The distraction gives the hooded figure enough time to scramble to his feet again, more slowly and deliberately this time, and run up the hill away from them. He runs fast, with extreme speed, even with a limp in his stride.

For some reason she can't understand, he runs straight for the back of the truck, crawls under it, and freezes.

The Groupies look up the street now. They see the truck, maybe for the first time, and with a few grunts they skulk back in the direction they came from.

Pressia wants to yell at the hooded figure. She created a diversion to save him from the Groupies-in front of the OSR even-and he crawls under their truck?

The soldiers in the house come pounding out again.

"Empty!" the one with the dog leg shouts to the driver.

The other two soldiers climb into the back of the truck, as does the one from the passenger seat. The driver puts away his knife, gives a nod. The other head shifts and bobs over his shoulder. He revs the engine, puts the truck in gear, and pulls off.

Pressia looks up and sees a face appear in the truck's back window-a face, half hidden with shadow, a face encrusted with bits of metal, and a taped-shut mouth. A stranger. Just a kid, like her. She takes a step toward the boy in the truck-she can't stop herself-out of the shadows.

The truck turns the corner. Silence fills the alley.

It could have been her.

Now with the truck gone, the hooded figure is exposed, lying on the street. He looks up and sees her. His hood has slipped off, and there is a shorn head. He's tall and lean without a mark or a scar or a burn on his clean, pale face. A long scarf twists in a loose swirl to the ground. He grabs his bag and scarf, quickly stands up and looks around, dazed and lost. And then he staggers, as if head-heavy, and he stumbles backward toward the gutter. He falls-the thick clunk of his skull on cement.

A Pure. Pressia hears the old woman's voice in her mind. A Pure here among us.

PARTRIDGE.

SKULL.

NOW, HERE, BREATHLESS. The stars look like small bright punctures-almost lost in the dark-dust air-but they aren't punctures. It isn't the ceiling of the cafeteria decorated for a dance. The sky overhead is endless. It isn't contained.

Home? Childhood?

No.

Home was a big airy space. Tall ceilings. White on white. A vacuum cleaner always purring in distant rooms. A woman in sweatpants working it back and forth against the furred floors. Not his mother. But his mother was always nearby. She paced. She waved her hands when she spoke. She stared out windows. Cursed. She said, "Don't tell your father." She said, "Remember, keep this just between the two of us." There were secrets within secrets. She said, "Let me tell you the story again."

The story was always the same. The swan wife. Before she was a wife, she was a swan girl who saved a young man from drowning. He was the young prince. A bad prince. He stole her wings and forced her to marry him. He became a bad king.

Why was he bad?

The king thought he was good, but he was wrong.

There was a good prince too. He lived in another land. The swan wife didn't yet know he existed.

The bad king gave her two sons.

Was one good and one bad?

No. They were different. One was like the father, ambitious and strong. One was like her.

Like what? How?

I don't know how. Listen. This is important.

Did the boy-the one like her-have wings?

No. But the bad king put the wings in a bucket down a dark, old dry well, and the boy who was like the swan wife heard ruffling down that well, and one night he climbed down the well and found the wings for his mother. She put them on, and she took the boy she could-the one like her, who didn't resist her-and flew away.

Partridge remembers his mother telling him the story on the beach. She had a towel around her shoulders. It ruffled at her back like wings.

The beach was where they had their second house. It's where they were in the photograph he found in her drawer in the Personal Loss Archives. They didn't go when it was cool except this once. The sun must have been warm because he remembers being sunburned, his lips cracked. They got a flu. Not a virulent one that would send them to an asylum; this was just a stomach flu. His mother took a blue blanket from the linen closet and wrapped him in it. She was sick too. They both slept on the sofas and threw up into little white plastic buckets. She put a wet cloth on his forehead. And she talked about the swan wife and the boy and the new land where they found the good king.

Is my father the bad king?

