Terra Nova

by Shane Arbuthnott

  “Are you hurt?” he said.

  She nodded and reached her arms out to him. Rory crouched down next to her and wrapped his arms around her awkwardly. The camera dug into her ribs, but she didn’t pull back, just squeezed it harder between them.

  “What’s going on, Moll? Where are you hurt?”

  “Da…” she said, and that was the only word she could manage.

  Suddenly there were others on the stage with them. Molly felt a hand on her back and looked up to see Theresa’s face, eyes tired and knowing. Bascombe was there too, hefting Arkwright up with the help of others, shouting out to the crowd. “Put down your weapons, all of you! We need to talk!”

  The fighting had stopped. Even the Disposal agents were still. Spirits drifted in closer to Molly and Arkwright, and no one tried to stop them. Through her tears Molly saw glimmering red shapes move in around them, igneous spirits casting warmth on her face, but their warmth only made her realize how cold she felt inside.

  “You can go,” Theresa said softly at Molly’s side. “We can handle the rest of this.”

  Molly nodded. “We should go, Rory. We need to…” She couldn’t say the words. She stood up with her brother’s help, and they walked down the steps.

  “Go where, Molly? I still don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” Molly said.

  She let him go and walked on her own, though she felt she might fall at any moment. A cool wind flowed in around her and buoyed her up—no, not the wind, but Ariel, come to carry her on. But Molly shook her head. “Thanks, Ariel, but let me walk on my own.”

  “Are you sure? I can carry you.”

  Molly shook her head, and the spirit released her, following behind as Molly made her slow way down the street to collect what was left of her tattered family.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Kiernan stood beside the door, hand on the doorknob, leaning into Molly. She considered him for a moment. It had been a few weeks since the battle at the base of the docks, and he seemed more or less healed, except that he now walked with a stoop in his shoulders. She wasn’t sure if that was about his injury or about what they had all lost, but it made him look more like her father than ever.

  She looked into his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  “I mean, you really don’t have to talk to him. There’s no reason, nothing we need to know. We could just let him stay in there until he turns to dust.”

  “I know.” She took a deep breath. “But I want to. For me, not for him or for the cause or anything. I want to talk to him before he’s gone.”

  Kiernan nodded. “You’re braver than I am then,” he said, stepping aside.

  “Or crazier,” she replied and turned the doorknob. The door clicked open. “They don’t keep it locked?”

  “He can’t even get up anymore. No point.”

  Molly nodded and stepped through, closing the door behind her.

  The room was dark, the single lamp on the wall burning low. With all the igneous lamps being broken apart, there was a shortage of oil, and she doubted anyone wanted to waste much on this room.

  In the corner was a single cot—the same thin-mattressed type that she had slept on for years aboard the Legerdemain. Arkwright lay on the cot, his long legs protruding over the end. As Molly entered the room his head turned slowly toward her.

  In the weeks since they’d captured him he’d begun to fade again. His skin was an ashy gray, and some of the blue had drained from his eyes. She could no longer see his veins through his skin, though the corners of his eyes still glimmered with green light.

  “Have you come to see me dying?” he whispered through lips that barely moved.

  “Sort of, I guess,” Molly said. There was no other furniture in the room, so she moved to the wall opposite the cot and sat down on the floor, legs crossed. “I wanted to tell you what’s been happening.”

  He let out a gurgle that might have been a laugh and might have been a cough. “What does it matter now? There is nothing more I can do.”

  Molly nodded and sat forward. “Everything is changing in Terra Nova. Faster than I would have thought. Theresa—you remember Theresa, right? She tried to expose you, and you locked her in a sanatorium—she had the idea to expose you like we did. It worked. People believe us now. That you lied. That maybe the spirits aren’t monsters.”

  “They are monsters, or they will be, given time and opportunity,” Arkwright said. “You do not understand how these things work. They are more powerful than we are, and if we give up our advantage, they will destroy us.”

  Molly shook her head. “You’re wrong. But I’m not done yet. I mean, it’s not easy, changing the way a whole city runs. Figuring out how to do things without spirits. No one knows how we’ll heat the buildings when winter comes. We still haven’t figured out how the hell to get the docks down without destroying half of the industrial district.”

  “So much lost—”

  “You’re wrong, but I’m still not done,” she said through clenched teeth. “Even I’ve been surprised by all of it. I thought it would be the workers who changed their minds first—the harvesters, like I used to be, and the factory workers, the people who spent their lives feeling what it is to be under your thumb. But it was the Unionists. They were the ones who spread the journal, as a trade for me, but most of them read it along the way, and most of them believed it too. I’m not sure why, but even Bascombe, who told me he lost his wife to a rogue spirit—he changed his mind.”

  “Why are you—”

  “And the spirits. After everything we’ve done, the spirits are helping, though I still don’t know why. They’re helping us grow crops so we don’t all starve. There’s a team of aetheric spirits holding up the docks so we can break up its engines without killing anyone.”

  “Damn it to hell, girl, why are you telling me all this?”

