“What if—what if—”
“Nothing more will happen, Vanessa. I promise. It’s over.”
Still she crouches with the glass in her hands. When Father moves forward and puts a hand on her shoulder, she screams.
He jerks back, stares at her, and leaves the room. She doesn’t know how long she squats there, panting, until Mother comes in. She puts her arms around Vanessa, who relaxes her hands and drops the glass on the floor. Mother has to help Vanessa from the room; she can’t tell which way is up, and the floor heaves left, then right. Pulling out the battered tin tub, Mother lights a fire that reflects in coral shards on its rippled surface, and heats pot after pot of water until the bath is steaming. When Vanessa steps in, it’s so hot it hurts, and she has to wait before putting in the other foot. As she sinks down, the water turns pink, and when she submerges her hand the pain stings so sharp and vivid that she bites her lip and whimpers. Mother murmurs soothing words as she gently sponges Vanessa’s back and face, wringing out scarlet water into the reddening bath. Heating another pot of water, she helps Vanessa stand up to be rinsed off. The sponge traces the water down her body, and Vanessa feels as fresh and weak as a new puppy.
Lifting Vanessa’s arm, Mother sponges from wrist to armpit and then freezes. Vanessa looks at her questioningly, and Mother hastily puts her arm down by her side. Vanessa turns her head and raises her arm again, despite Mother saying, “Not now, Nessa.” There in front of her eyes are a few fine, dark hairs marring the pale smoothness where her arm meets her body, coiling and thrusting angrily like blades from her skin. Collapsing back in the tub, Vanessa starts to cry. Mother hugs her fiercely, soaking up pink water with the cloth of her dress. She’s crying too.
Chapter Fifty
Caitlin
Caitlin wakes up in the darkness, shivering, her bones jostling against each other. A harder rain is falling, and the leftover sticks from the old shelter do nothing to protect her. She thinks briefly of trying to find something to drape over them for a tent—surely there is a blanket left somewhere—but it’s so dark she can’t see.
Lying on the wet sand, she listens to the sounds of the water. Eventually she can’t take the cold anymore, and she stands up and starts running in place. It helps, but she tires soon, coughing a deep, rasping cough. Sitting back down, she tucks her knees and elbows and feet into the shell of her curved torso and wonders if she’ll die.
She remembers the heat of sand in summer and digs down with a ragged fingernail to see if the sand below the surface is warmer. It’s not. Then she thinks that if she could make a coat out of wet sand, it would be warmer than just her threadbare nightgown. She doesn’t know how to sew together sand, but she starts digging in earnest, stopping only to pant and cough every now and then. Finally she nestles her curled body into the deep, chilly hole, so just her head and hands peek out, and scrapes in more sand to fill the empty spaces around her. She’s still cold, but she stops shivering after a little while, and the weight of the sand feels comforting. Her head falls forward over and over, and she isn’t sure if she’s falling asleep or freezing to death. Dreams bloom in her head, weaving out from her thoughts, slow colorful dreams that snap her briefly awake. Then they get thicker, and she drifts away from the freezing sand and the beach altogether.
Caitlin wakes to someone calling her name. Her forehead is against gritty sand, and her neck hurts. Lifting her face up to daylight, Caitlin narrows her eyes. Someone is standing over her, talking in a girl’s voice. The glare fades, and it’s Janey Solomon, wearing a coat over a nightgown, her red hair falling toward Caitlin like a rain of fire.
“I’ve been looking for you for hours,” says Janey. “Your father’s staggering around drunk, telling everyone to look for you.” She imitates his low, slurred voice: “‘My little girl, she’s all I have left, I’ll make it up to her.’”
“How did you know I was here?” croaks Caitlin, trying not to cough.
“I didn’t. I just said I’ve been looking for hours. I thought you might be at one of the hiding places, behind a rock or something. Then I thought of the shore, but I didn’t know where, so.” Janey shrugs. “And now you’re drowning.”
“I’m not in the sea.”
“No, just in the rain. That’s a great hiding place, under the sand. Your hair blends in. I almost looked right at you and passed by.”