It's just a story. But listen. Promise me you'll always remember it. Don't tell the story to your father. He doesn't like stories.

Partridge can't lift his head. He feels pinned to the ground, and the memory wheels across his mind. And then it stops. His head is abuzz, a cold bright pain at the back of his skull. His heart is as loud in his ears as the automatic threshers at work in the fields beyond the academy. He used to watch the threshers from the lonesome dormer window at the end of the hall in his dorm when Hastings went home for weekends. Lyda-is she there now? Can she hear the threshers? Does she remember kissing him? He remembers. It surprised him. He kissed her back, and then she pulled away, embarrassed.

There is wind on his skin. This is the real air. The wind whips over his head, flutters the fine fuzz of his hair. The air churns darkly as if stirred by unseen fan blades. He thinks of fan blades-shiny and quick in his mind. How did he get here?

PRESSIA.

GRAY EYES.

THE PURE STAGGERS TO HIS FEET and stands in the road. He glances around for a moment, up and down the row of burned, hollowed-out hulls, over the Rubble Fields with their wisps of smoke threading up into the night air, then at the buildings again. He looks at the sky, as if trying to get his bearings that way. Finally, he pulls the strap on his bag over his shoulder and loops the scarf once around his neck and jaw. He glances at the Rubble Fields and heads toward them.

Pressia tightens the wool sock over the doll-head fist, pulls her sweater sleeve down, and steps out of the alley. "Don't," she says. "You'll never make it."

He whips around, scared, and then his eyes fall on her, and he's obviously relieved that she's not a Groupie or a Beast or even an OSR soldier-though she doubts he knows the names of any of these things. What's there to be afraid of where he comes from anyway? Does he even understand fear? Is he afraid of birthday cakes and dogs wearing sunglasses and new cars topped with big red bows?

His face is smooth and clear, his eyes a pale gray. And she can't quite believe that she is looking at a Pure-a living, breathing Pure.

Burn a Pure and breathe the ash.

Take his guts and make a sash.

Twist his hair and make a rope.

And use his bones to make Pure soap.

That's what comes to mind. Kids sing the song all the time, but no one ever thinks they'll see a real Pure, no matter how many stupid whispers there are. Never. She feels like there's something light and airy and winged inside her chest, locked in her ribs, like Freedle in his cage, like the homemade butterfly in her sack.

"I'm trying to get to Lombard Street," he says, a little breathlessly. Pressia wonders if the quality of his voice is different. Clearer, sweeter? Is that the voice of someone who hasn't been breathing ash for years? "Ten Fifty-four Lombard, to be exact. Large row houses with grillwork gates."

"It's not good to stand out there in plain sight," Pressia tells him. "It's dangerous."

"I've noticed." He takes a step toward her and then stops. One side of his face has been lightly dusted with ash. "I don't know if I should trust you," he says. It's a fair statement. He's almost been beaten by Groupies; he's bound to be a little nervous now.

She sticks out her foot, the one missing its shoe. "I threw my shoe to distract the Groupies who were about to kill you. I've already saved you once."

He looks down the street to where he was getting shoved around. He walks over to Pressia in the alley. "Thanks," he says. He smiles. His teeth are straight and very white, like he's lived on fresh milk his whole life. His face, this close up, is even more startling because of its perfection. She can't tell how old he is. He seems older than she is, but then he seems young in a way too. She doesn't want to be caught staring and so she looks down at the ground. He says, "They were going to tear me apart. I hope I'm worth your lost shoe."

"I hope my shoe isn't lost," she says, turning away from him a little so that he can't see the side of her face that's burned.

He tugs on the strap of his bag. "I'll help you find your shoe if you help me find Lombard Street."

"It's not easy finding streets here. We don't go by streets."

"Where did you throw your shoe? Which direction?" he asks, heading back toward the street.

