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Page 5
How had Franie the reprobate managed to fall in love?
“You’re the only one who calls him that anymore,” Peri chastised her.
“Someone has to remember what he was like.” She started sweeping again in earnest, though the floor was already mostly clean—she’d swept the day before, too.
Her mother studied her. “You don’t have to do that. It can wait, if there’s something else you’d rather be doing.”
“I’m just trying to be useful,” she said, working the broom with more force than was really necessary.
“You are,” Peri said, a little sadly it seemed like. “But you’re not particularly happy, are you?”
“That’s irrelevant,” Enid muttered, digging the broom into the next corner with renewed determination.
“Do you think you’ll want a banner someday?”
“How am I supposed to know that?” she shot back, then ducked her head, ashamed at the outburst. Everyone was supposed to want a banner. To work to get a banner. Uphold your quotas, make your household and community a better place. Prove you could care for any children you brought into the world.
Enid was beginning to suspect she didn’t actually want a banner, ever. She would be happy to let someone else, someone who really wanted it, have one instead. And that meant one less thing to worry about.
But she was still lonely. The implant in her arm, which she’d had since she was twelve, also seemed irrelevant. It wasn’t like she’d made use of it.
Enid had tried to fall in love. They all had, their cohort of teenagers in and around Haven, supplemented by the teenagers who came in from surrounding villages and households for markets. They kissed. They experimented. They tried to figure out what all the fuss was about. And some of them got it. Dived into sex and came back to gatherings with flushed faces and bright eyes and tales about how great it was, how great they were; and they walked hand in hand and lost interest in their friends—and then fell out of love and hooked up with someone else, trading partners and stories, and Enid didn’t understand it. She could go through the motions, but invariably they’d all be sitting around a midwinter bonfire one moment, and the next she’d be alone because everyone else had gone off with one another and she hadn’t noticed. Maybe she was broken, she’d think. And now even Franie had figured out what to do with himself and Enid couldn’t pick on him anymore. She was getting left behind.
Lost in thought, she’d swept the same piece of floor for a full minute, and Peri sighed loudly.
“I love you, my child, but you need a job.” Peri flapped her arms as if waving away a cloud of gnats before disappearing back into the exam room.
Enid wanted to go. Just away. And when she said that, her mother and Tomas and everyone else said she should talk to the committee about courier jobs, that she should think about apprenticing with a road maintenance crew. But she resisted, like she resisted everything.
It was a week or so later when it finally happened, when everything changed—when he dropped on her like a tornado, the best worst storm.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Enid went to Haven’s one-day-a-week market to run errands for the household: delivering eggs to be traded for what Plenty didn’t make for itself, picking up cloth from the weavers at Barnard Croft. The day was hot, sticky. Awnings and shelters had been set up along the road around the town square, and people clung to the shade they provided, fanned themselves with woven reed fans, and batted flies away from baskets of fruit and baked goods. The carts and trestle tables were spread out enough that people had space to move around, close enough that they could chat and make the day feel a little bit like a party.
At first she’d taken her time, looking over the stalls and carts for anything new, anything interesting, any new faces to say hello to. The big harvest market wouldn’t come up for a month yet, so this was the usual crowd with the usual set of bottled mead and cider, canned fruits and jams, pottery, baskets, boots, knives, clothes, and hats, and the odd bit of livestock like goats and ducks. Enid unloaded the eggs and collected the fabric, thick wool for winter blankets and jackets, which was heavy and a pain to carry around in summer heat. She’d stuffed it all in a backpack, slung over her shoulders. But the pack got heavier, her whole back turned sweaty, and she just wanted to get home.
At the edge of the market, from the open space in front of the clinic, she heard music. At first a light guitar, then singing. The voice was . . . astonishing. She’d never heard anything like it. A clear tenor, resonant, so the sound carried and became fuller and better rather than flat and more diffuse. Haven had local musicians, folk with guitars and drums and fiddles, and they’d come out for parties and markets, good enough to dance to and sing along with. But none of them sounded like this.
She drifted toward the music to see who made it, leaned up against a tree at the back of the gathered crowd, dropped her pack of cloth to the ground, and listened.
The young man at the center of attention, singing and playing as easy as anything, seemed otherworldly. Clean shaven, nut-brown skin, long brown hair pulled back in a tail. He wore a plain tunic and trousers, scuffed boots, and a bright red vest with patterns embroidered on it—no one would miss him in a crowd. He sat on a wooden stool that had been brought down from the clinic porch, guitar nestled in his lap, one foot stretched out. Like someone out of a story.
This wasn’t a boisterous party sing-along. The musician sang, and people listened quietly. In awe, even. This was art; this was beautiful. One song, a light melody that everyone knew, ended and he started another, and this one—haunting, in a minor key with a drifting chorus that told a strange story of sailors lost at sea and ghost ships returning during storms—she’d never heard before. Maybe he’d even written it himself.
