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The Lieutenant’s Lover, Daughter of the South, The Hostage Bride, A Lady at Last: never in all her life had Soo read anything like these books. Whenever Soo imagined the Time Before, the thought was synonymous with machines-cars and engines and televisions and kitchen stoves and other things of metal and wire she had seen in Ba
She never should have brought one to the Wall that night, the night the girl had appeared. That was her big mistake. Soo hadn’t meant to, not really; she’d been carrying the book around in her pouch all day, hoping for a free minute, and had forgotten it was there. Well, maybe not forgotten, not exactly; but certainly it hadn’t been Soo’s intention, as things had occurred, that she should decide to make a quick visit to the Armory-where, alone in the quiet with no one to see her, she had pulled it out and started to read. The book she’d brought was Belle of the Ball (she’d read them all and started over), and encountering its opening passages for the second time-the impetuous Charlene descending the stairs to find the arrogant and mutton-whiskered Talbot Carver, her father’s rival, whom she loved but also hated-Soo found herself instantly reliving the pleasures of her first discovery, a feeling magnified by the knowledge that Charlene and Talbot, after much hemming and hawing, would find each other in the end. That was the best thing about the stories in the books: they always ended well.
These were Soo’s thoughts when, twenty-four hours later, busted from First Captain, Belle of the Ball still stashed in her pouch (why couldn’t she just leave the damn thing at home?), she heard footsteps ascending behind her and turned to see Jimmy Molyneau climbing off the ladder onto Firing Platform Nine. Of course it would be Jimmy. Probably he had come to gloat, or apologize, or some awkward combination of the two. Though he was hardly one to talk, Soo thought bitterly, not showing up at First Bell.
Jimmy? she said. Where the hell have you been?
The night was inhabited by dreams. In the houses and barracks, in the Sanctuary and Infirmary, dreams moved through the dozing souls of First Colony, alighting here and there, like wafting spirits.
Some, like Sanjay Patal, had a secret dream, one they’d been having all their lives. Sometimes they were aware of this dream and sometimes they were not; the dream was like an underground river, constantly flowing, that might from time to time rise to the surface, briefly washing their daylight hours with its presence, as if they were walking in two worlds at the same time. Some dreamed of a woman in her kitchen, breathing smoke. Others, like the Colonel, dreamed of a girl, alone in the dark. Some of these dreams became nightmares-what Sanjay did not remember, had never remembered, was the part of the dream that involved the knife-and sometimes the dream wasn’t like a dream at all; it was more real than reality itself, it sent the dreamer stumbling helplessly into the night.
Where did they come from? What were they made of? Were they dreams or were they something more-intimations of a hidden reality, an invisible plane of existence that revealed itself only at night? Why did they feel like memories, and not just memories-someone else’s memories? And why, on this night, did the entire population of First Colony seem to lapse into this dreamer’s world?
In the Sanctuary, one of the three J’s, Little Jane Ramirez, daughter of Belle and Rey Ramirez-the same Rey Ramirez who, having found himself suddenly and terrifyingly alone at the power station, and troubled by dark urges he could neither contain nor express, was, at that moment, cooking himself to a crisp on the electrified fence-was dreaming of a bear. Jane had just turned four years old. The bears she knew were the ones in books and in stories Teacher told-large, mild creatures of the forest whose hairy bulk and gentle faces were the seat of a benign animal wisdom-and that was true of the bear in her dream, at least at the begi
Nobody had explained these confusing events, nor had Jane told anyone what she’d seen. Teacher was nowhere around; some of the Littles-Fa
That was when it had occurred to Jane that the thing she’d seen was love. It could be nothing less than the force of love that had lifted Teacher into the air, into the waiting arms of the glowing bear-man, whose light was the radiance of royalty. He was a bear-prince who had come to take her away to his castle in the forest. So perhaps that was where Teacher had gone off to now, and why all the Littles had been moved upstairs: to wait for her. When she returned to them, her rightful identity as a queen of the forest revealed, they would be brought back downstairs to the Big Room, to welcome and celebrate her with a grand party.