“A loom,” I breathe.
The scientist demonstrates the loom for a group of men. I glance in the direction of Kincaid, who was once an official in Arras, then jerk my eyes back to the screen. Kincaid is watching us as we watch the film, and now I feel his eyes on me.
The film shifts to footage of girls waiting in line to be weighed, to have their eyes checked, and their hands measured. Many smile and wave to the camera. One curls her arm up and stares out fiercely before dissolving into laughter.
“Are those…” Jost’s voice is full of surprise.
“The original Eligibles,” Dante finishes. I forget the tension between us, too wrapped up in the film. “We have to assume from the film that they are. I truly wish we had the sound so we could hear what they’re telling us. Most of the other records have been destroyed. The Guild has worked very hard at ensuring confidentiality regarding the Cypress Project.”
But it’s obvious to me what’s going on, especially as the screen flashes lists of items approved for transport followed by written guidelines for safe addition and eligible participants.
“Wait,” I say as something slowly dawns on me. “Those eligibility requirements weren’t for Spinsters.”
“No, families and individuals had to prove their health and value to earn a spot in Arras’s weave.”
“And those that didn’t?” I ask.
“You’ve seen the evidence,” Dante responds. “Not everyone on Earth migrated to Arras, but they didn’t die out either as the Guild had hoped. Those who were left behind adapted to the changing surface conditions. The war ended quickly. Hitler, the man who started it, had no one to fight, and there were bigger problems to grapple with here.”
“They picked who got to come along.” The unfairness of it grates against my sense of justice.
“They assumed the war would destroy the rest. The few records that have stood the test of time indicate that the war lasted for several more years, stretching out almost an entire decade. The Icebox was less affected as most of the fighting continued in what was known as Europe,” he says.
“Was known as Europe?”
“We have enough information to conclude that most of it is gone now. A large portion of Arras’s population came from Europe, as many of the Allied troops hailed from there. The rest imploded after they left. And of course, many died during squelched riots. The survivors were driven into the Icebox.” Dante keeps his eyes on the screen while he tells me this. He relates it like a newsman on the Stream.
We watch the few remaining images flit across the screen. The program ends with a happy family—two parents, a daughter, and a son—beaming out at the audience. I wonder who they were. And whether they thought this would consign them to immortality, and how they would feel to see the theater sitting in a ruined world. An empty, forgotten Earth.
As the last image vanishes, the lights in the theater come up. I blink against the brightness. Kincaid stands and politely claps.
“I hope you found that informative.” There’s something weary in his voice, a heaviness that doesn’t suit, and I realize the film has moved Kincaid to tears. He’s touched by something that happened hundreds of years ago.
“I think it raises more questions than it answers,” I say. I bow my head a bit in an attempt to hide the surprise I can’t quite wipe from my face.
“It’s the story of how our worlds came to be.” Kincaid spreads his hands. “You cannot expect one film to explain everything.”
TWELVE
DANTE FOLLOWS ME OUT OF THE THEATER, but Jost keeps a protective arm around my shoulder. I know I can’t avoid Dante forever, and now that I’ve seen the film, I shrug off Jost’s arm and kiss him swiftly on the cheek. He doesn’t like it, but he gives Dante a terse nod and leaves us, heading back into the main house while Dante and I tarry on the stone path. The lights have dimmed to near twilight, but I can see the outlines of the wild plants and hear the trickle of the nearest fountain.
“Have you told anyone about us?” Dante asks me.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“I can barely believe it myself,” Dante says.
“But you suspected it. Why?”
“You said your last name was Lewys and, well, because of your mother,” he says.
“You know her?” I ask.
“Of course, she’s your mother.”
I’m having a difficult time composing sentences, and thoughts, for that matter. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not possible. “So you
knew
her.”
“Yes,” Dante confirms.
“But Benn Lewys was my father,” I say, trying hard to sort this in my mind.
“Benn was my brother,” Dante says.