  Molly watched him. He was wheezing now, his breath rattling in his chest. She stood up so she could see his face better, see the anger there.

  “Because I thought it would hurt you. To know how quickly it’s all falling apart. I mean, there are people who don’t change so fast. People fighting, people locking themselves away, saying the spirits have infected the whole damned city. It’s not easy. It’s chaos.”

  He turned his face toward her with a monumental effort. “And that is what you’ve unleashed on the world. Chaos. All I ever wanted was to move us forward, to make sure humanity would come out on top.”

  “You’re wrong. And you never did this for humanity.”

  “Look what I’ve accomplished,” Arkwright wheezed. “In a little over a hundred years we conquered the skies, plumbed the oceans, built machines that could work magic—”

  “And we would have gone further without you there,” Molly said. “If it was Haviland who had survived, and not you. If we had done it at the spirits’ sides, not on their backs. We could have gone further.”

  They both fell silent, staring at each other. Molly shook her head.

  “None of that is really why I came here. Though I did hope all the news would hurt after what you did to me, to everyone. But I came in here because, I guess, part of me wasn’t sure what I would do to you. And I needed to know.”

  She laced her fingers and squeezed until her flesh turned white.

  “I thought I might kill you. I think you deserve it. You killed my da, and Haviland, and so many spirits we’ll never be able to count them all. I wondered if I would do it, if I saw you again.” She stepped forward. Arkwright flinched away, but she kept her hands gripped together tightly. She breathed in deep, staring straight at him.

  “I brought you something,” she said. She pulled a small leather-bound book out of the back of her belt and dropped it on his chest. His fingers twitched, but his arms lay limp.

  “What is this?” Arkwright wheezed. He struggled to turn his head. “Is this…”

  “Haviland’s journal. The original.�
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  “Why?”

  “You asked me about it, right? For some reason I kept thinking about that. About why you cared when no one believed the journal was real anyway. And I thought about how you kept all of Haviland’s stuff set carefully away in that room in your mansion. The room I stole this journal from. That room wasn’t just a vault. It was like…a shrine to Haviland. You actually cared about him once, didn’t you?”

  Arkwright’s arms came up now. The journal looked heavy in his weak hands, but he didn’t drop it. He cracked it open, ran his fingertips over the pages.

  “You wanted it back, right? Because it was his.”

  “Why would you do this? Why would you give this to me?”

  Molly shrugged. “I just wanted to see if I could, I guess. Wanted to see what I would do if I saw you again.”

  She turned and walked back to the door.

  “I won’t come back. You can’t feed anymore, and I won’t bother you again. So you’ll die soon, I guess.” She stood in the doorway a long time, trying to think of something else to say. But she kept thinking of her father, and his blood glistening in the light of the flare, and she couldn’t find any words. She didn’t look back as she let herself out of the room.

  Things seemed jarringly normal back at their old house in Knight’s Cove. They’d never been rich enough to have much spiritual machinery in their home to begin with, so nothing had changed for them as spirits were freed across the city. The woodstove still ran, the lamps still worked as long as their oil held out, and their beds still welcomed them in.

  And yet, everything was different. Brighid sat at their kitchen table for the first time in years. She didn’t talk much, but she didn’t leave either. And Ariel came to stay with them when she wasn’t too busy helping the freed spirits find their way home. Da’s room sat closed. Molly went in sometimes. So did her brothers, and she had caught Brighid just sitting and staring at the door more than once. But they hadn’t touched anything in the room yet.

  It was good, having Ariel and her brothers there. Molly felt like there was a huge, deep pit sitting in the middle of her, and she might slip in at any moment. But having them close pulled her farther from the edge.

  It was suppertime, and Kiernan was cooking enough stew to feed two families—and Rory had brought enough whiskey for three. They all sat at the table, drinking, while Kiernan served. They even let Molly have a cup. She didn’t like the smoky taste, but it reminded her of her father in a way that was painful and warm all at the same time. She sipped it slowly.

  “How’s Legerdemain doing?” Kiernan asked Molly as he handed her a bowl.

  “Good,” Molly said. “Getting better. His wing’s not ready to use yet, but it seems like it’ll heal, given time.”

  “He will return to the sky again, I have no doubt,” Ariel said.

  “Think he’ll want to come back here? To this world?” Rory asked.

  “Yeah,” Molly said. “I’m pretty sure he will. How are things at the docks?”

  “They’re thinking of dumping them in the ocean,” Rory said. “Cut the umbilical and fly the whole thing out over the water.” He mimed dropping something and then a splash. “It means sinking the lot, but it might be the best solution.”

  “That would be good—to finally get it down,” Ariel said. “The spirits holding it aloft are growing tired.”

  Brighid watched them all with her glass raised to her lips.

  “Seems a waste,” Kiernan said. “I wonder if it could be retrofitted to float. Get some airbags on it. Or even find a shoal big enough to hold it up. I know it has to go, but… I remember spending a lot of days there with Da. I’d hate to see it just disappear.”

  Rory nodded.

