Authors: Stephanie Thomas
Chapter Thirteen
Every February 16
th
, the City takes part in Citizens’ Day, a day of remembrance for when the Seers vowed to protect the Citizens for the rest of time. Despite the rising tensions, the Keeper insists that we continue the tradition without any interruptions. It is a risk bringing all of us outside, gathering us with the Citizens, and hoping that the Dreamcatchers don’t make their appearance today. But just in case, under my robes, I strap on a pistol loaded with beacon bullets, the only kind that can truly incapacitate the Dreamcatchers. They are made from the light of the Beacon, a technology only known to us. With one hit, a Dreamcatcher is no longer able to use Citizens to revive himself. These bullets are only given to Seers—and we protect them, because what can kill the Dreamcatchers can kill us. We can’t risk the weapon falling into the wrong hands.
Until now.
I leave my bunk only to be met by my bodyguards, who don’t seem to be all too serious today. They chat about something or another as they tail behind me, and I don’t even bother to listen.
Brandon, Mae and Gabe meet me down in the Gathering Room, where we’ll receive the same speech we always get this time of the year, just as the Citizens who are now gathered in the Central Park are receiving their speech as well. Theirs goes something a little differently than ours. It speaks about how without the Seers, they would be exposed to the perils of the broken world, the harsh environment, and most of all, the Dreamcatchers, who would enslave them all and use them as chattel. I believe most of their speech speaks the truth, though I also wonder if they could have just found a way to make it on their own, without ever having turned to the Seers for protection in the first place.
We sit in a line, and I traditionally take my spot next to Gabe, who is quick to smile at me and scoot over a little bit. “Hey, Bea.” His eyes are glowing, which doesn’t happen often for Gabe. While he has received his raven’s wings, there’s a part of me that wonders how he ever reached that point when his Visions are so infrequent.
“You had a Vision,” I casually note, though he and I both know that it’s obvious and doesn’t need pointing out.
Gabe shifts himself in his seat to face me. “I did, and it was a bit disturbing to tell the truth.” The mention of anything being disturbing grabs the attention of the others, and Brandon and Mae all lean in to hear what Gabe has to say.
“Are you going to tell about it?” Mae chirps, her hands folded together like a child waiting for her Caretaker to read her a bedtime story.
“I guess I can. It’s already been reported, and the Keeper didn’t give me any instruction to keep it to myself.” Gabe hesitates a moment, his gaze flickering to me. The way he looks at me makes me shiver, and I quickly look away.
“Well?” Mae asks.
“I don’t know. It was of this man. He was my age with blonde hair…blue eyes. He kept staring at me, like I was looking in a mirror or something, and all I could do was stare at him, and all he could do was stare back at me.” Gabe’s words send a chill down my spine as I immediately remember Echo from my own Visions and dreams. Has he found a way into Gabe’s mind as well? Or is this all just a creepy coincidence?
“Eventually, I tried to speak to him, but nothing made sense when it came out of my mouth. He seemed to get angry and walked away from me, leaving me behind, staring into a blank mirror where nothing stared back.”
“It sounds like one of your clearer Visions,” Brandon notes almost jealously.
“I guess it was clear,” Gabe replies. “It didn’t make any sense, though.”
“Well, the Keeper is the one who is supposed to make sense out of them, not us,” Brandon adds. He wouldn’t do any extra work if he had to anyway.
“What do you think, Bea?” Gabe asks me directly, and I don’t know what to think because all I can think of is Echo.
“Well…I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with your identity?” I hazard a guess that has nothing to do with the fact that the same Dreamcatcher who caught me might have caught Gabe.
“That’s what the Keeper suggested. Something about an identity crisis, and how all boys my age go through one…and that we will go through one later when we grow up and have to figure out who we are.” Gabe’s lips shrink into a confused frown. “How many times do we have to figure out who we are anyway?”
The microphone crackles, startling us all to attention. The lights on the stage brighten, illuminating the Keeper when she comes out in her red robes and stands before the congregation of Seers. Her raven screeches loudly from her shoulder and preens itself idly, as if it were not a part of a huge presentation. With her arms spread out to us, the Keeper stares blankly at the sea of faces and begins the celebrations with no extra fanfare.
