because youre worried, Basil says. You have great equilibrium. What was that spinning game you used to play when we were in first year?
I let out a small laugh. It wasnt a game, really. I just liked to count how many times in a row I could spin without falling down.
Yes, but you would do it everywhere you went, he says. Up and down stairs, and in the aisles of the train, and all along the cobbles. You never seemed to get dizzy.
What an odd thing to remember, I say, but it makes me smile. I would spin around the apartment from the time I awoke in the morning, jumping around my older brother and spinning after each step as we shared the mirror in the cramped water room. It drove him mad.
One morning as he was fixing his tie, he warned me that if I kept spinning, Id be stolen by the wind and carried off into the sky. Well never get you back then, he said. The words were meant to frighten me, but instead they filled me with romantic notions that became a part of my game. I began to imagine being carried on the wind and landing on the ground, seeing for myself what was happening below our city. I could imagine such great and impossible things there. Things I didnt have words for.
The madness of youth made me unafraid.
2
Our genders are determined for us before our parents have reached their turn in the queue. How much are we leaving to the god in the sky?
Intangible Gods, Daphne Leander, Year Ten
YOU DIDNT HAVE TO WALK ME ALL THE way to the door, I say as Basil and I stop in front of my apartment. His building is within reasonable walking distance, but Id hate to be the reason he isnt home when his little brother arrives from classes.
Are you feeling better? he says. Your knees have stopped shaking.
I nod, stare down at my hand when he drags his fingertip over my knuckles, our clear rings catching the light. We had to wear them on chains around our necks until last year, when they finally fit us. When were married, the jeweler will open them and theyll be filled with our bloodmine in his ring, his in mine. I dont think about what it will be like to marry him; according to my mother, I dont think about the things I should be thinking about now that Im two months past my sixteenth birthday. But I do look at my ring and wonder if the blood drawing will hurt. Alice says it doesnt.
I can be here in the morning if youd like, he says. To walk you to the shuttle for the academy.
I feel my cheeks swell with a smile and I cant meet his eyes. No, I say. Its out of your way, and anyway Pen will be with me. Ill meet you there.
He touches the sharp crease of my uniform sleeve, runs his hand down the length of my arm. Something within me stirs. All right, he says. See you tomorrow.
See you.
I watch him enter the stairwell, and as he goes, I notice the flushed skin at the back of his neck.
The apartment door opens, and my mother, wearing an apron stained with flour, ushers me inside. She was listening at the door.
You should have invited him to dinner. Theres plenty, she says. And, Youre late. Did you miss the train?
There was a problem with it, I say, shrugging my satchel over the back of a kitchen chair.
A problem? She sounds only mildly concerned as she opens the oven and considers the state of the casserole.
It stopped, and then it had to go backward.
You should have invited him to dinner. Theres plenty, she says. And, Youre late. Did you miss the train?
There was a problem with it, I say, shrugging my satchel over the back of a kitchen chair.
A problem? She sounds only mildly concerned as she opens the oven and considers the state of the casserole.
It stopped, and then it had to go backward.
She closes the oven door and looks at me, eyes narrowed in concern.
It started going the right way again eventually, I say, unknotting my red necktie. With the anxiety I feel today, the tie is starting to have the effect of a noose.
But youre all right? she says. Nobody was hurt?
There were medic lights up ahead, but I didnt get a good look. I dont want to worry her; shes been doing so well lately. It has been a while since shes gone through an entire prescription. Im sure its fine, I say.
She stares at me a moment longer, face unreadable, then blinks to free herself from whatever it is shes thinking. Here, she says, fitting me with oven mitts and thrusting a covered dish into my hands. Take this upstairs to your brother and Alice.
Mom, if you keep feeding them, Alice is going to think you have something against her cooking.
Nonsense, she says. I just worry. She knows that. Shes already opening the door for me; she cant have me out of her kitchen fast enough. Usually she loves my company after class; she lets me nibble on mini fruitcakes and she asks about my lessons. She used to ask about Basil, but not so much since he and I started wearing our rings; she says its important for betrotheds to share secrets with each other.
