Folding the Sky

-18-

Jem knew what she was doing was almost certainly futile, but she had to try anyway.

    Even in the early hour, the sun was blazing, a pulsing heat plucking up beads of sweat upon her skin. Jem fanned herself with a hand as she peered over the ledge of the inn's roof, just as she had a few days ago when Chike had decided to go missing.

    This time, it wasn't Chike she was looking for, however. She was looking for Liesel.

    Jem wasn't new to the mechanics of her powers. She knew that an uncanny ability to mark out faces from miles away didn't mean anything if she didn't know whom those faces belonged to. Still, she couldn't squash that hope trembling inside of her: the thought that maybe, if she squinted hard enough into the crowds moving through the main street, she would know Liesel when she saw her.

    It was stupid. Very stupid. But she'd woken up before anyone else, blinking into the silence, and could think of no other way to kill time.

    The faces below were starting to blend together, a multicolored mob she could no longer make sense of, like a splintered mosaic. Jem's eyes began to throb, and her mind began to wander: back to Naino, back to her mother, back to the last time they'd spoken.

    It was the night before Jem met Zuri and the other Celestials at the gates of Celandine, long past the hour she should have been asleep. Jem had trailed into the kitchen, too hungry and wired to slumber just yet, and found her mother sitting at the window, illuminated like a marble statue in the silvery glow of the moonlight.

    Jem had sat down beside her, just studying her face for a moment—her real face, not the one that won her the collection of awards lining the mantle, not the one that beamed down from giant posters and billboards in inner Naino.

    Her mother spoke first. "You might not come back tomorrow, you know," she said, as if that wasn't the very thought keeping Jem awake. "Are you okay with that?"

    The answer had been a reflex. She didn't have to think about it. "Maybe there's something I've been called to do. A reason I actually have this power. And if that's the case, I don't care what risks come with it."

    Ruby stared at her, eyes like two black marbles, then sighed. "You are so young, Jem. Too young."

    Jem felt anything but young. She was tired, worn out, like an ancient piece of furniture left out on the curb. Finally, someone had picked her up. Finally, she could be of some use besides her mother's stepping stool.

    "Better to use my youth than keep wasting it," Jem had said, and gotten up again. Suddenly her mother was the very last person she wanted to talk to. "Goodnight, Mom. And goodbye."

    When the guards had brought her a pen and paper the evening before they set off, Jem had simply stared at the blank parchment before crumpling it and tossing it to the floor. She had no more words left to say, at least none that would make her mother understand.

    The best way to do that—maybe the only way, Jem thought—was to succeed.

    Yet lately it seemed as though every staggering step forward only preceded two more steps back. Could they do this? Really?

    "Jem?" A voice called behind her, making her jump. "Is that you? What on earth are you doing up here?"

    Jem turned just as Kalindi nudged open the door, stepping tentatively out onto the roof like it might crumble beneath her weight. Though she was dressed, her face made it obvious that she hadn't been awake for all that long. The skin beneath her eyes was puffy, and she squinted as though the sunlight hurt her.