It was deep enough into spring that night on that broad mountain that the frogs came out of their hiding places to sing. The katydids filled the night with their buzzing and whirring, and the cicadas, though fewest in number, where the loudest of all. It would drive a person mad if it weren’t so beautiful.
The blue darkness of night covered the camp, and the stars were big and bright. They were brighter than they’d been in over a century, now that there was no magic below, and no lights aside from fireflies and foxfire, and a few torches and primitive oil lamps like the ones in the town hall.
Hard work makes the past matter less, Kyrie thought as she lay down on her cot for her fourth night. She didn’t care that the world had ended. She had worked hard. She had eaten enough. Now she was lying in bed, more ready for sleep than she’d ever been before. She knew it was poison, what she was thinking. She knew the past had to matter. She knew that someone had to find the truth behind the Cataclysm, had to see that justice was done, had to restore order in the world. But she also knew she didn’t care, didn’t have the strength to worry. She was powerless to change the world, and that was fine. It felt good, laying her head on the pillow and closing her eyes. Life was good, life was bad, and she was going to bed.
She started to dream even before she was unconscious: a man walked up to the window with a bird in his hands. He opened his fingers, but the bird wouldn’t fly. He brought his hands up to encourage it, but it was dead. So he threw it to her right where she lay, and it struck her in the face.
Kyrie jerked her head back, and she was so close to wakefulness that she opened her eyes at once and saw a crumpled piece of paper next to her pillow. Since she shared her bunkhouse with seven other women, she uncrumpled it carefully so as not to wake any of them or catch their attention. Unfortunately, it was too dark to make out any of it, so she crept out of her bunk and made her way out the door so she could try to read it by moonlight. The front door squeaked, but no one would be made suspicious at that—women came and went throughout the night to go to the outhouse. What they never did was uncrumple pieces of paper.
Once outside, she walked a few paces from the door and held the note up to the light of the waning moon.
“Come outside,” it said.
She wadded it back up again and started looking around. She heard fingers snapping and followed the sound around the corner of the bunkhouse, to a deep black shadow, but no one was there. She walked around the back of the bunkhouse and still saw no one. But the shadow of a treetop just brushed the back wall, and its trunk paved a road of shade leading past the edge of the women’s village.
So, without any other hint, she headed toward the tree. She got there and, finding no one, looked up into the boughs, but couldn’t see much of anything up there.
A whisper came from the fence, just loud enough to cut across a small cow pasture: “Over here.”
Kyrie followed and, once at the fence, again saw no one, but, finding a dip in the ground where she couldn’t be seen from far off, she squatted with her back to a fence post, listening closely for another sign.
“It’s good to see you,” said a voice—softly spoken, but not a whisper.
Staying low, she turned on her feet, and on the other side of the chain link was Jaysynn, squatting so they were eye-to-eye. Before saying a word her eyes turned and ran across the top and bottom of the fence, looking for a tunnel below or a gap in the razor wire above. “How did you get out?” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jaysynn said. “It’s something I do well. You wouldn’t be able to get out the same way.”
“Well, find another way,” she said. “Or get some tools and cut a hole in the fence. Right here. I’ll know right where to find it, and no one will be able to see you.”
Jaysynn shook his head and gave a hint of a sigh. “No, look: I didn’t come here to bust you out. I just wanted to talk a little, see how you’re doing.”
With those words, Kyrie’s shoulders deflated—not because her hopes of escape had been crushed, but because she remembered that just minutes ago she didn’t want to escape. She was as happy as she cared to be, and she was going to let somebody else worry about the world’s problems. Now she realized that those problems were Jaysynn’s burden, and that he didn’t care either.
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