The Other Valley E-Book

Scott Alexander Howard

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 475

Beschreibung

'Astonishingly brilliant. My book of the year.' Liz Nugent, Sunday Times-bestselling author of Strange Sally Diamond For fans of Emily St John Mandel and Kazuo Ishiguro, an exhilarating literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighboured by its own past and future, and a young girl who faces an impossible choice... Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne is an awkward, quiet girl, but everyone knows she's destined to land a coveted seat on the Conseil. In her apprenticeship, she competes to become one of the judges to decide who amongst the town's residents may travel across the border. If she earns the position, she'll decree who may be escorted deep into the woods, who may cross the border's barbed wire fence, who may make the arduous trek over the western mountain range - or perhaps the eastern range-to descend into the next valley over. It's the same valley, the same town. However, to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it's twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness. The only border crossings permitted by the Conseil are mourning tours: furtive viewings of the dead in towns where the dead are still alive. Odile, wise beyond her years, will surely pass the Conseil's vetting. But when she happens upon a mourning tour she wasn't supposed to see, she realizes her dear friend Edme's parents have crossed the border from the east, from twenty years in the future, to view their son still alive in Odile's present. Edme, who's so funny and light. Edme, who's a violin virtuoso at just sixteen. Edme, who's the first boy to even see Odile, to really like her.... And it's Edme who's going to die. Sworn to secrecy by the Conseil in order to preserve the timeline, Odile finds herself drawn even closer to the doomed boy. When Edme dies far sooner than Odile expects, when she does nothing to thwart his fate, she's deeply shaken. The loss, her foreknowledge, the weight of her rare and varied grief all throw Odile's own future, her adult life, into a devastating, downward spiral. If your soul was stricken by the years, your teeth bloodied from all of life's blows, would you risk being seen by the armed patrols, would you gamble with everyone's lives, with your own, with the annihilation of an entire timeline to hike across the border and get back to where it all went wrong?

Leseprobe

First published in the United States of America in 2024 by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2024 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Intervalle Holdings ULC, 2024

The moral right of Intervalle Holdings ULC to be identified as the owner and author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 962 3

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 963 0

EBook ISBN: 978 1 83895 964 7

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Part I

I used to stand alone by the cloakroom door. In the morning before school, and again when the lunch bell rang and the others ran out to the field, I walked to the same spot and rested my head on the sharp crags of stucco. An outcrop of shadow protected the wall from the autumn heat. With folded hands I stood in the shade, gazing at the backwoods and waiting out the day.

I took up my station at the rear of the school after Clare’s parents moved downtown, leaving me friendless in the neighborhood. I sometimes ran into her at the store or on the boulevard, but as our mothers chatted, our scant talk revealed that our common ground had been only literal, the adjoining area between our yards. The new neighbors were old and seemed to wear housecoats all day. And so, at school, I became the girl by the door: Odile who stands by herself. Never spoken to and seldom spoken of. Staring at nothing with eyes like carved wood, as motionless as an effigy.

Before the bell called everyone in, I liked to slip inside the classroom a minute early. Six empty rows faced an immaculate blackboard. The dusty odor of chalk blended with a pungent oil. My teacher, M. Pichegru, habitually rubbed his desk with a wet black rag. When I was younger the oily smell had made my nostrils curl.

Then the bell would ring, the cloakroom door would open behind me, and the room would rush with noise. In the storm of laughter and gossip, I remained alone. But when Pichegru strode in with his books and his switch, everybody hushed. We stood in our uniforms until he motioned us to sit, and for the next hours of lectures and tests I was glad to have company in my silence.

That fall I was sixteen and the course of my life was ready to be determined. My class had reached the apprenticeship level, and most people were excited about the impending transition out of school. At the end of September we were to hand in our applications and wait to see who chose us; later on, once the decisions were made, we would split our time between Pichegru’s lessons and training for our vocations around town. Some people knew the work they wanted, and others were scrambling to figure it out. All month there were visits scheduled from clerks and artisans explaining their trades, as well as field trips to the farms, the orchards, the mill, and the border.

That, at least, was the regular way of things. My mother, however, thought that I was destined for the Conseil. She had always believed this, or wanted to.

The Conseil’s process was different from other apprenticeships. I could not simply apply at the end of the month and hope to be picked. Before that, they had a special vetting program, and gaining admittance to that program was difficult in itself. Pichegru would have to nominate me, and he could send just two students, unlike the downtown school, which got to send more. If you managed to get accepted into vetting, you had to get through September without being cut. Those who succeeded were offered apprenticeships in the Hôtel de Ville. Only a few candidates made it each year; some years no one did.

My mother worked in the Hôtel de Ville, but in the basement archives. I see the apprentices they get, she told me. They’re smart, but you’re smarter. She had tried out for the Conseil when she was my age and made it to the end of the second week. When I said I might be too shy for a career in politics, she scoffed.

She didn’t know how I acted at school. The idea of me on the Conseil was ludicrous. I had no desire to be a conseiller, and no illusions about the likelihood of my becoming one. The prospect of competing against others mortified me, let alone the prospect of prevailing and having such a public job. But my mother’s job seemed not so bad, despite her frequent gripes: filing petitions in a tucked-away room, collating reports with blacked-out names and ages. Underneath the Hôtel de Ville was somewhere I could see myself. And the fact that all such positions went to students cut from the Conseil’s vetting program had helped prepare me for the shame of asking Pichegru, on the first day of school, whether he would consider nominating me. My mother had dropped me off that morning and confidently wished me luck.

