We’re pulling at the straw, the thick air dragging at my throat. I’m screaming in my head, screaming for the children. Screaming for Kate to be safe.
We find the tunnel and there, huddled inside, are Sophie and Bobby. They’re clinging to each other, their faces alive with fear.
“She’s not breathing,” I hear Kindred Smith say, but I don’t understand because Ellis has pulled Sophie out and she is breathing because she’s crying and he’s holding her.
I look up and it is Kate lying motionless. Her hair is tangled with straw, her body bent at an angle, her face white as a star. Everyone is standing, just staring at her.
“Do something,” I hear Ellis shout, but no one moves. I don’t know what to do.
“Kate?” I say, but she’s lying there and everyone just stands, looking down at her.
Suddenly Ellis pushes Sophie into Kindred Smith’s arms and he’s kneeling next to Kate. He’s feeling her neck, feeling her wrists.
“Come on, Kate,” he says. He bends his face to her lips. No one moves, no one helps him. “She’s got a pulse,” he says, but he looks bewildered. Then Jack is by his side, his hand covering his own skin where the blood is pushing through.
“Can we help her?” he asks. The Kindreds look at him. Still they don’t move.
But I do. I run to Kate, try to lift her in my arms and shake her. “Kate!” I scream into her quiet face.
Ellis starts to push both his hands hard into her chest. “Rub her arms, keep her warm,” he says.
So I take her arm in both my hands and I rub it as though it is a stick, and I am lighting a fire. The Kindreds’ eyes watch us as I work on that spark to bring it to a flame, and Ellis pushes on Kate’s heart, and Jack whispers into her ear, telling her to wake up.
Then Ellis leans in and it looks like he is going to kiss her, on her lips, but she moans and turns her head and she’s opened her eyes, looking straight into mine. I watch her fire burn again as I rub her arms and I’m crying and laughing and hugging her into me. Ellis pushes me gently away and he picks her up into his strong, safe arms.
“We need to get her to a doctor,” he says.
But Kindred John is blocking the way. “She is fine now. Take her into the house,” he says.
“But she needs to see a doctor,” Ellis says.
“No, she stays at Seed.” Kindred John reaches out to take Kate, but Ellis won’t let him.
“Fine,” Ellis says and then he barges past Kindred John, out of the barn. I follow him toward the light of the house.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“They would have let Kate die.” Ellis’s voice is hushed, but I can hear his anger in the almost-dark. Kate is lying in her bed, sleeping. The moon through the window provides the only touch of light. “They just stood by and watched.”
“They thought it was her time,” I say. But the words feel wrong. I watch the blanket rise and fall with Kate’s restful breaths. And I know I couldn’t have let her go.
“Bollocks,” Ellis says. I don’t want to ask what he means, but his harshness smacks into me. I don’t move. His legs are touching mine, his arms, his shoulders. We have never sat together on my bed like this, but he’s like a block of stone.
“Nature didn’t want her yet. She let her stay,” I say quietly.
Ellis turns so quickly that I think he wants to hit me. “For fuck’s sake, Pearl,” he says as he gets up. He lashes out at the books on the table by the door, and they smash to the ground as he goes from the room.
I stare after him, at the door that has slammed behind him. Listen to his feet as he pounds down the corridor to the stairs. To where?
I look over at Kate and my thoughts whir and crash and try to escape, but there’s nowhere for them to go, just round and round and round.
Would I really have left her because it was Nature’s way? Could we really all have stood by while her breath dripped out of her and vanished like the wind?
Would I have done that? Would I?
The door opens and Elizabeth comes in. She has a steaming bowl and a flannel, but when she sees Kate sleeping, she puts them on the floor next to her bed. She leans over, her belly bulging in the moonlight, and she kisses Kate quietly on the forehead. She smoothes her hair back gently, without waking her.
“Kindred John didn’t help her,” I whisper. “Or Kindred Smith.” But it’s like I haven’t said a word.
The door opens again. It’s Heather.
