They told us that love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.
For the very first time I realize that this, too, might be a lie.
Alex rocks carefully back and forth on the fence so that it sways a little. I glance up, and he gestures to me again. We"re not safe. It"s time to move. I reach up and hoist myself onto the fence and start climbing. Being on the fence is even worse, in some ways, than being out in the open on the gravel. At least there we had more control-we could have seen if a guard was patrolling, could have hurried back to the cove and hoped to lose him in the darkness and the trees. A small hope, but hope nonetheless. Here we have our backs turned to the guard huts, and I feel like I"m a gigantic moving target with a big sign on my back saying SHOOT ME SHOOT ME.
Alex reaches the top before me, and I watch him pick his way slowly, painstakingly, around the loops of barbed wire. He makes it over and lowers himself carefully down the other side, climbing backward a few feet and pausing to wait for me. I follow his motions exactly. I"m shaking by this point, from fear and exertion, but I manage to pa.s.s over the top of the fence and then I"m climbing down the other side. My feet hit the ground. Alex takes my hand and pulls me quickly into the woods, away from the border.
Into the Wilds.
Chapter Eighteen.
Mary bring out your umbrella- The sun shines down on this fine, fine day But the ashes raining down forever Are going to turn your hair to gray.
Mary keep your oars a-steady Sail away on the rising flood Keep your candle at the ready Red tides can"t be told from blood.
-"Miss Mary" (a common child"s clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play The lights from the guard hut get suctioned away all at once like they"ve been sealed back behind a vault. Trees close in around us, leaves and bushes press on me from all sides, brushing my face and shins and shoulders like thousands of dark hands, and from all around me a strange cacophony starts up, of fluttering things and owls hooting and animals scrabbling in the underbrush. The air smells so thickly of flowers and life it feels textured, like a curtain you could pull apart. It"s pitch-black. I can"t even see Alex in front of me now, can just feel his hand in mine, pulling.
I think I might be even more frightened now than I was making the crossing, and I tug on Alex"s hand, willing him to understand me and stop.
"A little farther," comes his voice, from the darkness ahead of me. He tugs me on. We go slowly, though, and I hear twigs snapping and the rustle of tree branches, and I know that Alex is feeling his way, trying to clear a path for us. It seems that we move forward by inches, but it"s amazing how quickly we"ve lost sight of the border and everything on the other side of it, as though they"ve never existed at all. Behind me is blackness. It"s like being underground.
"Alex-" I start to say. My voice comes out strange and strangled-sounding.
"Stop," he says. "Wait." He lets go of my hand, and I let out a little shriek without meaning to. Then his hands are fumbling on my arms, and his mouth b.u.mps against my nose as he kisses me.
"It"s okay," he says. He"s speaking almost at a normal volume now, so I guess we"re safe. "I"m not going anywhere. I just have to find this d.a.m.n flashlight, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." I struggle to breathe normally, feeling stupid. I wonder if Alex regrets bringing me. I haven"t exactly been Miss Courageous.
As though he can read my mind, Alex gives me a second small peck, this time near the corner of my lips. I guess his eyes haven"t adjusted to the dark either. "You"re doing great," he says.
Then I hear him rustling in the branches all around us, muttering little curses under his breath, a monologue I don"t quite follow. A minute later he lets out a quick, excited yelp, and a second after that a broad beam of light cuts upward, illumi-nating the densely packed trees and growth all around us.
"Found it," Alex says, grinning, showing off the flashlight to me. He directs the light down to a rusty toolbox half-buried in the ground. "We leave it there, for the crossers," he explains. "Ready?"
