Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry [50]
Kira sighed in exasperation. "No, that's not the way it is. A gift —" She gave up. "Never mind. Tell us where he went."
"He be getting you some blue!"
"Blue? What do you mean?"
"Dunno, miss. But Matt, he said it. He be saying they got blue yonder, and he be getting you some."
The woman reappeared in the open doorway and called in a shrill and angry voice to the tyke, who retreated inside. Thomas and Kira turned away and began to retrace their steps on the muddy path back toward the village. Silent watchers still lurked in doorways. The fetid air still hung humid.
Kira whispered to Thomas. "When Matt disappeared, I thought perhaps we would find that he had been taken too. Like Jo."
"If he'd been taken," Thomas suggested, "we'd know his whereabouts. He'd be there with us in the Council Edifice."
Kira nodded. "And with Jo. Although maybe they'd have locked him up, like her. He'd hate that."
"Matt would find a way to get free," Thomas pointed out. "Anyway," he added, helping Kira find her way around a puddle with a dead rat in it, "they wouldn't want Matt, I'm afraid. They only want us for our skills, and he hasn't any."
Kira thought of the impish boy, of his generosity and his laughter, of his devotion to the little dog. She thought of him now, wherever he was, on his quest to bring a gift to friends. "Oh, Thomas," she said, "he does. He knows just how to make us smile and laugh."
There seemed no hint of laughter or any history of it in this terrible place. Making her way through the squalor, Kira remembered Matt's infectious chortle. She thought, too, of the clear purity of the small singer's voice, and how the two children must have been the only elements of joy here. Now Jo had been taken away. And Matt was gone as well.
She wondered where he could have journeyed, all alone but for the dog, to search for blue.
18
The day of the Gathering was approaching. Its nearness was palpable in the village. People began to finish projects and delayed the start of new ones. Kira noticed that in the weaving shed fabrics were folded and stacked, but the looms were not restrung.
The noise level subsided, as if people were distracted with preparations and didn't want to waste time with the usual bickering.
Some people washed.
In his room, Thomas was meticulously polishing the Singer's staff again and again. He used thick oils and rubbed them into the wood with a soft cloth. Smooth and golden, it began to take on a glow and fragrance.
Matt did not return. It had been many days now since he had disappeared. At night, before she slept, Kira held the scrap of cloth that had so often assuaged her fears and even answered her questions. She wrapped it around her fingers and concentrated on Matt; she pictured the laughing boy and sought some feeling of where he might be and whether he was safe. A feeling of reassurance, of solace, came from the scrap. But no answer.
They could occasionally hear the voice of the small singer, Jo, during the day. The crying had ceased. Most often they heard repetitive chanting, the same phrases over and over, though sometimes, as if she were allowed a moment of her own, the high lyrical voice soared into melodies that made Kira hold her breath in awe.
She crept down at night with the key in her hand and visited the tyke. Jo had stopped asking for her mother, but she clung to Kira in the darkness. Together they whispered little stories and jokes. Kira brushed Jo's hair.
"I could thump with the hairbrush iffen I needed," Jo reminded her, looking up at the ceiling.
"Yes. And we would come." Kira stroked Jo's soft cheek.
"Want I should make a song for you?" Jo asked.
"Someday," Kira told her. "But not now. We mustn't make noise in the night. It must be our secret, that I come here."
"I be thinking up a song," Jo said. "And someday I sing it for you horrid loud."
"All right." Kira laughed.
"The Gathering be soon," Jo said importantly.
"Yes, I know."
"I be right up front, they say."
"Good for you! So you'll be able to see everything.