He would get better, he had to, this was David. He was so strong, and this was only a scratch, wasn’t it? Barely more than a skin wound. He’d survived worse. But no matter how hard Sorrel pressed, the blood kept on coming.
“Don’t do this, David, don’t you dare.”
Tears, hot and angry and heavy with grief, landed on the back of her hands and mingled with his blood.
“David, please.”
His eyelids fluttered and opened, and his eyes focussed on hers.
She smiled through her tears. “David.”
She was still smiling, still thinking he was going to be alright, when the light left his eyes.
Mara had stabbed him in the heart, and there was no coming back, not even for David. Not from this.
“This mark,” Sorrel raised her wrist and displayed it to the crowd. “Martin said it was a sign from the Creator. He was wrong. It’s just a mark, an accident of birth. But because of it, people have looked to me for answers to all sorts of questions. They have sought from me a wisdom I don’t have.”
The people of Ulbroom, those who had survived the plague, had gathered on the beach. Several weeks had passed since David’s death. The house in which he’d died – Martin’s house – had been burned to the ground with Mara and Martin still in it. In time, nature would reclaim the plot, filling it with the green shoots of new life, and by and by, people would gradually forget that a house had once stood where the wild rosses grew.
The sun was out, the sky was blue, but though spring was on the way, winter still made its presence felt in the bitter edge of the wind.
“David and I talked about a future filled with love and peace. We wanted to build a home where we could live with our friends and family, sharing food and the warmth of the hearth. He’s gone now, and with him, our dream, and for a while, I wished that I too was gone. Without him, I had no future, no life. But then, as well as remembering what I had lost, I saw what I still had. A father, a brother – friends – and I realised that I owed it to David to go on. To not just exist, but to live.
“If you will have us, people of Ulbroom, we would like to stay here.”
Sorrel looked around at the faces of the people before her. Her father, Eli, Einstein, Alice, Kyle, Doctor Abigail and the rest of the people from Ulbroom who had survived. At first the only sound was the zing of the wind and the lapping of water on the shore. But then someone in the small crowd began to clap, and soon others joined in, and then they were all clapping.
Einstein came forward and embraced her. There had been so much loss, so many tears shed. But finally they had found a place where Eli could grow up safely. They had found home.
Epilogue
“We’ll be finished before winter,” Sorrel said.
“Maybe,” Einstein replied.
They had taken a break to admire their handiwork. Sorrel had not been able to settle in the village. She felt trapped in the stone houses of Before and so she and Einstein had set about building a log cabin on the outskirts of Ulbroom, and now it was taking shape.
The wound of David’s death had healed on the outside, new skin grown over the cut. Her eyes no longer filled with tears when his name was mentioned, and she no longer shook with grief every morning when she awoke and remembered he was gone. But deep inside her she carried a profound ache. It was as though something had been roughly plucked from within her and replaced with sorrow.
She thought about him every day, several times most days to be truthful. She’d see something and want to tell him about it before remembering that she couldn’t, and the ache would throb for a while. Sometimes she whispered her thoughts on the breeze and hoped that he heard them anyway.
There were moments when she wondered if it was the future they had planned together she grieved more than the loss of what they’d had, then hated herself for being so selfish. She at least had a future, not to mention the company of people she loved and who loved her in return.
Most of the men of the Free who had ruled Ulbroom had died of plague, and those who survived had quickly realised that there was a new regime in the shape of Doctor Abigail. Some of them even liked it.
Sorrel didn’t know if she would stay here all her days. She wondered how Yolanda was getting on in Dinawl, and if Slade and Brig had managed to persuade the children of the Monitors to join them. She would like to find out one day, but not just yet. Not least because Alice was due any day now. Funny thing, a couple of the other young women were also pregnant. It seemed to Sorrel that the plague had done Ulbroom a favour. She kept that thought to herself.
She wondered what Alice and Kyle would call their child and it occurred to her that in Amat there would have been no talk of naming the baby, not until it had been proved viable. Viable, an ugly word and one she did not miss.
There had been many losses, deep and painful, since Amat, but they had come a long way.
“Einstein?”
“Yes?”
“You never did tell me your real name.”
Einstein grinned, and she felt warm inside.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes – yes I do.”
But before Einstein could say anything, Annie came running along the shore calling Sorrel’s name.
“It’s Alice – she’s having the baby.”
Sorrel and Einstein downed tools and ran back to the village with Annie. Doctor Abigail was emerging from Alice and Kyle’s cottage when they got there.
“Is she -?” Sorrel gasped.
“Mother and baby are fine,” Doctor Abigail smiled. “You can go in to see them.”
Kyle was holding the baby when they went in. He was beaming, radiating pure joy. Alice lay on the bed, hair plastered to her head, looking exhausted but happy.
“Oh, Sorrel,” she said. “We have a girl, a wonderful baby daughter.”
Sorrel glanced at Einstein and was amused and touched to see the spark of tears in his eyes.
“Do you want to hold her?” Kyle asked Sorrel.
“May I?”
Kyle passed her his daughter.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen a newborn. I forgot how tiny they are.” She looked at Alice. “What are you calling her?”
“Hope,” Alice said shyly.
“It’s a good name. Look at her little hands, they’re so cute,” she said to Einstein, but when she caught the look Alice flashed at Kyle, Sorrel looked more closely.
Hope had six fingers on each tiny hand.
“She is beautiful,” Einstein said.
Sorrel saw the anxious looks on Alice and Kyle’s faces, but there was no need to worry. Unviable was a dead word.
“Your daughter is perfect,” Sorrel said. “Hope is perfect in every way. This is a new day for us all.”
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The New Day Page 23