The fourth day dawned dim and cloudy. Despite the lack of sunlight, Luke and Kamrin set off blithely from the house that had received them the night before. Dark silver clouds settled over the shining peaks of the Angelis structures, and beyond the angel sculpture, Luke thought he could see the faint dust clouds from the Purlieus far beyond. Beyond that, he knew, were the mountains. But Luke could never see so far. At least, he never tried.
Perhaps, with their newfound camaraderie, Kamrin could see where he was looking and ask a question related to his thoughts: “Luke, what’s the greatest crime that can be committed in the Purlieus?”
“That’s an ambitious question to ask in the morning, Kam,” Luke said, trying to play it off lightly. But facing the girl’s curious expression, he said gravely, “Evasion of duty, I suppose. Running away from work or difficulties.” Wanting to give Kamrin at least as much insight she’d given him the other day about her home, he added, “A common example would be deserting your community, escaping from the Purlieus.”
Kamrin wonderingly stared at the horizon Luke had been looking toward.
“If you’re born in the Purlieus, tough luck,” Luke added scornfully, “but you make the best of it. Only those afraid of dust and labor run away.”
“I escaped from Graceway into the Purlieus,” Kamrin said. “If you escape from the Purlieus, where do you go?”
“The mountains,” Luke answered quietly, pausing and guiding Kamrin’s gaze toward the elusive peaks beyond the immediate Angelis towers in their vision. “They surround the Purlieus in a circle, the way the Purlieus surround Graceway.”
“Why would anyone want to go there?”
“It’s selfish, shirking work to try and begin a new life for yourself—alone. And it never works. No one survives in the mountains.”
“They’re just escaping from their troubles into more, aren’t they?”
“You should answer that question for yourself.” Glad to end the conversation there, which had become increasingly and uncomfortably probing, Luke walked ahead with a mischievous smile, laughing as Kamrin ran up to him and tried to shove him.
Afterward, when Luke glanced up at the still heavily clouded sky and remarked worriedly that it might rain, Kamrin asked him how he knew what rain was, if he’d grown up never seeing rain in the Purlieus.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she added, frowning, “Graceway has over thirty different climates within itself. Twice that, if you consider the specific climate of each borough. But the entire Purlieus are as hot and dry as where you were?”
“The Purlieus also have a northern and southern region,” Luke answered with a sigh, “the northern Purlieus are where I’m from, where it’s hot and dry. As you go down south, it becomes wetter. The southern Purlieus are actually famous for rainstorms and floods; it’s cool and wet there. It’s really the unfortunate extremes of climates that the Purlieus have; the man was right,” Luke finished drily.
“What about the East and the West?”
“They’re no better. You’d think they are, but really they’re just inconvenient mixtures of the North and South. Graceway has all the lucky in-betweens.”
“I guess dust storms and rainstorms won’t be too bad once you’ve gotten used to them,” Kamrin said uncertainly, “but I don’t think I could ever adjust.”
“People do move around in the Purlieus to find a climate better suited for them,” Luke explained, “Mrs. Ainsley, for example, was someone who had recently moved to the northern Purlieus, which explains how confused and inexperienced she was with the dusty climate. And…”
For a few moments Luke held a brief debate with himself as ugly memories began to surface, but he felt pressured to answer Kamrin’s original question. He ended up telling Kamrin reluctantly, “My family, actually, moved from the southern Purlieus to the northern Purlieus when I was about your age. Anyway, that’s how I know what rain is. We had rain nearly every day down in the south.”
Inquisitive Kamrin, of course, latched onto that. “I don’t understand why your family would move north. Wet climates are easier to farm in, aren’t they? I think I’d rather rain than sandstorms.”
“By my family, I meant my brother and I. We came north because our uncle and aunt were living there,” Luke paused. “My parents both passed away in the southern Purlieus. That’s why my brother, who was nineteen then, brought us both up north.”
Kamrin’s mouth fell open a little, as she was likely piecing together his reluctance to talk about the weather, the mountains, and the other region of the Purlieus. Not wanting to meet her eyes, Luke began to whistle as they walked. Kamrin was silent for a few minutes and then said, “I’m so sorry, Luke.”
Luke nodded in what he hoped was a careless manner. At this point, the clouds had thinned and some light broke through the sky. Taking a deep breath, he said to Kamrin, “It’s time for lunch. I’ll race you to that house over there.”
