Crossed

Cassia washes her dirt-encrusted hands in the cabin bathroom at a work camp in Tana Province. Tomorrow, she’ll go to Central for her next and final work assignment, and worries about being taken far from the Outer Provinces and her goal of finding Ky. She looks through her sack of personal belongings. Cassia keeps her most valuable possessions buried on the grounds nearby—Ky’s compass, her tablet container, and the packet of blue tablets that Xander stole for her. The compass and tablets are both contraband, and the tablet container marks her as a Citizen, a fact she chooses to keep hidden from the other girls who lost their Citizenship. During her time at the camps, she’s learned more about the Rules of Reclassification: If a parent becomes Reclassified, then their children are too, but if a child becomes reclassified, their families are unaffected. There was once a class below Aberration called Anomaly, but its people have either disappeared or died. Ky was Reclassified because of his father’s Infraction. Cassia takes comfort in the fact that “leaving to find Ky will not destroy my family,” even if she herself is Reclassified in the process (14).

In her sack, Cassia has the new rose petals that Xander gave her when she left the Borough, and like the other girls, she collects the paper messages from loved ones that they receive once a week. Her printed photo of a painting is a rarity in the camps, and the other girls gather around to look at it. Chasm of the Colorado by Thomas Moran is one of the Hundred Paintings approved for consumption by the Society. Cassia picks up the brittle three-month-old print, and it falls apart in her hands. Indie, another worker, brushes the pieces off Cassia’s bunk.

An Officer distributes the girls’ weekly messages. She tells Cassia to come with her to receive a communication; the other girls react with surprise and envy. Cassia hesitates, afraid of who she might see on the port screen. She covers her eyes in shock when she sees who it is: Xander, in the flesh.

Six weeks after Ky and Vick placed the dead boy in the river, Ky lies on a battlefield surrounded by gunfire and falling bombs. He and other boys act as decoys, pretend villagers stationed by the Society to draw Enemy fire. He keeps calm by telling himself that all the noise is a song: “The bass sound of the heavy shots, the soprano of the screams, the tenor of my own fear” (17). The airships overhead suddenly change course. Ky recalls this morning, when a group of new decoys set out to gather snow from a nearby plateau; he tells them that their mission is futile. Vick stays behind with Ky to help dig graves. The other decoys complain about the work, but Vick reminds them that they’re “supposed to act like farmers” (19).

While he digs, Ky thinks back on his first day in Mapletree Borough. After his parents died, Ky went to live with his aunt Aida—his mother’s sister—and his uncle Patrick. Aida gave him a silver compass—their family artifact—despite his protests that Aberrations aren’t allowed to have one. Ky fondly remembers the last time he was on the Hill with Cassia, in which he gave her the compass and she gave him a square of green silk from her Match dress.

Back in the present, the firing is over. Ky sees a boot approach the edge of his hiding place. He knows it’s Vick by the number of notches—no one else has as many notches representing their days as a decoy. He and Vick get back to digging. They know the decoys who went to the plateau won’t come back; however, Ky can’t help but envy them for getting a taste of snow.

Cassia and Xander embrace, holding each other tightly with happy tears in their eyes; they’re due for their first official face-to-face meeting as Matches. This usually happens at girls’ homes, but because Cassia doesn’t live in Oria Province anymore, Xander got permission to come to Tana. They’re entitled to one outing chaperoned by an Officer. Instead of attending a showing or playing a game, Cassia makes the unusual request to visit the local museum. Xander agrees, and at the museum, he picks up on Cassia’s hint to distract the Officer while she talks to a museum worker about the illustrated province map. Cassia hopes the man is an Archivist, an illegal-market artifact dealer. She initiates the trade with the code phrase: “I want to know more about the Glorious History of Tana Province” (28). After some negotiating, Cassia agrees to trade one of her most precious items—Ky’s compass—for a map to the Aberrations in the Outer Provinces.

Later, at the music hall, Cassia thanks Xander for being someone she can trust. He takes the compliment and slyly adds, “[Y]ou don’t know everything about me” (32). As they say their goodbyes, Xander tells Cassia that he’s moving to Camas Province for work before his final assignment in Central. Cassia laments the move, upset that Xander is leaving her. Frustrated, Xander declares that she left him before she even left the Borough. Cassia reveals she traded Ky’s compass for the Archivist’s map, showing Xander that his gifted blue tablets are still in her bag. Before Xander leaves, he kisses Cassia on the cheek.

Ky repeats the last words of “Crossing the Bar” over each body he and Vick bury. Vick asks Ky about the poem, but the latter gives vague answers. Vick presses, asking Ky why he never made notches in his boot (marking his days as a decoy), but the latter refuses to share any information, saying “no one needs to know” anything about him (40). They break for lunch, and Ky sketches the letter “C” into sandstone with his gun, thinking of Cassia. Ky remembers the firing from his first night in the village. He and Vick took cover while other decoys ran outside to shoot. The pair had figured out that the guns didn’t work, and regretted not telling the other decoys earlier. Ky eats his food and wonders why those in charge bother giving the decoys anything to eat when they could just give them blue tablets. Vick tells him the truth about the tablets: They “don’t save you. They stop you” (42).

