Chapter Nine

The sky was still dark as Ben sat on the railing at the corner of the balcony. The raven was perched as close to him as the thickness of the branches would allow, and he was tempted, in the cold cheerlessness of the morning, to reach out and try to pet the creature. He felt close to nature this morning. Later, he would find this strangely fitting.

He sat there for hours and waited for the sun to peak over the canopy. He smelled it before he saw it; first-light always had a slightly biting taste to it, and so many of Ben’s nights had ended early this way, with him watching the morning come, that the experience was like being in the kitchen while the cook prepares a familiar meal.

“Ben?” a groggy, croaking voice came from the doorway behind him.

“Sorry,” he said, turning to look at Martha as she walked out, her arms wrapped tightly and protectively around her. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

She shook her head and yawned. “Gus was snoring; I was bound to wake up eventually.”

Ben smiled and turned back to watch the horizon. “I’m going to see Medias today.”

“I heard,” she said. She came to stand next to him, leaning over the railing. “Geneva works at the employment offices twice a week.”

Ben blinked slowly. “Do you know why?”

She tucked a long, shining black hair behind her ear. “You were labeled ‘denied,’ right?”

“Do you know why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Ben sighed. The raven croaked loudly, splitting the silence with a pickaxe. “I wish I could remember,” he said. “I feel like I would know if I…could only remember.”

“I...” Martha started, then seemed to swallow the following words.

Ben turned to her. Her eyebrows were knit together in either confusion or pain or a mixture of the two. “What?”

She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I…I think I remember something about you,” she said. “Not something that would have anything to do with you being denied. But…I’ve always had this feeling about you, and I think it comes from somewhere, like a memory.”

Ben waited. He watched the conflictions on her face.

“I don’t know, you understand.” She was looking down at her folded hands. “It’s just…a feeling.” She put another stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t say I actually ‘remember’ a time when you weren’t around, when it was just Gus and me, but I feel like that time existed.” She looked up over the yellowing canopy towards the lightening sky. “A time when you weren’t my brother. When I didn’t have a brother.”

Ben still waited. He could see that not only did she have more to say, but he could see that her efforts to remember were hurtful ones.

“I feel like you were in Medias alone before you came to live with Gus and I. I don’t know why you and Gus can’t remember it like I can. I think you looked…younger.” She turned her head slowly and tiredly. “Do I sound crazy, Ben?”

He examined his own expression in his mind. It felt like scared. “I…think…well…don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you are.”

She laughed. The first yellow beam of sunlight popped over the trees, and both of them knew the conversation needed to turn somewhere else. “Is Tess going with you?” Martha asked?

Ben smiled involuntarily. “What did Geneva tell you?”

“She asked me when you had gotten lashed,” she said, practically grinning.