The Swailing

ECCO: Entrance

We don't even have a moment to make up a story for the Ecco border guard. Fortunately, she doesn't seem overly concerned that we just made a wild and rapid exit from Malkut, and despite our previous chase and escape, the police from Malkut don't seem too eager to follow us into Ecco. Their jurisdiction must end at the border. It seems likely that young people like us run away from Malkut all the time and Ecco is happy to take them in.

The border guard also seems unconcerned about my bleeding head injury or the fact that I'm 17 and here without a guardian, or that I'm originally from Optima. Her biggest concern is that we properly "register" and pay an entry tax. We are informed that if we plan on taking advantage of any of the government programs or services, we will be required to sign a contract committing us to stay in the sovereign for a prescribed amount of time afterward to pay taxes to help cover the cost of that program.

I wonder about my mother, if she had to stay to help pay for the cost of the medical treatment she may have gotten here. That would help explain why she never came back. It seems like a more palatable thought than that she died. Or that she just never cared about seeing me again. I cling to whatever hope I can find.

Once we are admitted, our names and data securely in their system, we stop at an oasis and Finn locates a cold pack for my head. The bleeding has stopped and when I look at it in the mirror I decide I look kind of badass. It's just a small cut and even if it leaves a scar, it is practically in my hair and will be almost undetectable. But I feel like I've completed some kind of rite of passage. I've bled from an injury for the first time.

While we are stopped I take off his mother's ring and put it back in the fuzzy box in the glove compartment. I don't know why, but it makes me sad to remove it, sad to put something so beautiful in a box and hide it away.

We get back on the road and head towards New York. I point to the welcome sign that borders the highway. "Why do they spell ECCO like that, and in all capital letters?"

"It's not echo, like the sound. It's an acronym."

"Really? That makes more sense. I didn't know that." I shake my head, constantly amazed at all I didn't – and don't – know. "What does it stand for?"

"East Coast – Curare Omnes."

"Latin?"

He nods. "It means to cure all."

I stare at him. "Seriously?"

He nods. "I don't think they meant it literally, like in a medical sense, when they came up with it. I think it was supposed to be more figurative – like, our way is the cure to society's ills, you know? But ... it's become sort of literal over time."

Maybe if I would have known what ECCO stood for back at the beginning of my search, I would have come here in the first place. But I didn't even tell Finn that my mom was sick until we were getting ready to leave Prospera – I suppose I should have given him more details from the start. I just hadn't realized that some of the sovereign names were so integral to their identity. I thought they were all sort of superficial, like Optima and Prospera, or obvious, like the Rockies. I guess it surprises me that some sovereigns' names actually have more substantive, even lofty, meanings.

The buildings in New York are huge, like they were in Aon, and block out the sunlight from the street almost completely. It seems like there are even more people here than in Aon, but they all scurry around like ants. There are no panhandlers, no homeless people wandering the streets. Everyone seems to have a place to be, but everything is dingier. Dirtier. Like they're not trying to impress anyone or hide anything.