My feet feel lighter when I start walking again and I pick up speed. I see a smooth, round rock that looks like a polished egg, like the gift Bram gave to Grandfather. I leave it there, smal and brown in the grass, and I move even faster, pushing the branches out of my way and ignoring the scratches on my hands. Even when a pine branch snaps back and I feel the sharp slap of needles and sinewy branch on my face, I don’t stop.
I’m going to be the first one to the top of this hil and I’m glad. There is a lightness to the trees ahead of me, and I know it is because there is sky and sun behind them instead of more forest. I’m almost there. Look at me, Grandfather, I think to myself, but of course he can’t hear me.
Look at me.
I veer suddenly and duck into the bushes. I fight my way through until I crouch alone in the middle of a thick patch of tangled leaves where I hope I wil be wel concealed. Dark brown plainclothes make good camouflage.
My hands shake as I pul out the paper. Was this what I planned al along when I tucked the compact inside the pocket of my plainclothes this morning? Did I know somehow that I’d find the right moment here in the woods?
I don’t know where else to read it. If I read it at home someone might find me. The same is true of the air train and school and work. It’s not quiet in this forest, crowded with vegetation and thick, muggy morning air wet against my skin. Bugs hum and birds sing. My arm brushes against a leaf and a drop of dew fal s onto the paper with a sound like ripe fruit dropping to the ground.
What did Grandfather give me?
I hold the weight of this secret in my palm and then I open it.
I was right; the words are old. But even though I don’t recognize the type, I recognize the format.
Grandfather gave me poetry.
Of course. My great-grandmother. The Hundred Poems. I know without having to check on the school ports that this poem is not one of them. She took a great risk hiding this paper, and my grandfather and grandmother took a great risk keeping it. What poems could be worth losing everything for?
The very first line stops me in my tracks and brings tears to my eyes and I don’t know why except that this one line speaks to me as nothing else ever has.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
I read on, through words I do not understand and ones that I do.
I know why it spoke to Grandfather: Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
And as I read on, I know why it speaks to me: Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
My words have forked no lightning. Grandfather even told me this, before he died, when I gave him that letter that I didn’t truly write. Nothing I have written or done has made any difference in this world, and suddenly I know what it means to rage, and to crave.
I read the whole poem and eat it up, drink it up. I read about meteors and a green bay and fierce tears and even though I don’t understand al of it —the language is too old—I understand enough. I understand why my grandfather loved this poem because I love it too. Al of it. The rage and the light.
The line under the title of the poem says Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953.
There is another poem on the other side of the paper. It’s cal ed “Crossing the Bar,” and it was written by someone who lived even further in the past than Dylan Thomas—Lord Alfred Tennyson. 1809-1892.
So long ago, I think. So long ago they lived and died.
And they, like Grandfather, wil never come back.
Greedy, I read the second poem, too. I read the words of both poems over again several times, until I hear the sharp snap of a stick near me.
Quickly, I fold up the paper and put it away. I have lingered too long. I have to go; to make up the time I’ve lost.
I have to run.
I don’t hold back; this isn’t the tracker, so I can push myself hard, through the branches and up the hil . The words of the Thomas poem are so wild and beautiful that I keep repeating them silently to myself as I run. Over and over I think do not go gentle, do not go gentle, do not go gentle. It isn’t until I’m almost at the top of the hil that realization hits me: There’s a reason they didn’t keep this poem.
This poem tel s you to fight.
One more branch stings my face as I break through the clearing, but I don’t stop—I push out into the open. I look around for the Officer. He’s not there, but someone else is already at the top. Ky Markham.
To my surprise, we are alone on top of the hil . No Officer. No other hikers.
Ky’s more relaxed than I have ever seen him, leaning back on his elbows with his face tipped toward the sun and his eyes closed. He looks different and unguarded. Looking at him, I realize that his eyes are where I notice most the distance he keeps. Because when he hears me, he opens them and looks at me, and it almost happens. I almost catch a glimpse of something real before I see again what he wants me to see.
The Officer appears out of the trees next to me. He moves quietly, and I wonder what he’s observed in the woods. Did he see me? He looks down at the datapod in his hand and then back up at me. “Cassia Reyes?” he asks. Apparently I was predicted to finish second. My stop must not have been as long as I thought.
“Yes.”
“Sit there and wait,” the Officer says, pointing toward the grassy clearing at the top of the hil . “Enjoy the view. According to this, it’s going to be a few minutes before anyone else gets up here.” He gestures to the datapod and then disappears back into the trees.
I pause for a moment before I walk toward Ky, trying to calm down. My heart pounds, fast, from the running. And from the sound in the trees.
“Hel o,” Ky says, when I get closer.
“Hel o.” I sit on the grass next to him. “I didn’t know you were doing hiking, too.”
“My mother thought it would be a good choice.” I notice how easily he uses the word “mother” to describe his aunt Aida. I think about how he has slipped into his life here, how he became who everyone expected him to be in Mapletree Borough. Despite being new and different, he did not stand out for long.
In fact, I’ve never seen him finish first in anything before, and I speak before I think. “You beat us al today,” I say, as if that fact weren’t obvious.
“Yes,” he says, looking at me. “Exactly as predicted. I grew up in the Outer Provinces and have had the most experience with activities like this.”
He speaks formal y, as if reciting data, but I notice a sheen of sweat across his face; and the way he’s stretching his legs out in front of him looks familiar. Ky’s been running, too, and he must be fast. Do they have trackers in the Outer Provinces? If not, what did he run to out there? Were there also things he had to run from?
Before I can stop myself, I ask Ky something that I should not ask: “What happened to your mother?”
His eyes flash to me, surprised. He knows I don’t mean Aida, and I know that no one else has ever asked him that question. I don’t know what made me do it now; perhaps Grandfather’s death and what I’ve read in the woods have left me on edge and vulnerable. Perhaps I don’t want to dwel on who might have seen me back in the trees.
I should apologize. But I don’t and it’s not because I feel like being mean. It’s because I think he might want to tel me.
But I am mistaken. “You shouldn’t ask me that question,” he says. He doesn’t look at me, so al I can see is one side of him. His profile, his dark hair wet with the mist and the water that fel from the trees as he passed through them. He smel s like forest, and I lift my hands to my face to smel them—to see if I do, too. It might be my imagination, but it seems to me that my fingers smel like ink and paper.
Ky’s right. I know better than to ask a question like that. But then he asks me something that he shouldn’t ask. “Who did you lose?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tel ,” he says simply. He’s looking at me now. His eyes are stil blue.
The sun feels hot on the back of my neck and the top of my hair. I close my eyes the way Ky did earlier and tip my head back so that I can feel the heat on my eyelids and across the bridge of my nose.
Neither of us says anything. I don’t keep my eyes closed for long, but when I open them the sunlight stil blinds me for a moment. In that moment, I know I want to tel Ky. “My grandfather died last week.”