It wasn’t that Luke did not know how to let children win; he simply needed the few moments alone to recover, and so he reached the house before her, but Kamrin did not seem to mind as she ran toward him breathless and laughing. Luke was then able to meet her cheerfully. “You’re slow, Kam! Too slow!” Luke yelled, laughing as he dodged her trying to catch up to him. “Don’t you ever play games with your friends that involve, say, running?”
It was strange that the comments of the owner of the home that treated them to lunch affected Luke so little, now that Luke had most of his focus on the possibility of danger lurking. Afterward, Luke and Kamrin walked for the rest of the afternoon, at more liberty to tease each other and laugh, travelling until they saw a welcome sight to their tired eyes as soft darkness spread over their heads: a gate labeled “Marzin borough of Graceway’s West division.”
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“We’re getting close to home, I can feel it,” Kamrin said happily, as they set out on their fifth morning. “Marzin is only one or two boroughs away from Savannah.”
The houses in Marzin were smaller, with flatter roofs, likely since they did not have to worry about snow piling on it and collapsing it. The weather was now closer to the weather in the Purlieus: the breeze was warmer and the sunlight stronger. The roads, instead of stone paving, were wet, packed dirt with muddy puddles, and Kamrin ran around the puddles in excitement at the sight of tiny green sprouts lifting their faces upward from the earth. “Luke, look at this one! It looks like it’s drowning!”
“It’s just very close to the puddle,” Luke assured her. “It’ll survive. Look at those flowers and trees: they all began as those little seedlings.” He’d marveled over the miracle of growth himself, in the Purlieu fields each year.
The warm sun overhead soon shone upon them with more heat than what was necessary.
“I thought the Purlieus got hotter than this,” Kamrin muttered.
“It’s humid here, that’s why it feels so much worse,” Luke retorted, brushing away drops of perspiration on his forehead.
It was just after lunch when they heard the sound of rushing, crashing water ahead of them. It came from a thickly wooded copse that the tracks were disappearing into. Kamrin was excited at the prospect of a waterfall, in a forest at that. Marzin was warm, wet, and marshy; they’d already passed by more brooks and puddles than Luke had seen in years.
As they approached the waterfall, Kamrin began plunging eagerly into the dense wood. Luke, on the other hand, was trying not to remember the last time he’d been near so much water at once. It had been in the southern Purlieus, his hometown.
“Luke, I found it!” Kamrin screamed delightedly from a little distance. Panicked at the thought of losing sight of her, Luke hurried after her through a thick growth of bushes, and joined her, scratched and sweaty, at a small clearing.
It was a magnificent sight, although one that Luke was perhaps unable to take in fully at that moment. The real waterfall was scarcely visible through the clouds of white, misty sprays and the iridescent rainbow that shimmered in the air, like a magical illusion. The roaring foam of water leapt over rocks about five times Luke’s height, pouring into a river that rushed aggressively down and through the woods. Kamrin stood stock-still, enjoying the beauty of the waterfall, very close to the riverbank.
Trying to keep his panic under control, Luke yelled, “Kamrin, not too close to the water!” and Kamrin obediently stepped back. Then she asked him, “Luke, could we follow the river and see where it’s going?”
Luke was about to say no when Kamrin told him persuasively, “Please? Look, it’s going in the general direction of the tracks anyway. I know we can’t follow it all the way, but by the time we return to the tracks, they should be easy to find.”
The moment Luke’s hesitation became visible, Kamrin was already running ahead of him along the riverbank. Luke shook his head as he followed behind, but he couldn’t help tracing the resemblance between Kamrin and him at her age: the impulsiveness and fascination with water.
His heart rate, already unsteady, became increasingly more irregular as they walked along the river. Luke had hoped that the river would tame itself as it flowed away from the waterfall, but it only seemed to rage more wildly as it thickened and swirled its way through the woods; it was joined by other trickles as it flowed fearlessly into the understory of the forest. Kamrin ran with it. Luke followed behind as the rushing, watery noise turned his hands colder and colder.
“What’s that?” he heard Kamrin cry out ahead. His head snapping up, he ran toward her, vowing to himself that he’d never fall into a human-made trap again. But when he reached Kamrin, the only thing he saw was what Kamrin was staring down at in disgust: a limp, drenched rag doll that had been washed up on shore. It was pale, bloated, and hideous against the smoothed dark mud. It had likely once belonged to a someone who’d dropped it into the river.
The doll was swollen and mutilated. Its clothes were in rags. Its face was white and wet and absolutely still, while water trickled down from it.
