Sometimes you seem very far away from me, my parabatai. Light on water had not rivaled the boy’s blazing contradiction of a smile, somehow both indomitable and too easily hurt. He was a child going to a new home, as Will and the boy Zachariah had been had once traveled in lonely sorrow to the place where they would find each other. Jem hoped he would find happiness. Jem smiled back at a boy long gone. Sometimes, Will, he said. You seem very close.