“Oh.”
“There’s nobody else here anymore. I thought maybe a few of the girls might have held out, still be somewhere out here, slinking around. But they’re not. Why are you here? I’m sorry your mother is dead. I’d be out here too, if I was left alone with your father.”
She looks at Caitlin, who doesn’t say anything.
“I brought you food,” says Janey, leaning down to a pile Caitlin hadn’t noticed. She brings out a damp loaf of bread and tosses it to Caitlin. Wiggling her arms free, Caitlin tears into the bread with her teeth, barely chewing. Suddenly her stomach stabs with pain, and she stops and swallows, trying not to vomit.
“Thank you,” she says after the nausea has passed.
“I brought blankets too. They’ll get wet, but they’re better than nothing. You might be able to use them to block the rain.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll try to come every day. Mother will try to stop me. I was able to sneak out today, though, and I heard you were missing.”
“How many people are out?” asks Caitlin around another mouthful of bread.
“The only ones out have been sick already,” says Janey, “so they aren’t worried about being sick again. So many people are dead. So many people. The girls too. The children.” Her face clouds, but then she shakes fervently, whipping her head from side to side as if to dislodge the fog of sorrow. “I’m trying not to think about it.” She pauses. “It was worst for the pregnant women. I think all of them died, or at least most of them.”
“That’s bad,” says Caitlin, feeling like she should say something, but unable to muster any true sadness. When she learned Mother died, Caitlin’s emotions faded to a dull gray hum.
Janey shrugs. Her whole body is frenetic, her shrugs and stretches sudden and almost violent. “Some people haven’t had it, and they’re still in their homes. Like us. When are we going to come out? Nobody will tell me.”
“You’re out,” says Caitlin.
“I know, but I’m not supposed to be,” she says. “But it’s not like I’m going into rooms with sick people, or…I don’t know. I just had to get out.”
Caitlin nods.
“There’s not much food around, so few have been farming or baking or making cheese. But there are fewer people. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll all starve.” Janey shrugs again, her shoulders jerking upward like startled birds, then swiftly falling back into place. It looks like the prelude to a fit of convulsions. Caitlin lets out a sudden, very loud belch. Janey giggles. “They’ll all find you now,” she says.
“I don’t want anyone to find me.”
“Maybe you could come home with me,” Janey says thoughtfully. “Your father would look for you, but maybe he’d let you stay with us. You need a mother. There are so many of us without mothers now. The wanderers will work it out. Someone said they will just match up wives and husbands. I’m not sure that would work. Can you imagine any woman agreeing to marry your father? He’d cut them in two. Here, I brought you water. You can fill it up in anyone’s rain barrel.”
Janey hands Caitlin a cup and she gulps the water down. Taking it back, Janey sets it on the sand. “It’ll fill with rain soon.”
Caitlin nods.
“Can you get out of there?”
Struggling a bit, Caitlin stands up shakily. Janey smiles. “I was worried you were stuck.”
Caitlin shakes her head, and reaches out and wraps one of the blankets around her. It’s scratchy and wet, but warm, and she gives a little sigh.
“I don’t like you staying here alone. Why don’t you come home with me?”
Caitlin shakes her head hard.
“What are you worried will happen?”
Caitlin’s mouth quirks, and then she bursts into tears.
“Well, I’ll come see you every day. We’ll think of something.” They sigh in unison. “What else do you need?”
Caitlin shakes her head again.
“You’re very brave.” Janey hugs her, hard, and Caitlin leans into her bony shoulder and wishes she’d stay. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Try digging a hole and lining it with the blankets, and then gathering everything at the top.”
She does try, that night, but it doesn’t work. She rolls up in blankets and sleeps badly, waking to numb feet and a racking cough. Waiting all day in the same place, Caitlin watches the water advance and recede, and builds little shapes of sand, but Janey doesn’t come. That night Caitlin wakes up coughing so hard she vomits slime streaked with blood. “Janey?” she mutters, squinting to see a tall spindly figure coming toward her, dancing like a flame. Then Mother’s soft hands stroke her brow like a mist of cool water, and Caitlin sighs with relief.