“Jack is asking for you,” she says to me. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
I get up from my bed quickly. In all of this, my thoughts have not been with Jack. I should have been with him, not sitting next to Ellis. I step over the books left scattered on the floor and follow Heather from the room.
Jack is sitting in the Eagle Room. He has material clenched in his mouth, his teeth biting down hard, trapping the roar in his throat. His eyes look like a wild horse’s. It fills me with fear because he looks nothing like my Jack. But I go to him and take his hand, which is locked into a fist of iron.
Linda is here. She is sewing his skin. The cotton pulls through him as though through material, but it’s soaked in blood.
“He’d be better in a hospital,” she says quietly.
“It is best for him here,” Kindred Smith replies. “He is in good hands.”
“I’m not a doctor,” Linda says abruptly. Kindred Smith smiles calmly and rests his hand on her shoulder. Maybe she doesn’t realize what doctors really do.
Rachel rushes in with a glass of brown liquid. She stands by Jack’s side, takes the material from his mouth, and holds the glass to his lips.
“Have some more of this,” she says. “It will help.” Jack drinks, coughing and grinding his teeth. Rachel puts the material into his mouth and he bites down hard.
“Trust us,” Kindred Smith says to Linda. “He wouldn’t want to go to the hospital, would you, Jack?” Jack shakes his head violently. Linda looks confused and she’s making me have doubt. I know deep down that they are bad places, but a part of me would try anything to help take Jack’s pain away.
I hold his clenched fist and make him look into my eyes. I talk to him of the hills and the lake and the sunshine at dawn, as Linda drags the needle through his skin again and again.
The pain reaches into Jack and the material in his mouth drops to the floor as he jerks his head forward to push into my shoulder. I hold him there. Put my hand to the softness of his cropped hair. I am sure he is weeping but doesn’t want to show it.
Linda cuts the end of the cotton. She reaches for a cloth soaking in water and wipes gently at Jack’s jagged wound. Then she takes a bandage from Heather and begins to wrap it tightly around his chest. She splits the end of the bandage and ties it in a knot.
“I’ll have to change it every day at first. There’s always the chance of infection,” she says, but she seems less angry now, less scared.
“I’m proud of you,” Kindred Smith says, and Linda smiles.
“I think I surprised myself,” she says. She looks so different from when she arrived here. It’s as though Seed has burned away the gray clouds that were settled on her.
Heather goes over and puts her arms around her. “Thank goodness for you, Linda,” she says. Then they’re picking up the pieces of Jack’s sweater.
I can feel that he has stopped shaking. He moves his head back from my shoulder and I lean down, put my hands on his knees.
“Are you OK?” I ask. He nods. But the pain still shudders in his eyes.
Have we done wrong, Jack? By not getting you help?
I watch as Kindred Smith helps him out of the room. Jack, with his quiet ways and love growing out of him like wings.
“Thank you, Nature,” I whisper. “Thank you for not taking them.” But my words hang lifeless in the air and I don’t think anyone has heard them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I am bleeding again. My Blessing has returned. But this time I will tell no one. I can’t risk being sent into that h
ole again. Forgive me, Mother Nature, but I can’t. So I find one of the linen slabs that Elizabeth has left for me in my drawer, and when it’s soaked through I shall wash it in the bathroom and leave it around the back of the barn to dry in the sun. She has left me five slabs in all. Surely the first will dry before I have to use the last?
I sit next to Jack at morning meal. He’s obviously in pain. Elizabeth has put cloves into his food, but they don’t seem to have helped much.
“I won’t be able to swim in the lake for a while,” he says. “And I’m not allowed to work on the engines for a few days.” There is a bit of porridge on his bottom lip, so I reach over and wipe it off. I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back. If anything, he just looks a bit angry. It’s not like Jack.
“Does it really hurt?” I ask quietly.
“Yes,” he says.
“You’ll still be able to watch the work on the engines. You can learn that way,” Elizabeth says, smiling gently at him. “It won’t be long before you are healed.”
