Barcha huquqlar himoyalangan. Amerika Qo'shma Shtatlarida Houghton Mifflin Books for Children tomonidan nashr etilgan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company nashriyoti

Twenty-three

Jonas felt more and more certain that the destination lay ahead of him, very near now in the night that was approaching. None of his senses confirmed it. He saw nothing ahead except the endless ribbon of road unfolding in twisting narrow curves. He heard no sound ahead.
Yet he felt it: felt that Elsewhere was not far away. But he had little hope left that he would be able to reach it. His hope diminished further when the sharp, cold air began to blur and thicken with swirling white.
Gabriel, wrapped in his inadequate blanket, was hunched, shivering, and silent in his little seat. Jonas stopped the bike wearily, lifted the child down, and realized with heartbreak how cold and weak Gabe had become.
Standing in the freezing mound that was thickening around his numb feet, Jonas opened his own tunic, held Gabriel to his bare chest, and tied the torn and dirty blanket around them both. Gabriel moved feebly against him and whimpered briefly into the silence that surrounded them.
Dimly, from a nearly forgotten perception as blurred as the substance itself, Jonas recalled what the whiteness was.
“It’s called snow, Gabe,” Jonas whispered. “Snowflakes. They fall down from the sky, and they’re very beautiful.”
There was no response from the child who had once been so curious and alert. Jonas looked down through the dusk at the little head against his chest. Gabriel’s curly hair was matted and filthy, and there were tearstains outlined in dirt on his pale cheeks. His eyes were closed. As Jonas watched, a snowflake drifted down and was caught briefly for a moment’s sparkle in the tiny fluttering eyelashes.
Wearily he remounted the bicycle. A steep hill loomed ahead. In the best of conditions, the hill would have been a difficult, demanding ride. But now the rapidly deepening snow obscured the narrow road and made the ride impossible. His front wheel moved forward imperceptibly as he pushed on the pedals with his numb, exhausted legs. But the bicycle stopped. It would not move.
He got off and let it drop sideways into the snow. For a moment he thought how easy it would be to drop beside it himself, to let himself and Gabriel slide into the softness of snow, the darkness of night, the warm comfort of sleep.
But he had come this far. He must try to go on.
The memories had fallen behind him now, escaping from his protection to return to the people of his community. Were there any left at all? Could he hold onto a last bit of warmth? Did he still have the strength to Give? Could Gabriel still Receive?
He pressed his hands into Gabriel’s back and tried to remember sunshine. For a moment it seemed that nothing came to him, that his power was completely gone. Then it flickered suddenly, and he felt tiny tongues of heat begin to creep across and into his frozen feet and legs. He felt his face begin to glow and the tense, cold skin of his arms and hands relax. For a fleeting second he felt that he wanted to keep it for himself, to let himself bathe in sunlight, unburdened by anything or anyone else.
But the moment passed and was followed by an urge, a need, a passionate yearning to share the warmth with the one person left for him to love. Aching from the effort, he forced the memory of warmth into the thin, shivering body in his arms.
Gabriel stirred. For a moment they both were bathed in warmth and renewed strength as they stood hugging each other in the blinding snow.
Jonas began to walk up the hill.
The memory was agonizingly brief. He had trudged no more than a few yards through the night when it was gone and they were cold again.
But his mind was alert now. Warming himself ever so briefly had shaken away the lethargy and resignation and restored his will to survive. He began to walk faster on feet that he could no longer feel. But the hill was treacherously steep; he was impeded by the snow and his own lack of strength. He didn’t make it very far before he stumbled and fell forward.
On his knees, unable to rise, Jonas tried a second time. His consciousness grasped at a wisp of another warm memory, and tried desperately to hold it there, to enlarge it, and pass it into Gabriel. His spirits and strength lifted with the momentary warmth and he stood. Again, Gabriel stirred against him as he began to climb.
But the memory faded, leaving him colder than before.
If only he had had time to receive more warmth from The Giver before he escaped! Maybe there would be more left for him now. But there was no purpose in if-onlys. His entire concentration now had to be on moving his feet, warming Gabriel and himself, and going forward.
He climbed, stopped, and warmed them both briefly again, with a tiny scrap of memory that seemed certainly to be all he had left.
The top of the hill seemed so far away, and he did not know what lay beyond. But there was nothing left to do but continue. He trudged upward.
As he approached the summit of the hill at last, something began to happen. He was not warmer; if anything, he felt more numb and more cold. He was not less exhausted; on the contrary, his steps were leaden, and he could barely move his freezing, tired legs.
But he began, suddenly, to feel happy. He began to recall happy times. He remembered his parents and his sister. He remembered his friends, Asher and Fiona. He remembered The Giver.