She couldn’t stop listening. She couldn’t leave. Finishing another song, he caught her gaze across the heads of his audience, gave her a smile—bright, wry, welcoming—that made her feel like they’d known each other forever, and that he was here just for her. Her heart flopped over. She managed to smile back, even wave a little, though she felt goofy and crazy doing so. He’d think her silly. He’d laugh at her. She tried to smooth back her ratty hair, which she suddenly wished she hadn’t chopped so short last year in an effort to feel new and different.
But no, at his next break, when he set down his guitar by the bench and the audience drifted off, he held her gaze and came toward her. This was her chance. If she wanted to flee, she could. If she didn’t want to talk to him, preferring to nurse her burning little crush from afar, she could do that. He gave her plenty of time. But she waited, unable to control the beaming smile on her face.
He came right up to her. “Hola,” he said. Up close, she saw his eyes were a gray blue, magical.
“That was really great,” she said. “Thanks for playing.”
“Thank you for listening,” he said, and they stood for a moment, grinning at each other. “Hey—this is my first time in Haven. You think you can give me a tour of the place? If you’d like to take a walk with me, that is?”
She didn’t think she could smile any wider. And those eyes. “Yeah, sure, I just have to drop this off at home. I’m Enid, by the way.”
“I’m Dak. Nice to meet you.”
Later she decided she’d fallen in love with him on the first note she heard him sing. Seeing him only confirmed it, and holding hands with him was inevitable. Perfect, even. They spent that whole day together. He played some more, and she listened to every song. That night, at the close of the market, townsfolk gathered to build a fire pit and roast some kebabs over it. She and Dak sat side by side through it all, and when he leaned in close, nuzzled the hairline behind her ear, and whispered if she’d like to take another walk with him, she grabbed his hand and led him off to the orchard over the hill. They found a sunken dip between roots that was both dry and out of sight, pulled each other down, rolled in the grass, one ending up on top, then the other. She’d felt such a
desperate craving for him, she didn’t know where to start: take his tunic off or hers, knot her fingers in his long luscious hair or grab tight to his back. They were body to body, legs locked together, and she still wasn’t close enough to him.
Auntie Kath talked about the early days during the Fall, when sex was the most reliable form of recreation and pleasure they had. And how that warred with the terror so many of them felt about having children. They could barely take care of themselves in this new world with no electricity or running water or reliable medicine or reliable anything. The early epidemics wiped out a measurable percentage of the population, and after that the ancient diseases came back—cholera and dysentery and everything—and confidence in the world vanished. But they really liked sex.
Enid hadn’t understood until now. Until right this moment, when it all became clear. If you lost everything else but could still have sex, things wouldn’t seem so bad, would they?
Hormones, she’d been taught. The flush of hormones was soaking her system and making her crazy. But right here, in the middle of it, the heat was real, and Dak filled the sky.
“You’re so pretty,” she breathed, pressing her hands to his cheeks, sliding them down to his chest. She couldn’t feel him enough.
He laughed, kissed her again and again, everywhere, all over her body. He found nerves in places she hadn’t known she had them. Her own body turned new and weird and messy and breathtaking.
For a long time after, they lay still and exhausted, her clinging to him and him lying flat, looking up at the sky filtered through branches filled with new apples. The sky grew chilled, and the goose flesh rising on her arms made her snuggle closer to his warmth. Dak hummed a song, the melody vague so that she couldn’t follow it.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Enid would always remember exactly when she got her first implant: it was after her first bad storm. Still the worst storm, according to her own memory. The next morning, after returning to Haven and staying up most of the night fetching water and blankets and seeing the refugees settled, she’d felt an aching, bruise-like pain deep in her gut and for a moment wondered if she’d been injured somehow, if the stress of the storm had hurt her. Then she went to use the latrine and saw blood spotting her underpants when she pulled down her britches. She wondered if stress could cause internal bleeding, flashed yet again on the memory of that body and its ashen, gaping wound, and panicked, wondering if she was dying. Of course, she wasn’t hurt and wasn’t dying, and if she’d been thinking straight and not sleep-deprived and traumatized, she’d have known exactly what was happening: she had started menstruating.
Peri shared her cloths for the blood and came with her to the clinic the next day for her implant. Enid felt small, fragile, and defiant. The clinic was still crowded, a few of the worst-injured cases still occupying beds where medics could keep a close watch on them, and other survivors sheltered in safety until they could make plans. Enid felt odd, being here for such an ordinary reason when there were folk here who’d almost died. Everyone must have been staring at her; they must have known why she was here. Everything was different now. She hated that it ought to be so. To so randomly be declared an adult. Not really, of course—she still had to go to classes and help with the same set of kids’ chores. But this was a sign that time was pressing on her, and an unknown future was opening up.
“You’re very quiet,” Peri said. Enid didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what she was supposed to say.
“It’s just routine,” her mother said. “Nothing to be scared of.”
“Not scared. Sad.” Her eyes started pricking, tears burgeoning, and her anger that she was about to start crying made her want to cry even more.
Peri squeezed her shoulder. “You’ll wake up tomorrow and everything’ll be just the same, you’ll see.”
