Grace (10 page)

He rubs his shirt collar, touching that top button once again. “They did it right away, but he left me there, made them watch me struggle. He asked me if I understood why he was doing it and I said I did. I just wanted the pain to stop and when it did I didn’t . . . I didn’t even look at my parents when he cut me down and told me to go. I just left. I never even told them goodbye.”

“Do you . . . do you think about them now?”

“Yes,” he says, a simple, broken word.

I look out the window. The stars are fading, drifting away as the dark sky slowly fills with morning light.

I take a deep breath.

T
hey’ll forgive you,” I say slowly, hating the words as I say them but knowing they’re true. “Over the border, I mean. Everyone will forgive you for what happened. You were young. You—you got broken by terrible things. And now you have a way to stop Keran Berj. You have those codes you took. You’ll be a hero. The past will . . . it will be understood. Forgotten.”

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.

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.

H
e 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 wonder 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.

A
s 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.

J
erusha 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.