School began on the final Friday of August, an encroachment on the summer that never ceased to feel cruel. For the younger children it was a half day, but Pichegru treated it like any other, directing us to open our fresh textbooks without welcoming us back. I saw that some girls in the room had new haircuts, and there were discernible shifts in the social landscape—people who’d traded desks to get closer to each other. Alliances and flirtations I imagined developing during long afternoons at the beach.

I took care to look engaged in the lessons, and when class let out I ventured up to the lectern. Pichegru was erasing the blackboard. He was barely taller than me, but he was muscular and rapid, destroying block letters in vigorous swirls. The overhead light gleamed off his bald skull. I stammered that I was interested in a Conseil apprenticeship.

He finished cleaning the whole board before responding. Through the window I heard muffled shouts on the playground. Pichegru tossed his cloth on the chalk ledge and turned to me.

I’m surprised to hear that, Odile. You know the vetting program requires you to speak.

A blush climbed my face, but the next thing he said was matter-of-fact.

Write me something over the weekend and give it to me Monday. I nominate next week.

He told me that his recommendations were based on a personal essay— the shorter the better, but well considered. The downtown school nominated according to nepotism, but his essay method was based solely on merit. If I could write a paper that demonstrated a suitable intellect and, more importantly, a suitable temperament for the Conseil, he would be willing to give them my name.

I asked what I was supposed to write about. Pichegru said that he gave the same question every year: If you had permission to travel outside the valley, which direction would you go?

I walked home from school on the neighborhood’s one real road, notched into the mountain’s edge. On the uphill side of the chemin des Pins, houses peered from the tops of steep driveways. Across the road the slope continued downward, clumped with balsamroot and weeds. You could see the whole valley beyond the faded grey roofs of the lower homes: the calm lake, the arid mountains rising from the opposite shore.

Our house was a small one below the chemin des Pins. I walked down the laneway and let myself in. My mother was still at work. She’d been reorganizing the books in the living room, and precarious towers had sprouted around the floor. I sat cross-legged and picked up a vellum-bound collection.

It was the only art book she owned. It contained woodcuts done in red ink, compact square landscapes that made the valley look like a fairy tale. Each illustration was protected by a glassine page that had to be turned delicately. I opened to a picture of a hillside apple orchard, a rolling murmuration of trees. On the next page was the downtown park. It was a perspective from out on the lake, maybe from the summer swim dock. Little bathers stood on the beach. The crimson water in the foreground swayed with lines as thin as hair.

The most interesting picture was at the end of the book. It assumed a vantage point in the sky, looking at the valley from above. Our small town in the middle was nestled against the lake, which stretched like a finger up and down the page. The mountains surrounding us were tall and empty.

To the left of the mountains was an identical small town, on the shore of an identical lake. To the right, it was the same: the mountains, the lake, the town again. After each valley came another. The towns repeated in both directions, east and west. Dark lakes slid up the page in parallel.

My fingers paced the mountains as I considered Pichegru’s fantasy exercise. In addition to the valleys’ natural borders, each town was encircled by a fence—something not shown on this particular woodcut, but something everyone knew. The fence followed the ridge above my school, high in the backwoods and mostly out of view. Where it came down out of the mountains, it tracked across the wide yellow swath of plainsland on the eastern outskirts of town. It curved toward the lakeshore and then continued across the water, reaching the other side to claim the narrow slice of land inhabited by the western guards.

I had never seen the border up close. I sat on the floor and imagined how it would feel to cross it.

When I described my exchange with Pichegru to my mother, she didn’t ask whether I was actually more interested in visiting the east or the west. She said to prioritize what the Conseil wanted to hear.

It’s a trick question, Odile. Think about what you’re applying for. They don’t want apprentices who are curious what it’s like over there. A conseiller mostly tells people they can’t go.

We were on the back patio in our mismatched iron chairs, sipping cold soup for dinner. The soup was tangy and red. It was still daylight but there were some early stars. Our backyard was shaded by trees that blocked our view of the lake. I asked what she thought I should say in my paper if Pichegru’s prompt was a trap.

Be honest and say you don’t want to see those places. Say you’re content where you are.

*

I worked at my father’s old desk in my bedroom. The desk was so tight over my legs that I couldn’t picture a grown man using it, but it gave me an idea for making my essay more personal. This helped me feel better about not technically answering the question. After all, I had to write something. I picked up my pencil.

Given the chance to visit another valley, I would not take it.

I scratched this out:

Would respectfully decline.

The only legitimate reason for requesting passage, we’d been told, was consolation. To lay eyes on a person you would never otherwise live to meet, or a person you would never see again at home. In fact, for me, there was someone like this whom I could write about. When I was four years old, my father died in the old garage next to my grandparents’ orchard. If I were to go west, I could find him, and watch him for a bit. He’d be in his early twenties on the other side of the mountains, and would have met my mother only recently, hanging out by the fountain in the Place du Bâtisseur. I knew the story: she’d wished on a coin and refused to tell him, an inquisitive stranger, what her wish was. He threw a coin of his own and wished to take her out. She said he’d nullified his wish by sharing it, but she went out with him anyway. It would be tempting to go there and look. To feel like I knew him better, or like I knew him at all.

But, I wrote to Pichegru, seeing him would not console me. I might not even recognize which man he was. What good would it do, to have him pointed out from afar and be told I was looking at my father? The truth was that he was not so much a vivid loss in my life as an abstract deficit, the explanation for why our house was quieter than Clare’s. The real loss belonged to my mother, and she always swore that she’d never petition for a viewing. She said she remembered enough: how he started sleeping all day, how he started seeming asleep even when he wasn’t. She said her memories were what helped her not to miss him.

