“Go ahead, big shot,” says Kate again, gently.
“River, this is hard for me. I am, as I said, shocked myself—”
“Just tell it like it is,” says Kate, taking a slug from her glass. “Kid needs to go get some sleep.”
Mumma takes another wincing sip.
“Tell her,” urges Kate. “It’ll be good practice for when all this really kicks off.”
Mumma looks at Kate.
“Y’know. I mean, it’s bound to, isn’t it?” says Kate. “Okay, I’ll just shut up.”
Mumma clears her throat, composes herself, looks at me—ah! Such a look! I find myself trembling. What—WHAT—WHAT is about to be said?!
“No XY—”
“No boy,” Kate chimes in. She has shut up for approximately two seconds.
“No boy has survived outside a Sanctuary for sixty years,” she says, her tone serious and thoughtful, like she was speaking to the National Council itself and not just to me and Kate.
“That we know of,” says Kate.
“That we know of,” Mumma says, frowning.
“It’s a thought though, isn’t it?” says Kate. “I mean, what if—”
“As far as we know, no boy has survived for more than a day,” says Mumma, shutting Kate down. “This boy has survived for five days—six now…with help. If he regains consciousness—”
“When,” says Kate, her fist clenching around her glass.
“It would be the first opportunity we have had—”
“In sixty years,” says Kate.
“—to find out—”
“What the hell is going on.” Kate takes a slug of her apple brandy. “Let’s face it: you don’t know. Do you?”
“We’ve been through this. No one does. No one could have known. The Sanctuaries have always told us—”
“That everything was fine.”
“Yes! Yes…”
“And you believed them? Everything about this boy says nothing is fine in the Sanctuaries! The fact that he would even run away when he knew the outside might kill him. I’ve got news for you,” Kate says, taking a gulp and topping up Mumma’s glass, “men are quite capable of lying.”
And so are we, my muddled, exhausted, shocked, heat-dizzy head thinks. You’ve lied today. Mumma has lied. We all have.
“We could hardly go into a Sanctuary and check, could we?” says Mumma.
That is true. No one from the outside has ever entered a Sanctuary since…ever. No one could… Contact with an XY would result in what’s lying upstairs. A person from the outside could bring viral contamination. Sickness. Death.
“We gave…the survivors…to those places,” Kate says, cutting a fat slice of cake. She cuts so hard the knife bites the plate with a hard scrape. “We thought we were helping them.”
“You were helping them,” Mumma whispers.
I know what my mumma is thinking of: the story that’s been told so clearly and so painfully in the past. It’s as though it was happening again in front of us—Kate reaching up, pleading, baby Jaylen in her hands. The baby lifted into the plane. Her hands falling free. The burden of keeping him alive taken from her, and in exchange, her heart wrecked forever. Kate’s boyfriend didn’t get on the flight. He knew he was already sick. He died before they even got back home. In a field, by the side of the motorway, writhing in agony, and Kate unable to do a thing. All she could do was crouch over his body, stroking his hair, watching her first and last boyfriend die.
Her hands needing a hard task to escape her feelings. Her hands becoming coffin makers.
“I don’t really understand,” I dare to say. “I mean…XYs are really precious, aren’t they? Shouldn’t we just hand him back?”
“Have you not listened to a word of this?!” Kate says.
“Yes! Of course I have!”
The coffin maker taught me to use my hands—and to speak up.
“The thing is, River,” says Mumma, holding out a piece of cake to me, which I (reflex) take with a courtesy thank-you nod, “he can’t go back.”
The slice of cake in front of my nose smells impossibly good. I’m so tired and so hungry. I take a bite, and it IS good: apple cake with precious cinnamon and a crunchy beet-sugar crust. My whole body is instantly greedy for it, and I stuff more into my mouth as I wait for Mumma to explain why he can’t go back right now.
“He can’t ever go back to a Sanctuary because he’s contaminated—with our bacteria…and with the virus,” says Mumma.
That can’t be right. Even though I’ve never really listened closely in community studies—least of all in men’s week (why would you?)—and I’ve only half listened to the granmummas, there is one thing we all know: XYs cannot survive in our world. The virus still exists. The virus kills them. Five days alive would seem to be some kind of record, but even the boy knew how this goes: they run; they die.
“But he’s going to die, isn’t he?”
“Nope!” says Kate, taking another slug of apple brandy. The twinkle, that exasperating twinkle, is in her eyes again, accompanied by its friend: a smirk of triumph.
“It seems not,” says Mumma.
“What… Are you saying that he’s immune?”
“It’s weirder than that, kid.” Kate smirks.
“Akesa got the first results back,” says Mumma. “He has the virus, same as us. His body has not reacted. The virus does not affect him.”
“Same as us,” breathes Kate and clinks Mumma’s glass in toast, even though Mumma has not lifted it.
I can’t get enough spit to swallow. I grab my mint tea—cold now—and swig.