“Greetings, Seers. Today marks Citizens’ Day, when we remember the sacrifices that we made for those in the City, and we thank them for their roles in our lives. When we are done with our reflection, you will have the chance to co-mingle with the Citizens and take part of the festivities, but this year, it will be a little more monitored because of the Dreamcatcher threat.”
We watch the same presentation every year, and every year it seems so strange and far away from me. How did we get to this place? The Keeper turns and activates a holoscreen that projects a picture of pre-War Earth, with all of its greens and blues and white swirly clouds. I’ve never seen a white cloud myself—after the War the atmosphere was contaminated, clouds no longer formed like they used to. “This was our earth as our ancestors knew it. A mass mostly made of water that formed large pools called
oceans
.” She clicks a button on the remote she holds in her hand, and the picture zooms in on a part of pre-War Earth once called Italy. There are flickering images of ancient ruins, people in floppy sun hats and sunglasses milling about the Coliseum with trees that look like scattered umbrellas.
“People were content, then. They went on vacations, boarding airplanes that took them from pre-War America to pre-War Europe. They co-mingled, and for the most part, everything was at peace.”
Another click. Some people beside me whisper to each other about imagining the Earth if it was still like that. I try to imagine a world where we could travel and see other places and people, but it’s hard to grasp onto any thought at once. I can’t even think of a world outside of the City. It’s almost impossible to even dream up.
This image was much different. A darkened, grey and dead earth spins on its axis, the bodies of water no longer recognizable from the masses of land. One is a dirty green, the other a dirty gray that seem to blend into each other like a camouflage pattern. With another click, the image zooms in on post-War America, the East Coast, where the City was formed just in the middle of north and south. There is nothing around in any other direction, not on the East Coast, at least, and I am reminded of how very alone we really are here.
“Here we are now. A thriving City in a dead land. We’ve built ourselves up from nothing, and we’ve decided to never let such destruction happen to us again. Instead of giving into fate, our scientists decided to bring back a gift given to the people by the Maker a long time ago: the gift of Sight. And those who had it were then expected to use it to protect the Sightless, the Citizens, in order to guide them and keep them from doing any more harm to our broken Earth.”
I swallow and look sideways to Gabe, who is staring contently at the images, having seen them a hundred times before. Still, the expression of fascination on his face suggests he’s never watched this presentation, and I smile at how Gabe can turn anything old into something brand new and brilliant.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he whispers to me, catching my gaze.
Caught off guard, I nod my head and then look back to the images as the Keeper keeps flipping through them. The crowd is transfixed on the photos of destruction. There are images of the War, of many dead people in piles, littered around the earth, skin burnt, land burnt, everything burnt and infected with enough radiation to raze a planet. The photographer must have been brave to risk radiation poisoning to document the horrible acts of mass destruction that ripped our planet apart, piece by broken piece. No doubt he died, and as I think up this person in my mind, I grieve for him, too, and hope that at least his death wasn’t slow and agonizing but quick and painless. I wonder if anyone else is thinking of him.
Then, there are images of the rebuilding. First the colonies living in shelters built in the underground subway systems. Then the colonies that found the courage to build up again and brave the world that they were left with. I always find it fascinating that the earth could have gone from having nothing to supporting tiny sprouts of life that took a chance and started anew.
When I look around at the Seers gathered here, I realize how amazing it is that we’d survive something so brutal and unforgiving. I catch the gaze of another Seer who is about the same age as me, Analise. Though we aren’t close, she smiles a sad smile, as if commiserating, then goes back to watching the presentation. This is a survival that we can all appreciate, and a loss we can all mourn.
“Somehow, out of all of this, here we are today.” The Keeper’s words break through my thoughts, and I blink my attention back to her. “We must protect what little we have left. We are the Seers of the future, and had we been there before the War, maybe we could have avoided the mayhem altogether. But instead, mankind fought with one another until there was no one left to fight, and no fighting left to be done.” The Keeper’s violet eyes seem to meet with each pair of eyes in front of her, and she pauses for a long moment, allowing for the gravity of the past to settle in.
