Grace Page 8

  Jerusha laughs, softly. “I’ll remember though, won’t I? And I only took the codes because I knew it would frighten him. No other reason, no grand plans. I’ve been a hero, and I have enough blood on my hands for a lifetime from it. I don’t—I don’t want to stand for anything to anyone again. Not ever.”

  “But you have to stop—”

  “That’s the thing,” he says. “I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to live for others. I can live for myself, and that’s what I want. That’s my freedom.”

  I don’t want to understand, but I do.

  I understand him.

  Jerusha wants what I do, and we both chose to be on this train, with all the risks it carries—risks I’ve now seen so closely.

  We have both chosen life—and ourselves—over what we had.

  We have chosen ourselves over death.

  I always knew it was coming for me, but it would have come for Jerusha too. He knows Keran Berj’s world better than I ever could, and even I know that those Keran Berj trusts most, “loves” most, always die.

  So now we are here, on this train, waiting for the final stop to come. Behind us, we have left a trail. One of bodies. Victims.

  We are both running from what we were, from what we did and did not do.

  “You’ll have what you want,” I whisper. “You’ll be free, finally.”

  He touches the collar of his shirt and then looks at me. “You understand. You really do. No one else ever—” He breaks off, looking out the window, but I know he doesn’t see what is going by. He is seeing the past. Before. Keran Berj. The Minster of Defense. Mary.

  “That’s why I made you move,” he says after a moment. “It’s why I . . . it is why I said what I did when the Guards came. You were supposed to be taken. Christaphor sent you so you could—”

  “Be caught,” I say, thinking of how simple things would have been for Jerusha if that had happened. “I was sent to be caught so you could escape. Chris knew no one from the People would ever travel willingly with Jerusha. He thought I would—”

  “Yes,” he says. “He told me you’d be obvious, that you were a Hill girl, and that when you realized who I was you’d do anything to get away from me. You’d expose yourself, leaving me safe. But you weren’t obvious. And you were willing to travel with me after you knew who I was. I wasn’t sure until . . . ” He trails off, and I know both of us are thinking of things we’ve done on the train. Of how we’ve kept going afterward.

  Of how we’ve kept going our whole lives.

  Of how now we are on this train. How the ride we’ve taken, the one I’ve sweated through, worried through, and discovered things through, is almost over.

  I am hopeful in a way I have never been before.

  I am terrified too. That emotion is so much more familiar to me.

  I have spent my whole life waiting to die. Not wanting to, but waiting.

  I saw the difference the day I walked away, and this train ride has taught me I will do anything to survive. I will even sit next to Jerusha.

  And I am not, and will not ever be, sorry that I am.

  GRACE

  CHAPTER 36

  I want to live as I choose,” I say to him, and the truth is bitter on my tongue, in my heart. But it is the truth, and I’ve known it since I looked up at that cloudless blue sky and realized I didn’t want to be in it.

  I don’t mind telling him this. He has seen what I will do to live.

  We have both seen what each other will do to survive, and it is because of him I am here now.

  He is not . . . he is everything and yet nothing like I thought he was.

  “I do too,” Jerusha says, and he truly is Kerr, who wants to escape as much as I do. He is the person who came to me in the train station what feels like a lifetime ago. But he is also someone else. He carries a past that will always be with him. “It’s a strange thing to want. A shameful thing. But I still want it. I have for a long time.”

  Now I look out the window, thinking about what he has said. Off in the distance, in the faint yellow light that signals day has truly begun, I can just make out the border. I can see the crossing and the Guard Station we will have to pass through to reach it.

  The Guard Station looks like a simple building, but my heart beats fast and hard. I have waited to see this. I have longed to see this, and it is everything and nothing like I thought it would be.

  Just like Jerusha.

  I know that past the border gate is a long, stone walkway. I know that after I cross it, I will be in a place where Keran Berj does not rule. I will be in a place where his words are just words.

  I will be in a place where there are no Hills. No People.

  I will be in a place where I can be Grace, just Grace, and I want that. I want that more than I have ever wanted anything.

  I cannot see the shame in that.

  “Why is it shameful?” I whisper, turning away from the window, and he looks at me, startled.

  “I don’t know,” he says slowly. “It just is.”

  “Yes,” I say softly, as I remember what I spent a lifetime learning. As I remember all we have both done to be here.

  We stare at each other.

  I know exactly what he is thinking because I am thinking it too.

  It should be shameful. We were both taught that it was. That it is.

  And we both believed it, but now—

  Now neither of us do because life shouldn’t be something you want to hide. It shouldn’t be something you turn away from.

  Will we be able to embrace it like we want?

  Can we?

  I don’t know. I just know that I want to, and that Jerusha does too.

  Mary didn’t.

  Mary was who I was supposed to be. Mary was an Angel.

  Mary believed.

