“Hi, Tyse.”
“Hey. Where ya been? I’ve been asking around for ya for two days now.”
“Here and there. How’s the lady doing?”
“Good, I think. Haven’t seen her all day.”
“She’s working for Rodge.”
“Yeah. Did you go up there?”
“I passed by on my way doing something else. I didn’t say hi, though. Are you working now?”
“Kinda. For the week.”
“Well, I was thinking… I could be her friend. If that’s OK.”
It should be OK. I mean, she’s seven. No twenty-eight-year-old woman wants to hang out with a seven-year-old. Clara will be polite and say hello—because something tells me that being ‘polite’ is kind of a thing for Clara—and then she’s gonna forget all about the kid.
So it’s gonna go something like this: Anneeta will be all,Hi, I’m Anneeta, the resident tower sparkplug. Would you like to have tea with me?
And Clara—because I will have warned her ahead of time about the tea party invitation—is gonna be all,Very nice to meet you, small person, but I will have to decline your tea,for I hear it is atrocious.
And that’s probably gonna be the end of it.
But I have questions. And giving Anneeta permission to hang out with Clara while I’m at work this week feels like a good way to get a few answers. Plus, I can keep an eye on Clara with Anneeta’s eyes. It’s pretty much a win-win for me.
So I pretend to think about Anneeta’s request for a few moments, then sigh. Like I’m being put out. “Well, probably it’s gonna be OK. But…” I crouch down on one knee so I can be eye level with the kid, then lean in, like I’m gonna tell her something secret. “When I ask her if she wants to be friends with you, she’s gonna wanna know who you are and where you came from. Plus, if you do anything weird, it might scare her.”
Anneeta is shaking her head before I even finish. “I won’t do anything weird, I promise.”
“Well, where should I tell her you come from?”
Anneeta looks confused. “I come from the tower.”
“Yeah, but how that’s work?”
Her eyes narrow with suspicion. “How’swhatwork?”
“See, she’s gonna ask questions about you. And I’m gonna have to tell her you’re the one who led me to her.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Which is weird. So what do I tell her? I mean, about how you know everything about the tower.”
“Well…” Anneeta tries on a smile. “We could lie.”
I chuckle, then point at her. “We could. But we shouldn’t. I like Clara. I don’t want to lie to her.”
“Oh.” She’s confused again. “Well. My head, you see?”
“Mmmhmm.” I nod, rolling a hand for her to keep going.
“It sees things. Inside and outside. Well, of course outside. But it’s different. You know what I mean?”
Here’s the thing. Idoknow what she means. Because as an augment, I’ve experienced these inside pictures as well. Not to mention the outside ones, which is a whole other thing than actual reality. But Anneeta here is not augmented. She’sseven.
And when she talks about seeing things inside and outside, she’s talking aboutthe veil. Something no one outside of Sweep even knows exists.
