Gathering Blue

The morning after her conversation with Jamison, Kira wakes up groggy and prepares for her daily walk to Annabella’s cottage. Before she leaves, she notices that Thomas’s door is closed. He must be sleeping, she assumes.

Kira walks to Annabella’s cottage. On her way, a woman named Marlena, who works at the weaving shed, greets her, and Kira stops to talk. Kira asks Marlena if she knew a tyke named Jo who used to sing; Marlena isn’t familiar with the name “Jo,” but says that she remembers a singing tyke who was orphaned. Marlena tells Kira that the tyke sang before she was taught, and that her songs told of things that hadn’t happened yet.

Matt — who stole Marlena’s lunch yesterday, Marlena says — arrives at the weaving shed with Branch, and tells Kira that Annabella was taken to the Field earlier that morning. Kira is upset and surprised to hear this, since she saw Annabella only two days previously. She decides to go to the Edifice and ask Jamison about Annabella. She tells Matt to wake up Thomas, and mentions that Jamison wears one of Thomas’s carvings. Matt shouts out that he saw Jamison with Annabella in the Field that morning—Kira realizes that Jamison already knows about Annabella.

Inside the Edifice, Kira asks a guard where Jamison is, and he tells her shortly that he’s probably in Kira’s wing of the building, looking for her. When she asks how to get back to her wing without going back into the rain, he points her to a staircase at the end of the hall. Instead of walking back to her room immediately, Kira decides, “on a whim,” to stay in the hall and find the area where Jamison spoke to Jo yesterday.

Kira locates the door where she heard Jamison talking to Jo, and finds that it’s locked. She quietly calls Jo’s name. To her surprise, Kira hears a response: Jo says that she’s practicing. Through the closed door, Kira introduces herself. Jo, who sounds very young, says that she wants her mother. Kira thinks about the pen Vandara was building—at least there, the tykes were allowed to be with each other. It seems even crueler to leave Jo by herself. Kira tells Jo that she’ll come back soon, and returns to her quarters.

Back in her quarters, Kira finds Jamison waiting for her. He tells her, sadly, that Annabella has died. Kira, who’s suddenly uneasy around Jamison, does not mention Jo to him.