Prized Read Free Page A

monocle,” Gaia said in wonder. Gone was the chance to ever know her grandmother, replaced by a concrete truth: this was the place she’d been seeking for weeks in the wasteland, her grandmother’s home, the Dead Forest that Gaia’s mother and Old Meg had urged her to find. She gazed out at the big, shady trees and lush greens of the commons, proof that nothing here was dead except the possibility she would ever be reunited with Danni O.
    â€œGaia Stone,” the Matrarc said slowly, testing the name. “Your grandmother told me about your family. A brother was taken away from you, I think. I remember now. They burned your face, didn’t they?”
    Everything inside Gaia slowed down, and she let her gaze drift up to the woman’s sightless eyes. It was beyond strange to come all this way and meet someone who knew, without seeing
or touching her, that her face was scarred. She untucked the hair behind her left ear to let it slide forward.
    â€œTwo brothers,” Gaia said, correcting her, as if it still mattered. “The Enclave took both of my brothers. One I’ve never met. The other left for the wasteland shortly before I did.”
    â€œWhy weren’t you taken into the Enclave? I don’t understand.”
    â€œThe burn scar kept me out of consideration for advancing or I might have been taken, too.”
    â€œWhere are your parents now?” the Matrarc asked.
    â€œDead, back in the Enclave. My father was murdered. My mother died giving birth to my sister.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” the Matrarc said.
    Gaia stared bleakly toward the screen door. “Please,” she said. “Let me go to my sister. I need to be sure she’s okay.”
    â€œYou can’t do anything more for her, and there’s something we need to settle,” the Matrarc said. She made a gesture. “Bring her a chair.”
    Chardo fetched one from farther along the porch, and Gaia eased down upon it gripping the edge of the wooden seat.
    â€œTell me something,” the Matrarc said. “Why did you go into the wasteland with a baby? Why would you risk her life?”
    â€œI didn’t have a choice,” Gaia said.
    â€œMaybe you didn’t for yourself,” the Matrarc said. “But why couldn’t you leave the baby behind? Surely someone in Wharfton would have cared for her.”
    Gaia’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. She had promised her mother to protect Maya, and for Gaia, that had meant staying together as a family. “I couldn’t leave her.”
    â€œEven knowing it was likely she would die?”
    Gaia shook her head. “You don’t understand. I had to take care of her. I didn’t know it would take us so long to cross the
wasteland.” Then she remembered that her friend Emily had offered to care for Maya, and she’d refused. Had that been a mistake?
    â€œOr what you would find on the other side, I expect,” the Matrarc asked. “It was a terrible risk. A desperate, suicidal risk, in fact. Were you persecuted in your home? Were you a criminal or a rebel of some kind? Did you leave to escape the law?”
    Gaia looked uneasily at Chardo and the others.
    â€œI resisted the government in the Enclave,” she admitted. “But I didn’t cause any rebellion. I did what I thought was right. That’s all.”
    â€œâ€˜That’s all’?” the Matrarc echoed, and then laughed. She pensively circled her cane tip against the floor while her eyes grew serious again. “You have a decision to make, Mlass Gaia. Staying in Sylum is like coming through a one-way gate. You can enter, but anyone who tries to leave Sylum dies. We don’t understand fully why this happens, but we find their bodies.”
    Gaia’s eyes grew wide. “I saw a corpse,” she said. “At the oasis two days ago. He was only recently dead. I was afraid it meant the water was poisonous.”
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