Reached by Ally Condie Page B

much, from the way the Archivist in Tana reacted when I tried to trade with the Tennyson poem. But I thought that the Thomas poem, unknown to anyone except Ky and me, might have been an exception. Still, I had a wealth of possibility, thanks to Ky.
    “You can store your items here,” the Archivist said. “The fee is minimal.”
    Instinctively, I drew back. “No,” I told her. “I’ll find somewhere else.”
    She raised her eyebrows at me. “Are you certain you have a secure place?” she asked, and I thought of the cave where the pages had been safe for so long, and the compact where Grandfather kept the first poems hidden for years. And I knew where I’d hide my papers.
    I’ve burned words and buried them,
I thought,
but I haven’t tried the water yet.
    In a way, I think it was Indie who gave me the idea of where to hide the papers. She always talked about the ocean. And even more than that, it might have been her odd, oblique manner of thinking—the way she looked at things sideways, upside down, instead of straight on, seeing truth from unexpected and awkward angles.
    “I want to trade for something right away, tonight,” I told the Archivist, and she looked disappointed. As though I were a child who was about to spend all these fragile beautiful words on something shiny and false.
    “What do you need?” she asked.
    “A box,” I said. “One that fire can’t burn, and that won’t let in water or air or earth. Can you find something like that?”
    Her face changed a little, became more approving. “Of course,” she said. “Wait here. It won’t take me long.” She vanished again along the shelves.
    That was our first trade. Later, I discovered the woman’s identity and learned that she was the head Archivist in Central City, the person who oversees and directs the trades but doesn’t often execute them herself. But, from the beginning, she’s taken a special interest in the pages Ky sent me. I’ve worked with her ever since.
    When I climbed out from underground that night, clutching the box full of papers in my chilled hands, I paused for a moment at the edge of the field. It was silver grass and gray and black rubble. I could make out the shape of the white plastic that covered the other excavations, protecting them from a Restoration interrupted and not yet resumed. I wondered what that place used to be and why the Society decided to abandon any attempts at bringing it back.

    And then what happened next?
I ask myself.
Where did I put the pages after I took them from the Archivists’ hiding place?
    For a moment, the memory tries to slip away like a silvered fish in a stream, but I catch hold of it.
    I hid the papers in the lake.
    Even though they told us the lake was dead, I dared to go into it because I saw signs of life. The bank looked like the healthy streams in the Carving, not the one where Vick was poisoned. I could see where grass had been; in a place where a spring came in and the water was warm, I even saw fish moving slowly, spending the winter deep below.
    I crept out through the brush that went up to the edge of the lake, and then I buried the box under the middle pier, under the water and stones that pattern in the shallow part where the lake touches shore.
    And then a newer memory comes back.
    The lake.
That’s
where Ky said he’d meet me.

    Once I reach the lake, I switch on the flashlight I keep hidden in the brush at the edge of the City, where the streets run out and the marsh takes over.
    I don’t think he’s here yet.
    There are always moments of panic when I come back—will the papers be gone? But then I take a deep breath and put my hands into the water, move away the rocks, and lift out a dripping box filled with poetry.
    When I trade the pages, it’s usually to pay for the exchange of messages between Ky and me.
    I don’t know how many or whose hands the notes will go through before they get to Ky. So I sent my first message in a code I created, one that I