Chapter 21
I don’t know how it goes for Jarek with the slippery elm, but Misia makes so much noise in the bathroom that night, it wakes me from a deep slumber.
I glance to the floor for Gryphon, but he isn’t there, so I close my eyes.
The next time I open them, the ombré palette of the sky tells me dawn’s coming and still, no Gryphon.
Two mornings in a row, the Guardian has left without my noticing.
I don’t care for it. Perhaps I could put a bell on him.
I lie in bed for several seconds more, listening to roosters crow and remembering the dream I’d been having.
It featured my mother.
She was walking me through the woods, whispering urgently in my ear.
I touch my cheek, the dream so real I can almost feel the heat of her breath.
I brush away the tears pooling in my eyes.
It’d been a gift to see her face so clearly.
Would that Jonas had visited me as well.
I sit up, wondering what happens to grief unspoken.
Why can’t we acknowledge the loss of those Harvested while still supporting our community?
These dangerous thoughts join the others I’ve had since my family’s unravelling. How quickly a girl can change. I’ve gone from challenging only the directive on treatment of the elderly to questioning the whole system.
I dress quickly in case Gryphon walks through the door.
Misia’s already downstairs when I get there, hair wet from a morning bath and dressed in the simple spun-wool tunic and trousers that we all wear to chapel. Her cheek is less swollen than yesterday, the scratch scabbed over now.
“I didn’t see you in the bathroom last night,” she says, crossing her arms.
My lip twitches. “Excuse me?”
“There was something off in yesterday’s congee. Did you eat it?”
“Of course,” I say.
Except I hadn’t. I’d bustled around the kitchen until she and Jarek left with their jars of wild rice soup.
Then I boiled a small pan of water and tossed in rolled oats and a hard heel of sheep’s milk cheese.
I was so hungry I burned my tongue wolfing it down.
Once I’d scraped the pan clean, I threw the rest of the congee into the compost, mixed it up, and washed the mountain of dishes to hide my evidence.
Misia’s still studying me. I step closer. She smells like the honey lotion they make in the Beekeeper House. Each cottage used to be allotted a bottle per season, but that was before the fields and hives were closed. I haven’t smelled the lotion in months.
“There is a stomach bug going around,” I lie, pressing the inside of my wrist against her forehead to check for a fever that I know won’t be there. “It’s what I suffered from the other day. Let me make you some tea and toast to settle your stomach.”
I feel her eye-knifing my back as I prepare breakfast, but she doesn’t say a thing, even when Jarek and Gryphon stumble through the front door, exhausted from what must have been a full night of patrol.
Jarek looks particularly sallow, and I feel an ugly jolt of pleasure.
Both men go upstairs to change into their chapel clothes.
My brief moment of amusement disappears when the Crier passes down our lane, telling us all that there will be a funeral before today’s sermon, and we’re to gather immediately at Eden’s Gate.
The Tzus and I step into the brisk, woodsmoke-scented morning air, our breath puffing out in clouds.
Overhead, the sun decides to make an appearance.
I keep my head down as villagers stream out of their homes and into the square, all of us stopping as close to the Gate as allowed.
Because the Tzus reside in the Guardian cottage designated to protect the town’s center, it’s a short walk for us four.
The Harvest basket hovers just above the ground, tight to the Wall, already bearing its burden.
My stomach twists at the sight. Peter’s wrapped body should’ve been placed there during the ceremony, not before—another break in tradition that sets my teeth on edge.
Everything about this feels wrong. They say it’s a sacred journey up the Gate, a return to the Heavens, a reunion with the divine.
But I’ve seen enough now to question what they say.
Sojourner stands upon the stage, her dark skin gleaming in the morning light, her robes rippling like ink in water. Her voice carries across the gathering with practiced authority, though even she seems flustered, perhaps by the hasty nature of the funeral.
“We commit the soul of Peter Martinez to Eden,” she intones. “May the ascent cleanse our brother; may the Sun, Water, and Wall carry him to the sky.”
The Potter family stands to the side, clinging to each other, shoulders quaking with sobs.
Magdalene, Peter’s mother, presses her face into her husband’s chest, her fingers digging into his tunic as if she could tear the pain from her own heart and bury it in his.
Peter was their oldest son, surely well loved.
I glance again at the shape in the basket and swallow hard, remembering how he looked yesterday.
Like a pale berry, withered in the sun. A hollow spot opens just beneath my ribs.
I force my feet toward the Potters, keeping my head low so Jarek doesn’t see me. My anxiety nearly silences me, but I need to talk to them. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say, my voice breaking as I stand beside them.
Magdalene glances up, eyes hollow, lips parted as if she might speak, but no words come.
Shoji, her husband, clears his throat, his voice gravelly and choked.
“Peter went to get tools. Just tools. He’s done it a dozen times since we had to evacuate the neighborhood.
A dozen times and it’s never—” His words collapse into a sob, his body folding inward, crumbling. “I was the one who asked him to go.”
Something inside me splinters. I look around for Jarek. He is nowhere in sight. Neither is Misia.
“The Council told us,” Magdalene murmurs, voice thick with anguish. “They told us he had to be covered…because of what the animal did to him.” Her gaze flits toward the basket, her face contorted with pain.
My cheeks burn. I nod numbly.
Sojourner’s voice rises, a hymn lilting through the air, the words both ancient and comforting.
The crowd sings along in a harmony of grief.
As we sing, Jarek joins Sojourner on stage, his hands quick and sure on the tablet.
He presses it, and the basket ascends Eden’s Gate, whirring toward the sky.
Up, up, up, working just fine with the piece of its panel missing.
With a jolt, I realize exactly how it is that Albert’s chair can hover.
He didn’t just steal a solar panel—he stole a piece of our most sacred technology!
But my irritation is swallowed by fresh grief as I watch Peter’s remains disappear into the gloom above, swallowed by the dreary morning.
It’s over. Another child of the Valley is gone.