Lumi, on the ground. There is no one else around.

She sits up slowly, slowly, with the white of her robes glowing. She turns to me. I can see the hills and valleys of her eyes, nose, lips, through the silk of her veil, her veil like a funeral shroud.

She opens her mouth and says hey, Sozo.

Why did you kill me?

#

I wake.

The ceiling is not a ceiling I recognize. My heart is pounding. I fold my arm over my eyes, but am too stunned to cry.

I haven't cried in a long, long time. I don't know if I'd even remember how to.

Esp. The Omens at the tent. The Decade-Races.

Did I fail the Joining? How did I survive?

What happened to the Omens at the tent? I imagine some of them must have been caught by the guardians. I imagine some of them must've been caught inside.

Esp. Did she get away? Did she see everything? What did she do with, with—

I stay brewing that way for a while – arm over my eyes with my body wound tight – but eventually, I pull my arm away.

I look around and take the room in.

The walls are mint teal. It is dark outside. The curtains are sheer white, and they ripple in the breeze – not the breeze. There's a fan in the room that squeaks as it turns. There are other beds in this room, white, with railings, sectioned by more curtains. No one else is in the beds. I am in an infirmary.

My bones ache. My joints feel bruised. My teeth feel like I've been sucking on a lemon, and my hand is bandaged. It stings. I do not scratch it. And then I notice my robes have been changed. My veil is gone.

I startle up from the bed and touch my back through my new shirt, and feel–my skin, my bone. I don't know if I can feel my scab. I wrench the blanket off of me and stumble out of bed.

There's a mirror on the wall, and I go to it.

Briefly, I see myself – wild eyed and hair tousled – before I turn around. I tug my shirt up from the back and over my shoulder, and stare. My shoulder blade is bare. My skin is smooth. My stain is gone.

It's gone.

All my life, I've fantasized about this moment.

And then, like the way blood bleeds into sheets, blackness begins to spill over my skin. My omen stain is returning. It stretches like it is waking from some sleep, and then reforms around my shoulder blade, the way it always has, my constant companion.

I don't know how, or why, but my contact with the star must've jolted it dormant while I was out. Now that I am awake, it also wakes.

The door opens. I yank my shirt back down.

Several adults enter the room – all of them tall, some of them old. Three of them are wearing headdresses like fans, red like the setting sun. The fans are studded with golden spikes like sun rays.

These men and women, moving slow and regal, are High Suns – the high priests and priestesses of the temple. Out in public, like with Veils, their faces are kept obscured. Now, I can see their faces lined by age. I can see the crow's feet by their eyes, and the dark moles that splatter over some of their cheeks.

Behind them is another adult, a guardian. Her hair is shaved. Her neck is long. Her lines are hard the way a tall tree is hard, and she holds herself with a stillness that reminds me of Esp.

"Ah." One of the High Suns speaks. "You're up. How are you feeling, Lumi?"

I jolt. Lumi. They still think I'm Lumi. I haven't been recognized.

(This is where I fall to my knees and tell them the truth. I tell them what I am, that I am a murderer, that I do not deserve to be here.)

I manage a nod. "Fine."

"The doctor's looked you over. Said everything seems to be in working order. Your palm should heal in two weeks or so."

I nod again.

"Do you remember what happened?"

I recall the Joining, and the star and its many voices. I recall the hole in the wall. I recall the boy Naqi. He did not recognize me from his demonstration; there was a whole crowd of us at the time, after all.

"Yes."

"And what happened, exactly?"

I frown, and look down. "I don't know."

The star could have burned me up, but didn't.

The High Sun sighs. He turns to the others. They murmur amongst themselves.

I stand there and wait. I await my fate. It is all that I can do.

#

The High Suns have decided that I, Lumi, need to be placed in solitary confinement.

It's not punishment, not really. They took my flying the wall as a holy sign of prosperity, or as the star's prophetic declaration to how I will win the races this decade. But I did disrupt the Joining, even if I did not mean to, and I did break the anchor. Many children will have to wait several days now, before they can try to Join again.

So I am to be placed in solitude for three days. And for three days I am to reflect upon my actions. My isolation will be how I atone.