Even with the storm, even with all the injuries, the medic on duty, Alvin, seemed to know exactly why they were here, with Peri’s hand resting on Enid’s shoulder.
“Implant time?” he asked.
“I’ll do the honors if there’s space in the back exam room,” Peri answered.
“We’ll make space.”
They ushered out a woman and child with a bandage on his head—not the ones from Potter, Enid thought. They didn’t look twice at her. But then, they had bigger worries. Enid decided that nobody was staring at her; it just felt like it.
Enid sat on a chair while Peri went to the pharmacy in back and returned with a jar. Using tweezers, she pulled out the sterilized implant, just a little capsule an inch or so long, thin as a toothpick.
This was one of the bits of technology they’d worked hard to save after the Fall. Because if you could manage birthrate, you could manage anything, and they had the statistics to prove it. Before the pre-Fall supplies ran out, medics figured out how to derive the hormone from what they had on hand, how to develop the little cellulose, slow-delivery packets. Didn’t look like much, really. Not a big deal at all.
“Ready, kiddo?”
Her mother hadn’t called her “kiddo” since she was eight. Ironic that she did so now, when Enid was supposed to be growing up. Peri had done this dozens of times, but Enid still sort of wished one of the other medics was on hand. Then maybe she’d feel a little less like a child.
First came a swipe with a numbing agent that made the skin of her upper arm tingle. Then a swipe with alcohol. Then a tool that looked like an awl, at which point Enid decided not to look anymore. After a pinch and a weird sliding sensation under the skin, it was over. Peri held gauze over the spot, so Enid couldn’t see exactly what it looked like. Time enough for that later, she supposed.
While Peri was cleaning up, putting tools in the pot by the stove to be boiled later, Enid asked, “Why do only girls get implants?”
Peri turned. “Oh sweetie, that’s a good question. It’s a holdover from the old days. Women carry babies so it’s up to them to manage it. Except when it isn’t.” She shrugged away a lot of explanation there. Complications, Enid thought.
Then her mother came over and put her hands on Enid’s shoulders. “I have to give you the speech, now. Ready?”
Enid nodded. She’d heard this before; they all heard it growing up. But this recitation had the air of ritual to it.
“You understand that this is an honor, yes? Children are precious, and this means you are willing to earn the right to bear a child of your own someday, and not leave it to chance.”
“To prove that I can care for one.”
“Yes. It’s a privilege, not a right. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“I know you do,” Peri said, and kissed her forehead.
Back out on the clinic’s porch, she looked out at people working to clean up roads and salvage what they could from the gardens and fruit trees surrounding the building and felt herself even more at a loss than usual. She had an implant. What did she do now?
“Is that Enid?”
Auntie Kath was back at her usual spot, sitting in a rocking chair on the clinic porch, taking in the world as it passed by. Kath couldn’t see, but Enid was pretty sure she knew everyone in town by their footsteps on the wooden boards, maybe even by the way they breathed. She seemed to have emerged from the cellar exactly the same, none the worse for wear.
“Yes, ma’am.” Enid came over to sit next to the chair. Auntie Kath always had time for her.
“You sound sad.”
“I started bleeding last night.”
“That’s a big deal,” Auntie Kath said.
“I guess so.”
“So you’re here for your first implant, is that it? There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Why did people keep saying that? She knew that. She started to rub that arm and its fresh tiny wound again, then clasped her hands tight to keep from fidgeting. “I know. I just thought . . . it would happen later. Or something.”
She chuckled. “Isn’t that always the way?”
Enid sighed. “Does it ever get easier?”
“Does what get easier?”
“Everything,” Enid said. That was the kind of answer that made the adults chuckle at her.
But Auntie Kath didn’t laugh. She looked over that same golden scene, damp and newly born from the storm, as if she could really see it. Maybe the light felt different to her.
Her voice stretched as if speaking brought pain, she finally said, “Oh, yes, it’s so much easier. You’ll never know how hard it was.”
Auntie Kath was the last one who remembered.
Enid had a million questions, but she didn’t press. Auntie Kath could usually be persuaded to tell stories from before the Fall, about what things had been like then, about what had changed, all the work they’d done to get from there to here and how many times they were sure they wouldn’t make it. But right now she sounded breakable. More breakable than the blind old woman usually did. She said goodbye to Auntie Kath, who squeezed her hand and waved her off and told her to keep her chin up.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Dak stayed at Haven longer than he’d intended. When market day ended, he’d meant to head north to the next town, the next set of markets. He traveled the Coast Road, timing his arrival with various midsummer markets and festivals, trading music for a bed and food. He seemed to do well at it, too. He rarely stayed longer than a few days in one place. But he stayed in Haven for over a week, for her. She thought she’d burst. She spent every moment she could with him, hardly any at home, until Peri said, “Are you ready to move out, then?”
“What? No,” she said. But maybe she could see about asking Dak to move in . . .
“Then maybe get some of your chores done before you run off today, hmm?”