“Mother, I dreamed you were dead,” she says. Mother doesn’t answer, but keeps caressing Caitlin’s face with cool damp hands until Caitlin wakes up sprawled out in the rain, feverish and alone.
Chapter Fifty-One
Janey
When Janey returns at nightfall, sandy and soaked and flushed, Mary moves to hit her. But before she can raise an arm, Janey pulls her aside and starts talking about how they have to take in Caitlin, and when Mary cocks her head in confusion, Janey paces around the room, throwing her hands in the air and making stifled half-exclamations. “Janey,” says Mary. “Janey, I can’t understand you.”
Janey shakes her head and staggers. Rising, Mary darts toward Janey, who sinks warm and shaking into her arms.
“Mother,” says Mary. “I think Janey’s sick.”
Janey tries to protest, but time stops, stretches, and twists away like a plume of smoke. Her tongue is slow, pushing against heavy air as she tries to form words. They cut it out, she thinks thickly, so now I can go, to and fro. Then she laughs a little at her rhyme. Her body is made of water, and she pulls from Mary’s arms and splashes to the floor.
Then everything happens very quickly, in flashes. She is in Father’s arms, being lifted toward the ballooning ceiling. Mary’s face is near hers, smearing and blurring like streaks of paint on a rain-swept window, and then suddenly snatched away. She is in bed, the sheets thick and silky and coiling against her skin like live snakes. Everything is swaying and shuddering. Something’s wrong, she thinks slowly, and then, I am sick. “Mother,” she says heavily. Mother turns toward her.
“Don’t let Mary in,” whispers Janey urgently, trying to make each word separate and easy. Her mouth feels numb. She has to speak quietly; she doesn’t want another lashing.
“I won’t,” promises Mother tautly, stripping Janey of her damp dress. She gathers Janey in her arms and lifts her easily, slips a warm nightgown over her aching head and down her slender body.
“You’d better get out of here,” croaks Janey.
“If you think I’m leaving you alone for a second, you’re a fool, Janey Solomon,” snaps Mother, and Janey sinks back, intimidated and a little impressed. Mother’s hair, sleek like Mary’s, falls out of her topknot in slices of darkness, and her freckles shift around on her face as Janey stares blurrily.
“Mother, your face,” says Janey, and a cool cloth is laid on her aching forehead. It’s the most wonderful thing she’s ever felt in her life. The coldness sinks into her brow bone, flows down her temples in pulsing waves, cooling the inferno in her brain. It cuts past the sourness in her throat, the throbbing pain in her eyes, the trembling ache in her bones. “Thank you,” she gasps, and slips beneath consciousness.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Vanessa
Vanessa’s hand is healing, although Mother bound it so tightly to keep the edges of her wound together that the flesh swells between the cloth strips. She makes Vanessa hold it in the rain barrel regularly, and gives her a bitter tea that sleeps away the pain. Mother says her hand won’t work perfectly again and will probably always pain her, but that Vanessa should be able to do everything that a woman needs to, except perhaps sew. Vanessa is no lover of sewing and can’t help feeling that this news is a ray of light in an otherwise dark prognosis.
Two of Father’s cuts needed a stitch from Mr. Joseph the weaver, but Father tells Vanessa they don’t hurt. She responds that he needs to go put his belly in the rain barrel, which makes him smile.
A few days later, the wanderers meet in Father’s library. Vanessa is accustomed to wanderers gathering in her home, but now they seem like alien beings, murderous and predatory. She thinks of them sitting uncomfortably on the floor, or leaning against the bookshelves and dirtying the books with their black coats, and shivers.
She can only assume they are trying to figure out what to do now that everyone is dead. Curiosity proving stronger than fear, she inches away from Mother when her back is turned and sets to eavesdropping.
“The fields will be admirably fertilized, but there is nobody to farm them.”