“He is NOT the same as us,” I manage to say.
My mind is reeling. The granmummas always speak as though the XYs will come back, as though, after all these years, some kind of solution will be found. The mummas never speak like that. Though I never listen closely, until a solution is found is a phrase I know well. I understand it, but I never attached much meaning to it. It is the mummas’ polite way of acknowledging the granmummas’ heartfelt desire for the XYs to return, spoken, always, before whatever proposal relating to XYs is Agreed—that they should be supplied with new tech; that they should have their own air-transport service for the purpose of moving XYs between Sanctuaries. These are things I’ve heard. These are things I’ve heard and not paid attention to, because they were prefaced by the phrase until a solution is found. Until a solution is found means that whatever follows does not apply to me.
I feel not an eruption, but a huge landslide happening in my head.
“If the boy is able to survive…does that mean all the XYs are coming back?”
I try to imagine a world full of Masons. I cannot. I will not. It’s horrible. It cannot be. Why would the granmummas even want this?
“We don’t know yet,” my mumma says at the same time Kate says, “Yes!”
“We don’t know,” Mumma says. “So, River—”
“We gotta keep a lid on this,” says Kate.
We don’t “keep a lid” on anything that I know of. A secret—one like this—is the same as a lie.
“But…why?!”
“Kate’s view is that—”
“They’re not getting their hands on him. If we’d followed the damn protocol, he’d be dead already. Until we find out what’s been going on and where this boy has even come from, he’s going nowhere.”
“Mumma?” I cannot believe she is agreeing to this, that my mumma, a newly elected representative, would even dip a toe into all this lying—and, in any case, since when did Kate and the rest of the granmummas have the final say over something that is so clearly of national—international!—importance? This cannot be right!
“I have listened to the granmummas’ concerns,” Mumma says, “and I have listened to Akesa. She seems confident that the boy is indeed recovering�
��rapidly. I am prepared to allow him to remain here until such time as we can speak to him. After that, any decision regarding his future and our position regarding the Sanctuaries will be a matter for the National Council.”
“Over my dead body,” says Kate.
My mumma does not respond to this. “So, for now, we’re keeping it.” She sighs.
“Him,” corrects Kate.
“Excuse me?!” I manage to get out. It’s a phrase I learned from Kate. You say it when you have heard perfectly well what the other person has just said, but you do not want to believe it. The mental landslide piles down on me and I—
“What do you mean, we’re ‘keeping’ it?!”
“He’s not some kind of pet!” says Kate.
“That’s right,” says Mumma, who knows hardly anything about pets (apparently people used to have tons of them) and even less about XYs. “It’s not some kind of pet.”
“He—he’s not some kind of pet,” corrects Kate, cutting free a new slice of cake. “He! He! He!”
“Oh—yes—he. It’s just so hard to remember.”
“Try.”
“I am!”
HELLO?! I’m thinking. Another Kate-learned phrase. It hardly matters what it’s called, he or she or… What matters is that it’s in our house—and, specifically, IN MY ROOM.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“Don’t start getting antsy,” chides Kate.
“You could come in with me,” says Mumma.
“Or there’s always the utility room,” says Kate.
The once-was utility room: tiny and cold and packed with junk. Or sharing Mumma’s big, warm bed. “Fine, I’ll sleep in the utility room,” I say coldly—colder than I know that room will be.
“Oh, River,” Mumma says.
I look up, wanting to catch Mumma’s loving warmth and see Kate shaking her head at Mumma. If there are already a thousand things I do not like about this situation, this—Kate and Mumma siding together, working together—is number 1,001.
“You can always change your mind later,” Mumma says.
“Later? How long are we keeping…him…for?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I rest my elbows on the table and squeeze my fists against my head, squishing the landslide inside it. One thought is forced to the surface:
“What if it’s dangerous?”
“Oh, stop now,” says Kate.
“It said women rape and kill, but that’s what men did, isn’t it?”
Mumma darts a look at Kate.
“Get a grip! Both of you! Where did you even hear that kind of thing?”
“School,” I say, shrugging.
“Oh, for crying out loud! That’s what they’re teaching you?”
“It was mentioned during a discussion last Men’s History Week.”
Kate rolls her eyes.
“But there’s truth in it though, isn’t there?” says Mumma. “Didn’t there used to be prisons full of men?”
“Violence! Wars!” I nod encouragingly at Mumma.
“Stop!” Kate stares us both down. “He’s a boy,” she says. “He’s just a boy. He’s no more dangerous than…River.”
I, nondangerous River, slide my chair back. It makes a long, slow groan.
“Just remember: you can’t tell anyone about this,” Mumma says.
I shake my head in disbelief and confusion.
Kate scrapes back her chair in a fast shriek, leans across the table to eyeball me.
“Have you told anyone about what the boy said?”
“No. Only that I found him. And that he was sick. No.”
“You tell no one,” she says, voice pointed hard as her shaking finger—right in my face.