I nod. I feel much better now that we can see where we"re going. The branches above us form a canopy that reminds me of the vaulted ceiling of St. Paul"s Cathedral, where I used to sit in Sunday school to hear lectures about atoms and probabilities and G.o.d"s order. The leaves rustle and shake all around us, a constantly shifting pattern of greens and blacks, set dancing as countless unseen things hurry and skip from branch to branch. Every so often Alex"s flashlight is reflected for a brief second in a pair of bright wide blinking eyes, which watch us solemnly from within the ma.s.s of foliage before vanishing once again into the dark. It"s incredible. I"ve never seen anything like it-all this life pushing everywhere, growing, as though at every second it"s expanding and thrusting upward, and I can"t really explain it but it makes me feel small and kind of silly, like I"m trespa.s.sing on property owned by someone way older and more important than myself.
Alex walks more surely now, occasionally sweeping a branch out of the way so I can pa.s.s underneath it, or swatting at the branches blocking our way, but we"re not following any path that I can see, and after fifteen minutes I begin to fear that we"re just turning in circles, or going deeper and deeper into the woods without any real destination. I"m about to ask him how he knows where we"re going when I notice that every so often he hesitates and sweeps his flashlight over the tree trunks that surround us like tall, ghostly silhouettes. Some of them, I see, are marked with a swath of blue paint.
"The paint... ," I say.
Alex shoots me a look over his shoulder. "Our road map," he says, pressing on, and then adds, "you don"t want to get lost in here, trust me."
And then, abruptly, the trees just peter out. One second we"re in the middle of the forest, penned in on all sides, and the next we"re stepping out onto a paved road, a ribbon of concrete lit silver by the moonlight like a ribbed tongue.
The road is filled with holes, and cracked and buckled in places, so we have to step around enormous piles of concrete rubble. It winds up a long, low hill, and then disappears over the hill"s crest, where another black fringe of trees begins.
"Give me your hand," Alex says. He"s whispering again and without knowing why, I"m glad of it. For some reason, I feel as though I"ve just entered a cemetery. On either side of the road are gigantic clearings, covered in waist-high gra.s.ses that sing and whisper against one another, and some thin, young trees, which look frail and exposed in the middle of all of that openness. There seem to be some beams, too-enormous beams of timber piled on top of one another, and twists of things that look metallic, gleaming and glinting in the gra.s.s.
"What is this?" I whisper to Alex, but just after I ask the question a little scream builds in my throat and I see, and I know.
In the middle of one of the fields of whispering gra.s.s is a large blue truck, perfectly intact, like someone might have driven up just to have a picnic.
"This was was a street," Alex says. His voice has turned tense. "Destroyed during the blitz. There are thousands and thousands of them, all across the country. Bombed out, totally destroyed." a street," Alex says. His voice has turned tense. "Destroyed during the blitz. There are thousands and thousands of them, all across the country. Bombed out, totally destroyed."
I shiver. No wonder I felt like I was walking through a graveyard. I am, in a way. The blitz was a yearlong campaign that happened long before my birth, when my mom was still a baby. It was supposed to have gotten rid of all the Invalids, and any resisters who didn"t want to leave their homes and move into an approved community. My mother once said that her earliest memories were all clouded by the sound of bombs and the smell of smoke. She said for years the smell of fire continued to drift over the city, and every time the wind blew it would bring with it a covering of ash.
We go on walking. I feel like I could cry. Being here, seeing this, it"s nothing like what I was taught in my history cla.s.ses: smiling pilots giving the thumbs-up, people cheering at the borders because we were at last safe, houses incinerated neatly, with no mess, as though they were just blipped off a computer screen. In the history books there were no people, really, who lived in these houses; they were shadows, wraiths, unreal. But as Alex and I walk hand in hand down the bombed-out road, I understand that it wasn"t like that at all. There was mess and stink and blood and the smell of skin burning. There were people: people standing and eating, talking on the phone, frying eggs or singing in the shower. I"m overwhelmed with sadness for everything that was lost, and filled with anger toward the people who took it away. My people-or at least, my old old people. I don"t know who I am anymore, or where I belong. people. I don"t know who I am anymore, or where I belong.
That"s not totally true. Alex. I know I belong with Alex.