“He didn’t have a brother,” I say.
“No, his brother left.” Dante blinks several times as if resetting himself. “I left, because the Guild was coming after me.”
It doesn’t explain anything, especially not his claims about his past—our past—or how he wound up on Earth. Still, my mother hinted at this, so I concentrate.
“But,” I say, struggling, “you aren’t old enough to be my father.”
“About that,” he says, scratching his temple.
“Yes?” I prompt.
“Things are different here.”
“Do you have time machines?” I ask sarcastically.
“We don’t need them. Time doesn’t flow rapidly on Earth like it does where we came from. Arras is a construct, so its time is not bound to the same physical laws that time on Earth is. For every month that passes on Earth, a year passes in Arras. So if you’re sixteen years old—”
“It’s only been sixteen months since you left,” I say. If he’s right, then half a year has passed on Arras since we left. It will be spring again, and Amie will graduate primary academy soon.
“I feel like I’ve barely been away, but here you are. I didn’t know,” Dante says. “I wouldn’t have left Meria if I had known she was pregnant.”
He wants me to understand. He wants forgiveness.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. My words are glass, smooth and cold, and I know he can see right through them. “You still left her.”
You left me,
I add silently.
“You don’t understand.
Meria
refused to come with me,” Dante explains. “She didn’t want to run. I showed her the mark of Kairos so she could come if she changed her mind.”
“Why does this matter?” I ask, gesturing to the techprint—a symbol that’s lost its original meaning to me. Now it’s another secret—another lie.
“Credentials,” he says. “It’s not just the mark, but also the information the techprint contains. Most refugees and dissenters hide theirs along their hairline.”
That’s why the girl checked our necks, but because my father had burned mine into my wrist she almost didn’t see it. “Why is mine here?”
“Priority access,” Dante says in a grim voice. “If you’d made it out that night, our channels would have rushed your clearance. Kincaid’s men in Arras verify information, but the placement of your techprint would have granted you priority passage through a loophole.”
“A loophole?” I ask.
“It’s an exit from Arras. It’s how most refugees make it to Earth.
“I told Meria all of this. If she had left…” He pauses and searches my face as though he wants to tell me something, but he changes the topic instead. “You can’t imagine what it was like. A girl with fiery hair walks into my life with that mark, and you’re so like her, but—”
“My father marked me, not my mother,” I interrupt.
Betrayal flits across Dante’s face. His voice is raw when he speaks. “She must have told him about it.”
He’s hurt that she revealed his secret to her husband. His brother. “Yes,” I say, “because she loved him. Because he was a good man.”
“I never said differently.” But his body is saying it now. Every expression, every gesture, every pause is wounded. But then his posture changes, shrinking down before me. In my short time at the estate, Dante has never seemed vulnerable.
“I knew you the second I saw you,” he says. “I couldn’t explain it, even to myself.”
“That’s why you invited us back to the safe house,” I say.
“At first I thought you were Meria, altered a little, toying with me.”
“Mom wouldn’t do that,” I say defensively.
“The spitfire I knew would have, but I figured out pretty quickly you weren’t her,” Dante says.
“When you saw me kissing Jost.”
“I wouldn’t have put that past Meria, but no, I knew it wasn’t her. It was obvious you didn’t know me, but when you showed me that techprint and started telling your story—”
“You realized—”
“No, I don’t think I understood anything until I scanned the techprint,” he admits, “and even then, I wanted to deny it. But from the moment I saw you, you were as familiar to me as air in my lungs. I didn’t know why.”
“That sounds about right,” I say. I’d spent my entire first meeting with Dante trying to determine why he seemed so familiar, but how can you know someone you’ve never met? I can see my father—I can see Benn—in him now. Both are fair with dark features. Dante a younger version of the man I knew. “You had no idea about me?”
“No,” he says.
“But then how do you know you’re my father? If my mom married your brother—”
“It says so here,” he says, touching the print on my wrist.