I concluded my essay by vowing that, as a future conseiller, I would advise petitioners to seek whatever closure they needed here in their own valley, which is to say, in the safer pastures of ordinary grief. If that was enough for my mother, then it was enough for me, and so it ought to be for anyone. Reading it back under my breath, my answer struck me as reasonably good. Moreover, it seemed like the kind of writing that might impress Pichegru. The only checkmarks he ever scrawled on my homework, regardless of the subject, were next to the toughest-minded statements that crept from my pencil. Perhaps he would see this as another one of my small severities, and approve.

It was late when I transcribed my final draft. My mother was reading in bed. She placed my essay on her book and tilted it to the lamp, her shadowy eyes scanning the page. I was nervous and looked away, finding my distorted face in her magnified makeup mirror: my jumble of curls, my too-long jaw. The paper fluttered when she handed it back.

Very clever, she said.

We hadn’t talked about him in a long time. He had worked in the little grocery store on the rue de Laiche. He did everything there, but his specialty was fruit, which made sense given his upbringing. It was a sore spot between him and my grandparents that he didn’t want to run the orchard when they retired. They had to sell the land to the neighbors instead, and the two orchards were merged. But the Nancys were always kind to me, and when we visited my grandparents, I was still allowed to wander through the cherry trees that used to be ours.

One of the few memories I have of him is from that orchard in the summer. Although the sunshine was splitting hot, under the leaves the air felt lush and languid. My father held my hand as we walked barefoot up the row. I took big steps through the tall grass, squishing overripe cherries between my toes, feeling like a giant in a slow green land. When we reached the orchard’s edge, he lifted me onto the stone wall that formed the property line. Before me was a barren vista, a field of wild mustard climbing toward rounded foothills. The sun had gone white in the clouds. What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.

As important as this memory is to me, the next part contains too much hindsight to be genuine. Still holding my father’s hand, I glance back into the trees. They are all the very same height, and through their branches I see the white-walled garage, crouching. The moment has the air of a premonition: instead of a parent, you will have this haunted place. Yet apart from avoiding the garage where he’d done it, I really didn’t think of him often. When he left us, I had been too young to understand, and so the disavowal in my essay came easily.

On Monday morning I left my nomination essay on Pichegru’s desk and hurried to my seat before he came in. More students filed to the front to do the same. I soon regretted leaving my paper face-up, because I noticed Henri Swain and Jo Verdier pausing to skim it before putting theirs on top. Henri gave me a smirk on the way to his desk. When Pichegru entered the room he stuck the essays in a drawer.

Lumped into our normal lessons that morning was a short visit from the druggist’s assistant, who was there to answer apprenticeship questions. A few people eagerly raised their hands. It seemed like it would be all right working at the counter and pouring tinctures, but the main druggist was Lucien’s father and one of the available spots was bound to go to him. I tuned out the assistant. As little as the vetting program appealed to me, I had no idea what I would do if Pichegru turned me down. I’d prepared no alternatives because of my mother’s insistence on the Conseil. Her ambition for me was vicarious, I knew. Anything else I might do with my life would fall short of the life she’d wanted for herself.

*

I was standing against the wall, eating my sandwich outside, when a crack went off near my head. Stucco granules sprayed into my collar. I flinched and looked around.

Out on the lawn, Henri and Tom were stifling laughter. A rubber ball, dusted white, landed in the grass.

Sorry about that, Odile—I missed. Henri gave an exaggerated shrug.

I reddened, stepping away from where the ball had left its mark. The shoulder of my navy blazer was speckled with grit. I brushed it off and pulled a fragment out of my hair. There was a sandwich lying on the pavement, and darkly I recognized my lunch. I was deciding whether or not it was salvageable when the ball struck a second time.

You missed again, said Tom, dissolving into giggles.

This time I hadn’t startled as much. I stayed with my back to the wall and took a second small step to the right, but as I did, I felt my mistake. There was something too automatic about the way I’d moved, too much like a clock figurine. Henri’s laughter trailed off and he regarded me oddly. He scooped up the ball.

I shut my eyes to the next shot, winced, and took another side-step.

That’s so funny, Henri remarked.

Sensing an event, other kids started to watch. Each time he threw the ball, I dodged from the waist up, but only shuffled a bit farther down the wall. The laughs around the lawn grew louder. Some of the spectators were younger but some were in my class. I saw Justine Cefai looking disgusted; beside her, Jo wore an incredulous grin. Sitting under a tree at the far edge of the grass, Edme Pira and Alain Rosso were watching too. A teacher squinted from the playing field but didn’t come over.

I’m not sure why I kept stepping along the wall when that was the whole problem. I could have dashed for cover in the backwoods, in fact I longed to run for the trees, but running felt like the greater humiliation. Sickeningly, I began affecting a distant smile as they hooted at me, as though I was in on the joke.

Then Henri let out a curse. I looked up and saw Edme and Alain marching across the lawn toward him. They’d untucked the fronts of their uniform shirts to use as pouches, and the pouches were full of sticks.

Hey, Henri! Edme called in a cheerful voice. He whipped a stick over the grass and hit Henri in the shin. Alain threw another, this time striking his shoulder. Swearing and covering his head, Henri retreated and Tom followed. Edme and Alain chucked their remaining sticks after them, a fusillade that fell well short. They wiped their hands and strolled back to their tree.

I cleaned my uniform in the bathroom and spent the rest of the lunch hour indoors. My blazer and pinafore were damp from the sink, and my head hurt, not from the ball, which never actually hit me, but from clenching my teeth, the afterache of shame.

