Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  She stops and checks the vial and formula again, opening her backpack, popping open the metal box, touching them. They’re fine, and this gives her a little courage. They remind her of her mission here.

  She walks deeper through the trees, hoping to find a clump of brush to hide in, a rock or fallen log to block the wind.

  But then there’s a rustling.

  Birds or rodents? A fox? She remembers the stitched arms of the blind creatures that Kelly set loose—their roving eyes, the way they touched her hair. She shivers. It’s not them. She knows that, but she can’t shake the feeling of them touching her. What would they have done if she hadn’t gotten away? She draws her arms in across her chest and stares into the darkness, hoping for something small and harmless to reveal itself. Please be a bunny, she thinks. A little bunny. I could really use a bunny. The last bunny she saw was years ago, and instead of fur it had thick scarred skin, dark and wrinkled, its ribs poking through in warped slats. But it was still a bunny, with long ears and sharp front teeth, and it scampered off, afraid of her. Scamper off, she pleads with the bunny that’s probably not a bunny at all. Please scamper off.

  The cold night sky shifts with dark clouds, thick with smoke. She wants to get out of the wind and sleep. That’s all. She’s tired—deep in her bones and joints. It’s a fatigue that seems to have crashed down on her.

  More rustling. She crouches. Her adrenaline starts to kick in, but it’s not enough. She doesn’t have the strength to fight. She doesn’t want to be eaten here, mauled to death—not now. She pulls the backpack off and holds it to her chest. She looks down at the doll head, its glassy eyes glinting in the dull light, as if pleading with her for protection. She failed Wilda and the others—the doll head seems to know, and it’s as if it has lost some faith in her.

  More rustling, footsteps. She grips the doll head and backpack and freezes.

  And then she hears her name. The rough voice of Bradwell. She sees him, between two thin trees. He opens his wings, streaked dark with rain. “Pressia,” he says.

  She stands up slowly. He came after her. She’s angry that he doesn’t have enough faith in her, but then she’s relieved to see him. Her heart kicks up.

  “Look at me,” he says.

  And she does: the meat of his shoulders, the long spokes of his collarbones, the twin scars on his cheek, and his eyes, his lips—all wet with rain. His skin, like hers, has lost the golden tinge from their time in Ireland. But the wings—that’s what he wants her to look at. Some of the feathers shine. Others are tattered. The quills are thick and strong. She says, “I see you.”

  “All of me.”

  “I see all of you.” He’s like a dream. He’s staring at her as if really seeing her for the first time in so long.

  “I had to try to find you.” How did he track her down?

  “I had to go,” she says.

  “I know, but I didn’t get to say what I needed to.”

  “And what’s that?”

  He runs his hands through his wet hair. “You think I don’t imagine being inside that Dome, inside those academy classrooms, in the dance halls with you? I do. But not the way you do. You see yourself fitting in.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You think it’s possible. You can imagine what it’d be like to have your hand back, to have your scars gone. Me? I don’t have that kind of imagination. I can only see myself as I am. And every time I imagine myself there, I see how they would look at me. To them, I’m sick. I’m diseased. I’m a perversion of a human being.”

  “You’re not any of those things to me.”

  He rubs his knuckles together. She knows this is hard for him—excruciating. “We were born to die, Pressia. We’re the ones no one really expected to survive. So my life is a mistake; it’s only something that was given to me by accident. It’s not mine. It’s borrowed.” He walks up close to Pressia. He whispers, “Sometimes I think I’d go back if I could. I would bleed to death, bound to my brothers. But then I know I’d rather go back further than that. If I could, I would die with you on the frozen forest floor. We were wet and cold and naked. That’s how we came into this world. We could have gone out like that together.” He touches his forehead to hers. He closes his eyes. “I know why you did what you did. But now I’ve got that stuff in my blood, and I’m no longer who I am. You can’t love me.”

  “But I do.”

  He says, “Don’t.”

  She says, “I’m trying not to.”

  She reaches up over his shoulder and lets her hand run down one of his soft, wet wings. It feels silken. He touches the crescent-shaped burn curved around one of her eyes then cups the head of the doll in his hands.

  “I can’t let you go,” he says.

  She leans in toward him, close, the rain beading on her eyelashes. She puts one hand on his heart and can feel it pounding. “I have to.”

  “I know.”

  “How long will you give me before you use the bacterium?”

  “Not long. Anything could happen to you in there. Cap was right about that too.”

  “It’ll take me a day to get there at least. So how long will you give me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If I get to Partridge, I can get a message to you.”

  “Within three days?”

  “I can try.” She wants to kiss his wet lips. She misses him so much her chest aches. Tell me you love me, she wants to say. Tell me you love me like you used to.

  And then he dips toward her and kisses her on the mouth, the rain still coming down. When he pulls back, she’s breathless.

  “Three days,” he says. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she says and then, even though her legs feel numb, she takes a step back.

  “Hastings has come after you too,” he says. “I’m surprised he hasn’t found you already. He only wants to help.”

  She nods.