  Mary thought her life meant death and never once questioned that. She wasn’t and didn’t and never would have lived for anyone at all.

  She believed, and that is why Jerusha loved her.

  CHAPTER 37

  He hasn’t said so, although I heard enough of the word when he spoke of her to know it is how he felt.

  But he doesn’t have to say it. I understand why he loved her.

  She believed and that was what caught him. Belief was something he’d once had, even though it was in a very different form.

  Mary was who Jerusha wanted to be, but wasn’t anymore. She was who he could never be again.

  She was a reminder of who he was when life was simple. When it was just about belief, and that was all he’d needed.

  I’d never had Mary’s belief. I had resented her for so much, for nearly everything she did. But the thing I hated most was how she accepted it all.

  She never wondered like I did. It was so easy for her to believe that her death would bring not just the People, but her, glory.

  How could she have believed that? Without hesitation. Without question.

  I don’t know, but I do know why Jerusha loved her.

  Mary was so sure of why she was here. She never once thought something like “Why?” She never, ever would have.

  But I did, and he did too.

  Jerusha and I wondered, and so now we are both sitting on this train, alive and waiting for it to make its last stop. The final one.

  Can this really be it? Am I really near the end of this long, strange, and surprising trip?

  I am sitting here, sweating, hoping, and afraid.

  I am sitting here with someone I always saw as Death by my side.

  Is this what I left everything for? Is this worth it?

  Yes.

  I look around the train slowly, cautiously, and for the first time, I truly notice who else is in the car with us. I see they aren’t just sheep. They are people, and they are as real as I am. As Jerusha is.

  And all of them look tired, look anxious. All of them know the world we live in.

  They all have their reasons for being on this train, and for the first time I won
der what they are all doing here. If any of them think like I do. Like Jerusha does.

  I wonder if any of the People ask themselves the questions I did and do. I wonder if any of Keran Berj’s followers did or do too. I know that somewhere; in the City, in the desert, or even in the Hills, I am not alone.

  There are those who wonder like I did and do. Like Jerusha did and does. We cannot be the only people who have looked at death and realized it isn’t life at all.

  I think again of the people who were there when I chose life. I think of the people I killed. I don’t know if they ever wanted what I did, but I took everything from them.

  I took what I am afraid of losing. I took what sent me running to Chris, to the train.

  I took what sent me here, to now.

  I took life when I chose my own.

  I can see the final stop more clearly now, and the train begins to slow down.

  CHAPTER 38

  As the train brakes, wheezing with effort, the people around us begin to straighten up. They comb their hair or pluck at their clothes, trying to pull out wrinkles. They all look out the window.

  They all pull out their papers, getting ready to go as far as Keran Berj’s leash will allow.

  Jerusha leans over and scratches his ankle, then pulls out a folded stack of bills. He sees me looking at them and says, “You have to pay a fee before you can cross. Christaphor didn’t tell you that, did he?”

  “No,” I say, thinking of Chris handing me coins and shoving me into the night. I think of the last bit of money I had. How I used it to buy tea that could have cost me my life. Should have.

  “I have enough for two,” he says, and when I look at him he smiles—a strange, hesitant thing. A real smile. “I told him I had no money and took everything he gave me, then added it to what I already had. I told him I’d never say a word to you about it. I told him I understood why he’d kept you alive, what you were for. But I’m tired of how death is supposed to mean nothing to me. It isn’t like that. It—”

  “It marks you,” I say, thinking that if I’d done what I’d been told to that day in the village, I would be a hero to the People. I would be beyond this world; I wouldn’t have to live with the deaths I created. The deaths I never thought about until Jerusha made me see what I’d done.

  I will never be able to look at flowers again. I looked at them that day and saw their death, felt for the earth, but I never thought about who held those flowers. I never wondered what happened to those little girls. There are thirty-four people I tore out of this world. I never once thought of them, and now there are thirty-four people I must carry with me. That I cannot forget.

  That I will not forget because they are marked inside me. Their blood is on my hands and in my heart.

  In the end, I created death just like I was supposed to.

  I wish I hadn’t.

  Life was simpler before Jerusha opened my eyes. It was simpler when I didn’t know him, when he was Death and nothing more.

  His hands are bloody too. I will never forget that. But I also know he will not forget either. I see the price he paid for that blood, and it was not the nothing I believed it was. All his choices were shaped by Keran Berj.

  Keran Berj created him for a reason, and I believed in that creation.

  He was Keran Berj’s creature, but what grew in Jerusha’s heart was something else. Something that wanted more.

  He is as much a person as I am. He even loved.

  He loved Mary, who didn’t love him back. Who was a reminder of everything from when his life was simple. But it was still love.

  I have never loved anyone like that.

  I have never loved anyone besides myself. It gave me the strength to get here, but what it cost . . . I do not know what it will cost me.

