Melancholy: Book Two of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  I have no space in my heart for the gratitude I feel for him, for the love.

  I turn back to Pace. “We’ll take the baby, if you want. We’ll love it.”

  Pace shakes her head desperately. “You’re not thinking straight,” she says. “We didn’t have clearance for procreation. Hal was killed for it. I’ll be killed for it. They’ll let me have the baby and then they’ll punish me with exile.”

  Oh fuck. I didn’t even think. The air leaves my chest in a rush.

  “You have no idea what you’re actually asking me,” Pace says and goes to bed with a slam of her door.

  I close my eyes. Try to get a hold of the ridiculous floundering hope inside me. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t realistic. I know this.

  Hands brush my cheeks, my jaw, my neck. Hands I know very well. I tilt into his touch and open my eyes.

  “I love you, Josephine Luquet,” Luke says, “And whether it is this baby or not, you and I will have children.”

  I kiss him.

  *

  Luke

  I lie on Josi’s bed with her. We face each other, hands touching.

  “We’re not permitted to breed,” she says with a smile.

  “I’m a rebel.”

  “That’s why I like you.”

  “Oh yeah? How much do you like me?”

  “Medium.”

  I laugh, tracing my hand over the curve of her hip.

  “Luke,” she says. “Can you tell me about your parents?”

  “You’ve met my parents. You have dinner with them every night.”

  “I want you to tell me secret things about them. Things from your childhood. Real things. Things from before the cure.”

  I lie still for a while, thinking about the question and the answer. About how uncomfortable it makes me, about how thoroughly I would have avoided it had this been during our first relationship. But that was the relationship full of lies, and I need to build something else. My hand moves up to gently thread through her thick, dark hair.

  “Mom has pink cheeks. They’re pink no matter what. She made eighteen cups of tea a day. Every problem in the world was solved by cups of tea. But she was smart, too. She knew how to talk stuff through, and I always had this sense that everything she said was inherently true. She could deal with anything – usually injuries. Her laugh was very high-pitched. And unexpected. She loved listening to Motown music and blues. She had great stories from her childhood, which she relished telling us. Dave and I always got sick of them, but they were good. I drove her nuts ’cause I was always pulling things apart so I could figure out how they worked and then never putting them back together.” I smile, thinking about all the times she threatened to punish me and then never did.

  “She was an excellent woman,” I say simply. “She’s only a few hundred yards away but I miss her terribly.”

  Josi’s hand moves to my cheek, her thumb stroking gently. “And your dad?”

  “He was a philosopher in worker’s clothes. Had all the best sayings for every occasion. I have absolutely no idea how he came up with them because I never once saw him crack a book. But he was a perfectionist. Good at everything with his hands. God, the stuff he used to build was so beautiful I didn’t understand how it was possible. His hands were dry and perpetually covered in dirt. It gets under his fingernails and you can’t get it out – I’m not kidding. That dirt is there forever. I tried to scrape it out once when I was a kid but there was no moving it. He said he wished his hands were as soft as mine. He also paid me a dime to scratch his feet.” I start to laugh. “Man, he loved it. My fingernails weren’t sharp enough so he made me use bottle caps. I really used to dig in.”

  Josi is laughing too, imagining the gross picture I paint.

  But then she says, “Tell me about Dave.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. I’m right here.”

  The ache of it. I have never imagined such an ache could exist. I close my eyes.

  “He was good at everything,” I say softly. I’m not sure if Josi can even hear me, but she doesn’t ask me to repeat it. “He was surly about being good at everything. He didn’t want to be good at things, but unfortunately he was. He was brave, but it annoyed him. A stray cat used to bring dead rats to our doorstep every day and we told Dave he was the man-of-the-house-in-training so he had to get rid of the entrails every morning with a shovel. He hated it, which I thought was hilarious. But he did it, and none of us doubted for a second that he would do it. He could just do stuff. He fixed stuff. He was the person you knew would come through for you. Always.” I stop, drawing a breath. “He was so funny,” I whisper finally. I think it’s the worst bit of all, that he used to make everyone laugh so much.

  Josi’s hands move over the lines and shapes of my face; I can feel her fingers tremble, but her voice when she speaks is strong. “The only wisdom I have comes from books,” she admits, and I give a breathless laugh until she says, “but Thornton Wilder said ‘There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love’.”

  It’s just like what Dad said, and I feel it suddenly and intensely; I feel it as a great, gaping ocean, and me slipping into it. Her melancholy has found me, for the first time. Her yearning.

  She holds me as I weep for my brother, for the loss of him.

  An ancient, tight thing within starts to loosen. I do not feel any better; you can’t cry away grief. And you can’t cry away the knowledge that your brother was a far better man than you. He would have killed himself, rather than leave the people in this compound in danger. He would have ended this madness because he was selfless. But the girl in my arms makes me selfish; secretly I know that I’d let the whole world burn down if it meant she and I would live in the remains alone, just as we did the first time we fell in love.

  *

  It’s very late when I whisper to her, not knowing if she’s still awake or not.

