“It’s nice to be out here with you, Mama,” Wren said. His sudden words, quiet as they were, jolted Cass from her thoughts.
“It’s nice to be out here with you, Wren,” she said with a smile.
“I mean, with just you.”
“Yeah. Seems like it’s hardly ever just us anymore, huh?”
“Yeah.”
He went quiet again for a few moments after that, but Cass could tell he was working up to something. Sometimes he just needed time to find the words, and sometimes Wren waited for her to ask the right questions. For a long time it had been easy for her to read her son, but lately it’d been different. Difficult. Maybe it was that they hadn’t spent as much time together the past few weeks. Or maybe, more frightening to her, he was just growing up.
“Do you miss it just being the two of us?” she asked.
Wren shrugged and then waggled his head back and forth from shoulder to shoulder slightly, a gesture that Cass had learned to interpret as “kinda”.
“I know I’ve been away a lot lately,” she said. “There’s just been a lot going on. But I’ll try to make more time for us, if you’d like that.”
Wren nodded. But there was more to it than that. Not that it looked like he was going to offer.
“Have you been enjoying your time with Able and Swoop and everyone?” Cass asked.
“I guess so.”
“Just guess so?”
Wren shrugged. “They’re all really nice.” His tone didn’t carry any enthusiasm.
“But they’re not Three.”
Wren shook his head.
“I miss him too,” she said. “Every day.”
“Mama, do you think we could go away?” Wren asked, looking up at her. She must’ve looked surprised by the question, because he quickly added, “Just for a little while, I mean.”
“Hmm, I don’t know, baby,” Cass answered. “I don’t think people would like it too much if their governor disappeared all of a sudden.” She’d meant to make the statement light, but from Wren’s reaction she realized she’d said exactly the wrong thing. Cass tried to recover, to keep him from shutting down on her completely. “But who knows? I guess if you’re in charge you can do what you want. Where would you like to go?”
Wren shrugged again. Cass tried to think of a place to suggest, but found she couldn’t come up with one that didn’t have some painful memory attached to it. She needed something, though, to keep him talking.
“Greenstone?” she said, and then held her breath. They hadn’t been back since their narrow escape from that wild and dangerous city. But for all the threats they had faced, the little time they’d spent there had also offered them a greatly unexpected refuge and, for one precious moment, almost a sense of home.
Wren did his little head wag again.
“Greenstone would be nice,” he said, finally. “Or Chapel’s, maybe.” Chapel’s village without walls, just on the edge of the Strand. It sounded like an imaginary place, a fairytale for children in a world of fortified cities and urban wasteland. But Chapel and his people had taken Wren in for a time, and Cass knew as dreamlike as it sounded, it did exist out there, somewhere, on the Strand’s fringe.
She said, “I’d really like to see that someday.”
“I think you will.”
They were just passing the north-eastern gate, and Cass hadn’t really thought much about it until Wren stopped walking. She continued on a few steps before turning back. He was just looking off through the gate.
“Wren? You OK?”
“I’m not who they think I am, Mama,” he said quietly. And his words held such weight that she knew this, at last, had been what he’d been building up to say.
“Who, baby?”
“Any of them.” He looked so small to sound so weary. Cass returned to her son and crouched in front of him. She lifted her veil and took his face in her hands. His cheeks were cool from the morning air.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Last night wasn’t about anything that you did, or anything you could’ve done. And you never have to try to be anything that you aren’t.”
Without taking his eyes from hers, Wren said, “I do, Mama. I do have to try. Every day.”
He said it with such quiet authority, Cass couldn’t think of anything to say. Her hands slid off his face, down to his shoulders.
Wren looked off towards the gate. “All those people,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that.”
It took a moment before Cass understood. She followed his gaze, and the pieces came together. Though it was technically still an entryway, the north-eastern gate was hardly ever used to actually enter or exit the compound. Soon after Wren had Awakened the first of the Weir, word had spread through the city with surprising speed. And then the memorials had started showing up. Wreaths, ever-burning vigil lights, personal belongings… offerings, really. It wasn’t a gate anymore. It was a shrine. To her son.