It was hardly the first time I’d been harassed, and usually the worst of it happened at the start of the school year, before Henri and the others got bored and turned to other games. But my dejection made me realize that I’d been hoping things would have finally changed. Apparently, I was still what I was.

Edme’s desk was ahead of mine in the next row over. That afternoon Pichegru was teaching geology. Slate, schist, gneiss. There was a leather case sitting at Edme’s feet. He played violin in the humble school orchestra. His neck was the color of sand in the shade, and his hair was blacker than shale.

Edme and Alain didn’t talk to me, but they didn’t tease me either. The two of them were a pair, friends since before school began. Alain’s house was a little ways down from mine. He was a ruddy-cheeked loudmouth, red-haired like me, though more orange than my ruby frizz. Years ago, before I went quiet, Clare and I had sometimes played with him in the neighborhood. He’d been eager to throw apples at cars, and I’d been too scared to do it. He seemed the same now as he was then: hyper, irreverent, hard to predict. Alain’s antics earned him the switch from Pichegru more often than most, which was part of why people liked him.

Edme lived past the school. His parents worked at the packing house, crating apples and peaches in the harvest months. In the winter I would see them shoveling snow and salting sidewalks downtown, always together. People never referred to M. and Mme Pira individually; they were, fondly, the Piras. My mother and I sometimes passed them doing their odd jobs, and they invariably said hello.

Their son was soft-spoken and sharp-boned, with a haircut that hung in his face. I didn’t see Edme around the neighborhood much, except for with Alain. Their friendship might have been surprising if it hadn’t always been there. Where Alain was blustering, Edme seemed thoughtful, with slender, dancing eyes. On the other hand, he wasn’t really shy: if Alain did something outrageous, Edme would join in with an abstract smile, like it was the only thing to be done. One morning in our second year, when we were eight or nine, Alain shimmied up a birch tree in front of the school. The tree wasn’t any good for climbing and wobbled from his weight. But he got near the top, pulled out his flute, and began mangling one of the Cherishment hymns that we had to learn in music class. Poised at the base of the tree, Edme raised his violin. Eyes closed, he came in screeching and off-key, which had to be on purpose, since everyone knew how well he could play. I hid a smile and walked to my wall, but I could still hear the dreadfulness echoing, and eventually a teacher yelling at them to stop. They got beaten for it, but not badly, because Pichegru didn’t know quite what to think.

After school I delayed going home to avoid walking near Henri and Tom. I stayed in my desk long enough that Pichegru noticed. He addressed me from the front of the room.

I’ve read your essay. I’m not going to nominate you.

My teacher slid his books into his leather bag. It seemed like all he intended to say.

Why not?

It was effrontery to ask; in the swiftness of my failure I’d forgotten my place. Pichegru looked irritated, as if I shouldn’t need to be told.

I asked you a question—east or west—and you didn’t answer it. All you did was add some pity.

He flipped off the overhead on his way out, leaving just the depleted light from the window. I blinked at the playground and field and pond, all blurring together and threatening to flood, but I tightened my jaw and didn’t let myself cry.

I yanked my bookbag from my cloakroom peg and went outside. Everyone else had left the schoolgrounds. At my house, all that awaited me were hours of fear before my mother got home and asked how things had gone with Pichegru. I tried not to imagine how she would react. Across the sunny lawn was the forest where I’d wished I could escape at lunch. I shouldered my bag and crossed the grass, leaving the school behind, letting the pine trees swallow me.

The backwoods had an amber smell, a tang of warm earth and resin. The ground was a motley mix of reddish anthills, fir sheddings, and stumps decomposing into soil. The path felt spongy and hollow underfoot. Creaking branches replied to the sound of my breath, and slowly my breathing settled.

It was a while since I’d been in the backwoods. I didn’t remember my way around. If I went far enough I knew I’d hit the border fence, but that was at least another mile up the mountain. Down here, the trees were still dense and the incline was mild. I followed the trail in the pine stubble. The soil was the soft grey of a cat’s belly.

After several minutes the slope above the path became barer, dotted with sedge and loose stones. Farther up was a rocky ridge where I could see a thin wall of brush positioned on the edge. Something about it seemed too isolated to be an accident, so I stepped off the path to explore. The hill bristled with tiny coral lichens that crunched as I climbed. Without many trees to filter the sun I had to shield my eyes with my hand. I walked along the crest of the ridge toward what looked like a small fort.

It was children’s work, either half-finished or half-ruined. There was a big log forming the base of a single wall, and on top of it a sagging heap of branches like a dam or a bird’s nest. Protruding from that heap was the vertical brush that I’d spotted: dead copper bushes rustling in the breeze, circular leaves spinning like paper coins.

The abandoned fort was peaceful. Its dirt floor had some prickly moss and sparkles of quartz. I sat down, grateful for the shade and my hiddenness from the path below. It would be possible to clean this place up, I thought. Haul in fresh foliage, thicken up the branch barrier. The bark had peeled off the log and the wood’s flesh was inscribed with shallow lines, worms that had traveled at weird angles. As I reclined against the log, it took more and more effort to keep my eyes from closing. I lay my head on my bookbag and listened to the light wind slipping through the wall.

*

My eyelids opened to the sound of footsteps. People were passing on the path.

I heard them speaking, but their voices floated up the ridge and away, revealing nothing but the sure presence of others. Soon they were gone. They’d sounded like adults, which was unusual for the woods behind the school.

Even though I’d napped for only an hour, the day’s memories felt harder, like sore muscles that were worse upon waking. Henri’s jeers, Pichegru’s snide rejection. I got to my feet and brushed off my uniform. The daylight leaned sharply behind the wall of the fort. The sun was already low in the west, the valley sighing in the heat’s afterlife. I walked back down the slope and rejoined the path.