A little farther up the hill we come across a trim white house standing in the middle of a field. Somehow it escaped the blitz unscathed, and other than a shutter that has become detached and is now hanging at a crazy angle, tapping lightly in the wind, it could be any house in Portland. It looks so strange standing there in the middle of all of that emptiness, surrounded by the shrapnel of disintegrated neighbors. It looks tiny all on its own, like a single lamb that has gotten lost in the wrong pasture.
"Does anyone stay there now?" I ask Alex.
"Sometimes people squat, when it"s rainy or freezing. Only the roamers, though-the Invalids who always move around." Again he pauses for a fraction of a second before he says Invalids Invalids, grimacing like the word tastes bad in his mouth. "We pretty much stay away from here. People say the bombers might come back and finish off the job. But mostly it"s just superst.i.tion. People think the house is bad luck." He gives me a tight smile. "It"s been totally cleaned out, though. Beds, blankets, clothes-everything. I got my dishes there."
Earlier, Alex told me he had his own special place in the Wilds, but when I pressed him for details he clammed up and told me I"d have to wait and see. It"s still weird to think of people living out here, in the middle of all this vastness, needing dishes and blankets and normal things like that.
"This way."
Alex pulls me off the road and draws me toward the woods again. I"m actually happy to be back in the trees. There was a heaviness to that strange, open s.p.a.ce, with its single house and rusting truck and splintered buildings, a gash cut in the surface of the world.
This time we follow a fairly well-worn path. The trees are still splattered with blue paint at intervals, but it doesn"t seem as though Alex needs to consult them. We go quickly, single file. The trees have been shoved away here, and much of the underbrush has been cleared so the walk is much easier. Beneath my feet the dirt has been tamped down over time by the pressure of dozens of feet. My heart starts thumping heavily against my ribs. I can tell we"re getting close.
Alex turns around to face me, so abruptly I almost slam into him. He clicks the flashlight off, and in the sudden darkness strange shapes seem to rise up, take form, swirl away.
"Close your eyes," he says, and I can tell he"s smiling.
"Why bother? I can"t see anything."
I can practically hear him roll his eyes. "Come on, Lena."
"Fine." I close my eyes and he takes my hands in both of his. Then he pulls me forward another twenty feet, murmuring things like, "Step up. There"s a rock," or "A little to the left." The whole time a fluttery, nervous feeling builds inside of me. We stop, finally, and Alex drops my hands.
"We"re here," he says. I can hear the excitement in his voice. "Open up."
I do, and for a moment can"t speak. I open my mouth several times and have to shut it again after all that emerges is a high-pitched squeak.
"Well?" Alex fidgets next to me. "What do you think?"
Finally I stutter out, "It"s-it"s real real."
Alex snorts. "Of course it"s real."
"I mean, it"s amazing." I take a few steps forward. Now that I"m here I"m not sure what, exactly, I was imagining the Wilds would be like-but whatever it was, it wasn"t this. A long, broad clearing cuts through the woods, although in places the trees have begun to crowd in again, pushing slender stalks toward the sky, which stretches above us, a vast and glittering canopy, the moon sitting bright and huge and swollen at its center. Wild roses encircle a dented sign, faded nearly to illegibility. I can just make out the words CREST VILLAGE MOBILE PARK CREST VILLAGE MOBILE PARK. The clearing is full of dozens of trailers, as well as more creative residences: tarps stretched between trees, with blankets and shower curtains to serve as front doors; rusting trucks with tents pitched in the back of their cabs; old vans with fabric stretched over their windows for privacy. The clearing is pitted with holes where campfires have been lit over the course of the day-now, well past midnight, they are smoldering still, letting up ribbons of smoke and the smell of charred wood.
"See?" Alex grins and spreads his arms. "The blitz didn"t get everything."
"You didn"t tell me." I start walking forward down the center of the clearing, stepping around a series of logs that have been arranged in a circle, like an outdoor living room. "You didn"t tell me it was like this."