And tell your brother I expect that dish to come back empty, she calls as Im entering the stairwell.
She has unrealistic expectations. My brother can live on ideas and water for days. His apartment is directly above ours, and his office is over my bedroom. I hear him at all hours, but especially late at night, wearing down the floorboards, and I know hes whispering his novels into the transcription machine. If I listen closely, I might hear his indistinguishable murmurs, Alice asking him to come to bed.
My brother is frequently irritated by my visits, especially if Im under our mothers orders to bring him food. He says hes too old now to be treated like a child. But when he and Alice married, they applied for an apartment in this building, so he must not mind being near our parents too much.
I knock on the apartment door, and from the other side I hear Alice cursing. When she opens the door, her hair is falling out of a cloth tie, and water and flower petals are spreading out on the kitchen floor. Shes holding shards of the unfortunate vase in a dustpan. There are always flowers in her apartment, and Lex is always knocking them over.
Meekly, I hold up the covered dish. From my mother, I say.
Lex! she calls to the closed door at the end of the hallway. She steps aside to let me in. Theres no answer and she paces to the door and knocks angrily.
The windup metal vacuum discus is repeatedly knocking into the corner, trying to find its way out. The copper is scuffed, the gears whining for their efforts.
Alice goes back to picking up the shards. You try getting him out of there, she says. Maybe hell come out for you. Hes holed up in there so often that Im starting to forget I have a husband.
As she gathers the shards, I watch the red blood in her band.
I set the dish on the stove before heading down the hallwaymy mothers instincts were right; the stove hasnt been turned on.
I stand outside the door to my brothers office, ear pressed to the door. I never know what hes writing. He tells me that when I was a baby, he would read his earliest manuscripts to mehe would whisper them through the bars of my crib until I stopped crying in the bedroom we shared, and he could finally go to sleep. He wont tell me what the stories were about. They were gruesome, brutal, hell say. But you didnt understand. Youd smile and go to sleep.
Now I cant hear what hes saying to his transcriber. I knock. Lex?
His murmurings stop. I hear him shuffling around, but I dont ask if he needs help. Words like help have been banned from his apartment like Internment has been banned from the ground.
The door opens, and Im hit with the smell of burnt paper. Through the darkness I can just see, on a table in a far corner, a long strip of paper trailing from the transcription machine to the floor, curling into and around itself like hills and valleys. Wisps of smoke are rising from the exposed gears.
Youre supposed to use that thing for only an hour at a time, I say, frowning. There are bags under his eyes and hes staring through me with eyes that used to be blue like mine. But theyve faded since his incident. Theyre gray, bloodshot, and they tell a different story from the rest of his youthful face. He could be my twenty-four-year-old brother or he could be a hundred.
What happened? he asks me.
Mom sent me up here with dinner. Shes going to send me right back up here if I dont convince you to eat. You just have to take a bite; you know she can tell if I lie.
What happened? he asks again. He always knows when Im uneasy.
Nothing, I say. There was a problem with the train. Come out and eat something.
I was in the middle of a thought. Just leave it on the table.
Youre going to break that machine, Alice yells from the kitchen. Ive never understood how two people who are so clearly in love can act as though they hate each other at the same time.
Lex relents, though, closing the door behind us and feeling his way along the wall toward the kitchen. Alice has mopped up the water and flower petals. The apartment is kept sparsely furnished, which is Alices doing. This is her way of helping Lex in secret; shes always a step ahead of him, quietly making sure hes safe.
In a rare feat of accomplishment, Ive convinced Lex to eat some of the casserole. He has just taken his first forkful, and hes just about to complain, when the door bursts open.
My father is standing in the doorway, red and out of breath. Sweat stains the collar of his blue patrolmans uniform.
Dad? Lex and I say at the same time. Lex is gripping Alices arm. Hes always worrying shell disappear.