  Brighid put down her glass abruptly and stood. “I think I’ll go to bed,” she said.

  “Not going to eat your supper?”

  “No, thank you.” She walked to her room and closed the door. Molly stared at the door. She would have to go in later—it was where her bed was too, after all—but if she waited long enough, maybe Brighid would already be asleep.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t bring up Da for a bit,” Kiernan said. “Every time we say his name, she goes and hides.”

  “No,” Rory said. “We can’t not talk about him. That’s not right. He’s not here, but he’s still…” He shrugged.

  “Still our da,” Molly said.

  “There you go,” Rory said. “Listen to Moll. She knows.” He smiled across the table at her, and she attempted a smile back. It almost worked.

  “I don’t want to stop talking about him,” Molly said.

  Ariel sank down to hover next to Molly. “So what do you want to say about him?”

  Molly looked around the table. They were all watching her. “I mean, I didn’t have anything in mind. Just… in general.”

  “What would you say to him if he were here?” Ariel asked.

  Molly grimaced. She braved a larger swallow of whiskey, then spent several minutes coughing. Kiernan brought her a glass of water, which she took gratefully.

  “Should we drink to him or something?” Rory asked. “I don’t know the proper form here.”

  “Seems weird to drink to him, given that he just kicked his habit at the end,” Kiernan said. “I mean, it seems inappropriate somehow.” He looked at Molly and saw the tears in her eyes. “Hey, Moll, are you—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.” She turned her face away. “I just…I didn’t ever understand, and I hoped I would. Why he did it all.”

  “All what?”

  “Fighting with us for the spirits. I mean, I know he believed the spirits were innocent. But he never seemed the type to get up and do something, you know? I keep thinking he probably wouldn’t have done any of this if it wasn’t for me. If I hadn’t…I don’t know. I just don’t understand.”

  “Are you asking if you are to blame for his death?” Ariel asked gently.

  “No,” Molly said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You never coerced him into acting,” Ariel said.

  “But that’s the thing. I know sometimes he wanted to stop, but he never did.”

  “He didn’t want to stop,” Kiernan said. “He wanted us to stop. All of us. And…I think he was there because of you, but that doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “Oh. That clears it up then,” Rory said.

  “He just wanted to stick with you. Protect you if he could.”

  “He did. None of it would have worked without him.”

  “Let’s not talk about him like he was a saint now that he’s dead,” Rory said. “He spent a lot of years screwing up. He threw Molly out of the bloody house once, remember, and he wasn’t exactly kind and comforting to me either.”

  “I know,” Molly said, raising her hand to her face where her father had given her a black eye that night long ago. “He didn’t do such a good job most of the time. But I miss him.”

  “Me too,” Kiernan said.

  “Yeah, me too, I guess.” Rory raised his glass. “To Da, sometimes drunk, sometimes not.” He emptied his cup. After a moment Kiernan did the same. Molly drank more slowly.

  “Think she’s listening?” Kiernan said, gesturing to Brighid’s door.

  “Of bloody course,” Rory said and raised his voice. “Maybe one of these days she’ll even come out and join the conversation.”

  The talk went on, Kiernan and Rory falling into old rhythms with each other, the sound of their words almost as soothing to Molly as the creak of sails and the whisper of wind. She stared down at the table, watching the light of the lamp play through the whiskey in her glass.

  “Molly? Do you feel well?” Ariel asked.

  “I need some air, I think.” She got up and walked out the front door. She looked up at the sky—the winds dancing, the stars blinking sleepily at her. Oil lamps flickered in the windows of the houses around her, and she stood in their dim glow, breathing in and out until her chest unclenched. She knew it was in her head, but the air seem
ed to smell fresher already, now that the factories had been stopped. The air above was still stained brown, and yet…She filled her lungs again.

  “It wasn’t what you think it was.”

  Molly jumped at the unexpected voice. It had come through the open window of her own bedroom.

  “Brighid?” She walked to the window. It was dark in the room, but she could see Brighid sitting on her bed.

  “When I left the ship. It wasn’t like you said.”

  “Oh?” Molly’s fingers gripped the windowsill.

  “You never knew Ma. And the boys were so little when she died, they hardly remembered her. But I did. And I remembered how Da was before too. For a while I could stick it out, because you needed me. But then you didn’t need me anymore, and I was stuck there thinking of Ma, watching Da waste away. I didn’t…I wasn’t trying to get status or money. It just didn’t feel like my family anymore. Not the one I knew.”

  “That’s not how families are supposed to work,” Molly said.

  “I know that,” Brighid replied.

  Molly opened her mouth and closed it again. She didn’t trust herself to say anything more, not with so many emotions washing through her—anger and disappointment and, worst of all, the hope that the sister she remembered might come back to her. She stood at the window, waiting, but Brighid lay down in the bed and turned her back to Molly.

  She suddenly longed to have the air all around her, to feel nothing but the wind on her skin. Molly went back inside the house.

  “Ariel?” she called.

  Ariel rose from the table and drifted closer. “Yes, Molly?”