Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry [56]
Kira listened to the Singer's voice as he sang the serene melody of plentiful harvests and celebratory feasting. This part of the Song coincided with her own feelings at the moment. She experienced an enormous sense of relief and joy, now that Matt had returned and was safe.
When she looked back, he had crept away again, and the aisle was empty.
"May the little Singer have lunch with Thomas and me?"
It was the midday interruption of the Gathering, a lengthy gap in the day for food and rest. The tender pondered Kira's question and agreed. Leaving by the side door through which they had entered, Kira and Thomas, accompanied by Jo, yawning, went up the stairs to Kira's room and waited for their food to be brought. On the plaza outside, the people would be eating the food they had brought with them and discussing the Song. They would be anticipating the next section, a time of warfare, conflict, and death. Kira remembered it: the bright splatters of blood in crimson threads. But she put it out of her mind now.
While Thomas and Jo began on the large lunch that appeared on a tray, she hurried across the hall to Thomas's room to look down from the window and scan the crowd for a dirty-faced tyke and a bent-tailed dog.
But there was no need to search from the window. They were waiting for her in Thomas's room.
"Matt!" Kira cried. She set her stick aside, sat on the bed, and took him into her arms. Branch danced at her feet, his eager nose and tongue damp on her ankles.
"I been on a horrid long journey," Matt told her proudly.
She sniffed and smiled. "And you never washed, not once, while you were gone."
"There be no time for washing," he scoffed.
"I brung you a giftie," he told her eagerly, his eyes dancing with excitement.
"What was it that you held up at the Gathering? I couldn't see it."
"I brung you two things. A big and a little. The big be coming still. But I gots the little here in my pockie." He dug one hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a handful of nuts and a dead grasshopper.
"Nope. Be the other side." Matt put the grasshopper on the floor for Branch, who grabbed it with his teeth and consumed it with a crunch that made Kira cringe. The nuts rolled under the bed. Matt plunged his hand into the opposite pocket and brought out something triumphantly.
"Here you be!" He handed the thing to her.
She took the folded thing curiously and plucked the dead leaf pieces and dirt away. Then, while Matt watched with delight and pride suffusing his face, she unfolded it and held it to the window light. A square of filthy, wrinkled cloth. Nothing more. And yet it was everything.
"Matt!" Kira said, her voice hushed with awe. "You found blue!"
He beamed. "It were there, where she said."
"Where who said?"
"She. The old woman who makened the colors. She said there be blue yonder." He wiggled in excitement.
"Annabella? Yes, I remember. She did say that." Kira smoothed the cloth on the table, examining it. The deep blue was rich and even. The color of sky, of peace. "But how did you know where, Matt? How did you know where to go?"
He shrugged, grinning. "I recollect she pointed. I just followed where her point went. There be a path. But it's horrid far."
"And dangerous, Matt! It's through the woods!"
"There be nought fearful in the woods."
There be no beasts, Annabella had said.
"Me and Branchie, we walk for days and days. Branch, he et bugs. And me, I had some food I tooken —"
" —from your mother."
He nodded, with a guilty look. "But it weren't enough. After it be all gone, I et nuts, mostly.
"I could've et bugs if I had to,"