Memories of joy flooded through him suddenly.
He reached the place where the hill crested and he could feel the ground under his snow-covered feet become level. It would not be uphill anymore.
“We’re almost there, Gabriel,” he whispered, feeling quite certain without knowing why. “I remember this place, Gabe.” And it was true. But it was not a grasping of a thin and burdensome recollection; this was different. This was something that he could keep. It was a memory of his own.
He hugged Gabriel and rubbed him briskly, warming him, to keep him alive. The wind was bitterly cold. The snow swirled, blurring his vision. But somewhere ahead, through the blinding storm, he knew there was warmth and light.
Using his final strength, and a special knowledge that was deep inside him, Jonas found the sled that was waiting for them at the top of the hill. Numbly his hands fumbled for the rope.
He settled himself on the sled and hugged Gabe close. The hill was steep but the snow was powdery and soft, and he knew that this time there would be no ice, no fall, no pain. Inside his freezing body, his heart surged with hope.
They started down.
Jonas felt himself losing consciousness and with his whole being willed himself to stay upright atop the sled, clutching Gabriel, keeping him safe. The runners sliced through the snow and the wind whipped at his face as they sped in a straight line through an incision that seemed to lead to the final destination, the place that he had always felt was waiting, the Elsewhere that held their future and their past.
He forced his eyes open as they went downward, downward, sliding, and all at once he could see lights, and he recognized them now. He knew they were shining through the windows of rooms, that they were the red, blue, and yellow lights that twinkled from trees in places where families created and kept memories, where they celebrated love.
Downward, downward, faster and faster. Suddenly he was aware with certainty and joy that below, ahead, they were waiting for him; and that they were waiting, too, for the baby. For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing.
Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.


One


"Mother?”
There was no reply. She hadn’t expected one. Her mother had been dead now for four days, and Kira could tell that the last of the spirit was drifting away.
“Mother.” She said it again, quietly, to whatever was leaving. She thought that she could feel its leave-taking, the way one could feel a small whisper of breeze at night.
Now she was all alone. Kira felt the aloneness, the uncertainty, and a great sadness.
This had been her mother, the warm and vital woman whose name had been Katrina. Then after the brief and unexpected sickness, it had become the body of Katrina, still containing the lingering spirit. After four sunsets and sunrises, the spirit, too, was gone. It was simply a body. Diggers would come and sprinkle a layer of soil over the flesh, but even so it would be eaten by the clawing, hungry creatures that came at night. Then the bones would scatter, rot, and crumble to become part of the earth.
Kira wiped briefly at her eyes, which had filled suddenly with tears. She had loved her mother, and would miss her terribly. But it was time for her to go. She wedged her walking stick in the soft ground, leaned on it, and pulled herself up.
She looked around uncertainly. She was young still, and had not experienced death before, not in the small two-person family that she and her mother had been. Of course she had seen others go through the rituals. She could see some of them in the vast foul-smelling Field of Leaving, huddled beside the ones whose lingering spirits they tended. She knew that a woman named Helena was there, watching the spirit leave her infant, who had been born too soon. Helena had come to the Field only the day before. Infants did not require the four days of watching; the wisps of their spirits, barely arrived, drifted away quickly. So Helena would return to the village and her family soon.
As for Kira, she had no family, now. Nor any home. The cott she had shared with her mother had been burned. This was always done after sickness. The small structure, the only home Kira had ever known, was gone. She had seen the smoke in the distance as she sat with the body. As she watched the spirit of her mother drift away, she had seen the cindered fragments of her childhood life whirl into the sky as well.
She felt a small shudder of fear. Fear was always a part of life for the people. Because of fear, they made shelter and found food and grew things. For the same reason, weapons were stored, waiting. There was fear of cold, of sickness and hunger. There was fear of beasts.
And fear propelled her now as she stood, leaning on her stick. She looked down a last time at the lifeless body that had once contained her mother, and considered where to go.


Kira thought about rebuilding. If she could find help, though help was unlikely, it wouldn’t take long to build a cott, especially not this time of year, summer-start, when tree limbs were supple and mud was thick and abundant beside the river. She had often watched others building, and Kira realized that she could probably construct some sort of shelter for herself. Its corners and chimney might not be straight. The roof would be difficult because her bad leg made it almost impossible for her to climb. But she would find a way. Somehow she would build a cott. Then she would find a way to make a life.
