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"That’s all?" Lei asks

"That’s all," I say "Too short?"

Lei begins to laugh and for a moment she sounds like herself "It’s you," she says "It’s obvious That’s no story"

I laugh, too "Sorry," I say "I’ood at this"

"But you love your Match," Lei says, no longer laughing "I know that about you You know it about me"

"Yes," I say

She looks at me The liquid drips into the line

"I know an old story about people who couldn’t be Matched," she says "He was an Aberration She was a citizen and a pilot It was the first of the vanishings"

"The vanishings?" I ask

"Soet out," Lei says "Or wanted to get their children out There were pilots ould fly people away in exchange for other things"

"I’ve never heard of anything like this," I say

"It happened," Lei says "I saw it So--because they thought sending their children aas the best way to keep them safe"

"But where would they take them?" I ask "Into Enemy territory? That doesn’t e of Enees After that, it was up to people to decide whether they’d stay in the villages, or try to cross Enemy territory to find a place known as the Otherlands No one ent on to the Otherlands ever came back"

"I don’t understand it," I say "Hoould sending your children out to thein the Society?"

"Perhaps they knew about the Plague," Lei says "But obviously your parents didn’t feel that way Neither did mine" She looks atthe Society"

"I’m not," I say

"I know," she says "I’m sorry I didn’t mean to tell you history I meant to tell you a story"

"I’"

"The story, then" She lifts her ar in "This pilot loved the ations at hoations to her leaders, too If she left, too many people would suffer She flew the man she loved all the way to the Otherlands, which no one had done before"

"What happened after that?" I ask

"She was shot down by the Eneot to tell people what she had seen in the Otherlands But she had saved the one she loved She knew that, no matter what else happened"

In the silence that follows her story, she leans againstdown

"Do you think you could do that?" she asks

"Fly?" I say "Maybe"

"No," she says "Do you think you could let soht it was best for them?"

"No," I say "I’d have to knoas best for them"

She nods, as if she expected my answer "Almost anyone could do that," she says "But what if you didn’t know and you only believed?"

She doesn’t know if it’s true But she wants it to be

"That story would never be one of the Hundred," she says "It’s a Border story The kind of thing that can only happen out here"

Was she a pilot once? Is that where her husband is? Did she fly hi down? Is this story true? Any of it?

"I’ve never heard of the Otherlands," I say

"You have," she says, and I shakeme "Even if you never heard the name, you had to know they existed The world can’t only be the Provinces And it isn’t flat like the Society’s maps Hoould the sun work? And the moon? And the stars? Didn’t you look up? Didn’t you notice that they changed?"

"Yes," I say

"And you didn’t think about why that ht be?"

My face burns

"Of course," Lei says, her voice quiet "Why would they teach you? You wereAnd it’s not in the Hundred Science Lessons"

"How do you know?" I ask

"My father taught me," she says