  “What did it feel like for you?”

  She doesn’t move, or open her eyes. I think she must be asleep until she says, “A shadow. One I could see only when I didn’t look directly at her.”

  Josephine’s eyes move to mine, and for just a moment I have the most vivid memory I have ever experienced, like a vision or a hallucination or something far too real. Her eyes, in the space between blinks, are bleeding red like they were on the night of the blood moon.

  My heart lurches and I have to slam my eyelids shut; her soullessness on that night is a foretelling of my own and I can’t shake the dread of it.

  “How does it feel for you?” she asks.

  I’m unable to speak, at first. Josi traces her fingers over my lips; she touches me now as though she will never have enough touch, as though she has wasted so much time not pressing her skin to mine. I clear my throat. “I’ve spent most of my life learning to inflict harm. Control means everything to me. It has to, when you know how to kill someone.” I swallow; there is so much fear uncurling in my heart. “This is like … long, crooked fingers reaching through the dark to tug at the edges of me, gentle and sinister. And they’ll keep slowly tugging until control unravels, and me with it.”

  Chapter 23

  April 9th, 2066

  Josephine

  Luke has nightmares all night. Terrible, violent things. I try to hold him, but it’s too much of a hazard as I get hit in the face and knocked off the bed twice, so eventually I just sleep on the floor.

  I wake him before dawn. We need to work out a plan before he has to sneak home. He lurches loudly awake, then spots me and calms down. “You okay?” he mumbles.

  “I’m good. Are you? How do you feel?”

  “Bit sore.”

  I sink onto the bed. It’s still pitch black outside, but we don’t have time to waste. “Here are my thoughts.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Woah. Can I, like, wake up a bit first?”

  “No time. Objectives: stop the cures. Reverse the cures. Get Raven out o
f power. To do the first two we have to change the hierarchy of power in the city. Do you agree?”

  He blinks. Nods.

  “If we don’t change the power structure the cures will never stop. We can destroy the labs and the factories but they’ll just start again and keep going. So to shift the power we need to attack the circle of Ministers, starting with Falon Shay.”

  “Hang on,” Luke says. He rubs his eyes. “We make a void and then what fills it?”

  I hesitate. “You do.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a born leader.”

  “Fuck no. I was not born to lead the last remaining humans on the earth.”

  “We don’t know we’re the last – there could be other cities left.”

  “Whatever. I’m not a leader.”

  “Actually,” I reply calmly, “you are.”

  I move us past it – he’s nowhere near ready to agree to anything like that. “So this means we have twelve people to either incapacitate, turn to our cause or kill.”

  “Not gonna happen before the cures are administered.”

  “No. So first we take out the lab and the factory. We delay, while we work out how to kill the fuckers.”

  His eyebrows arch. “Ruthless.”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright,” he says sleepily. “To do all of that we’re going to need – for starters – a proper team. Not rag-tag, feral resistance fighters. I need Bloods.”

  “Can you turn any of the Bloods you knew?”

  “Too risky. They don’t have loyalty to anything except their jobs.”

  “Can you train new Bloods out of us?”

  “I can try.”

  “Good. Now to Raven.”

  “We can’t just remove her from power, Jose. Unless several people were to take her down in combat, and then her hierarchical spot would automatically drop. But even that wouldn’t work, because she’s in Quinn’s ear constantly.”

  “Well we have to do something – she’s the reason this place is so messed up.”

  “No, she’s a product of how messed up this place is.”

  “But she perpetuates it.”

  “Yes.” He rubs my back. “Raven’s not a problem to be solved. She’s a person we happen to not like.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  *

  Raven

  I’m watching the window when he climbs out. It is too early for anyone to be around, but I knew, I knew there was something wrong when I didn’t see him arrive home last night. So I came here to be met with this.

  It’s a volcano in my heart, seeing him come from her room.

  I don’t know what to do. I want to make him hurt as much as I do. I know it’s simple, this desire. Childish. Mad, even.

  But if we exist for a reason, it’s to be driven by our passions. And that is one thing that both Luke Townsend and Josephine Luquet will never disagree with.

  *

  May 1st, 2066

  Josephine

  “Pace?” I push into my housemate’s room to find her lifting weights that are so heavy I doubt I could pick up even one of them using the strength of both arms and legs. “Good to see you’re not pushing yourself too hard.”

  “Good to see you obeying the knock-first rule,” she replies.

  Will ambles in behind me. The kid has been going through a serious growth spurt lately, and is now taller than me in that gangly, hasn’t-quite-grown-into-his-limbs-yet way. Which means the poor guy looks clumsy and awkward ninety-nine percent of the time, the other one percent being when he breakdances.

  “Do you plan on hiding in here forever?” he asks her, sprawling onto the bed.

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Bah!” Will and I both say at the same time, then, “Jinx.”

  “First of May, girl,” I say to Pace. “We’re coming up on three months.”

  Pace nosedives onto the bed and covers her head with a pillow.

  “I have a plan,” I announce.

  “For what?” Her voice is very muffled.