Her mother’s brother had been near her in the Field for two days, not guarding Katrina, his sister, but sitting silently beside the body of his own woman, the short-tempered Solora, and that of their new infant who had been too young to have a name. They had nodded to each other, Kira and her mother’s brother, in acknowledgment. But he had departed, his time in the Field of Leaving finished. He had tykes to tend; he and Solora had two others in addition to the one that had brought about her death. The others were still small, their names yet of one syllable: Dan and Mar. Perhaps I could care for them, Kira thought briefly, trying to find her own future within the village. But even as the thought flickered within her, she knew that it would not be permitted. Solora’s tykes would be given away, distributed to those who had none. Healthy, strong tykes were valuable; properly trained, they could contribute to family needs and would be greatly desired.
No one would desire Kira. No one ever had, except her mother. Often Katrina had told Kira the story of her birth—the birth of a fatherless girl with a twisted leg—and how her mother had fought to keep her alive.
“They came to take you,” Katrina said, whispering the story to her in the evening, in their cott, with the fire fed and glowing. “You were one day old, not yet named your one-syllable infant name—”
“Kir.”
“Yes, that’s right: Kir. They brought me food and were going to take you away to the Field—”
Kira shuddered. It was the way, the custom, and it was the merciful thing, to give an unnamed, imperfect infant back to the earth before its spirit had filled it and made it human. But it made her shudder.
Katrina stroked her daughter’s hair. “They meant no harm,” she reminded her.
Kira nodded. “They didn’t know it was me.”
“It wasn’t you, yet.”
“Tell me again why you told them no,” Kira whispered.
Her mother sighed, remembering. “I knew I would not have another child,” she pointed out. “Your father had been taken by beasts. It had been several months since he went off to hunt and did not return. And so I would not give birth again.
“Oh,” she added, “perhaps they would have given me one eventually, an orphan to raise. But as I held you—even then, with your spirit not yet arrived and with your leg bent wrong so that it was clear you would not ever run—even then, your eyes were bright. I could see the beginning of something remarkable in your eyes. And your fingers were long and well-shaped—”
“And strong. My hands were strong,” Kira added with satisfaction. She had heard the story so often; each time of hearing, she looked down at her strong hands with pride.
Her mother laughed. “So strong they gripped my own thumb fiercely and would not let go. Feeling that fierce tug on my thumb, I could not let them take you away. I simply told them no.”
“They were angry.”
“Yes. But I was firm. And, of course, my father was still alive. He was old then, four syllables, and he had been the leader of the people, the chief guardian, for a long time. They respected him. And your father would have been a greatly respected leader too had he not died on the long hunt. He had already been chosen to be a guardian.”
“Say my father’s name to me,” Kira begged.
Her mother smiled in the firelight. “Christopher,” she said. “You know that.”
“I like to hear it, though. I like to hear you say it.”
“Do you want me to go on?”
Kira nodded. “You were firm. You insisted,” she reminded her mother.
“Still, they made me promise that you would not become a burden.”
“I haven’t, have I?”
“Of course not. Your strong hands and wise head make up for the crippled leg. You are a sturdy and reliable helper in the weaving shed; all the women who work there say so. And one bent leg is of no importance when measured against your cleverness. The stories you tell to the tykes, the pictures you create with words—and with thread! The threading you do! It is unlike any threading the people have ever seen. Far beyond anything I could do!” Her mother stopped. She laughed. “Enough. You mustn’t tease me into flattery. Don’t forget that you are still a girl, and often willful, and just this morning, Kira, you forgot to tidy the cott even though you had promised.”
“I won’t forget tomorrow,” Kira said sleepily, snuggling against her mother on the raised sleeping mat. She pushed her twisted leg into a more comfortable position for the night. “I promise.”


But now there was no one to help her. She had no family left, and she was not a particularly useful person in the village. For everyday work, Kira helped in the weaving shed, picking up the scraps and leavings, but her twisted leg diminished her value as a laborer and even, in the future, as a mate.
Yes, the women liked the fanciful stories that she told to amuse restless tykes, and they admired the little threadings that she made. But those things were diversions; they were not work.
The sky, with the sun no longer overhead but sending shadows now into the Field of Leaving from the trees and thorn bushes at its edge, told her that it was long past midday. In her uncertainty she had lingered here too long. Carefully she gathered the skins on which she had slept these four nights guarding her mother’s spirit. Her fire was cold ashes, a blackened smudge. Her water container was empty and she had no more food.
Slowly, using her stick, she limped toward the path that led back to the village, holding on to a small hope that she might still be welcome there.
Tykes played at the edge of the clearing, scampering about on the moss-covered ground. Pine needles stuck to their naked bodies and in their hair. She smiled. She recognized each little one. There was the yellow-haired son of her mother’s friend; she remembered his birth two mid-summers ago. And the girl whose twin had died; she was younger than the yellow-haired one, just toddling, but she giggled and shrieked with the others, playing catch-me-while-I’m-running. Tussling, the toddlers slapped and kicked at each other, grabbing toy-sticks, flailing with their small fists. Kira remembered watching her childhood companions at such play, preparing for the real scramble of adult life. Unable to participate because of her flawed leg, she had watched from the sidelines with envy.
