“You dream quite loud,” he says, not looking back. “She someone important?”
“Never you mind.”
“We just have to get through it, Todd,” he says. “That’s all any of us has to do now. Just stay alive and get through it.”
I turn to the wall.
There ain’t nothing I can do. Not while they got her.
Not while I don’t know.
Not while they could still hurt her.
Stay alive and get thru it, I think.
And I think of her out there.
And I whisper it, whisper it to her, wherever she is. “Stay alive and get thru it.”
Stay alive.
{VIOLA}
“Calm yourself, my girl.”
A voice–
In the brightness–
I blink open my eyes. Everything is a pure white so bright it’s almost a sound and there’s a voice out there in it and my head is groggy and there’s a pain in my side and it’s too bright and I can’t think–
Wait–
Wait–
He was carrying me down the hill–
Just now he was carrying me down the hill into Haven after–
“Todd?” I say, my voice a rasp, full of cotton and spit, but I run at it as hard as I can, forcing it out into the bright lights blinding my eyes. “TODD?”
“I said to calm yourself, now.”
I don’t recognize the voice, the voice of a woman–
A woman.
“Who are you?” I ask, trying to sit up, pushing out my hands to feel what’s around me, feeling the coolness of the air, the softness of–
A bed?
I feel panic begin to rise.
“Where is he?” I shout. “TODD?”
“I don’t know any Todd, my girl,” the voice says as shapes start to come together, as the brightness separates into lesser brightnesses, “but I do know you’re in no shape to be demanding information.”
“You were shot,” says another voice, another woman, younger than the first, off to my right.
“Hush your mouth, Madeleine Poole,” says the first woman.
“Yes, Mistress Coyle.”
I keep on blinking and I start to see what’s right in front of me. I’m in a narrow white bed in a narrow white room. I’m wearing a thin white gown, tied at the back. A woman both tall and plump stands in front of me, a white coat with a blue outstretched hand stitched into it draped over her shoulders, her mouth set in a line, her expression solid. Mistress Coyle. Behind her at the door holding a bowl of steaming water is a girl not much older than me.
“I’m Maddy,” says the girl, sneaking a smile.
“Out,” says Mistress Coyle, without even turning her head. Maddy catches my eye as she leaves, another smile sent my way.
“Where am I?” I ask Mistress Coyle, my breath still fast.
“Do you mean the room, my girl? Or the town?” She holds my eyes. “Or indeed the planet?”
“Please,” I say and my eyes suddenly start to fill with water and I’m angry about that but I keep talking. “I was with a boy.”
She sighs and looks away for a second, then she purses her lips and sits down in a chair next to the bed. Her face is stern, her hair pulled back in plaits so tight you could probably climb them, her body solid and big and not at all someone who you’d mess around.
“I’m sorry,” she says, almost tenderly. Almost. “I don’t know anything about a boy.” She frowns. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about anything except that you were brought to this house of healing yesterday morning so close to death I wasn’t at all sure we would be able to bring you back. Except that we were informed in no uncertain terms that our survival rather depended upon yours.”
She waits to see how I take this.
I have no idea how I take this.
Where is he? What have they done with him?
I turn away from her to try and think but I’m wrapped so tight in bandages around my middle I can’t properly sit up.
Mistress Coyle runs a couple of fingers across her brow. “And now that you’re back,” she says, “I’m not at all sure you’re going to thank us for the world to which we’ve returned you.”
She tells me of Mayor Prentiss arriving in Haven in front of the rumour of an army, a big one, big enough to crush the town without effort, big enough to set the whole world ablaze. She tells me of the surrender of someone called Mayor Ledger, of how he shouted down the few people who wanted to fight, of how most people agreed to let him “hand over the town on a plate with a bow tied round it”.
“And then the houses of healing,” she says, real anger coming off her voice, “suddenly became prisons for the women inside.”
“So you’re a doctor, then?” I ask, but all I can feel is my chest pulling in on itself, sinking as if under an enormous weight, sinking because we failed, sinking because outrunning the army proved to be of no use at all.
Her mouth curls in a small smile, a secret one, like I just let something go. But it’s not cruel and I’m finding myself less afraid of her, of what this room might mean, less afraid for myself, more afraid for him.
“No, my girl,” she says, cocking her head. “As I’m sure you know, there are no women doctors on New World. I’m a healer.”
“What’s the difference?”
She runs her fingers across her brow again. “What’s the difference indeed?” She drops her hands in her lap and looks at them. “Even though we’re locked up,” she says, “we still hear rumours, you see. Rumours of men and women being separated all over town, rumours of the army arriving perhaps this very day, rumours of slaughter coming over the hill to vanquish us all no matter how well we surrendered.”
She’s looking at me hard now. “And then there’s you.”
I look away from her. “I’m not anyone special.”
“Are you not?” She looks unconvinced. “A girl whose arrival the whole town has to be cleared for? A girl whose life I am ordered to save on pain of my own? A girl,” she leans forward to make sure I’m listening, “fresh from the great black beyond?”
I stop breathing for a second and hope she doesn’t notice. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”
She grins again, not unkindly. “I’m a healer. The first thing I ever see is skin and so I know it well. Skin tells the story of a person, where they’ve been, what they’ve eaten, who they are. You’ve got some surface wear, my girl, but the rest of your skin is the softest and whitest I’ve seen in my twenty years of doing the good work. Too soft and white for a planet of farmers.”