• • •
I am in so foul and disturbed a mood I do not bother with washing my face or brushing my teeth or even getting changed for bed. I shove the creaky, old folding cot up against the utility-room window, so I can see a snippet of sky. Clouds have come in, but still I place the stars and the planets beyond them. I know they are there.
This is what happens when you see Mars: a single tiny scrap of light that might have taken millions of years to reach Earth hits the back of your eyeball, and your brain grabs it and whispers, Planet.
Is that not amazing?
It is only you who sees that. You are the only person on Earth to receive it. You are the only person in the entire known universe to see that scrap of light at that second, which will never be repeated again. Only you.
Chapter 8
Geography
It is worse than I thought it would be.
It is supposed to be the first day back at school after the ha-ha-harvest break, which should have been yesterday, but yesterday got canceled.
I wish today were canceled too—what’s left of it.
It is very hard to sleep when your world has been turned upside down (along with half the village). It is also quite hard to eat breakfast, even though you’re starving because you’ve slept so late it’s lunchtime already, when there’s Mumma’s huge map lying on the table and you’re immediately asked to point out where you managed to be unlucky enough to stumble across a boy creature.
“About here,” I mumble, jabbing at the map.
“You need to do this properly,” says Kate.
“I am.” I really am. On the map in my head, which is more accurate than this one with all its once-was features, I know exactly the place. “Here.” I press my finger down on the spot, amazed at how filthy not just my nail but my whole hand is. It leaves a grubby mark on the map.
“Thank you,” says Akesa. “Well, the fact that he was on the road complicates things a little. What did he say again, River, about how fast he could run?”
“He didn’t.”
“He did,” says Kate. “He said he could do a mile in…”
“Six point eight.” It horrifies me that I can remember every word of that weird, nightmarish conversation. It horrifies me even more that I feel as though I’d be remembering it even if I hadn’t had to write it all down; it feels like it’s going to be burned into my brain forever, taking up precious space where information that is more useful to me could go. I calculate how fast six point eight is. “He couldn’t run at that speed.”
Mumma shrugs. She wouldn’t know. Sports used to be a big thing, apparently, and there’s talk about it happening again in some sort of large-scale, organized way, but it’s the same as all kinds of once-was entertainments, such as television; there isn’t really enough time or resources for it—or enough interest.
“Plenty of people could run that fast,” says Kate. “And those shoes he was wearing, they’re runner’s shoes. It is possible…”
“But how long could he keep that up for?” Mumma asks Akesa. “If he was sick too, how long?”
“I really don’t know,” Akesa says.
“People used to run marathons,” Kate is saying, explaining how a person could run twenty-six miles in not even a whole day with breaks, but in one go, in just hours (!!!), as I scrape leftover porridge out of the pan, pile leftover eggs on top, pour myself the last of the sage tea—so strong it makes my mouth crinkle—and scoop a seriously enormous spoonful of honey into it.
“Go easy on that honey, honey, and get a move on,” says Kate. “Have you seen the time?”
I am stunned. She can’t mean it. “I’ve got to go to school?”
“Yup.”
“No one could run that far, every day, for five days,” Akesa is saying.
“And not if it was sick!” Mumma says.
“But perhaps if he was desperate enough,” says Kate, looking hard at Mumma.
Akesa ties a piece of string around a pencil, measures the string against a ruler.
“Mumma?” Even before the question that
follows leaves my lips, I know what Mumma will say: school. School, school, school, school, school. Kate isn’t strict about it at all ordinarily, but Mumma… “Do I really have to go to school?”
“Yes, of course,” Mumma says without even looking up.
“What did I tell you?” says Kate.
I do not like this. I do not like this at all. Mumma and Kate agreeing…like last night. Like this whole keep the boy idea.
A thing has been happening to me sometimes lately. A thing Kate calls “hormones”—and when she does, it is guaranteed to make the THING worse. This seriously bothers me in every way. When Kate loses it, that’s just Kate being Kate. Now, when I lose it, it’s hormones. Not River. Hormones.
The thing that bothers me most is I sometimes think it might be true—and I don’t like it. I liked it when I was just me, and not hormones. Although sometimes, like right now, I feel like changing my name.
Hormones scoops out another spoonful of honey and—
“I said that’s enough,” says Kate. She hasn’t even looked up; she has a sixth sense when it comes to Hormones. I could be a terror when I was your age, she says, forgetting that she’s still a terror.
Akesa has drawn a circle on the map, finger where mine was, string pulled tight.
“Maximum distance,” she says.
Mumma gasps.
“As the boy flies,” murmurs Kate.
I can’t help myself. I have to look. The circle covers a huge, huge swath of land; it’s got to be several hundred miles in area. It stretches down as far as the north of Cornwall. It stretches into the sea—and across the sea. It stretches as far as the south of Wales.
“How in the hell did he get here?” says Kate. “I mean, think about it: Where is the nearest Sanctuary?”
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