The scene Luke had tried destroying from his memory for the past nine years of his life, the scene that had broken his childhood to pieces suddenly flared back into his vision with such intensity that Luke was hit with an overwhelming wave of horror and nausea. Whirling away from the body of water, he retched into the bushes as his ears rang and his vision became blurry.
Heaving painfully, he remained there with his head bent and one hand clutching a nearby tree. Only after a minute or two did the surrounding noises enter his mind: the sickening and perpetual rush of the river, some cicadas crying in the distance, and Kamrin, who had her small hand on his shoulder, frightenedly saying, “Luke, Luke, are you all right?”
He was unable to answer just then, but Kamrin seemed to understand. This time she led him and he followed blindly, and a few minutes later they had relocated the familiar golden tracks, winding ahead of them through the leaf-strewn path in the woods. Now in the drier and quieter section of the forest, Luke slid down to the ground and Kamrin sat down beside him.
“I’m so sorry,” Kamrin was saying, “I should have known you didn’t want to be near the river…you said something about your parents passing away in the wet regions of the Purlieus, didn’t you?”
A long silence passed. Only after Kamrin brought him water in a tree bark cup was Luke able to answer, “You’re right, the southern Purlieus is where my brother and I were born and raised. We never dreamed we’d leave it. We used to love the rivers and lakes, and even the rainstorms.”
Kamrin was staring at him cautiously as she listened. The copse they were sitting in was mercifully quiet save the natural rustlings of the forest, helping Luke distance himself from the terrifying sound of water.
“I was your age when my mother went fishing one morning, as she had every day. She was usually able to read the signs of a storm coming, but that day, the storm came without warning.” Luke had less difficulty than expected talking about this part. “When she failed to return from the river, my father went to look for her, even when the rain was pouring: it was one of the worst rainstorms to ever hit the Purlieus. Every villager tried to stop him, but failed. And I don’t wonder. My father was probably one of the most strong-willed and stubborn men that ever lived.” Luke smiled faintly. “People say I get that from him. That’s why you remind me of myself, Kam. You’re a stubborn one as well.” He felt a smile break through his twisted expression.
Kamrin smiled back at him tremulously.
“And…what is there more to tell? By the time my brother and I woke up—we’d been sleeping that entire morning—the villagers were there to tell us that our parents had both been lost in the storm. By then the sun had come back up, so the entire village organized a search party along the river. My brother and I were told to stay in the house, but do you think we listened to them? We ran along the river by ourselves, still refusing to believe our parents could be drowned. The river was our playmate, not a murderer.”
Luke paused. “At least, those were my thoughts. I’m not sure what my brother was thinking. He was almost as old as I am now. We followed the river all morning, and a few hours later, we found our father washed up on the shore.” Shuddering, he let the remains of that memory wash over him again, although not quite as strongly as it had earlier at the riverbank.
“Like the rag doll,” Kamrin whispered remorsefully. “Luke, I’m so sorry.”
Luke shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Kam. How could you have known? It’s impressive that you managed to make the connection at all between my panic attack and what I’d said earlier.”
Luke rose slowly. Kamrin did also, holding his hand.
“We never found our mother, but the villagers did—further downstream. It wasn’t long before my brother and I faced the long journey toward the northern Purlieus, where we knew was hard labor, heat, dust, and also our aunt and uncle. We never wanted to see rain—or a river—again. And I never have, until today. You must have been awfully scared, Kam. Well, at least you know why I hate rivers.”
Kamrin nodded, and together they continued their way through the wood. The rag doll lay still behind them, splashed by the swirls of the river at its bank.
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Marzin was a small borough. Exhausted, Luke and Kamrin emerged from the forest on the other side of Marzin as the sun was setting. Through the rosy dusk, they knocked on the nearest house, which received them kindly. As Luke slept that night, he expected his dreams to be crowded with the horrors he’d experienced that day, but instead he dreamed peacefully of the twinkling sprays at the waterfall, casting watery, wavering lights on everything. The journey had changed him already, he reflected incredulously during a brief moment of wakefulness during that warm, calm Marzin night. He heard frogs outside the window and trees rustling lightly. It was easier now to think about his parents, and to acknowledge simply how much he missed them. The act of voluntarily mentioning them, and telling someone their story, had somehow also restored the pleasant memories of them as well. It was strange and incredible, but Luke felt that finally, after nearly nine years of denial on his part, healing had begun.
And, they had been told during supper, the gate to Kamrin borough was just ahead.