  “For if you want to keep it.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “But I think you do.”

  “I think you do, too,” Will says. “If it helps.” Will sniffed out that something was wrong and wouldn’t stop hounding Pace until she caved and told him everything.

  “See?” I grin.

  A muffled scream of frustration leaves the pillow area. After a minute, though, she says, “What’s the plan?”

  “At the moment you see it as a ticking time bomb, right? So what if you knew you wouldn’t be punished for the whole having-sex-without-permission thing?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “You apply now.”

  “A) you can’t apply retroactively. And B) do I need to remind you that there’s usually a second person involved in ‘breeding’?”

  “No, you do not, my wise-cracking little incubator.”

  “So then who?”

  “Here’s where it gets interesting,” I warn her. “Please welcome our new best friend into the fold.” Popping my head out of the door, I look at the guy sitting nervously on the couch. “Come on in, Eric. But beware of flying pillows.”

  “Or weights!” Pace snaps, sitting up in a fluster of mortification.

  Eric plods in uncomfortably, giving Pace an awkward wave.

  “What’s going on?” she demands.

  “Try to have an open mind,” I forestall. “Here’s my plan. I spoke to Eric and in an overwhelming act of generosity he’s climbed aboard. I think you and he should apply for procreation permission – ” I can’t help but shudder “ – and you can report the pregnancy after.”

  Pace’s neck and face go so red it looks like she’s about to spontaneously combust. “You want us to pretend to be a couple? I don’t … No. No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “How awkward is that?” she hisses.

  “Very,” I agree cheerfully.

  Pace folds her arms and shakes her head like an obstinate teenager. Oh wait, she is a teenager. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s only eighteen.

  “Pace,” I say as gently as I can manage. “It’s awkwardness, or you getting exiled into the Furies.”

  “Or I could just end the pregnancy,” she points out. “Ranya has stuff you can drink.”

  We consider it, glancing around at each other. “It’s your choice and we support you either way,” I tell her, thinking about me at eighteen, which wasn’t all that long ago, and how I was a million light years away from being ready to have a child.

  “Look, I don’t relish the thought of pretending either,” Eric says, breaking the long silence. “But if it means that a baby of Hal’s gets brought into the world, it would be my privilege to help. No pressure.”

  Pace rubs her face wearily. “I’m three months along already.”

  “It’s not like we have an OB-GYN to give you an exact date,” I remind her. “We can fudge it a bit and say it’s premature. Plus by the time this kid is born I’m hoping none of these rules will matter anyway.”

  “Have you thought about this?” Pace asks Eric. “It means you have to actually be this child’s dad. And me its mother. Obviously. But, like, that’s you and me being parents together forever. It’ll be weird.”

  “Yep,” he agrees.

  “Don’t you hate me?” she presses.

  “I did. But only briefly. Do you hate me?”

  “No more than I hate most people.”

  I clap my hands excitedly. “Oh my god, this is really going to happen!”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Pace says sternly. “I haven’t agreed yet.”

  But she does agree, and I do get carried away, because I can see that she’s secretly excited about the decision, which means there’s going to be a baby, and this is the whole point of it all, I think.

  *

  I find Raven doing a guard shift on the wall. As I approach I�
�m in time to see her release an arrow with a calm exhale and take a Fury straight through the eye.

  “Nice shot.”

  She glances at me, red hair glinting under the setting sun. “What do you want?”

  “To ask you something. About permission for … procreating.” I forcibly stop myself from shuddering.

  “I’ve told you – ”

  “Not for me. For Pace and Eric.”

  Raven looks at me properly. “Isn’t he gay?”

  I blink, startled.

  A smile twists her lips. “You think I don’t know what’s going on in my own camp?”

  Oh. “Relationships are complex,” I shrug. “They’ve connected over the brutal murder of their best friend – unsurprisingly. They want permission to be a couple.”

  Raven knocks an arrow and takes sight. “And why don’t they ask me themselves?” She lets loose the string of the bow and takes down another Fury with ease. They’re getting riled up down there, feasting on their fallen.

  “They’re embarrassed.”

  “And they thought it would help their case to have you ask me?” She laughs, drawing another arrow. “Why would I give them permission?”

  “Raven …” I shake my head. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because, Josephine,” she says seriously, “relationships make us weak. Children make us vulnerable. Change disrupts survival patterns, just as you’ve done. And Pace is one of our best soldiers.”

  I find the words interesting, and slot them away to ponder later. For now I point out, “You’re in a relationship.”

  “Not one that makes me weak,” she mutters, as she kills another monster.

  “Have some empathy!” I exclaim. I’m trying to be civil with her, even to connect with her a little, but she makes it so damn hard.

  “You think I don’t care about them?” Raven asks coldly. “You think I don’t care about this settlement? Then you’re more stupid than you look.”

  “If you could just show some kindness, they’d be loyal,” I try.

  “I don’t care if they’re loyal. I care only that they’re hard and strong.” She meets my eyes. “And I’ll do whatever I have to, to make them that way – that’s how we survive, Dual eyes.”