He shrugs, trotting next to me like a happy dog. "It"s the kind of thing you need to see for yourself." He toes a bit of dirt over a dying campfire. "Looks like we came too late for the party tonight."
As we progress through the clearing, Alex points out every "house" and tells me a little bit about the people who live there, speaking all the time in a whisper, so we won"t wake anybody. Some stories I"ve heard before; others are totally new. I"m not even fully concentrating, but I"m grateful for the sound of his voice, low and steady and familiar and rea.s.suring. Even though the settlement isn"t that big-maybe an eighth of a mile long-I feel as though the world has suddenly split open, revealing layers and depths I could never have imagined.
No walls. No walls anywhere. Portland, by comparison, seems tiny, a blip.
Alex stops in front of a dingy gray trailer. Its windows are missing and have been replaced by squares of multicolored fabric, pulled taut.
"And, um, this is me." Alex gestures awkwardly. It"s the first time he has seemed nervous all night, which makes me nervous. I swallow back the sudden and totally inappropriate urge to laugh hysterically.
"Wow. It"s-it"s-"
"It"s not much, from the outside," Alex jumps in. He looks away, chewing on a corner of his lip. "Do you want to, um, come in?"
I nod, pretty sure that if I tried to speak right now I would only squeak again. I"ve been alone with him countless times, but this feels different. Here there are no eyes waiting to catch us, no voices waiting to shout at us, no hands ready to tear us apart-just miles and miles of s.p.a.ce. It"s exciting and terrifying at the same time. Anything could happen here, and when he bends down to kiss me it"s as though the weight of the velvety darkness around us, the soft flutters of the trees, the pitter-patter of the unseen animals, come beating into my chest, making me feel as though I"m dissolving and expanding into the night. When he pulls away it takes me a few seconds to catch my breath.
"Come on," he says. He leans a shoulder against the door of the trailer until it pops open.
Inside it"s very dark. I can make out only a few rough outlines, and when Alex shuts the door behind us even those vanish, sucked up into black.
"There"s no electricity out here," Alex says. He"s moving around, b.u.mping up against things, cursing every so often under his breath.
"Do you have candles?" I ask. The trailer smells strange, like autumn leaves that have fallen off their branches. It"s nice. There are other smells too-the sharp citrus sting of cleaning fluid, and very faintly, the tang of gasoline.
"Even better." I hear rustling, and a spray of water descends on me from above. I let out a small shriek and Alex says, "Sorry, sorry. I haven"t been here in a while. Watch out." More rustling. And then, slowly, the ceiling above my head trembles and folds back on itself, and all of a sudden the sky is revealed in its enormity. The moon sits almost directly above us, streaming light into the trailer and crowning everything in silver. I see now that the "ceiling" is, in fact, one enormous plastic tarp, a bigger version of the kind of thing you"d use to cover a grill. Alex is standing on a chair, rolling it back, and with every inch more of the sky is revealed and everything inside only seems to glow brighter.
My breath catches in my throat. "It"s beautiful."
Alex shoots me a look over his shoulder and grins. He continues folding back the tarp, pausing every few minutes to stop, scoot his chair forward, and begin again. "One day a storm took out half the roof. I wasn"t here, fortunately." He, too, is glowing, his arms and shoulders touched with silver. Just as I did on the night of the raids, I think of the portraits in church of the angels with their sprouting wings. "I decided I might as well get rid of the whole thing." He finishes with the tarp and jumps lightly off the chair, turning to face me, smiling. "It"s my own convertible house."
"It"s incredible," I say, and really mean it. The sky looks so close. I feel like I could reach up and slap my fingers on the moon.
"Now I"ll get the candles." Alex scoots past me toward the kitchen area and starts rummaging. I can see the big stuff now, though details are still lost in darkness. There"s a small woodstove in one corner. At the opposite end is a twin bed. My stomach does a tiny flip when I see it, and a thousand memories flood me at once-Carol sitting on my bed and telling me, in her measured voice, about the expectations of husband and wife; Jenny sticking her hand on her hip and telling me I won"t know what to do when the time comes; whispered stories of Willow Marks; Hana wondering out loud in the locker room what s.e.x feels like, while I hissed at her to be quiet, checking over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening.