"Don't," she says, although she needs the shoe, the gift from her grandfather, maybe the last gift he'll ever give her. She hears a truck engine to the east and then another in the opposite direction. And there's still another not far off, or is it an echo? He should stay out of sight. Anyone could see him. It's not safe. "Leave it."

But he's already in the middle of the street again. "Which way?" he says and opens his arms wide, pointing in opposite directions, like he wants to be a living target.

"The oil drum," she says, just trying to hurry him up.

He spins around, sees the oil drum, and runs to it. He turns a half circle around the drum and then bends over. When he pops back up, he's got her shoe. He holds it over his head like a prize.

"Stop," she whispers, wishing he'd get back in the shadows.

He runs to her and gets down on his knee. "Here," he says. "Give me your foot."

"It's okay," she says. "I can do it." Her cheeks are flushed. She's embarrassed and mad at him too. Who does he think he is, anyway? He's a Pure who's been kept safe, who's had it easy his whole life. She can put on her own shoe. She's not a child. She bends down, rips her shoe out of his hand, and puts it on herself.

"How does this sound? I helped you find your shoe so you help me find Lombard Street or what used to be Lombard Street."

She's scared now. It's settling in that he is a Pure and that this is too dangerous, being with him. The news of his presence will keep spreading, and there's no way to stop it. When people find out that there's a Pure here for certain, he will definitely become a target-his arms stretched wide or not. Some people will want to use him as an angry sacrifice. He represents all of the people from the Dome, the rich and the lucky who left them behind to suffer and die. Others will want to capture him and leverage ransom somehow. And the OSR will want him for his secrets or to use him as bait.

And she has her own reasons, doesn't she? If there's a way out, that means there's a way in. That's what the old woman said, and maybe it's true. She knows that he could be of use. Wouldn't he offer her some leverage with the OSR? Could she get out of having to report to headquarters? Could she negotiate medical help for her grandfather too, while she's at it?

She tugs on her sweater sleeve. The Dome will send out people to look for him, won't they? What if they want him back? "Do you have a chip?" she asks.

He rubs the back of his neck. "Nope," he says. "I never got one as a kid. I'm fresh as the day I was born. You can look if you want." The chip implants always leave a small raised bump as a scar.

She shakes her head.

"Do you have one?"

"It's defunct now. Just a dead chip," she says. She always keeps her hair long enough to cover the small scar. "They don't work here anyway. But it's what all good parents did back then."

"Are you saying my parents weren't good parents?" he says, half joking.

"I don't know anything about your parents."

"Well, I don't have a chip. That's what you wanted to know. Are you going to help me or what?" He's a little angry now. She's not sure why, but she's glad to see that she can rile him. It tilts a little power in her direction.

She nods. "But we'll have to use old maps. I know someone who has them. I was on my way to his place. I can take you there. Maybe he can help."

"That's fine," he says. "Which way?" He turns and starts for the street.

She grabs his jacket. "Wait," she tells him. "I'm not going out with you like that."

"Like what?" he says.

She stares at him, disbelieving. "Uncovered."

He puts his hands in his pockets. "So it's obvious."

"Of course it's obvious."

He doesn't say anything for a moment. They stand there. "What was that thing that attacked me?"

"A Groupie. A big one. Everyone out here is deformed in some way, fused so that we aren't exactly what we were before."

"And you?"

She looks away from him and answers a different question. "People's skin is often littered. Glass is sharp, depending on how it's embedded. Plastic can stiffen up, making it hard to move. Metal rusts."

"Like the Tin Man," the Pure says.

"Who?"

"He's a character in a book and this old movie," he says.

"We don't have that stuff here. Not much survived."

"Right," he says. "And what's that singing?"

She'd blocked it out, but he's right. Chanting voices from the Death Spree carry on the wind. She shrugs and says, "Maybe people singing at a wedding." She's not sure why she would say something like this. Did people sing at weddings-like her parents' church wedding and white-tent reception? Do they still sing in the Dome?

"You'll have to watch out for OSR trucks too."

He smiles.