Chapter Twenty Rapture
Tears flowed down Zada’s face. She couldn’t help it. She was just so happy.
“Uh, do you want any help?” asked Augusta. In her outstretched hands was Zada’s wedding dress.
Wedding dress. What a musical array of sounds.
Zada had been crying since Counseling yesterday, but she didn’t bother to wipe away her tears.
She wanted everyone to know how overjoyed she was.
What a perfect way to mark the beginning of her real life, the start of her marriage with Buford: a wedding dress fitting with her mother and her dearest friends—her only friends—Augusta and Flora.
“She’s fine,” her mother told Augusta, and Zada beamed wetly at her. Her mother understood.
Flora and Augusta were exchanging a look of some kind, their beloved faces briefly marred by wrinkles of concern, but Zada barely registered it.
The important thing was that soon she would join hands with Buford, uniting their souls forever, and they would mark their eyes for all to see the miraculous bond they shared.
The important thing was that she was about to become a true contributing member of New Ionia, a dutiful wife, and a caring mother.
Something twinged in Zada’s mind for a moment, a resonance with the source sound missing. Nothing but an empty echo. For some reason, it made her cry harder.
Happy. She was so happy.
Zada took the dress, a positive confection of frills and ruffles. She slipped behind the modesty screen, eager to catch a first glimpse of herself as Buford Arnoth’s bride. It was all a glorious play, and for one day, Zada would be the beautiful shining star.
“I’m glad you changed your mind,” Mx. Beauchamp called over the screen. “This one suits you so much better.”
Zada nodded, so overcome with gratitude that she was unable to speak. Her face hurt from smiling so much, the best kind of pain.
“Hey,” said Flora quietly from the other side of the screen. “Zada, if you need a moment—”
“I don’t,” Zada managed at last. “I don’t need anything but Buford.”
“And perhaps a few other things,” came Augusta’s voice. “Your friends and your books and your triple cello.”
“Of course,” said Zada pleasantly. Augusta didn’t understand.
She’d been separated from her own true love for too long to remember that ultimately there was nothing more important than a pair of souls joining forever in perfect wedded bliss.
It wasn’t Augusta’s fault, Zada reminded herself.
Zada had once let her mind grow cluttered with all kinds of trivialities.
She had once cared such an awful lot about so many things.
Now they were all swept away, with perfect clarity, her mind clean and pure as her beautiful dress.
Zada peeled off her dull, ordinary jacket and let it crumple to the ground.
That was odd. Someone had taken the time to make a very deliberate-looking smudge on Zada’s arm.
She wasn’t certain how she hadn’t noticed it when dressing this morning; too delirious with joy, perhaps.
Now, she couldn’t ignore it. How embarrassing—it wouldn’t go at all with the white of her gown.
Zada went to rub it off and realized with another twinge that the marks exactly matched the dimensions of her own fingertips.
Five parallel lines, with seven little dots marching up and down.
They were rendered in some dark gray substance, with just a slight bit of glitter to it. Very odd.
Her friends and her mother were waiting for her to put on her gown, and take one thrilling step closer to her marriage with Buford and their life of flawless harmony together.
There was no space in that picture for whatever she had, for some mystifying reason, done to her own arm.
Done quickly, and yet with a strange sort of precision. Almost as if it were some sort of code.
Another twinge.
Zada stared at the five lines and the climbing dots. She knew there was no time for this, but the marks didn’t fit.
Music, she realized belatedly. It was a melody, consisting of seven notes.
That was nice. Maybe she’d written something for Buford.
That would make sense, she thought. It was the best possible use of her silly little hobby, to express some piece of how she felt about her husband-to-be. She hoped he would like it.
Why had she smeared the tune on her arm under her jacket, like a secret?
Very quietly, she hummed the seven notes. That feeling again, an echo with no origin. It came with a strange sense of urgency, of running feet and hushed voices, a call to adventure—
“Zada?” her mother called from behind the screen.
There could be no greater adventure than marrying Buford. The memory of something else twinged unpleasantly, a chord with one note very wrong. Zada’s happy tears were still flowing, and she used the moisture to wipe away all traces of the hastily inked circles.