Alex finds a bunch of candles and starts lighting them one by one, and corners of the room flare into focus as he sets the candles carefully around the trailer. What strikes me most are the books: Lumpy shapes that in the half dark appeared to be a part of the furniture now resolve into towering stacks of books-more books than I"ve seen anywhere except for at the library. There are three bookshelves mashed against one wall. Even the refrigerator, whose door has come unhinged, is filled with books.
I take a candle and scan the t.i.tles. I don"t recognize any of them.
"What are these?" Some of the books look so old and cracked I"m afraid if I touch them they"ll crumble to bits. I mouth the names I read off the spines, at least the ones I can make out: Emily d.i.c.kinson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth.
Alex glances at me. "That"s poetry," he says.
"What"s poetry?" I"ve never heard the word before, but I like the sound of it. It sounds elegant and easy, somehow, like a beautiful woman turning in a long dress.
Alex lights the last candle. Now the trailer is filled with warm, flickering light. He joins me by the bookshelf and squats, looking for something. He removes a book and stands, pa.s.ses it to me for inspection.
Famous Love Poetry. My stomach flips as I see that word-Love-printed so brazenly on a book cover. Alex is watching me closely, so to cover up my discomfort I open the book and scan the list of featured authors, listed on the first few pages.
"Shakespeare?" This name I do recognize from health cla.s.s. "The guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet? The cautionary tale?"
Alex snorts. "It"s not a cautionary tale," he says. "It"s a great love story."
I think about that first day at the labs: the first time I ever saw Alex. It seems like a lifetime ago. I remember my mind churning out the word beautiful beautiful. I remember thinking something about sacrifice.
"They banned poetry years ago, right after they discovered a cure." He takes the book back from me and opens it. "Would you like to hear a poem?"
I nod. He coughs, then clears his throat, then squares his shoulders and rolls his neck like he"s about to be let into a soccer game.
"Go on," I say, laughing. "You"re stalling."
He clears his throat again and begins to read: ""Shall I compare thee to a summer"s day?""
I close my eyes and listen. The feeling I had before of being surrounded by warmth swells and crests inside of me like a wave. Poetry isn"t like any writing I"ve ever heard before. I don"t understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind. It reminds me, I realize, of the music that struck me dumb nearly two months ago at the farmhouse. It has the same effect, and makes me feel exhilarated and sad at the same time.
Alex finishes reading. When I open my eyes, he"s staring at me.
"What?" I ask. The intensity of his gaze nearly knocks the breath out of me-as though he"s staring straight into into me. me.
He doesn"t answer me directly. He flips forward a few pages in the book, but he doesn"t glance down at it. He keeps his eyes on me the whole time. "You want to hear a different one?" He doesn"t wait for me to answer before beginning to recite, ""How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.""
There"s that word again: love love. My heart stops when he says it, then stutters into a frantic rhythm.
""I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach....""
I know he"s only speaking someone else"s words, but they seem to come from him anyway. His eyes are dancing with light; in each of them I see a bright point of candlelight reflected.
He takes a step forward and kisses my forehead softly. ""I love thee to the level of every day"s most quiet need....""
It feels as though the floor is swinging-like I"m falling.
"Alex-" I start to say, but the word gets tangled in my throat.
He kisses each cheekbone-a delicious, skimming kiss, barely grazing my skin. ""I love thee freely....""
"Alex," I say, a little louder. My heart is beating so fast I"m afraid it will burst from my ribs.
He pulls back and gives me a small, crooked smile. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning," he says, then traces a finger over the bridge of my nose. "You don"t like it?"
The way he says it, so low and serious, still staring into my eyes, makes me feel as though he"s actually asking something else.