Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
It should be OK. I mean, she’s seven. No twenty-eight-year-old woman wants to hang out with a seven-year-old. Clara will be polite and say hello—because something tells me that being ‘polite’ is kind of a thing for Clara—and then she’s gonna forget all about the kid.
So it’s gonna go something like this: Anneeta will be all, Hi, I’m Anneeta, the resident tower sparkplug. Would you like to have tea with me?
And Clara—because I will have warned her ahead of time about the tea party invitation—is gonna be all, Very nice to meet you, small person, but I will have to decline your tea, for I hear it is atrocious.
And that’s probably gonna be the end of it.
But I have questions. And giving Anneeta permission to hang out with Clara while I’m at work this week feels like a good way to get a few answers. Plus, I can keep an eye on Clara with Anneeta’s eyes. It’s pretty much a win-win for me.
So I pretend to think about Anneeta’s request for a few moments, then sigh. Like I’m being put out. “Well, probably it’s gonna be OK. But…” I crouch down on one knee so I can be eye level with the kid, then lean in, like I’m gonna tell her something secret. “When I ask her if she wants to be friends with you, she’s gonna wanna know who you are and where you came from. Plus, if you do anything weird, it might scare her.”
Anneeta is shaking her head before I even finish. “I won’t do anything weird, I promise.”
“Well, where should I tell her you come from?”
Anneeta looks confused. “I come from the tower.”
“Yeah, but how that’s work?”
Her eyes narrow with suspicion. “How’s what work?”
“See, she’s gonna ask questions about you. And I’m gonna have to tell her you’re the one who led me to her.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Which is weird. So what do I tell her? I mean, about how you know everything about the tower.”
“Well…” Anneeta tries on a smile. “We could lie.”
I chuckle, then point at her. “We could. But we shouldn’t. I like Clara. I don’t want to lie to her.”
“Oh.” She’s confused again. “Well. My head, you see?”
“Mmmhmm.” I nod, rolling a hand for her to keep going.
“It sees things. Inside and outside. Well, of course outside. But it’s different. You know what I mean?”
Here’s the thing. I do know what she means. Because as an augment, I’ve experienced these inside pictures as well. Not to mention the outside ones, which is a whole other thing than actual reality. But Anneeta here is not augmented. She’s seven.
And when she talks about seeing things inside and outside, she’s talking about the veil. Something no one outside of Sweep even knows exists.
So seven-year-olds, who would never be augmented, should not be able to see the veil in the outside world or communicate with it inside their heads.
“Yes,” I say. “I do know what you mean. But how do you see these things inside and outside of your head? And was it always like this? Or has it been changing over time?”
“You sound like a doctor, Tyse.”
Oops. She’s catching on. “Sorry, don’t mean to. I’m just trying to find a way to explain you to Clara. In easy-to-understand terms. And if you tell me, I’ll take you upstairs and introduce you to her right now.”
Her suspicion fades. “You will?”
“Absolutely. She’s gonna be thrilled to meet you. I bet you’ll be having tea parties together by tomorrow.”
I think Anneeta is lonely—she’s just programmed herself not to think about it so it comes out as confidence—because her eyes immediately go wistful and fill up with longing as she pictures tea parties with Clara.
I almost feel bad about lying to her, but understanding Anneeta’s relationship to the decommissioned god’s tower feels pretty critical in this moment—I do, after all, have a world-hopping woman claiming she was sacrificed to this very same tower god living in my room with me—so I push that guilt away.
Anneeta leans in closer to me, then looks over both her shoulders like she’s checking her peripherals before meeting my gaze again. “I didn’t always see things the way I do now.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “No. It just happened one day last year.”
“Last year?”
“Yep. I saw a lady.”
“What kind of lady?”
“She looked like Clara, but… different. And she walked out of that tower.” Anneeta points to one of the ruins.
I look at the ruined tower for a moment. It’s not completely gone but it’s not completely there, either. “Then what’d she do?”
“Just… walked away. And when she got to the edge there?” She points to the imaginary boundary that separates the Ruin District from the Canal District. “She disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared? Like… into a crowd of people?”
“No. Just… poof.” Anneeta makes a poof gesture with her hands as she says this. “Gone. Like she was never there. And that’s when the other place showed up.”