I come upon the wreckage again.
There are four bodies lying in the road, covered in white sheets that don’t quite conceal the pools of blood beneath them. Nearest to me but behind a cordon of soldiers guarding the site is the sheet covering the soldier who accidentally saved me.
I didn’t even know his name.
And then all of a sudden he was dead.
If she’d just waited, if she’d just seen what the Mayor wanted her to do–
But then I think, Appeasement, my girl, it’s a slippery slope–
But the bodies here in the road–
But Maddy dying–
But the boy soldier who saved me–
But Corinne being hit to stop her from helping–
(oh, Todd, where are you?)
(what do I do? what’s the right thing?)
“Move along there,” a soldier barks at me, making me jump.
I hurry along the road and before I even realize it, I’m running.
I return to the nearly empty house of healing out of breath and slam the front door behind me. There were yet more soldiers on the road, more patrols, men on rooftops with rifles who watched me run very closely, one of them even whistling rudely as I went by.
There’ll be no getting to the communications tower now, not any more.
Another thing she screwed up.
As I catch my breath, it sinks in that I’m the only thing even resembling a healer here now. Many of the patients were well enough to follow Mistress Coyle out to wherever she’s gone and, who knows, might have even been the ones to plant the bombs, but there’s still at least two dozen in beds here, with more coming in every day.
And I’m just about the worst healer New Prentisstown has ever seen.
“Oh, help,” I whisper to myself.
“Where’d everybody go?” Mrs Fox asks as soon as I open the door to her room. “There’s been no food, no medicine–”
“I’m sorry,” I say, bustling up her bedpan. “I’ll get you food as soon as I can.”
“Good heavens, dear!” she says as I turn, her eyes widening. I look at the back of my white coat where her eyes have gone. There’s a dirty smear of the young soldier’s blood all the way down to the hem.
“Are you all right?” Mrs Fox asks.
I look at the blood, and all I can say is, “I’ll get your food.”
The next hours pass in a blur. The help staff are all gone, too, and I do my best to cook for the remaining patients, serving them and asking at the same time which medicines they take and when and how much and though they’re all wondering what’s going on, they see how I must look and try to be as helpful as they can.
It’s well past nightfall when I come round a corner with a tray full of dirty dinner dishes and there’s Corinne, just inside the entrance, pressing on the wall with one hand to hold herself up.
I throw the tray on the floor and run to her. She holds up her other hand to stop me before I reach her. She winces as I get close.
And I see the swelling around her eyes.
And the swelling in her lower lip.
And the way she’s holding her body up too straight, like it hurts, like it really hurts.
“Oh, Corinne,” I say.
“Just,” she says, taking a breath. “Just help me to my room.”
I take her hand to help her along and feel something hidden in her palm, pressed into mine. She holds up a finger to her lips to shush the wonderings about to come from my open mouth.
“A girl,” she whispers. “Hidden in the bushes by the road.” She shakes her head angrily. “No more than a girl.”
I don’t look at it until I’ve got Corinne to her room and left again to get bandages for her face and compresses for her ribs. I wait until I’m alone in the supply room and open my palm.
It’s a note, folded, with V written on the outside. Inside, it’s only a few lines, saying almost nothing at all.
My girl, it says. Now is the time you must choose.
And then there’s a single asking.
Can we count on you?
I look up.
I swallow.
Can we count on you?
I fold the note into my pocket and I take up the bandages and compresses and I go to help Corinne.
Who was beaten by the Mayor’s men.
But who wouldn’t have been beaten if she hadn’t had to speak for Mistress Coyle.
But who was beaten even though the Mayor said she wouldn’t be hurt.
Can we count on you?
And it wasn’t signed with a name.
It just said, The Answer.
And Answer was spelled with a bright blue A.
[TODD]
BOOM!
– and the sky tears open behind us and a rush of wind comes up the road and Angharrad rears back in terror and I tumble off her to the ground and there’s dust and screaming and a throbbing in my ears as I lay there and wait to see if I’m dead or not.
Another bomb. The third this week since the first two. Not two hundred metres away from us this time.
“Bitches,” I hear Davy spit, getting to his own feet and looking back down the road.
My ears are ringing and my body’s shaking as I get to my feet. The bombs’ve come at different times of day and night, at different spots in the city. Once it was an aqueduct that fed water to the western part of town, once it was the two main bridges to the farmlands north of the river. Today, it’s–
“That’s that caff,” Davy says, trying to stop Deadfall/Acorn from bolting. “Where the soldiers eat.”
He gets Deadfall to heel and climbs back up on the saddle. “Come on!” he barks. “We’ll go see if they need help.”
I put my hands on Angharrad who’s still frightened, still saying boy colt boy colt over and over again. I say her name a buncha times and finally get back up on her.
“Don’t you go getting no funny ideas,” Davy says. He takes out his pistol and points it at me. “You ain’t sposed to leave my sight.”
Cuz that’s also how life’s gone since the bombs started.
Davy with a gun on me, every waking minute of every waking day.
So I can’t never go looking for her.
“The women certainly aren’t helping their own cause any,” says Mayor Ledger, mouth filled with chook.
I don’t say nothing, just eat my own dinner and field off the asking marks coming from his Noise. The caff was bombed at a time when it was closed, like everything else this Answer thing bombs, but just cuz it’s sposed to be empty don’t mean it always is. Davy and I found two dead soldiers when we got there and one other dead guy who probably mopped the floors or something. Three more soldiers have died in the other bombs.