The Blue Tower

Chapter 12

AFTER KIYO LEAVES, the walls start to feel tight around me. I try again to open the door to my room, like Kiyo did the day before. My hand presses in the same spot. I envision it opening. Frustration builds and channels into wind, but it blasts uselessly against the wood. The door doesn't budge.

I climb into the window and breathe the salty air and watch mist rising from the sea below. It's darker outside. Each moment it seems to get darker still.

The cool air feels good in my lungs. Birds swirl down below, occasionally diving into the water for fish. It must be cold when the birds fly out of the water, the wind blasting them. Maybe the taste of the fish in their mouths overwhelms the feeling of cold. Kiyo's memory made her cold. What about this place could change anything about her past? What will my own memory be? Part of me still thinks it could all be a lie, manipulating us, but after Kiyo's story I'm afraid to look into the Sieve. My body is young, without wrinkle, blemish, or scar, but maybe it was not like that before. I could have been older, in another time and place.

I move to the desk and take the feather pen in hand. This time when it presses on the paper, words come easily.

Kiyo looks twelve years old. She had five children. One of them was taken from her. She is cold inside.

I am cold inside. I look twelve years old. Did I have children? Did I die?

I had a mother. Had to.

What was her name? What was my name?

The pen drops. My throat is tight, my eyes moist. I had a mother and I can't remember her name. This realization has slipped in through a crack, like a beam of light through the tower's wall. I'm terrified of what will come next. I place the paper in the desk drawer and return to the window, breathing in the salty air and watching the birds dive for fish as the sky darkens into black. The birds are lucky. They are not prisoners of towers or walls in their minds.

When it's too dark to see, I feel my way along the edge of the room and into bed. Dreams come about the Blue Tower, but nothing before. In one dream Max and I stand facing each other on the top of the tower. I summon the wind to blast him off. He falls into darkness, then reappears exactly where he was. I throw him off the tower again, and he reappears. Over and over and over.

The room is light when I wake. Outside the sky is a dull, steady gray. There has been no sign of the sun, the moon, or the stars. But it's been only two days here. Maybe it's just cloudy by the sea. I'd rather believe that than consider the alternatives.

Someone has brought food again—a loaf of bread and a cup of milk. Bread in hand, I sit in the window and eat.

When Kiyo finally comes, it feels like routine. Neither of us speaks of her story. I tell her about my attempt to open the door and ask her how she did it. She explains that there's a latch inside the stone beside the door. She forms the air into a little whip, as much as she can control, to flick the latch open. She says I should be able to do it, especially since no one has seen anyone harness the air like I did against Max.

I try to open it again. But I can't make it work.

"Maybe that's why they assigned me to get you," she says with a laugh. She goes through the steps again, slowly, and eventually I open it myself. One bar of the prison gate removed.

We walk together up the path to the classroom. Sarai is there, waiting for us. The same group is here, with one difference.

Max is gone. A new boy has taken his place.

Before Kiyo and I take our seats, Sarai announces, "No need to get settled. We're going out of the tower today. You have two days until your first Scouring, and we need to make sure you're ready."

A murmur of excitement spreads around as we follow Sarai out of the classroom. She leads us down the long path through the tower and out a weathered door. We're greeted by a gust of wind from the ocean. The salty spray wastes no time in moistening my robe.

Before us, bobbing up and down in the water, are two wooden boats tied to a pier. The boats have masts rising high from their center, with sails rolled tight at the bottom. Oars stick out from the boats' sides. Six oars per side.

One of the boats has another group of twelve students. Abram stands with them, his gray beard blowing in the wind.

It's another team. And one of them is Max.