The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(61)

A tree is an astonishing thing. So much of it you will never see. Not its roots: a whole secret life spreading out in the blind earth, drinking from unknown sources. Not its core: the sapling it once was, clad by each successive year of growth.

Does a tree know how deep its roots go? Can it locate its original seed?

I thought about how all seeds are necessarily lost things, dropped and abandoned.

This tree, I thought, felt familiar. It felt like me.

It had been stripped like me, like anyone who had ever been tithed. The difference was that someone had taken care to gild the tree’s wounds. I was luckier than so many in the Ward—I had lost only blood. But I didn’t move through the world the way Sid did, as someone who fully owned her body. I had always been afraid. I never knew what would be taken from me or when, and although I didn’t always think about it or fully feel that fear, it was as much a part of who I was as my light brown skin, my sturdy hands.

It was so tiring to be afraid all the time.

So I decided I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t go to the wall and touch it the way children touch their mothers. I decided it didn’t matter that I was afraid of heights. I chose not to be.

I began to climb the tree. I ignored how sweaty my hands got, how my breath rattled in my throat, how my mouth got dry. I didn’t dare look down.

I went as high as I could, working my way up into the branches, then settled into a crook that was almost comfortable, though my rear ached and my leg eventually fell asleep.

The ground stretched below. The ground feels like such a safe thing … until you get too far above it.

But the leaves rushed and played around me. My breath calmed. I listened to the leaves. Their whispers almost made sense. I realized that was a strange thought, the kind that means sleep is coming, but as soon as I knew it was coming, it was already there.



* * *



I didn’t know how much time passed before I woke in the darkness.

I heard the hush of someone walking over grass. The sound below grew closer, and then there was a musical glug and slosh of a large quantity of water flowing from a metallic bucket or can.

Someone was watering the tree.

Carefully, as soundlessly as I could, I shifted to peer down through the branches.

The man emptied his tin watering can. It thumped hollowly against his thigh as he walked away, the smell of wet earth strong in the air. His red robe trailed behind him.

It was a councilman.





35


“HMM,” SID SAID THE NEXT DAY, dipping a thin, buttered slice of toast into the soft yolk of an egg. She had knocked softly at my door before bringing in a tray with breakfast for both of us: soft-boiled eggs encased in pale blue shells, pink pastries clouded with cream piped between wispy wafers, spongy pancakes dotted with holes and sopping with butter, a dish of amethyst-colored jam, a lily-yellow pot filled to the brim with steaming black liquid that scalded my tongue and made my heart race. “A councilman.” Sid squinted as she stared from our little table on the balcony out over the bright sea. I had slept until midday. The sun was high. It honeyed Sid’s skin and made the freckle beneath her eye stand out like a star. In this light, I could see other, fainter freckles on her cheekbones, and even one near her upper lip. She sipped the hot black drink. The sun shone through her peacock-blue porcelain cup.

She caught me staring and held out her cup for me to drink from it, even though my own full cup remained untouched after my first sip. I refused. “You don’t like it?” she said.

“So bitter.”

“It’s coffee, imported from the east. I always travel with my own supply. I adore it. Tea tastes like water to me, and coffee from anywhere else in the world is truly inferior. Here.” She uncovered a little jar shaped like an Elysium bird nesting on golden eggs. The bird’s back was a lid that revealed sugar molded into hearts. I had never seen so much sugar. I resisted the temptation to sneak the whole jar into my pocket. Sid dropped one sugar heart into her cup, then looked at me, considering, and dropped in two more. She offered the cup again. “You said you like sweet things.”

I was surprised she remembered. I didn’t think any amount of sugar could make me like the coffee, but I wanted to drink from Sid’s cup. I wanted to put my mouth where hers had been. I tried the coffee again, and made a face.

“Still too bitter?” she said.

I handed the cup back, but she said, “Now it’s too sweet for me,” and chucked the cup’s contents off the balcony. She laughed at my gasp.

“You can’t just do that,” I said. “You could have burned someone below.”

“I heard no scream.” She was impishly delighted by my moral outrage.

“Sid.”

“We are above a garden. There is no one below. Anyway, the whole High quarter is still asleep. It’s only just past noon.”

“You wasted it.”

“You didn’t want it and neither did I.” She tucked half her smile away when she saw me shake my head. “Very well, I won’t do it again. Let’s find something you do like. We need to nourish you. Since you slept in a tree. Try a pancake with jam.”

“I didn’t sleep in it. At least, not on purpose. I was—”

“Spying?”

She reached across the table to spread the purple jam on a pancake that she placed on my plate. I was too surprised to stop her. This entire breakfast was surreal. No one had ever served me anything before.