The school’s playing field was freshly mowed. The custodian was locking up the utility room. It was almost four-thirty; soon my mother would be getting home. Stalling, I kicked around the playground’s perimeter, watching the custodian start his car and drive away. On the far side of the school I heard music, a distant rehearsal bending slightly out of tune.

I looked at the swings. Normally they were the little kids’ domain, but sometimes my classmates took over and stood on them, swinging until they were level with the crossbar, then leaping like cliff divers into the sawdust.

I wiped a shoeprint off the black rubber seat and sat with a squeak of the chains. At first I rocked listlessly, but when I felt the tug of momentum, I lifted up my heels. A couple of short pumps and I began rising without effort. It surprised me, the force that could be released by the limpest of actions, and in spite of the day’s troubles, I pointed my toes.

Soon I was nearing the crossbar and the wind was in my ears. Through watery eyes I looked out past the field. The pond rose into view and became sky. As I reached the swing’s highest arc, I strained for that perfect stillness at the outer limit of gravity. My swing plunged down and the pond disappeared. But when I rose again, I was startled by the sight of something past the bulrushes.

Three people stood on the surface of the pond, or so it seemed to me. All had black masks on their faces. It was two men and a woman—none young from their postures. One of the men wore the green uniform of the gendarmerie, and the others wore formless visitors’ tunics. I watched the man in green lean toward the woman. She began taking her mask off to answer, but the gendarme reached out and pulled it back on so abruptly that she stumbled. I saw, now, that they were balancing on a jetty of reeds extending from the pond’s shore. The man in the tunic caught the woman’s arm before she fell into the water. Then, clinging together, the two visitors stared directly at me.

Dread poured through my body. On the downswing I dragged my heels hard against the playground’s mulch. I jumped off the swing too fast and staggered to the corner of the school, but when I got there, I looked back. From the ground, I could still make them out across the field.

I had seen masks before, but never when I was the only one around. I tried to reason breath by breath. They had to be the same people I’d heard on the backwoods path, so they’d come from the eastern fence. They’d waited by the school, so they were probably somebody’s parents— but there were two of them, so they couldn’t be mine. As I hurried past the empty classroom windows I clutched at this thought, that they weren’t here for me. But their stare was not the stare of strangers either. I’d just passed our cloakroom door when Edme rounded the corner carrying his violin case.

Instantly I knew.

It was Mme Pira’s lips when she’d raised the mask. It was M. Pira’s hasty bearing when he steadied her. My heart lifted. The visitors were the Piras, it was the Piras, it wasn’t about me at all.

Ahead, their son raised his hand in a mild wave.

Hi, Odile.

My voice vanished. I stopped a few steps away and hugged my arms across my stomach. We were face-to-face. I was the only thing between him and the pond.

Edme scanned my expression under curious brows. Are you okay?

Oh, yeah—I’m fine.

My body stayed where it was with a solidity I didn’t understand. I saw Edme notice too—the moment we should have parted, but didn’t—and he chuckled.

Fine is good, he said, unbothered by the awkwardness, and somehow my laugh in response was easy and light, like a streamer in the sun.

What are you up to? he asked.

Just heading home.

I usually don’t see you here after school.

I went for a walk in the backwoods.

Nice. I like it up there.

I glanced at the trees, nodding in agreement. In the corner of my eye I thought he shifted his weight.

Actually, I added, I might’ve found something. There’s kind of a fort. Really?

Yeah. Probably some kids made it. It’s not much, just part of a wall. It’s a little off the path.

I began to blush: surely it was a childish thing to mention. But Edme replied that he’d like to see it sometime. I didn’t know if he meant with me, so I didn’t answer, and he didn’t elaborate. He switched his instrument case to his other hand and smiled again.

If you’re going home, do you mind if I walk with you? Rehearsal let out early, maybe I’ll head to Alain’s.

I must have said yes, because he turned around and paused for me to join him. And I must have gone to him, because we left the schoolgrounds together, without passing the playground or the pond.

He walked on the gravel at the side of the road, the sun silhouetting his face. Behind him the lake shone with light.

My house was only ten minutes away. I could suppress the implications of what I’d seen for ten minutes. With him beside me it felt wrong to think about, indecent, so I tried to act unfazed.

Edme was saying it was hard to believe this was our apprenticeship year. He asked what I was applying for.

There wasn’t a way around telling him. As soon as I uttered the word ‘Conseil,’ before I got to the part about botching it, he whistled.

The Conseil, that makes sense. We always figured you were, you know—wise.

I felt embarrassed and gratified at the same time. We who?

Just me and Alain. But everyone else too, I bet. You’re very serious. Sorry, is that annoying for me to say?

I managed to smile at my feet and shake my head, wishing the subject would change. What about your apprenticeship? I asked.

Well, now, that’s a matter of controversy. I want to try out for the conservatory. They’re starting a combined composition and performance stream. But my parents want me to do something more useful, like the butcher shop. With one hand Edme lifted his violin case in the air, and with the other he made a gesture of futility.

That wouldn’t be so bad, I offered. My father was a grocer.

I’ve heard that.

They were simple things, but felt intimate to say. Edme’s footsteps kicked the gravel in comfortable silence. The sinking sun touched the far ridge.

So what are you going to do? I asked.

He hopped ahead of me, swinging his case, his movements boyish and quick. No clue. We’ll see. It’d be nice if I could go over there and find out. He cocked his head at the mountain.

My stomach tightened, but he went on. They’re letting me do the audition, at least. I think if I get in, they’ll give up on the whole butcher thing. Which means I’ve got a couple weeks to perfect my repertoire.

