Earthday, Maius 27
The girl waited for Jackson or Grace to fetch the dishes from her evening meal. Earlier in the day, she had opened the shutters that covered her window, wanting more light. A screen covered the window, and white paper was tacked outside the screen, preventing her from seeing anything. But she had heard them talking, growling. Upset.
Something bad had happened. Simon, the other Wolf she had drawn in that picture she’d made for Jackson, had been hurt. And because the bad had happened, something else would happen.
The girl looked at the drawing she’d made that day. Storm clouds and lightning. Cars full of people driving away from the storm. But on the other edge of the paper, something waited for the cars and the people—something she couldn’t picture in her mind, something her hand refused to draw because it wasn’t meant to be seen. It simply was.
And it, unseen and terrible, waited for the people in the cars.
Hearing a sound outside her door, the girl shoved the drawing under her bed before Jackson walked in carrying a mailing envelope. He placed the envelope at the foot of the bed.
“Meg, the Trailblazer, said we should take pictures for you to look at.”
New images? She was ready to look at new images.
“Thank you.” She must have said the right thing because he nodded and picked up the dishes she’d left on the desk.
She waited a minute. Then she carefully lifted the envelope’s flap and removed the photographs.
Her breath caught as she looked at each one, drinking in the images.
“Not in order,” she muttered as she rearranged the photos. “Need to be like . . . this.”
A place. All the photos were different images of a wonderful place. But . . . where? Her old keepers used to identify images. How else could she tell someone what she saw when she was cut?
Nothing written on the backs of the photos, so she turned the envelope over. Carefully printed on the front was one word: Sweetwater.
The girl spent the rest of the evening listening to the Wolves howl as she studied the photographs.