I am led by the guardian out of the infirmary and onto the temple grounds. It is nighttime. The moon is like a searchlight above us.

The temple cells are blocks of cement set in the earth, dug near the back of the gardens, the gardens dense and dark in the night. A metal grate on a hinge – the sole entry doubling as the ceiling – slants up from the earth. Deep inside the cell is a woven bed, a blanket, a stool. A small cement counter juts from the side wall, and behind the counter is a squatting toilet, and a faucet for water.

The guardian pulls open the grate for me. The hinges screech on rust.

She waits for me to step inside, but says nothing. She's said nothing to me all this time, not a single word.

I don't ask why. I prefer the silence.

I climb down the ladder and into the cell, and the grate is closed over me. The woman locks it, then moves to the side, and disappears from my view. I can hear her still. She's settled somewhere by the cell, in the grass. She must have been assigned to keep watch over me.

I am tired, so tired, but I know I cannot sleep, even as I crawl onto the bed. I know that if I sleep, Lumi will come to me again. I don't know if I could bear to hear the things she will have to say to me.

Morning comes. It is cold.

When I look up past the grate, at the temple grounds outside, all I see is mist. It rolls through the garden and drapes and chills, and thickens white like clouds. I move to the ladder to sit on it, to press up against the grate to stare.

The woman must've left sometime without my noticing, because she's reappeared with a tray of stick crullers and steamed egg pudding and a tall cup of hot soy milk, and she slips that tray through the bottom slot of the grate. I stare at it. My stomach grumbles enough to be heard.

I push the tray back to her.

"I'm not hungry."

She tilts her head. Maybe she didn't hear me.

"Take it. I don't want it."

The woman frowns. Then her hands go every which way, quick, precise, like she's braiding or weaving, except there is nothing but air between her fingers. I don't understand.

"What?"

Her hands flutter again. She grunts ah, ah, and opens her mouth and points at it. Inside her mouth, I can see that her tongue is not there.

"Oh." That's why she did not speak.

She smiles, and presses the tray toward me again. I shake my head. I pull away from the ladder without touching the food, the tray, and return to the bed. I lay on my side with my back to the grate. I do not want to see the food, or the woman. The scent of sweetness and of oil wafts.

In the afternoon, the woman leaves and returns with another tray. Lunch is fried rice and tofu and crispy pork chops, and my stomach twists. It hurts. But I know if I eat, I will not be able to keep it down. I know if I eat, the food would turn to ash in my mouth.

I curl up tight and close my eyes. When the woman grunts and taps the grate, I pretend I do not hear her.

#

Night falls. Someone rattles the grate and says, "Definitely not a bird."

I turn around. Naqi is there with one of his many smiles, and he is holding another tray of food, this time a single large bowl of noodles. It is steaming. I frown.

"Why are you here?"

"Hello to you, too." Naqi laughs.

"If you're here to get me to eat, don't bother."

"Even though Yashi's so worried?"

I pause. "Who?"

"Yashi," Naqi repeats, and gestures his head at the guardian behind him. I notice, for the first time, how broad the woman's shoulders are. Her arms, even through her black robes, are well muscled.

He says, "If you ate something, it'd really put her mind at ease. Mine, too."

My frown sharpens into a scowl. "Why do you care?"

"Why?"

"You heard me."

"What kind of a question is that?"

I say nothing. It occurs to me, then, that Lumi would not talk the way I do. With her, a conversation is putting the knife away, opening the door, smiling and laughing and asking, asking and accepting.

I've never been taught how to do any of those things.

Naqi continues. He crouches and balances the tray on his knee and says, hushed, like he is passing over a secret, "I still can't believe that you flew the wall. When I saw you, I wanted to bombard you with questions: You flew? From the ground? On that massive anchor? How? How did you do it?"

I wrinkle my nose. I would've tossed Naqi out the hole in the wall if he had done that. The khab and his questions grate on me.

Naqi sees my expression, and laughs again.

"You really should eat something."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Hey. Even birds need to eat. And if you're feeling guilty, don't. It's not your fault. Everyone knows it. No one blames you."

I say nothing. I curl onto my side again, my back to the others.

So Naqi raps the tray against the grate again, again, again.