I wanted to reply that he was obviously good already, but I worried that the compliment might sound like false reassurance in spite of being true, so I said nothing. We reached the top of my laneway.

Thanks for the walk, said Edme.

Okay, I replied.

His dark eyes were lively. See you tomorrow! He tapped a little drum-roll on his case, and continued down the hill.

Right away she asked if I’d submitted my essay to Pichegru. I began mumbling that I had. But she must have assumed it would take him longer to decide, because she didn’t ask for my result. Instead she praised my strategy again: my essay showcased my unique perspective, levelheadedness in the face of personal tragedy. With an encouraging look she went back to chopping onions. Soon the house smelled good and I realized I was hungry. I hadn’t had anything since I dropped my sandwich at lunch. At the dining table, I avoided conversation about the vetting program by eating. My mother was going on about a colleague in the archives who’d been sick for a week, so she had more work to do at home. Nothing else was said about the Conseil, but I still felt nervous that she would return to the topic while I finished the dishes. I rinsed and dried with such efficiency that I almost dropped a plate on the floor. As soon as I could, I went to my bedroom and shut the door.

I knew what it meant that his parents had come. In reality—not in a hypothetical essay prompt—permission to leave one valley and enter another was only ever granted due to a loss. On their side of the mountains, twenty years from here, Edme must be gone.

I’d felt relieved when I realized it was the Piras. Now I felt guilty. I hadn’t even thanked Edme for what he did, fending off Henri and Tom. If he ever talked to me again I needed to do that.

The black masks were larger than normal faces, which made them look uncanny from a distance, sinister even, but it was simply to prevent recognition. That was one of the few things Pichegru had taught us in our geography lessons when we were young and in need of coddling: nothing about the masks was designed to frighten. Behind them were regular people. Still, they had a disquieting effect.

There were places around town that served as unofficial viewpoints for visitors. Gendarmes from the neighboring valleys would escort them there. Typically these spots were at a remove, close but not too close. The outsiders would hang back behind a pair of cottonwood trees at the far end of the park. From there, they had a view of both the pavilion and the open green, where people had picnics and played football or pétanque. I once noticed a mask in a guildhall window overlooking the town square, waiting for someone to pass by. I watched surreptitiously, although you weren’t supposed to, and others who saw the visitor looked away. Their presence was unsettling: the swim of daily life interrupted by looming, expressionless faces against the glass. Inevitably you worried that it boded ill for you.

He didn’t seem sick. I thought, too, of the relaxed way he’d mentioned his disagreement with his parents over the conservatory—not the manner of someone about to do something dramatic.

A year ago a girl from the downtown school, Yvette Cressy, died. She’d had some kind of disease, so no one was surprised when it happened. I’d seen her once or twice, moving weakly on her mother’s arm, so emaciated that she seemed not to touch the ground.

Masks had visited that time. I didn’t see them myself, but I heard Marie Valenti talking about it: two older people and a gendarme, in the park, by the cottonwoods. The word spread in whispers. If Yvette noticed them watching, she must have put it together too. But you were not meant to know who they were or who they’d come for. Usually, if they were somewhere they could be seen, it was busy enough that you couldn’t tell who they were looking at. And since they all dressed the same, you couldn’t tell if they were from the east or the west—unless you’d overheard them in the woods, close to the eastern fence, so you knew they were here for bereavement.

I lay in my school clothes on top of my bed. I rolled over to close my curtains. A tiny moth roamed the quilt, wings folded into a lost arrow.

Marie Valenti had seen the masks in late autumn; Yvette had not passed away till the spring. Whatever would befall Edme, he had some time. Yet a knot had formed in my abdomen. I lifted my shirt to rub it, but the sensation of my fingers on my skin only added a second detail to the discomfort. My body buzzed with nameless agitation, something distinct from simple pity.

I tried to distract myself with homework. Although it was the second day of the year, Pichegru had already assigned us a set of logic problems. I trudged through the proofs, crossing out my wrong turns, then idly darkening the strikethroughs with my pencil instead of correcting the errors. Every few minutes I found myself staring at the ceiling. Finally I gathered my papers to work in the kitchen.

It was past nine o’clock. My mother was still hunched at the table with a box of files. I moved a placemat and dropped my homework across from her. She leaned back in her chair.

Look at us, she sighed. I need more wine.

She opened a new bottle and poured herself a glass, then set another one down by my homework, as she sometimes did. Tonight I frowned and muttered that I had to be able to think straight.

My mother looked bemused. You’re right.

I did my proofs deliberately, feeling her watching as she sipped her wine.

Things will work out for you, she murmured.

I paused before glancing up. Her eyes were tired and her glass was stained purple at the bottom. You’ll see, Odile, once you show them what you’re made of, the conseillers will eat you up. It turned out she was not gazing at me, but at her box of files.

I could have told her then what Pichegru had said, but she was seldom this tender with me. I reached for my wine glass and raised it to her.

Soon after, my mother went to bed, taking her files but leaving the rest of the bottle. My pencil plodded to the end of the proofs. When I was done I carefully tore out the pages I would hand in tomorrow and wrote my name. Because I thought it was homely, it was my habit to scribble it small: Odile Ozanne, the letters bunched together as if trying to hide. It sounded better the way Edme said it: Hi, Odile.

I finished the glass of wine and decided to pour another. His was a nice name, Edme Pira. If you said it aloud, each word ended with parted lips, as if promising something more. I dismissed a strange temptation to write it in my notebook just for myself. He was the first person to be nice to me in years—setting aside childhood, the first ever. But something was going to happen to him, and only I knew. Bleakly I wondered how I was supposed to look at him now. What if he saw it in my eyes.