  I do know what I will have to remember forever. Who I will have to remember. How I never once thought to look back in the village. I never once thought to see if anyone was hurt as I chose to walk away. As I chose life.

  I fold my hands together, and after a moment Jerusha touches my shoulder clumsily. Kindly. I do not flinch away, but I want to. I just don’t know if it is from him or myself.

  We sit in silence until the train stops. No one moves for a long time, but then the doors finally creak open, the soldiers leaving first, stepping off into the sunlight that’s rapidly filling the sky.

  CHAPTER 39

  Jerusha and I do not get off right away. We both sit, watching others go. From our car, from others, they venture out slowly. Some are old and some are young. Some are clearly in a hurry, and some are hanging back a little, smoothing their clothes or hair again. Looking at their papers again.

  I wonder what they will all do when they cross the border. Will they think of the train? Will they be eager to go back? Will they think of their lives with pleasure? Can they?

  I have never known pleasure with the People. I did love the Hills, but I was able to leave them behind.

  I left them because all they are is a place where people are born to die.

  I think of the City, of the people I saw waiting in lines. Of the tick-tock man, and the terror he brought. That was Jerusha’s world, and he left it for the same reasons I left mine.

  Keran Berj’s world and the People’s world, the worlds Jerusha and I have traveled through, are ones that promise that death brings glory. That life is only about death.

  But it shouldn’t be.

  Life is about being alive. It is about living.

  If that choice—life—has made us both do things that have stained our minds and souls, it is a price I am willing to pay. I will pay in memory. I will pay by standing by my choice to be here. To be alive.

  I will leave the beliefs I was told were true behind. I will find ones that will show me how to hold life gently. That will teach me to respect others and not see them as less than human.

  Jerusha already knows these things, and yet he let me judge him. He let me judge him, and he saved me. He is actually more human than I am.

  He is more human than anyone I have ever known.

  And he is so alone. I have never had a friend, not a true one, but at least I had the Hills, the land, around me. He only had Keran Berj.

  Jerusha has never had anything or anyone to really depend on since he was very young. He has never had a true friend.

  We have both traveled down strange roads, down paths full of lies. Jerusha saw the evil in his, and I saw the empty heart of mine.

  We have both done terrible things to be here. We have both come so far to be new. I know we will both try to do that now. Not just because we want to live, but also because we have to.

  We must live to remember what we have done.

  We will get off this train and try to cross the border.

  We may not make it across. I know that. I have always known that, and I know he does too.

  And so Jerusha and I wait, only leaving when the flow of people exiting the train has slowed to a trickle. We can see people walking toward the Guard Station and the border. Toward the path that curves off into the distance.

  My feet don’t hurt anymore. I am ready to stand.

  I am lighter than air, soaring.

  CHAPTER 40

  As Jerusha and I get off the train, every breath I take tastes like a beginning, and the sun is beautiful, gilding everything and everyone around us.

  I have never felt so alive. I ache, I am exhausted, but I am here at the border.

  And I am here because I was helped by someone I was taught to hate.

  Jerusha has helped me, but more than that, he has shown me something. I see that everyone around us is not a thing. Not a sheep. I see that everyone is a person.

  Everyone I see matters to someone else.

  Everyone who has died by my hand or at the whim of Keran Berj or from the People’s fury is mourned.

  It is not just one person, or even one group of people who matter, who deserve to live.

  I see that now. Everyone deserves life.
It has taken me so long to reach this point.

  It has taken me my whole life.

  And now here I stand where I have struggled to be. Where I have longed to be.

  Here I am, and I am scared.

  I see the border, marked by a thin line painted on rocks resting on the sand. I see the station we must pass through to reach it. I see the path that lies just beyond it.

  I see Guards standing by it, waiting. Their faces are a blur in the morning light.

  Jerusha stands still beside me. He knows as well as I do what could happen now.

  I tense, then hold out my hand like a sister would.

  Like a friend would.

  After a moment, Jerusha clasps his hand to mine.

  I let my fingers twine with his, and we walk together into the light. To the waiting path. To the border.

  To life.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Julie Strauss-Gabel, who looked at this book, saw what it could be, and made it all happen.

  Thanks also go to Lisa Yoskowitz, for always being so kind to me.

  As always, thanks to the usual suspects, including everyone who read drafts of this book, especially Jessica Brearton, Katharine Beutner, Clara Jaeckel, and my husband.

  And of course, thanks go to Robin Rue, who always believes in me, and to Diana Fox, who has held my hand so many times that I owe her about twenty dinners.

  Finally, many, many thanks to The Sheep Meadow Press for permission to use an excerpt from Miklós Radnóti’s stunning poem, “Forced March.” The poem can be found in Clouded Sky: Poems by Miklós Radnóti, with translations by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S. J. Marks.