Vick’s miniport—the only communication device in the village—alerts him that the decoys are all being moved. The Officer complains that the casualties were much worse than expected because of the decoys who left for the plateau. The remaining decoys are being moved to another location, and a crew of replacement decoys will replenish their lost numbers. Ky and Vick board the airship and recoil at the young replacements, many of whom don’t look older than 13.

Not far from the new village, Ky immediately recognizes The Carving, a vast network of canyons and rock formations. The new decoys latch onto Vick as their leader. Eli, one of the new children, asks Vick if he’s going to give them a speech. Vick refuses, telling them to act like villagers, tend their assigned cotton crop, and not bother with fake ammunition. Ky tries to comfort Eli by telling him that the villages were once real farming communities. He privately tells Vick that he grew up in the area and is familiar with the landscape. The pair decide to run away from the village, the Society, and the Enemy. Ky declares that Eli is coming with them.

Cassia waits until everyone else in the cabin is asleep to unfold the Archivist’s paper. Much to her dismay, it’s not a map at all, but a story. It details a man pushing a rock up a hill over and over again, while the people in the nearby village ignore him. One day, a curious girl approaches the man and sees that the boulder is covered in words. The man explains that these are “the sorrows of the world,” which he pilots “up the hill over and over again” (54). He says he’s making a river, and when a storm comes and washes him away, the girl understands that he was onto something. She takes the man’s place and continues his work, pushing the boulder. When one boulder pusher dies, another person takes their place, taking up the mantle of the Pilot. The Pilot is the leader of the Rising against the Society.

Cassia is thrilled to learn that there’s a real, organized rebellion against the Society. She considers telling the other girls, but decides against it when she hears the Officers patrolling outside. Indie almost catches Cassia destroying the paper in the bathroom, washing the pieces down the sink. Early in the morning, Officers come to take girls from every cabin to an airship. Indie is among those chosen, but her bunk is empty. Cassia rushes to hide her blue tablets and notices her Match banquet box is missing. She follows an Officer and the chosen girls into the airship. Another Officer catches Indie and drags her onto the airship, where she and Cassia lock eyes; the airship takes off.

Ky improvises new weapons for the decoys by pouring gunpowder from half-exploded Enemy shells into a gun barrel. Vick tells the other decoys to keep digging graves while he and Ky fill the guns with projectiles. As the pair work, they decide to leave the village that night.

Ky and Vick acknowledge that the homemade weapons won’t be enough to save the other decoys, even if it gives them a chance to return fire. For no discernable reason, Vick asks Ky for his full name; he offers his own full name, Vick Roberts. Ky considers giving his first last name, the one his parents gave him (Finnow), but decides on Markham “because that’s the name she knows me by. That’s my real name now” (67).

The Official on the airship explains that the girls are going to the Outer Provinces to fight in the war with the Enemy. He claims the Society is “solidly in power” and that the Outer Provinces “are well-populated and thriving” (68-69). The girls line up to receive new plainclothes and heated coats. Cassia panics at the thought of being searched, and Indie notices. She offers to hold Cassia’s belongings while she gets her clothes if Cassia does the same for her. Cassia manages to keep her packet of blue tablets with this arrangement. She doesn’t look at what Indie gives her to hide, only noticing that it must be small and lightweight.

As they wait for the Officers to finish doling out clothing and rations, Indie compares the sound of the ship to a river. Cassia mentions the Sisyphus River, the river from Ky’s childhood, and how the Society killed it with poisoning. Indie, who grew up in a place with many rivers, disagrees, saying “You can’t kill anything that’s always moving and changing” (72).

Ky and Vick finish showing the other decoys how to work their new guns. They haven’t told anyone that they’re leaving, including Eli. Vick relays a message from his miniport: They’re getting new villagers soon. Regardless, he says they need to be ready to return fire if the Enemy attacks tonight. The group wonders if the Society is running out of Aberrations. Ky makes a comment about all the Anomalies dying in battle before them, and Vick punches him. The outburst shocks Ky and Eli, but the Enemy arrives and cuts their conversation short.

The other decoys spring into action. Ky tells Eli that they’re running, and Eli hesitates before obeying. They cover some ground before Eli starts to lag. He hears the decoys screaming and insists that they go back and help them. Ky refuses, and a big explosion sends them running again. He remembers the day his village was destroyed by the Enemy. On that day, he grabbed his mother’s paintbrush and “ran for the Carving” (78) like his father told him to, but the Officials caught him. Ky quickly learned that he would need to lie to survive in the Society, so when the Officials asked him about the paintbrush, he told them that he’d found it on the ground. Back in the present, he, Vick, and Eli run into the Carving. They smell smoke as they climb into the canyon.