“No, that’s not true. Quite a few farmers survived; we can simply broaden some of the fields that we made smaller before. We’ll divide them again, when we need to.”
“We have nobody to make paper now. Only one carver left. We’ve lost a lot of skilled—”
Mother finds Vanessa and pulls her into the kitchen. Once she stops glowering at Vanessa and becomes lost in her work, Vanessa creeps out to listen again.
“More widowers than widows. All the women with child died. We need everyone to marry, but we’re short on women. A few men could take on more wives, but in the past that’s only been if their first wife can’t have a healthy child. Is that something we want to change?”
A sharp, nasal voice. Mr. Solomon? “Ah, says a man who won’t have to deal with a furious wife!”
Laughter.
“Let some of the older men go to the summers of fruition. The younger men can wait a year.”
“We’ve never had older men or widowed men at the summers of fruition. For good reason. That could be a catastrophe.”
“That also doesn’t fix the problem, and we don’t want unmarried young men roaming around.”
“If we could bring in couples with older daughters—”
“Remember what happened to the Josephs all those years ago, the new ones, and she was only eight!” That’s Father.
“But in these times—”
Mother swats Vanessa’s behind and sends her to her room, threatening severe punishment if she stirs again. Vanessa waits a few minutes, then darts past Mother’s back toward the library once more.
“We have the room to bring in new families. Many new families. This is a very unusual opportunity.”
“We don’t want to throw everything out of balance. The carver Adams were a complete disaster and they were only one couple. We can’t make sure everyone is suitable, and if they outnumber us…”
“The Adams were a disaster, but almost every family we’ve brought in throughout the generations hasn’t been.”
“And the Jacobs?”
“All right, they haven’t been perfect, but they’ve stayed. We need people.”
“The ancestors came with ten families.”
“We are not the ancestors! Nor are there any like them to choose from out there.”
“That many people, all at once, their knowledge will spread. It can’t be kept when half of us are—”
“Not half.”
“No, listen to him. Can we persuade everyone not to discuss the wastelands among themselves, when they’ve all come in from outside at the same time? Can we keep it from spreading?”
“Yes, if we choose the right men.”
“But do they have the right women?”
“All women can be taught what is right.”
“They most certainly cannot. Look at what our daughters did. That Janey Solomon, sh
e didn’t just lead them all out onto the beach, did you know she gave secret sermons?”
Vanessa’s heart contracts with a painful jerk, and she has to breathe deeply and remind herself that nobody knows she’s there.
“What’s this?”
“My daughter was acting so strangely, I had to force it out of her. Janey is saying that there are other islands, she knows about Amanda Balthazar—I thought it was just the Gideon girl and that nobody would believe her, but—”
A long exhale. “That’s why they went to the beach, then. I thought it was just Janey Solomon convincing them they didn’t need parents.”
“It was Janey Solomon. But how did she find out?”
“I don’t know how these girls thought they could do such a thing. They are going to be the next wives, in a year or two. We can’t have them going to the beach to escape their husbands. Nothing like that has ever happened. If it wasn’t for the illness, they would still be out there!”
“Nonsense, as soon as it got cold enough they’d have crawled back, whimpering for mercy. It was a game, but it’s over.”
“You call that a game? They wouldn’t listen! I had to beat my daughter so badly that—”
“I don’t know why you take the Solomon girl so seriously. In a year she’ll be dead or married.”
“Yes, let us fear the girls! They will bring war against us!” There’s general uneasy laughter, but some sighs of frustration.
“And the sickness?” asks one wanderer bitterly. “Their disobedience brought it down from the ancestors, worse than war.”
“Who knows what more Janey will tell them in a year? She’s already sown distrust and disobedience. She’s the only one old enough to piece anything together. I say we—”
“You underestimate the older girls, thirteen and fourteen. I always said we should marry them younger.”
“The ancestors said—”
Mother digs her fingers into Vanessa’s arm, marches her upstairs, pushes her into her room, and drags a table over to block the door. Sitting with a frustrated snort, Mother does her sewing right there, sitting at the table.
Gather the Daughters Page 26