"C'mon, Lumi. I brought you your favourites, and if they're not your favourites, you're kind of wrong. But we can work on that. Juicy, succulent beef noodle soup, extra onions. You could bounce off of these noodles."

I twist around. Zap off, I want to hurl, to curse, but then I remember again that I am supposed to be Lumi. Lumi would not curse. Lumi would nod and stretch out her hands and thank Naqi for this delicious meal.

I am not Lumi. I never will be.

I can only stare, unimpressed. Naqi laughs.

"The dish really is very good."

"I don't care. I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten all day."

"And I'm not hungry."

"Liar."

I flinch. I twist away again.

Naqi falls silent. I don't see what he does, but I hear him set the tray down. I hear the rustling of their robes as the two of them move. Yashi might be speaking with her hands again, and I can hear Naqi say things like yeah, I know. Do you think I can?

He's able to understand her hand-language.

The lock clicks free. The grate is pulled open.

"Hey," Naqi says. "I've got your letter."

I go cold. Lumi's letter, the one she was clutching before the Joining, the one she read again and again. Is he going to ask me what's in it, to test me?

"I'll give it to you if you eat something."

I breathe in and out. I smooth out my expression. When I look over my shoulder, it's to ask, "How did you get it?"

"Your friends found it," Naqi explains, "in the waiting room after everything happened. They're not allowed in the temple since they didn't pass, so they gave it to a guardian, who passed it along to me since I was coming by. What do you say?"

In the dark, his smile sheens white.

I shouldn't. The letter is not mine to read. The letter was something dear to Lumi. And then Naqi says, "If you don't want it, guess I'll have to toss it away."

I push up, and glare. Naqi has the nerve to laugh. He holds up his hands and says, "Don't shoot! I'm unarmed!"

"Khab," I say, and realize too late that that is also not something Lumi would say. Would she even know street slang?

"Ooh!" Naqi's smile is impish. He hops down the ladder. "Did you just say a bad word?"

"No."

"Sounded like one."

"Give me my letter."

"I will. Once you eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then I guess your letter is going into the trash."

I push to my feet. I want to scream, to rail, to bite. I want to punch Naqi's teeth out of his smug smile. He stands before me in the dark of the cell, hand over his sash. There, I can see the creased paper of Lumi's letter. He's telling the truth.

I say nothing, not for a while. I stew in the heat of my anger. My back itches.

I push past Naqi and stomp up the ladder. I break apart the wooden chopsticks on the tray and use them to guide the noodles into my mouth as I tip the bowl, as I drink and slurp and halfway choke. It burns. I do not stop. I deserve to burn.

My cheeks are swollen with food when I turn back to Naqi.

His shoulders quake; he's trying not to laugh.

I hold out my hand, and he pulls the letter out of his sash and hands it over to me, like he said he would.

I take the letter as he says, "I'm real excited to be racing with a Veil, you know, since it looks like I'll finally have," he waggles his brows, "real competition."

Of course Naqi passed the Joining, the annoying khab. I toss him another glare; my mouth is too full to curse him.

He raises his hands like I am holding him at gunpoint, and finally laughs. He steps around me, hands still up, and then lowers them to make his way back up the ladder.

"I'll come visit you again tomorrow, okay?"

I chew, and swallow. "Don't."

"But you'd miss me."

Yashi steps over then, and nudges Naqi on the shoulder. She's frowning and weaving her hands at him. She's scolding him, I think, because Naqi dips his head and rubs the back of his neck. His laugh is sheepish.

"Yeah. You're right. Okay."

He steps away from the cell. The grate is closed, then locked.

Naqi waves as he leaves. Yashi again settles down on the grass. I look down at the letter in my hand.

I touch the edges of it – it's been folded enough times that the paper is wearing to tear. Touching is all I do, in the end. I do not open it. I do not read the letter.

I place it closed on the counter, away from the bed, and then spend the rest of the night on the ladder, looking out.

The second morning comes around. I still have not slept.

Yashi brings more food that I do not touch, that I do not bother looking at. And when I retreat to the bed with my back to her, she unlocks the grate and comes inside, and touches my head. It is soft, like maybe she is afraid of breaking me.

I close my eyes, and pretend to be asleep.

