LITMIR.BIZ

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one that he’d now shed, becoming as helpless as one of the littles.

      “And please,” her father said, “help Van to know that I love him.”

      Van? Legacy thought. Van?

      Her face was growing hot. Her father wanted to send Van to work? But where could he go? He had no education that would be recognized in the city. And what could he do in the provinces, with his limp and his glasses and his skinny arms? He was the smartest kid Legacy had ever met, but he wasn’t the strongest. He could barely manage carrying full pails of milk in from the barn, let alone long days of harvesting olives.

      “Help me,” her father was saying, “to have faith that he’ll survive the factories. And that he’ll understand the decision I’ve made.”

      A fist clenched in Legacy’s stomach. The factories? Van would never survive it. She’d heard stories of ten-hour shifts, kids not much older than her hauling loads of mineral compounds shipped in from the mines. Pumping the bellows for hours on end, heating the metal until it could be drawn into threads.

      When would Van read? How would he finish his education? How could her father imagine Van was suited to that kind of work?

      Legacy glanced over her shoulder at Van. Had he known about this scheme? Was that why he wanted her to go play the trials? Now, in the hallway, his face was ashen, but he didn’t speak. She saw again how frail his shoulders were.

      Then she remembered that other day. His shoulders had looked frail then, as well, when he was pinned under that branch, struggling to get out. With a rush of shame, Legacy remembered the blinding flash of light and the way the branch had fallen. She’d tried to pull Van out by his shoulders, but she couldn’t manage it until her father came running.

      Before Legacy knew what she was doing, she was charging through her father’s door.

      “You can’t send him,” she said. “It’s not right.”

      Her father pulled himself up. His face had darkened with anger, and suddenly Legacy realized that he was not, in fact, as vulnerable as a child.

      And she’d just revealed that she’d been eavesdropping at his door. And on top of that, she’d rushed into his room without his permission.

      Looking up at her father’s darkening face, Legacy considered running away. But then, once again, she remembered the day that branch fell and pinned Van.

      “Don’t send him,” she said. “Send me instead.”

      Legacy saw the clench of her father’s jaw.

      “You’re not old enough,” he said.

      “He’s only a year older than I am,” Legacy said.

      “I need your help here,” her father said.

      Legacy’s nails dug into her palms. “Then let me go to Silla’s trials,” she said. “Let me try to win. If I do, I can train at the academy. I can start winning money, and I’ll send it back and—”

      “Legacy!” her father said. “Listen to yourself. You’re talking about fantasies. You’re talking about dreams. But this is the real world that we live in. There’s real work to be done. How would I manage the orphanage without you?”

      Legacy stared up at him. How could she explain to him how it felt when she played tennis on the back wall? How could she make him understand that playing tennis was the one thing she was made for, that it wasn’t just a dream, that it was the realest of her realities?

      “I could do it,” she tried, but she felt her confidence failing. “I could—”

      But her father was already shaking his head. “How could you, Legacy? How could you choose this moment to bring up the old argument about tennis?”

      Legacy tried to summon a defense and found that she couldn’t.

      “You can’t just think about yourself,” her father said. “Think about the littles. There are other people you have to consider.”

      Now, no matter how hard Legacy clenched her fists, the tears started to fall. “Please,” she said. “Just let me tr—”

      “So stubborn!” her father said. His eyes had gone cold. “Just like your mother.”

      A sob ripped through Legacy’s chest. Then she was running away. She passed Van in the hallway, stumbled down the stone stairs, and must have let herself out through the gate, because she was running up the slope to the Forest of Cora, where she pushed her way past the scratching fingers of the burnt trees, heading deeper into the gloom beneath their dead branches.

      Once her lungs started burning, Legacy slowed to a walk. Then she looked around. She had never ventured this far into the forest. There were other kinds of trees here, not just the burnt drammus trees that crowded the edges. The trunks of the drammus trees seemed to be made of charcoal: satiny black and evenly quilted. All of them had been killed in the fire. But some of the other trees seemed to have withstood the worst flames. Here, deeper in the forest, Legacy found a few nipperberry trees that were still bearing fruit. There were other trees too, trees that Legacy didn’t recognize. Some of them had grown leaves since the fire, and their canopies had twisted together until they blocked out the afternoon sunlight. The darkness hung around Legacy’s shoulders like velvet. These trees, the ones she didn’t recognize, seemed wild and unruly. Their trunks were whorled and knotted, their leaves a disorganized jumble of shapes: mittens, goldfish, unfurled umbrellas.

      She realized it had been a long time since she’d heard birdsong. She couldn’t hear the explosions deep in the mines, either, or feel their vibrations in the soles of her sneakers. In fact, she could feel nothing but the soft moss underfoot. Its cushiony thickness absorbed the sounds of her footsteps, though sometimes, when she stepped on a burnt branch, she could hear a faint whisper as it disintegrated, giving way to a sigh of black dust.

      Everything was so quiet. Legacy wondered if she shouted—if she screamed for help—whether anyone in the world would be able to hear her.

      Her heart beat faster as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Disturbing new details began to emerge from the gloom. If she looked too long at the whorled trunks, she saw the shapes of unhappy faces etched into their bark: women with long, snarled hair; men with skin sagging loose on their faces.

      As her ears got used to the new silence, she began to make out sounds that she hadn’t noticed: branches clicking like fingernails on a window, small animals skittering over tangled roots. Then a large shape rushed screeching toward her head, only veering away at the last moment with a great crashing through the canopy.

      Spooked, Legacy tried to steady herself by grabbing a low-hanging branch. But she only managed to break off a burnt twig, and then her heart froze in her chest when she heard a moan of pain from the branch she’d just broken.

      She looked down at her hand. A drop of blood gleamed on the twig she was holding.

      For a moment, Legacy stood rooted to the spot. Was it her hand or the twig that was bleeding? When she looked up again, the tree was bending toward her: a tall, treacherous form leaning down to enclose her. Recoiling in horror, she shook free and ran until she emerged into a clearing.

      There, Legacy stopped. She took a step forward. Her jaw dropped.

      The clearing looked almost like a tennis court.

      It was wild and overgrown, but still: it had the rectangular shape of a court. There, almost obscured by the overgrown grass, were faded white lines. And there, at the center, was a sagging black net.

      Legacy took another step forward. What was this place? Who could have built a court so deep in this forest?

      More questions bloomed in Legacy’s mind as she walked the length of the

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