“And you can go to the lake and wade up to your waist,” I say. But Jack doesn’t answer. He just spoons the porridge from the bowl into his mouth. “Kate says she’ll get up after breakfast,” I tell him. “But she won’t be working today either.”
“Where’s Ellis?” Jack asks.
“He took her some porridge. He’s probably eating with her.” I look up toward the window, certain that he’s watching us, but there’s no one there. “You could sit with him while he works on the engines.”
“I think I’ll spend the day with Kate.”
“Don’t let her do too much,” Elizabeth says.
“I’ll make sure she rests,” Jack assures her. He drinks the juice from his glass, not stopping for breath until every last drop has gone. I watch the bump in his throat move in and out. Every day he is changing. Moving away from me? I can’t tell. I just know that I think my heart will break if he goes too far.
Ellis and Kate are lying on her bed together. Her eyes are closed, but she is laughing lightly. For some reason I don’t think the Kindreds would be happy to see this. Ellis sits up as soon as he sees me.
“Feeling better?” I ask, going over to them.
Kate opens her eyes and smiles. “A bit,” she answers. Her skin still looks pale, though, and her eyes don’t seem as bright. “But don’t tell anyone. So long as I’ve nearly died, then I won’t have to do any work.”
“It’s not funny, Kate,” I say. “You scared me.”
“Not them, though,” Ellis mumbles.
“What do you mean?” Kate ask, turning to him.
“Nothing,” is all he says.
Kate reaches out her arms to me and I pull her up. “You’re still with us.” I smile and happiness is everywhere.
“It’ll take more than a few straw bales to get rid of me.” She laughs.
Ellis stands up, and I look at his arms as he reaches for the two empty bowls. “I’ll take these down,” he says.
“Thank you, servant.” Kate smiles at him before he goes out. That feeling is there again and I hate myself for it. It burrows deep within me, twisting what is good. Kate is alive and I shouldn’t have any jealous thoughts.
“Jack wants to spend the day with you,” I say. “But he’s not happy about not being able to work.”
Kate raises her eyebrows. “That boy,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“They’ve well and truly got him.”
“Who? What do you mean?”
Kate looks at me. I don’t know what I’m meant to know. I don’t know what’s in her mind.
“Nothing,” she says as she gets up slowly. “Will you find Jack and tell him I’d love to?” She reaches her arms above her head. Her hair is so long and though mine is growing, I envy her even that.
Sophie and Ruby are standing on chairs, helping me wash up, when Kate comes into the kitchen. She’s wearing trousers. They don’t seem to notice, but when Jack comes in I can tell he realizes straight away. He puts down the stack of bowls and looks at her legs and then at her face.
Sophie and Ruby don’t stop their chatter and washing, and they don’t notice the new feeling that has crept in here and is circling our heads.
“Do you want to sit down?” Jack asks.
“I’m OK,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound sure.
“Do you need a drink?” Jack gets her a glass of water before she has time to reply.
“How’s your cut?” Kate asks him. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s getting better already.”
“Don’t heal too quick,” she says. “I’ve got lovely lazy days planned for us.”
“They’ll want you back in the fields soon.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I won’t be much fun. I can’t do much.”
“I’m sure we’ll find something to entertain us.” Kate smiles at him and pulls her long hair over her shoulder. Jack suddenly seems awkward and he moves her glass into the sink.
“Like cards!” she laughs as she pulls herself up to sit on the side, crossing one bare ankle over the other. “Or I could get us together a picnic and we could go up to the orchard, or the dip?”
“That’s not fair,” I say, reaching for Sophie’s sponge to scrape at a bowl she’s struggling to get clean.
Kate licks her fingers and presses them onto the crumbs on the breadboard. “You could always nearly die and come join us,” she says.
“Did you really nearly die?” Ruby asks. Sophie takes her wet hands from the sink and stares at Kate.
