Corinne.
“No,” I keep saying, under my breath, hardly realizing it. “No, no, no, no, no,” as we get her down onto a flat of rock and as Mistress Lawson runs towards us with armfuls of bandages and medicines. “No, no, no,” as I take her head in my hands to cradle it from the hard rock and Mistress Coyle tears off Corinne’s sleeve to prepare for injections. “No,” as Mistress Lawson reaches us and gasps as she sees who it is.
“You found her,” Mistress Lawson says.
Mistress Coyle nods. “I found her.”
I feel Corinne’s skull under my hands, feel how the skin burns with fever. I see how sharp her cheeks look, how the bruising that discolours her eyes is against skin sagging and limp. And the collarbones that jut up from above the neckline of her torn and dirty mistress cloak. And the circles of burns against her neck. And the cuts on her forearms. And the tearing at her fingernails.
“Oh, Corinne,” I whisper and wet from my eyes drops onto her forehead. “Oh, no.”
“Stay with us, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says, and I don’t know whether she’s talking to me or Corinne.
“Thea?” Mistress Lawson asks, not looking up.
Mistress Coyle shakes her head.
“Thea’s dead?” I ask.
“And Mistress Waggoner,” Mistress Coyle says, and I notice the smoke on her face, the red angry burns on her forehead. “And others.” Her mouth draws thin. “But we got some of them, too.”
“Come on, my girl,” Mistress Lawson says to Corinne, still unconscious. “You were always the stubborn one. We need that now.”
“Hold this,” Mistress Coyle says, handing me a bag of fluid connected to a tube injected into Corinne’s arm. I take it in one hand, keeping Corinne’s head in my lap.
“Here it is,” Mistress Lawson says, peeling away a strap of crusted cloth on Corinne’s side. A terrible smell hits all of us at the same time.
It’s worse than how sickening it stinks. It’s worse because of what it means.
“Gangrene,” Mistress Coyle says pointlessly, because we can all see that it’s way past infection. The smell means the tissue’s dead. It means it’s started to eat her alive. Something I wish I didn’t remember that Corinne taught me herself.
“They didn’t even give her basic bloody treatment,” grunts Mistress Lawson, getting to her feet and running back towards the cave to get the heaviest medicines we’ve got.
“Come on, my difficult girl,” Mistress Coyle says quietly, stroking Corinne’s forehead.
“You stayed until you found her,” I say. “That’s why you were last.”
“She’d never yield, this one,” Mistress Coyle says, her voice rough and not just because of smoke. “No matter what they did to her.”
We look down at Corinne’s face, her eyes still closed, her mouth dropped open, her breath faltering.
Mistress Coyle’s right. Corinne would never yield, would never give names or information, would take the punishment to keep other daughters, other mothers, from feeling it themselves.
“The infection,” I say, my throat swelling. “The smell, it means–”
Mistress Coyle just bites her lips hard and shakes her head.
“Oh, Corinne,” I say. “Oh, no.”
And right there, right there in my hands, in my lap, her face turned up to mine–
She dies.
There’s only silence when it happens. It isn’t loud or struggled against or violent or anything at all. She just falls quiet, a certain type of quiet you know is endless as soon as you hear it, a quiet that muffles everything around it, turning off the volume of the world.
The only thing I can hear, in fact, is my own breathing, wet and heavy and like I’ll never feel lightness again. And in the silence of my breath I look down the hillside, I see the rest of the wounded around us, their mouths open to cry out in pain, their eyes blank with horrors still being seen even after rescue. I see Mistress Lawson, running towards us with medicine, too late, too late. I see Lee, coming back up the path, calling out for his mother and sister, not willing to believe yet that in all this mess, they’re still not here.
I think of the Mayor in his cathedral, making promises, telling lies.
(I think of Todd in the Mayor’s hands)
I look down at Corinne in my lap, Corinne who never liked me, not ever, but who gave her life for mine anyway.
We are the choices we make.
When I look up at Mistress Coyle, the wet in my eyes makes everything shine with pointed lights, makes the first peek of the rising sun a smear across the sky.
But I can see her clearly enough.
My teeth are clenched, my voice thick as mud.
“I’m ready,” I say. “I’ll do anything you want.”
[TODD]
“Oh, God,” Mayor Ledger keeps saying under his breath. “Oh, God.”
“What’re you so upset about?” I finally snap at him.
The door ain’t unlocked at its usual time. Morning’s come and gone with no sign of anyone remembering that we’re here. Outside the city burns and ROARs but a sour part of me can’t help thinking he’s moaning cuz they’re late with our breakfast.
“The surrender was supposed to bring peace,” he says. “And that bloody woman has ruined everything.”
I look at him strangely. “It’s not like it’s paradise here or nothing. There’s curfews and prisons and–
But he’s shaking his head. “Before she started her little campaign, the President was relaxing the laws. He was easing the restrictions. Things were going to be okay.”
I stand and look out the windows to the west, where smoke still rises and fires still rage and the Noise of men don’t show no sign of stopping.
“You’ve got to be practical,” Mayor Ledger says, “even in the face of tyrants.”
“Is that what you are then?” I say. “Practical?”
He narrows his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, boy.”
I don’t really know what I’m getting at neither but I’m frightened and I’m hungry and we’re stuck in this stupid tower while the world falls to bits around us and we can watch it but we can’t do nothing to change it and I don’t know what Viola’s part in all this is or where she is and I don’t know where the future’s heading and I don’t know how any good can possibly come outta any of this but what I do know is that Mayor Ledger telling me how practical he’s been is kinda pissing me off.