“You’re so mean to Grays,” she laughs. “Something you don’t like about them?” She runs a hand through my hair as she comes to sit on the arm of my chair.

“They’re too obedient.”

“Ah, so that’s why you like me.” She digs her fingernails lightly into my scalp, teasing. “Statues are a bad idea. Too easy to deface. Vandals could give you a mustache or breasts at their leisure. Risky proposition, breasts.”

“Could be worse.”

“Well, there nothing worse than a mustache. Daxo is trying to grow one. I think it’s meant to be ironic? I’m not sure.” Mustang laughs lightly as she settles in on the metal chair next to me. “His sisters will sort that out.”

She looks around at the mine and the Can. “Place is disgusting. I wrote a piece of legislation that the Reformers plan to put through after all this. It’ll gut the Department of Energy, restructure the Board of Quality Control”—she looks around the Pot—“change the way this meat shop is run. You see the supply stores in this place? Food enough for seven years, yet they keep maxing out their acquisition orders. I took a look at their files. The MineMagistrate’s skimming off the top. Likely reselling the supplies on the black market. Lying Copper thought we wouldn’t notice. Probably because some Gold or Silver told him they’d grease the right palms to make sure no one ever noticed. All while he has a malnourished population. Corruption everywhere.”

She wrinkles her nose and flicks a piece of flaking paint from her chair.

“Why are we here?” she asks. “Did something happen with my brother?”

“This is the mine where the girl sang the Forbidden Song,” I say after a moment. Her eyes open wider as she scans the crowd beneath.

“These poor people.”

She watches me, waiting expectantly for what I have to say. But there are no words left. Only something to show. I take her hand and stand. “Come with me.”

49

Why We Sing

I’ve never felt fear like this.

Lykos is dark at night. Lights all turned down so the Reds don’t go mad from eternal day. Somewhere, the nightshifts weave silks, mine soil. But here in this wide tunnel, there is no motion, no sound except the murmur of HCs showing old terraforming holos and the hum of distant machines. It is cool here, yet I sweat.

Mustang is silent beside me. She has not spoken since we descended in our gravBoots to the Common’s floor, ghostCloaks making us nearly invisible to the lingering drunks slumped over tables and sleeping soundly on the gallows steps. I hear the tension in her silence and wonder what she thinks.

My heart runs wild in my chest, so loud Mustang has to hear it as we enter Lambda Township, where I grew from boy to man. The place is smaller. The ceiling lower. Rope bridges and pulley systems like children’s toys. The HC that once glowed with Octavia au Lune’s face is an ancient relic, pixels missing. Mustang peers around, cloak deactivated. Her eyes dance from bridge to bridge to home like she’s seeing something wonderful. It didn’t occur to me a Gold would ever find interest in a simple place like this.

I climb the stone steps to the bridge that leads to my old home just like I did as a boy. Only, my limbs are too large now. I forgot I had gravBoots. Mustang doesn’t use hers either. She follows behind and dusts off her hands as she makes the landing where the thin metal door to my old family home has been cut into the wall.

“Darrow,” she says so quietly, “how do you know where you’re going?”

My hands tremble.

“You told me to let you in.” I look down at her.

“I did, but …”

“How far do you want to go?”

I know she feels what’s coming. I wonder how long she’s felt it. The strangeness of me. The odd mannerisms. The distant soul.

She looks at her hands, stained red from the dust of the stone stairs. “All the way.”

I hand her a holoCube. “If you mean that, press play, and come in when you’ve finished watching. If you leave, I understand.”

“Darrow …”

I kiss her one last time, hard. She clutches at my hair, sensing that when we part, something will be different. I find myself pulling back. My hand cups her jaw. Her eyes, closed, begin to flutter open as I step away and turn to the door.

I push it open.

I have to duck to enter. The home is cramped. Quiet. The first floor is the same as I remember. The small metal table has not changed. Nor have the plastic chairs, the small sink, the drying clay dishes, or Mother’s prized teakettle that heats on the stove. A new rug covers the floor. It’s the work of a novice. Different boots sit where Father used to place his at the base of the stairs, where I used to set mine. Wait. Those are mine. But tattered and worn more than they’d been in my day. Were my feet really so small?

Silence guards the house. All sleep except her.

The teakettle hisses as the water reaches a boil. Soon it begins its breathy murmur. Feet scrape over the stone stairs. I almost run out of the room. But terror roots me to the spot as she comes closer. Closer till she’s in the room with me, pausing at that last stair, foot suspended, forgotten. Her eyes find mine. They never leave. Never look at the rest of my Golden form. I panic as she says nothing. A breath. Three. Ten. She doesn’t know me. I’m a killer in her house. I shouldn’t have come here. She doesn’t recognize me. I’m a lost Gold poking his head in out of curiosity. I can leave. Run away now. My mother never has to know what her son has become.

Then she finishes her step and comes toward me. Gliding. It’s been four years. She looks twenty older. Lips thin, skin loose and webbed with lines, hair worked through with sooty gray, hands tough as oak and gnarled as ginger roots. When her right hand reaches for my face, I have to kneel. Her eyes still have not left mine. Now they let out tears. The teakettle screams on the stove. She brings her other hand to my face, but it is unable to open and touch like the other. It remains twisted and clenched, like my heart.

“It’s you,” she says softly, as though I will disappear like a night vision if she says the word too loudly. “It’s you.” Her voice is different, slurred.

“You know me?” I manage desperately.

“How could I not?” Her smile is twisted, left eyelid sluggish. Life has been less kind to her than to me. She’s had a stroke. It breaks me to see her body fail her. To know I wasn’t here for her. To know her heart was broken. “I would know you … anywhere.” She kisses my forehead. “My boy. You’re my Darrow.”