“Ready,” Zada called.
Time warped and blurred, dreamlike.
Flora and Augusta escorted Zada to the florist. Something about the dense, heavy smell of roses made Zada feel like there should have been a hand in hers, squeezing hard. Buford’s hand, of course. But Buford was so busy.
On the way home, Flora and Augusta attempted to stop at a noodle stand for what they called “old time’s sake,” but Zada couldn’t stop smiling long enough to bring the chopsticks to her mouth. Flora and Augusta exchanged a look, one far too serious for the situation.
“Z,” said Augusta, “you know how much we care about you, right?”
“Of course,” said Zada easily. They cared as much as it was appropriate for friends to care, which was simply lovely of them. She smiled even wider to show them her gratitude.
“It’s just that Buford, you know, he’s a wonderful man,” Flora began. “But his lifestyle—he’s so serious about becoming an important politician and that’s great, we’re all so proud of him—”
“Of course.” Had she already said that? It was hard to keep track. There were such a lot of different words out there, but so few that could pinpoint her current state of bliss. It was so self-evident. “I am unbelievably proud of him. I couldn’t be prouder.”
“Yes,” said Augusta. “But you’re so shy. You don’t like being the center of attention unless you’re playing your triple cello. You hate giving speeches.” She cleared her throat. “The life of a politician’s spouse . . . Z, are you sure, are you absolutely certain this is what you want to do?”
“Of course,” said Zada.
“Because it’s not too late,” said Flora very quietly. “It might seem like it’s too late, but it’s not. We can find a way out of this for you. With a few careful inquiries, we might reach out to people who could reach out to others—”
“The underground,” Zada supplied.
Augusta shushed her and sat up straighter.
Zada couldn’t understand why they were talking about something so dull, but maybe if she contributed something they could return to happier topics.
“Aubrey Audelay,” she said with a shrug.
“What about Aubrey?” Augusta whispered.
“They’re in the underground movement, I think,” Zada volunteered, matching her friends’ peculiar hush. “They play the drums now. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Flora widened her eyes at Augusta. “How do you know this?” Augusta asked in a low voice.
Zada checked her memory. There were a tremendous number of loose ends, pieces of information that refused to flow into each other, as if something enormous had been sheared away. What a thought. For a moment, Zada’s tears were not from joy. She dug in her mind for an answer, any answer at all.
You look at your hands, like clockwork. Someone had told her that once.
Their face, their voice, it was all a blur, but the words themselves had stuck in her head for some reason.
Zada glanced at her hands. The nails were perfectly painted a pale pink, in preparation for her wedding. She was getting married!
“Did you tell anyone, about Aubrey?” Flora pressed.
Zada frowned. Who would she have told? Why would she have told them? Politics were far outside the purview of a woman in love. Why were her friends, who cared for her a good and reasonable amount, insisting on forcing her down these dim, narrow conversational corridors?
“No,” she said at last. “Nobody asked. It wasn’t important. Now, then.” She cleared her plate out of the way and leaned forward. “What are we going to do about the centerpieces?”
Flora set down her chopsticks.
“Was I like this?” she muttered to Augusta.
Maybe she thought Zada wouldn’t notice. It wasn’t that Zada couldn’t pick up on the more pedestrian details of the world.
It all simply felt thousands of miles away, and any thoughts that couldn’t connect with her heart and the overpowering love she had for Buford slid away like raindrops off the back of something smooth and slippery.
A roof? A duck? What an amusing thought.
She couldn’t wait to share it with Buford.
Augusta winced. “Yours lasted a long time. But not nearly as bad,” Augusta said just as quietly back.
Bad, that was a word people used with love sometimes.
She’s down bad, an old turn of phrase that described being laid low by love.
Except really, Zada’s present state of rapture felt more like floating than sinking.
She’s up bad. Except bad was wrong too. She’s up good.
There was a story she’d read once, about a man who lived long before the dome.
He had wished to fly and so attached a fleet of helium balloons to his chair.
He had assumed his ascent would be gentle and slow, but instead he had shot skyward, some sixteen thousand feet into the air.
Zada laughed. That was love. It took you to heights you couldn’t imagine.