“When you go out there today, I want you to remember how much it is that you do for the Citizens, and how much they depend on us. You are their protectors, each and every one of you. You are the machine of Visions that keeps us alert and ready to defeat whatever comes at us next. They are the people who have borne you, who have made you possible. We want to thank them just as much as they thank us. For this reason, every year, you are awarded a small stipend for this day only. It will go directly into the City’s economy, supporting all of the Citizen families. Spend it wisely.”
The Keeper disappears behind a curtain to the left of the stage, the microphone clicking off. There’s mounting applause and cheering, a rush of excitement that soon we will be able to speak with and stand side-by-side with actual Citizens. Most of the time, they seem so far away from us, as if they exist entirely on their own, and soon our worlds will be combined into one.
Mae claps her hands, jumping to her feet with the excitement. Brandon rolls his eyes and juts a thumb out toward her, and the rest of us laugh at how she carries on.
“I hope they have those fried hot dogs that they did last year. Those were to die for,” Brandon wishes aloud, his only goal in life being to eat as much food as he can when he possibly can.
Gabe stands up and stretches his arms up over his head, lifting the hem of his robes from the floor about an inch. “Wanna stick together?” he asks me, and of course, I have to agree. Why wouldn’t I want to stay with Gabe? Firstly, there will be a large clash of people when we get outside, and secondly, to spend any time with Gabe, free from the Institution, seems like a small celebration within itself. If we’re lucky, the Keeper’s guards won’t find us and split us up.
“Yeah. I’d like that.” I file in behind Gabe as the Gathering Room starts to empty out into the streets. In one mass, the Seers make their way to the Central Park, where tents and tables have been set up to sell all sorts of foods and different wares. Mae and Brandon head off in one direction—toward the food—with Mae chattering all the while.
There’s a plethora of Watchmen who stand guard, large machine guns in their hands, eyes scanning everything and anything that moves. The threat of the Dreamcatchers is even more prevalent now than before, since one could easily slip into the crowd and blend in with the Citizens and Seers. It makes me wonder what the Watchmen are looking for, exactly. How do they know who is a Dreamcatcher and who isn’t?
And then it occurs to me that they don’t.
Gabe reaches and finds my hand so that we don’t get separated, and I take it and hold it tightly, even when the crowds do let up, and I don’t really need to hold onto it anymore. When I look behind me, I notice the two bodyguards trailing a distance behind. At least they are giving me my space.
“Where do you want to go first?” Gabe looks down at me, waiting for me to make the call.
“I guess we can go over to the vendors and see what they’re selling. I always like getting something from them to put in my bunk. We never get to do it at any other time of the year, you know?”
Gabe nods his head and changes his direction so that we are headed for the market instead. “What did you get last time?”
“A pretty sequined shawl. I’ll never be able to wear it, but it looks nice on the wall.” I laugh pathetically, wondering when I would wear it, even if I could. There aren’t many times when we are dressed up in anything aside from our robes and our jumpsuits, and the one time we are—the Ceremony—we are required to wear special outfits for that, too.
“I’m going to get something for you this time,” Gabe vows.
“You don’t have to do that. Their stuff is expensive anyway. I probably don’t even have enough— ”
Gabe shakes his head and tugs on my hand. “I said that I’m going to get something for you. There’s nothing you can do about it, Bea. You can complain all your little heart pleases.” He grins down at me and shrugs his shoulders. “But it’s not going to help, you know. I’m still gonna do it.”
“If you insist.” I roll my eyes at him, but in truth, I’ve never had anyone get me anything before. Not like this.
We approach the market and it’s already flooded with curious Seers, all perusing the different stands filled with wares such as clothing, shoes, trinkets, jewelry and more. There’s a particular stand that sells tiny, crochet animals that seems to be the most popular, even drawing in the heartless ones like Rachelle, who is holding up a teeny pink turtle with big, beady eyes.