Following my gaze, Julian drew in an exasperated breath. “Untangling ourselves from the House’s regulations is a process. It’s the same as rewiring a conduction box. There’s much to learn. And it takes … practice.”
“Are you saying you practiced with Ezra?” I asked, unable to hide a smirk. Somehow, I felt much better knowing I wasn’t the only one who’d fallen under his thrall.
“Not intentionally,” Julian said with surprising honesty. “That was a mistake. I’m sure he’d agree.”
I hummed, noncommittal. I hadn’t asked Ezra about their relationship yet. I wasn’t ready to unravel the knot of pain between us. With Julian, I felt comfort in knowing we’d been raised the same way. Ezra was a wild unknown, and he’d hurt me terribly. The wound of hisbetrayal and manipulation throbbed no matter how much I tried to ignore it.
“We need to press on to Cascade before we starve,” Julian added, as if he’d heard my stomach growling. He probably had. Or, as was more likely, he wanted to change the subject. “The Taylors will have plenty of food.”
“Don’t say ‘food,’” I whined, pressing my hand to my belly. “It’ll start getting ideas.”
Julian let out a tired chuckle and began to pack up the rest of his things.
“Hey.” I walked over to Ezra and nudged him with my boot. “Julian says we have to keep going.”
Watching him wake, I felt a coil of heat under my ribs. He took several seconds to orient himself, his expression warm and sleepy in a way that stole my breath. Then he shifted and winced, his hand flying to his bandages. He let out a disappointed moan. “We’re not there yet?”
“We’ll never be there if you continue sleeping every time we stop,” I said.
“I won’t get better without plenty of naps.” The amused glint in his eyes told me he’d have napped whether he needed to commune with the grass or not.
As we began to travel again, Julian led the way, pack snug against his back and his gait long and sure. I was in the middle, with Ezra trailing me like a shadow. I never allowed him to slip too far behind in case he got any ideas about resting without telling us first.
“How does it work?” I asked, tired of the silence of our endless march.
Ezra answered quickly. “How does what work?”
“You. The grass. The forest. Getting better.”
“I wish I knew.”
Julian’s head gave a curious sort of tilt, but he said nothing.
“My mother told me some things,” Ezra went on, hesitant now, as if sifting through ashes to find the words. “Stories that had snatches oftruth in them. She didn’t call us Animators, you know. She called us witches. She’d tell me about witches letting saplings rock their babies to sleep, putting their bare feet in the dirt to feel the breath of the world.”
I’d never been told anything nice about witches or Animators. At the House of Industry, they were the villains, mad with the wildness of dark forests and cold winter winds. They stole babies, buried people alive in the dirt. They were characterized as too emotional to be properly in control of their power. Just like me.
It was one more way I’d been shaped and shamed into an unthinking tool.
I liked Ezra’s mother’s stories better.
“If she told you stories about witches, maybe she knew there were others like you out there,” I suggested softly. “Other survivors.”
“Maybe. It’s difficult for me to remember all the things she told me. I didn’t want to listen.” His voice grew so quiet, I worried he’d stopped walking, but when I glanced back, he was nearly beside me, his gaze fixed on the weedy wheel ruts at our feet as he shuffled along. “I think I was more powerful than her. Otherwise, she could have stopped me.”
“If you know how to make water move, why couldn’t you do it when we were on the raft?”
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out how I did that.” Ezra’s laugh was tired, void of amusement. “I can’t call to the water with the ease I can with plants. I suppose some things happen only because you don’t mean for them to happen.”
His words held a thread of significance I couldn’t grasp. “So you can’t control water?”
“I can’tcontrolanything. I can only ask. Water is stubborn and strong. Like you. Plants are friendly.”
“Plants are friendly,” I repeated, dubious, and pointedly ignoring being called stubborn.
“They are. You’d think so if you could feel it. Sometimes it’s not like asking—it’s like being called.”
“Is that what healing is like, too?” I asked, thinking of the life he’d walked away from. His apprenticeship, the gentleness of that work.