“They never told me,” I say. The deception twists hard in my chest. Did it make Benn any less my father if he wasn’t biologically related to me? Does it matter that he never told me?
“They were protecting you,” he says. “The only way to protect my family was to run. If the Guild knew I had fathered you, they never would have let you be born.”
“Because you weren’t married to my mother,” I guess.
To my surprise this makes him laugh. “No matter what their politics are, no one in the Guild is that morally rigid. No, it would have been because they thought you would be too dangerous. I think you proved them right.”
“But why?”
“A child with your genetics can’t be controlled.”
“My genetics? How would they even know my genetics?”
Dante hesitates and his eyes grow distant, reflecting only the rippling water of the fountain. “They know everyone’s genetics. They knew your mother’s and they knew mine. That’s why they wouldn’t let me marry her. You’ve been in the Coventry. You know women need permission to give birth in Arras, but anyone can get pregnant,” he reminds me.
“But what do they do if they don’t get permission?” I ask.
“Earth isn’t the only world with a grey market. There are secrets in Arras, Adelice, but they’re bought at a cost.”
“Then why didn’t you stay? If there was somewhere to hide—if you loved my mother?” I ask.
“It was too late. If I’d left earlier, I could have set up in the grey market, but we didn’t know anything was wrong until my marriage request was denied. We knew then that whatever was in my file meant I couldn’t stay in Arras.”
He had wanted to marry her. The Guild hadn’t merely denied my mother’s request to have more children or placed my parents in menial jobs, the Guild had dictated the course of their lives with one simple denial. One that colored how my parents perceived each demand of their government thereafter.
“But why would the Guild want you?” I ask.
“Like I said, I have my secrets.” He runs a hand through his hair, evading my question. “Did your family have the radio? The books?”
I nod a yes.
“And the stories of Earth?”
I shake my head slowly. “Loricel, the Creweler at the Coventry, was the first person who told me about Earth. They must have forgotten.”
“Impossible. They chose not to tell you,” Dante says.
“So they knew, but why would they train me to fail at testing?” I demand. “They could have brought me here.”
“Meria had no desire to come to Earth,” he says in a cold voice, and I realize then that sixteen years in Arras may have given my mother time to move on and build a life, but Dante hasn’t had the same advantage. His scars are fresh. The damaged parts of him are still tender.
“This isn’t possible. Nothing you’ve told me makes sense. You can’t be my father, and Arras doesn’t run on an accelerated timeline.” Each of my words is louder than the last, as though volume can erase the information Dante has given me.
Dante pauses to consider this, and then he stands and walks to a fern lilting near the fountain. “Spinsters use a loom to see the fabric of the universe,” Dante says. “They work within the constructed weave of Arras.”
“Except Loricel, the Creweler,” I point out. “She could capture the threads without a loom. They even used her to help gather the raw source materials here.”
“That’s an entirely different level of skill,” Dante says, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. He’s trying to explain things and I’m interrupting him. “Very few
women
have that ability.”
The way he emphasizes
women
sends ice through my veins. Loricel alluded to this once, in her studio at the Coventry:
There are rumors of departments where men work with the weave, but the Guild always denies it.
“It’s different for men,” he continues. “We don’t need looms, but we can only alter things that already exist.”
I can’t hold back the questions now. “
We?
You can weave?”
“I can alter,” he clarifies. “Same materials, different results. Spinsters can create, while Tailors can only alter what’s already present. I’m a Tailor.”
“That’s why you ran.” Loricel was right about the secret departments employing men, and they had wanted Dante to be part of it.
“You met some of us there, I’m sure. A medic who healed you or maybe an assistant of some sort,” he says. “They were Tailors.”
My encounter with the medic who healed my leg during my retrieval is hazy from the Valpron I was administered that night, but I can recall how easily Cormac had him ripped. Cormac did it as a reflex, like the man was the least important person in the world. If these men exist within Arras, the Guild has a very different way of handling them. “Why aren’t we told about this?”