UnStrung Read Free Page B

hand before he can, and shakes her head no.
    The group of kids sits in silence for a good thirty seconds, filled with the aftermath of the song. Then the elder releasesthem, and they all go back to their games and learning.
    She thanks Wil and wishes Lev luck with his new journey, and they leave.
    “You really are amazing,” Lev tells him once they’re out on the street. “I bet you could make millions outside the rez with your music.”
    “It would be nice,” Wil says wistfully, almost sadly. “But we both know that’s not going to happen.”
    Lev wonders at his sadness, because it seems to him if you never have to worry about unwinding, you can do anything. “Why no applause?” he asks. “Are people here that afraid of clappers?”
    Wil laughs at that. “Believe it or not, we don’t have clappers on the rez. I’d like to believe that’s because people here don’t get angry enough to become suicide bombers and make their blood explosive . . . but maybe it’s just that we vent our anger at the world in different ways.” Then he sighs and says, with more than a little bitterness, “No, we don’t applaud because it’s not our way. Applause is for the musician, and the musician is ‘just an instrument.’ Accepting applause is considered vanity.” Then he looks at his guitar, stroking the strings with his fingertips, peering into its hollow, like maybe something will speak out from inside. “Every night I dream of cheering crowds and wake up guilty for it.”
    “Don’t be,” Lev tells him. “Where I come from, everyone wants to be cheered for something. It’s normal.”
    “Ready to go back?”
    Lev isn’t sure whether he means Wil’s home or back to the world outside of the rez. Well, Lev isn’t ready to do either. He points down a winding path. “What’s down there?”
    Wil huffs, his mood clearly darkened by Lev’s talk of adoration. “Why do you need to see everything? Maybe there are some places it’s best not to go!”
    Lev stares at the ground, feeling more hurt by the rebuke than he wants to admit.
    When he looks up, Wil is staring with pain at the cliffs on the other side of the village, then down the winding path. “The medical warren is down there,” he tells Lev. “It’s where my mother works.”
    And then Lev recalls something. “And where your grandfather is?”
    Wil nods, saying nothing for a moment . . . and then he takes off his guitar and leaves it hidden behind a boulder. “Come on. I’ll take you there.”
    Lost in thought, Wil walks down the cobblestone road. His face looks grim, and Lev leaves him alone, wrapped in memories of his own. Clappers remind him of the last time he saw Connor and Risa, and guilt prickles him. They had rescued him, and in his own uneasy ambivalence between his past and his future, he had betrayed them. Connor and Risa had pretended to be clappers, solemnly applauding in grand, rhythmic sweeps—and it caused a panic. They had escaped. He hopes. The truth is, he has no idea what befell them. They could be unwound by now. In a “divided state.” The more he thinks about it, the more he despises that euphemism.
    The road curves outside the village toward the wide fissure in the cliff and dips into a gulch filled with gleaming one-story buildings separated by greenbelts.
    “This first building is the pediatrics lodge,” Wil explains tersely as they pass. Wil doesn’t stop, but Lev peers through the windows and into the patios, hoping to see the medicine woman. He sees other healers and groups of children, but not Wil’s ma.
    Lev shoots a look at Wil and sees his eyes glued on someone ahead: a short girl with warm almond eyes, a cascade of feathers woven into her vest, and a faint smile that remindsLev of Risa. She is standing in front of another medical lodge, stalling at the door, when she catches sight of Wil.
    Even before they speak, Lev realizes that this must be Wil’s fiancée. There’s a connection between them perhaps even