The afternoon is much the same. I do not touch the food. Outside, I hear the rhythmic cries of people training, and the rhythmic clacks of wood striking against wood.

I roll onto my back and peer past the grate, and see that Yashi is watching a little screen that she's propped up in the grass. She's scrolling through the feeds as she eats her own lunch, and the small square of a vid plays.

The images are too small and far away for me to make out – I see only smudges of grey and white and brown. I hear a man announcing that the Omens they caught at the House of Stars have profaned the tent, and are to be executed at the end of the week.

I go cold, so cold. I roll back onto my side and hug my knees to my chest, and cannot stop trembling. I wonder if they are my fault, too.

Hours pass. Yashi comes into the cell again. This time, she reaches around and slips Lumi's letter between my hands, and I want to scream, to weep, to tear at the letter and then at myself. The letter burns. Yashi's gentleness burns even more.

I do nothing in the end, and do not move. Yashi leaves the way she came, quietly, softly.

Night shades in. I don't know why. I really don't. Twisted curiosity, maybe.

I fold open the letter. I read.

Darling Lumi,

I miss you, and I'm so proud of you.

I can't keep it in. I let go of the letter and scrabble from the bed. I stumble to the toilet in the floor and hurl, and hurl, except I have hardly any food in my belly. The smooth yellow of my stomach acid rolls out of me, and burns.

Yashi is here. I don't know how she got here so fast. She's folded her arms around me and is opening the faucet, and is wiping water over my mouth. I push at her, but she's strong. Her muscles are tensed. She does not let me go.

We sit like that on the floor for a while, a long while. I do not cry, but I fall asleep. Somehow, I do not dream.

I wake in the bed. The sky is all blush red and shy violet, the colours of late afternoon, early evening. I've slept most of the third day away.

"Hey."

It's Naqi, standing on the other side of the grate, his lines bloomed orange by the setting sun. He's back to visit, like he said he would.

"Heard you're not feeling well."

I consider saying nothing, but then Naqi is opening his mouth again, so I cut in with, "Yeah."

I say, "Stay away or I'll throw up all over you."

Naqi laughs.

"Never been puked on by a Veil before. I imagine it'd be like a cleansing, really."

I wrinkle my nose, but say nothing else. I'm drained, husked out. Sleeping the day away has not made me less tired.

"They pulled together a makeshift Joining today, and finished up the rest of your school. Two more people passed. So including you, that's eight."

Still, I say nothing. That's seven more eyes I have to be wary of, seven more eyes that could expose my lie.

Naqi falls silent. He watches me. He crouches by the grate and then says, quiet, "Something happened, didn't it?"

My eyes tick up to him.

"The Joining. The star. It said something to you?"

"Why do you care."

"You asked me this yesterday." Naqi looks up and ponders it. "And I think my answer is: because I'd like us to be friends."

An Omen and a temple acolyte. Friends. A murderer and a someone who has never sinned. Friends. I want to laugh, but am too tired for it.

"You're sick for wanting that."

"Am I?"

"Yes." I realize now he wouldn't understand. I shouldn't have said what I said, but it's too late. "Now go away."

"Taking solitary confinement real serious, huh?"

"Better to be alone than with a khab."

And I imagine Naqi will laugh again, or take offense. He'd turn and stomp away like any sane boy. But instead he hooks his fingers through the holes of the grate. He presses in close and says, soft, "You don't have to shoulder whatever this is alone."

Heat brews in my chest. Right now, in this moment, Naqi reminds me of Lumi at the tent. She crouches from her high and mighty place and asks to save me, to help the charity that I am.

In that beat, in that breath, I swell with a bitter idea. I say, "Alright."

"Alright?"

"Don't let me shoulder this alone. Since I can't go out, you'll come in."

"What?"

"Instead of you," I drawl, "sleeping in your cushy acolyte bed, you'll sleep here, on the ground of my cell."

Naqi says nothing. He looks at me and is unmoving, and I flash him my teeth. "Maybe if you locked yourself in here with me, I'll even be your friend."

The boy is frowning, now. I can see it, the bumps of moonlight over his brow. He rises from his crouch and moves to the side, to where Yashi is, and so I taunt, "What's the matter? This all your friendship is worth? First sign