An older child, a dirty-faced boy of eight or nine years, still too young for puberty and the two-syllable name that he would receive, looked over at her from the place where he was clearing underbrush and sorting the twigs into bundles for firestarting. Kira smiled. It was Matt, who had always been her friend. She liked Matt. He lived in the swampy, disagreeable Fen, probably the child of a dragger or digger. But he ran freely through the village with his disorderly friends, his dog always at his heels. Often he stopped, as now, to do some chore or small job in return for a few coins or a sweet. Kira called a greeting to the boy. The dog’s bent tail, matted with twigs and leaves, thumped on the ground, and the boy grinned in reply.
“So you be back from the Field,” he said. “What’s it like there? Scared, was you? Did creatures come in the night?”
Kira shook her head and smiled at him. Younger, one-syllable tykes were not allowed in the Field, so it was natural that Matt would be curious and a little in awe. “No creatures,” she reassured him. “I had fire, and it kept them away.”
“So Katrina be gone now from her body?” he asked in his dialect. People from the Fen were oddly different. Always identifiable by their strange speech and crude manners, they were looked down upon by most people. But not by Kira. She was very fond of Matt.
She nodded. “My mother’s spirit has gone,” she acknowledged. “I watched it leave her body. It was like mist. It drifted away.”
Matt came over to her, still carrying an armful of twigs. He squinted at her ruefully and wrinkled his nose. “Your cott is horrid burnt,” he told her.
Kira nodded. She knew that her home had been destroyed, though secretly she had hoped she was mistaken. “Yes,” she sighed. “And everything in it? My frame? Did they burn my threading frame?”
Matt frowned. “I tried to save things but it’s mostly all burnt. Just your cott, Kira. Not like when there’s a big sickness. This time it just be your mum.”
“I know.” Kira sighed again. In the past there had been sicknesses that spread from one cott to the next, with many deaths. When that happened, a huge burning would take place, followed by a rebuilding that became almost festive with the noise of workers smearing wet mud over the fitted wooden sides of new structures, methodically slapping it into smoothness. The charred smell of the burning would remain in the air even as the new cotts rose.
But today there was no festivity. There were only the usual sounds. Katrina’s death had changed nothing in the lives of the people. She had been there. Now she was gone. Their lives continued.
With the boy still beside her, Kira paused at the well and filled her container with water. Everywhere she heard arguing. The cadence of bickering was a constant sound in the village: the harsh remarks of men vying for power; the shrill bragging and taunting of women envious of one another and irritable with the tykes who whined and whimpered at their feet and were frequently kicked out of the way.
She cupped her hand over her eyes and squinted against the afternoon sun to find the gap where her own cott had been. She took a deep breath. It would be a long walk to gather saplings and a hard chore to dig the mud by the riverbank. The corner timbers would be heavy to lift and hard to drag. “I have to start building,” she told Matt, who still held a bundle of twigs in his scratched, dirty arms. “Do you want to help? It could be fun if there were two of us.
“I can’t pay you, but I’ll tell you some new stories,” she added.
The boy shook his head. “I be whipped iffen I don’t finish the fire twiggies.” He turned away. After a hesitation, he turned back to Kira and said in a low voice, “I heared them talking. They don’t want you should stay. They be planning to turn you out, now your mum be dead. They be set on putting you in the Field for the beasts. They talk about having draggers take you.”
Kira felt her stomach tighten with fear. But she tried to keep her voice calm. She needed information from Matt and it would make him wary to know she was frightened. “Who’s ‘they’?” she asked in an annoyed, superior tone.
“Them women,” he replied. “I heared them talking at the well. I be picking up wood chippies from the refuse, and them didn’t even notice me listening. But they want your space. They want where your cott was. They aim to build a pen there, to keep the tykes and the fowls enclosed so they don’t be having to chase them all the time.”
Kira stared at him. It was terrifying, almost unbelievable, the casualness of the cruelty. In order to pen their disobedient toddlers and chickens, the women would turn her out of the village to be devoured by the beasts that waited in the woods to forage the Field.
“Whose was the strongest voice against me?” she asked after a moment.
Matt thought. He shifted the twigs in his hands, and Kira could see that he was reluctant to get involved in her problems and fearful of his own fate. But he had always been her friend. Finally, looking around first to be certain he wouldn’t be overheard, he told her the name of the person with whom Kira would have to do battle.
“Vandara,” he whispered.
It came as no surprise. Nonetheless, Kira’s heart sank.