My essay had cautioned against visiting the other valleys. Pichegru said I hadn’t given him a proper answer. But now I saw I was more right than I’d known. Visitation should be discouraged—not just because the viewers themselves might find it unconsoling, as I’d argued already, but also because the viewings could place unfair burdens on nearby onlookers. It was too easy to glance the wrong way and see a mask lift up for a moment, or notice a posture that looked familiar. That was all it took to have a terrible secret about your neighbor—something that might gnaw on your mind until every thought you had was wet with its teeth. It was a grim thing to live with, and not everyone would have the prudence or discipline to keep it to themselves.

The hanging light above the table flickered. I splashed the rest of the wine into my glass. The feeling coming over me, like a brushfire up my scalp, was more than reproach or indignation: it was contempt for Pichegru, for his casual no, for accusing me of weaseling out of his question when I had answered it and gotten it right. I picked up my pencil and dug it into a blank notebook page, denouncing his rejection and arguing more stridently against leaving the valley. I would not apologize for my position, or, for that matter, for getting in the way of the Piras’ viewing—it was not my choice to see them. With zealous disdain I drew heavy circles around words like ‘risk,’ ‘danger,’ and ‘foreknowledge.’ Now I wrote down Edme’s name.

I dreamed of the school playground. It was as if I’d gone back at night to swing again. I couldn’t see the masks, but knew they were around. The clouds were too bright, almost yellow, hissing like oil in a pan.

In the morning my bedsheets were sweaty and coiled. My mouth was parched with wine, my tongue a dead slab. When I made myself move there was pain behind my eyes. I had woozy memories of finishing the bottle. I walked to school squinting through daggers of sunlight, then slumped against the outside wall and closed my eyes until the bell.

Alain was loitering at Edme’s desk, his butt leaning into the aisle. Edme hadn’t acknowledged me after our walk yesterday, but with my headache I was grateful to be catatonic before class started. It was only when Lucien brushed by with a sheaf of paper that I remembered my homework.

At Pichegru’s desk I opened my notebook to the assignment. I was about to leave it on the pile when I noticed the drunken screed underneath. It was my righteous attack on Pichegru, complete with a scarlet stain in the shape of a glass. I’d torn the page out but not yet destroyed it. Hastily I covered it with my logic proofs. Then someone poked my shoulder.

How are you feeling about this? Confidence level on a scale of one to ten?

Alain was looking at me eagerly. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the homework.

Confidence level, I repeated. Um. Six and a half.

Six and a half, mused Alain. That’s semi-respectable, do you mind if I crib? Any friend of Pira’s is a friend of mine. Just a friendly little cribbing . . .

I didn’t react fast enough, and suddenly he’d plucked the homework out of my hand. He darted around me and began copying my proofs at the big oak desk. I stood helplessly as I heard Pichegru coming down the hall.

Well shit, Alain sighed, glancing at the door. He shoved the pages into the submission pile and patted it straight just as Pichegru walked in. Both of us lowered our eyes and went to our desks. Edme was laughing silently as I passed him.

*

Where the playing field ended in marshy weeds, I took the path that circled the pond. The shoreline was overhung with dead branches that reminded me of claws. The sounds of the lunch hour grew distant.

It didn’t take long to reach the spot where the visitors had stood. A few steps down the embankment, a section of reeds had broken sideways into the water, forming a natural dock. I nudged it with my toe and put my weight on it. Mud leaked up through the reeds. There were no footprints, no cigarette ends, no indications of anyone. Orange tadpoles, fat and bright, swarmed slowly in the shallows.

When I came back from the pond I found Edme and Alain on the edge of the field. Alain had a leather ball at his feet.

If it isn’t Mlle Ozanne, who went out of her way to lend me a hand, he said. Alain talked in that way where you didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not.

Edme rolled his eyes at me. Never help him. Once you do it’s hopeless. I’m not sure if he knows how to read or write. He might just be copying the shapes I make.

You could take advantage of that, I said.

Fuck you, and you, Alain said pleasantly, pointing to us in turn. He lifted the ball with his foot and kicked it in the air.

Edme ignored him. We were wondering. You know that fort you found? Would you mind showing us where it is?

Sure. I blushed. I mean, it’s nothing.

The bell rang across the field. Alain booted the ball into the weeds.

How about after school? asked Edme.

Today? Sure, okay.

In the classroom I opened my notebook to a fresh sheet. I had just written the date when I realized that the wine-stained page wasn’t there. I remembered Alain snatching my homework, then thrusting a heap of papers onto Pichegru’s desk.

I looked to the front of the room. The papers were gone.

I searched my notebook, the inside of my desk, my notebook again. I couldn’t piece together everything I’d written, but isolated phrases came back with nauseating clarity. The page had been dark with scorn. I’d asserted the superiority of my judgment over Pichegru’s. Worse, I’d identified the Piras—Pichegru would blame me for exposing him to information neither of us was supposed to have. I would be beaten, without a doubt. After that, I had no idea what further punishment would be dispensed for defiance on this scale. Pichegru used the switch for regular discipline; I had never seen his reaction to something so grave.

For the rest of the day I stared down at my desk. Only once, after finishing a quiz early, did I risk looking up. Edme was writing with his head low, his cheek nearly touching the page. In the far corner of my eye it seemed as if Pichegru might be watching him, but I didn’t dare confirm it. Instead I made the mistake of glancing at Henri, who was rolling his rubber ball under his palm. He raised his eyebrows at me in boredom.