  “Pressia, what if we don’t see each other again? What if this is the last time?” He’s scared. She’s not sure she’s ever seen him look this way.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says.

  “I know you will,” he says. “It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “In case there’s a heaven…”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Pressia says.

  “In case there’s a heaven, I want us to be together there. Joined. Forever.” His eyes search hers. “I’ve never seen a wedding,” he says.

  Is he asking her to marry him? She whispers, “I’ve heard they were held in churches or under white tents.”

  “What if the forest is our church?”

  “Are you asking me to marry you—here? Now?”

  “I’ve loved you since the beginning—since the first time I saw you. Why not get married—yes, here and now?” He lifts her hand up and places it on her heart. He then slips his hand between her arm and chest and puts his hand over his own heart. He leans down and puts his cheek to hers. He says, “Will you be my wife forever? Here and now and beyond all of this?”

  She closes her eyes. She feels her arm entwined with his, his cheek against hers—both rain-wet and cold. She nods. “I will. Will you be my husband forever?”

  He says, “I will.” And he bows his head, kisses her neck, her jaw, her lips.

  “This isn’t the end,” Pressia says. “We’re just starting, Bradwell.”

  He tips her up off the ground and kisses her again—she feels his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

  And she feels so alive that she can barely breathe. She’s happy. This is what happy feels like—it doesn’t have to be about this moment. Happiness can be a promise.

  When he sets her back down, she feels heavy.

  He turns then and heads back through the woods; the rainy wind gusts his wings a little. She’s going to keep going. But now she knows what she wants: to make it back to Bradwell, to find a beginning.

  She walks quickly now, shaking with relief and joy, marching with purpose. She has to find that safe
place. She walks for a while, and then a whirring sound zips through the air—a taut zing that ends in a thunk just over her head. She looks up at the tree behind her, and there, lodged deep in its bark, is a thick blade, sharp on all sides.

  There are mothers out here. That’s probably why this part of the woods hasn’t burned. It’s been heavily guarded.

  Pressia stays low but calls out, “I’m just a girl! I’m friends with Lyda! My name is Pressia, and I’ve met Our Good Mother! I’m alone! No Deaths with me!” But she’s not just a girl—she’s a wife. She’s not alone, even if it seems that way. She has Bradwell, forever.

  The forest is silent. She moves behind a tree. Another blade whirs through the air, pinning her coat to the tree behind her. She wants to rip her coat loose and make a run for it, but the mothers aren’t to be messed with. If you defy them, they can retaliate brutally.

  She puts the doll head in the air. “What do you want?” she calls into the woods. “I surrender! Okay?” She hopes Bradwell is long gone, that he can’t even hear the echo of her voice. “I surrender,” she says again, and as she says those two words, they seem like the truest thing she’s said in so long. I surrender. I’m tired. Take me in.

  Finally, there’s a woman’s voice, sharp and clear. “Get her,” the woman says. “She’s ours now.”

  LYDA

  BECOMING

  Lyda is hidden in her other world. The orb—which is set on the outside world—exists in the nursery now. It’s where she keeps the ash of the burned baby books and the row of cylindrical slats from the baby crib that she’s sharpening into spears. The door stays locked. If anyone asks, she says, “It’s a surprise! For Partridge!”

  Partridge has ordered more guards to stand watch at her door. A small army is collected there now. Is he afraid someone is going to attack her? Or is he making sure she can never leave?

  She’s worked hard in that small room, and now she lies in bed, clean and sweet smelling, her hair damp from a midday shower. She writes Partridge another letter. She’s written so many she can’t keep track. She gives them to Beckley whenever she sees him—every few days he takes a shift—but he never has any for her.

  “What does he say when you give them to him?” she’s asked.

  “He smiles and slips them in his pocket—to read later, I guess.”

  “I don’t understand why he doesn’t write back.”

  “He’s busy. You know—plans.”

  Wedding plans. Yes, she knows.

  Partridge,

  When are you coming back? I am becoming

  What is she becoming? She doesn’t know. It seems most honest to just say that she’s becoming. The becoming is what matters maybe more than the result.

  She thinks of writing him that she’s nesting—a term she learned in the girls’ academy in an infant-care class, one that Chandry uses often when she comes for knitting lessons. Lyda likes the word because when she was in the girls’ academy, she loved walking through the aviary and watching the birds fortify their nests. Her nesting instincts might not be what Partridge expects, but she does feel like she’s building a place for herself and this child—just for them. She feels safe in the nursery. But lying here, in her own room, on her fresh sheets, having combed her hair smooth, she’s vulnerable.

  Something’s coming. Things are unstable. It’s not just that Willux has died. It’s as if the air is agitated, combustible. And while Partridge is out there, busy with his wedding plans, he doesn’t even notice. No one seems to. The guards stand stiffly outside of her door. Chandry comes and goes. Sometimes Lyda looks out the window and sees people on the street, bustling with packages, walking miniature dogs, pushing strollers.

  It’s almost completely back to normal—like the truth was never spoken.