“Maybe,” Kate says lightly. She hadn’t seen Sophie and Bobby in that airless tunnel, the terror sitting starkly on their faces.
“Everyone’s fine now though,” I say brightly, lifting Sophie from the chair and into my arms. She doesn’t stay there long. Even after all this time, she doesn’t really like to be held by anyone apart from Ellis or Linda. Her mother. “And we’re going to have a lovely day picking food for the market.”
“Can I come to the market?” Sophie asks.
“When you’re a bit older,” I say. I wonder if she misses the Outside. Did she have friends who wonder where she’s gone? I’m so lucky to have been born here, to know only this. I kiss my palm, hold it up to the window to face the sky. But nobody else joins me.
Out in the vegetable patch it’s too hot to put on a cardigan, so I’m just wearing Kate’s yellow dress. It feels like I’m wearing sunshine, but there’s a heavy stone sitting within me. I don’t know where it is, or why it’s there, and I try to wish it away but it stays, humming quietly to itself.
I pick the beans with their rough skin, snap them from the plant they grow from. With the soil and the sun and the wind and the rain, they have grown for us. Nature has provided.
My thoughts drift to Ellis, working right now in the barn. I try to crowd my mind with the blue sky and the biting sun so that I do not think about how it felt to sit so close to him on Kate’s bed. But he’s there and he’s taking so many of my thoughts. More than anyone else. I hope that Papa S. can’t see into my mind.
I try to concentrate on my task, and by mid-morning I have three baskets full. I can take a bunch of beans to Kate and Jack for their picnic. They can crunch the peas raw from their pods. I hook the baskets over my arms and walk back to the kitchen.
Ellis is bending over the kitchen sink. He’s taken his shirt off and he is rinsing his hair under the running water. He doesn’t know I’m here. I watch the muscles click in his back, and the need to touch his skin is so strong that I have to hold my breath.
He squeezes his hair out and straightens up, and I am still watching him, the baskets of beans on my arms.
He smiles. “Do you want to help?” Water drips slowly from his curls onto his bare shoulder. I watch as they slide down his stomach and disappear into the top of his trousers. When I look back to his face, he is gazing at me.
“I’m taking beans to Jack and Kate,” I say. I walk to the table, lift up th
e two baskets and place them on the side. I must not look back at him.
“Can I come?” Ellis asks.
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Where are you going to try?”
I have to turn to him and he’s smiling, leaning back to squeeze the ends of his hair once more into the sink.
“The orchard? Maybe the dip?”
“I’ll come with you, then.”
“I’m going to join them for their picnic. I need to take food.”
“I’ll help get food, then.”
“Fine,” I say. I don’t know why my words come out so roughly. I’ll be walking in the fields in the yellow dress, with Ellis to talk to and food to eat. Where is the bad in that? “That’ll be good,” I add as I turn my back on him once more and take a bunch of beans from the basket. I look out of the window quickly. There’s no one to see us.
Ellis cuts two wedges of bread from the loaf freshly made this morning. I take a small pot of chutney from the cupboard, as Ellis puts a chunk of cheese and a handful of tiny tomatoes into the bag he’s taken from the hook.
“Milk, or juice?” I ask, standing next to him by the fridge.
“Both,” he says.
As I put the bottles in the bag, he looks at me. “That dress suits you,” he says, but then instantly he’s walking to the door, grabbing the T-shirt from the chair with his spare hand. I’m left to follow him, wondering at the words and the smoothness of his back and the feelings he’s planted in me like seeds. I must not let them grow.
“Where to first?” Ellis asks. I don’t look back at the house, although I’m sure someone is watching us. I’m scared that it’s Papa S. I wish I was so small that he could not see me. If we walk quickly, I will only be a dot in the distance, a moving sunflower.
“The orchard?”
“Sounds good.”
We walk in silence for a while. I’ve put my sandals on and it’s strange not to feel the dusty grass beneath my feet.
“Do you miss your home?” I ask, without thinking.
“Isn’t this my home?” Ellis does that mocking smile again.
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