The clock dragged out the day: half one, half two. I’d thought my hangover was done with me, but it moved from my head to my guts, where it congealed together with my fear. I squirmed miserably in my seat.

Finally the bell sounded. I tried to exit with everyone else, but Pichegru yelled my name.

There was no escaping him. Against the current of students, I angled my way to the front. Pichegru planted both hands on his desk as though about to lunge at me. But instead he yelled past: Verdier!

Confused, I looked back. I saw Jo making an amazed face at Justine. She rushed up, smoothing her shiny black hair and shooting me an anxious smile. I couldn’t put together what was happening.

Both of you expressed interest in the Conseil, said Pichegru. The vetting program starts tomorrow.

He gave Jo a piece of paper, then held one out to me.

We’re the nominees? Jo said excitedly.

Yes.

Outside the cloakroom, Edme and Alain were waiting for me, and Justine was waiting for Jo, so they had drifted together. When I came out Alain was talking to Justine. She had sunny brown hair and freckly brown skin, and when she giggled she tucked her hair behind the tips of her ears, which were prone to reddening. Her miniature blushes seemed endearing instead of embarrassing. Jo flew past me and threw herself into Justine’s arms.

I got it! she cried. They jumped around together in a circle.

This is for the Conseil? Edme asked, looking amused.

Yeah! Me—and Odile. Jo paused her celebration to size me up. I never knew you were so ambitious.

I managed a shrug.

That’s great! Edme enthused. Congratulations.

Hey, and Odile did it without a rich dad in the mix, Alain quipped.

Jo scowled. Watch your mouth. Remember her dad?

Ah, shit, sorry.

Everyone looked at me. That’s okay, I said quietly. Then I added, like it was an afterthought: But fuck you, Alain.

For a worried beat I thought I’d misjudged, but they were only surprised: Alain laughed along with Edme and Justine, and Jo cracked an appreciative grin. My stiff reputation, it seemed, was possible to play with. Alain gave me a low bow of deference, and as he came back up, he waggled his middle fingers at the others. It’s these little gestures, it’s these classy things you do, remarked Edme.

It was natural to invite Jo and Justine along to the fort, although I kept downplaying the interest of the find. The five of us walked on the backwoods path. The forest hummed with insects.

I pointed up the slope where the trees were sparse and the sun streamed down. The boys took off their blazers, and their white shirts were blinding. Jo and Justine loosened their ties and unbuttoned their collars, so I did the same. As I followed them up the hill I wiped my forehead and smeared a tiny fly with my thumb.

This is it? Jo said, surveying the log wall with a hand on her hip.

I know, I apologized. Like I said, it’s really not much.

Not much? exclaimed Alain. Are you kidding? This spot’s ideal. He stepped up on the log and balanced on the brush heap. You’ve got bountiful building material. You’ve got a panoramic view. You’ve got the crucial advantage of height.

Are you preparing for battle or something? asked Justine.

No, just a place to hang out, said Alain. Although if a battle comes our way . . .

He aimed a stick down the ridge like a spear. It hit the path and sent up a puff of dirt.

Well, said Jo, on the topic of battles, Henri’s pissed that you attacked him yesterday.

Edme laughed. Henri’s such a piece of shit. So’s Tom.

Tom is a slightly smaller piece of shit, Alain said. What some might call a turd.

They can be shitty, Jo agreed. She and Henri were childhood friends: the Verdiers and the Swains were the only wealthy families with connections to the north end.

I fidgeted with the pleats of my pinafore. I wanted to thank Edme and Alain for how they’d chased Henri and Tom away, but it felt impossible to do in front of Jo after I’d seen her laughing. Instead I waited for the conversation to change, and soon enough it did. Alain walked around the wall and began retrieving some of the slag brush that had fallen over the side. Edme followed suit, then I went, stepping with care down the steepest part of the slope. Jo and Justine stayed near the top. I was still worried that they thought the fort was silly, but they gamely accepted the stones and branches I passed, depositing them as we sent them up the ridge.

For nights afterward I would return to this memory, in which nothing special occurred. Alain and Edme are below, ferrying things into my hands. I’m balancing on shale fragments, keeping my feet light, trying not to trigger a rockslide. Edme passes me a bulky grey stone that’s pocked with air holes and damp on the bottom. He makes sure I’ve got a good hold on it before he lets go. I give it to Justine, who scrunches her freckles at the wetness. It’s wondrous to be here, in the center of the chain.

When we’d finished hauling for the day, we sat on the lichens above the fort and looked over our work.

Justine asked me what I’d written in my application essay for the Conseil. She’d submitted her own but hadn’t been picked.

Odile totally dodged Pichegru’s question, Jo interrupted. Sorry, I peeked.

What do you mean? Justine asked.

Jo looked over at me, wry and admiring.

All she wrote was: ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere—not there or there.’ I thought it was brilliant. Well, to be honest, I thought it was crazy, but it worked! I mean, it seemed like you gave a bunch of reasons. I never would’ve thought of that, though.

Edme widened his eyes, impressed. What was the question?

He made us say which direction we’d go in, Jo explained. If the Conseil let you visit somewhere.

What did you write? I asked.

Jo stuck her hand in the air, swiveled her wrist around, and pointed to the mountain behind us. They say going east is safer for people here, so I went with that. My parents are keen on me getting in.

I bet you’ll make it, said Justine. I mean, I bet you both will.

Well, it’s super competitive, said Jo. In the long run you’ll definitely be happier with your second choice. The veterinarian’s, she added for our benefit.

Nice, said Alain, I hear Émilie’s applying for that too.

Justine groaned. Would it be out of line if I begged her not to?

You should just come work at the mill with me, said Alain.