  Sometimes, she writes Partridge,

  I feel like the fire is inside of me. I don’t know what I’m becoming. But I think it’s to help me meet some future I can’t imagine, but a future that’s coming all the same.

  When will I see you again? Ever?

  Love,

  Lyda

  PRESSIA

  MOTHERS

  The mothers emerge from the woods one at a time. A bush becomes a body. A woman jumps from the thin limbs of a tree. It’s dark, and their bodies—alive with the restlessness of their children—are hard to make out. One of the mothers says, “Take her to camp. Guard her closely. We’ll send word to Our Good Mother of her presence.” Pressia, still staked to the tree by the dart through her coat, isn’t sure what Our Good Mother might think of her being one of their prisoners.

  Two mothers walk up to her, one in a woolen cap and the other with white hair.

  Pressia hopes that they don’t confiscate her backpack. That’s what matters most.

  The one with white hair pulls the blade from the tree—leaving a fresh rip in Pressia’s coat—and tucks the dart back into a small bag strapped over her shoulder. “This way,” she says. “Hands on your head.”

  Pressia walks between the two mothers. Her arms start to ache. She can see their children now—one on his mother’s shoulder, another curved across her mother’s chest.

  “You’ve kept these woods from getting burned,” Pressia whispers.

  They nod, walking her past a small camouflaged lean-to. Inside, Pressia glimpses strange contraptions—catapults on wheels?—and baskets of what look like grenades. “I made some of those from the robotic spiders sent down from the Dome.”

  “And we continued the effort,” the woman with white hair says. “We’re the first line of defense. We take out the new Special Forces when they step out and descend, when they’re still disoriented.” The mother stops at a large barrel filled with guns—freshly polished. “We gut them for their guns, clean them off. The stockpile is growing.”

  Pressia remembers the Special Forces boy—not Pure, a wretch. “Aren’t some of them young?”

  “They send their boys off to die. We comply.” The mother with white hair squints at Pressia. “Why are you here?”

  Pressia doesn’t want to tell them. The mothers are erratic—calm and then murderous, capable of most anything. “I was looking for someone,” she says.

  “Who?” the mother with white hair says, and Pressia wonders if the woman in the wool cap has a voice at all. Is she mute?

  “The children who were Purified in the Dome, especially one named Wilda.”

  The mother in the wool cap makes a clucking noise with her tongue as if Pressia’s said the wrong thing and the mother is rebuking her.

  “Stop looking. It’s a waste of time,” the mother with white hair says.

  “Because they’re dead or because they’re hidden away somewhere?”

  “Some questions are better left unanswered,” the mother says. “Plus, you’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You’re not telling the whole truth, which is lying.”

  The mother in the wool cap clucks her tongue again.

  The mother with the white hair reaches up and pulls one of the few remaining leaves from a branch overhead. She says, “This is a season of death. We are not sure there will be another spring.”

  “What do you mean?” Pressia says. “The earth has endured this much. Of course there will be spring.” She thinks of Bradwell saying, If we don’t see each other again…

  “After they took Lyda, we decided we would never back down. Some say it’s a death wish. We don’t wish for death. We’re already dead.”

  “Took Lyda? She was going into the Dome with Partridge. She wasn’t taken. She went on her own…”

  “She was taken!” the mother with the white hair says.

  “Mmmhmm,” the mother in the wool cap purrs from the back of her throat.

  Pressia isn’t sure what to believe. The mothers sometimes tell themselves the stories they want to believe. Pressia can’t blame them. But right now, she wishes she understood. “What happened? Tell me.”

  The mother in the wool cap shakes
her head and glares at the other mother.

  “You can’t be trusted,” the mother with the white hair says.

  “But I need to know. Lyda’s my friend. She’s like a sister to me. You understand?” The mothers have built their lives around the notion of sisterhood. They exchange a glance.

  “No,” the mother with the white hair says. “We will tell you nothing.”

  They walk through the forest, deeper and deeper, until it’s almost completely dark. They come to a small camp of lean-tos. The mothers lead Pressia to one of the tiny tents.

  The mother with the white hair says, “You can drop your hands now.”

  Pressia rubs her arms, tingling from the lack of blood. The mother in the wool cap sees the doll head, reaches out and cups it in her pale, raw hands.

  The mother with the white hair nods and says, “It’s like she’s one of us.”

  The mother in the wool cap purrs again.

  “One of you? Why do you say that?” Pressia says. She’s nothing like the mothers. She isn’t a woman who’s been deserted, and she never will be. She has Bradwell—here, now, and beyond. The mothers scare her. They always have. Their underlying strength is shot through with something vicious. It’s how they’ve stayed alive. “It’s just a doll.”

  “It’s part of you, isn’t it?” the mother with the white hair says. “It defines you completely, and then again it doesn’t define you at all—like motherhood. You’ll be one of us. It’s a matter of time.”

  Pressia pulls the doll head to her chest but doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to be part of this tribe of women. She wants to get through this and build a life with Bradwell. If we don’t see each other again—the thought alone scares her.