The Ask and the Answer

“Where am I?” I ask Mistress Coyle, my breath still fast.

“Do you mean the room, my girl? Or the town?” She holds my eyes. “Or indeed the planet?”

“Please,” I say and my eyes suddenly start to fill with water and I’m angry about that but I keep talking. “I was with a boy.”

She sighs and looks away for a second, then she purses her lips and sits down in a chair next to the bed. Her face is stern, her hair pulled back in plaits so tight you could probably climb them, her body solid and big and not at all someone who you’d mess around.

“I’m sorry,” she says, almost tenderly. Almost. “I don’t know anything about a boy.” She frowns. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about anything except that you were brought to this house of healing yesterday morning so close to death I wasn’t at all sure we would be able to bring you back. Except that we were informed in no uncertain terms that our survival rather depended upon yours.”

She waits to see how I take this.

I have no idea how I take this.

Where is he? What have they done with him?

I turn away from her to try and think but I’m wrapped so tight in bandages around my middle I can’t properly sit up.

Mistress Coyle runs a couple of fingers across her brow. “And now that you’re back,” she says, “I’m not at all sure you’re going to thank us for the world to which we’ve returned you.”

She tells me of Mayor Prentiss arriving in Haven in front of the rumour of an army, a big one, big enough to crush the town without effort, big enough to set the whole world ablaze. She tells me of the surrender of someone called Mayor Ledger, of how he shouted down the few people who wanted to fight, of how most people agreed to let him “hand over the town on a plate with a bow tied round it”.

“And then the houses of healing,” she says, real anger coming off her voice, “suddenly became prisons for the women inside.”

“So you’re a doctor, then?” I ask, but all I can feel is my chest pulling in on itself, sinking as if under an enormous weight, sinking because we failed, sinking because outrunning the army proved to be of no use at all.

Her mouth curls in a small smile, a secret one, like I just let something go. But it’s not cruel and I’m finding myself less afraid of her, of what this room might mean, less afraid for myself, more afraid for him.

“No, my girl,” she says, cocking her head. “As I’m sure you know, there are no women doctors on New World. I’m a healer.”

“What’s the difference?”

She runs her fingers across her brow again. “What’s the difference indeed?” She drops her hands in her lap and looks at them. “Even though we’re locked up,” she says, “we still hear rumours, you see. Rumours of men and women being separated all over town, rumours of the army arriving perhaps this very day, rumours of slaughter coming over the hill to vanquish us all no matter how well we surrendered.”

She’s looking at me hard now. “And then there’s you.”

I look away from her. “I’m not anyone special.”

“Are you not?” She looks unconvinced. “A girl whose arrival the whole town has to be cleared for? A girl whose life I am ordered to save on pain of my own? A girl,” she leans forward to make sure I’m listening, “fresh from the great black beyond?”

I stop breathing for a second and hope she doesn’t notice. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”

She grins again, not unkindly. “I’m a healer. The first thing I ever see is skin and so I know it well. Skin tells the story of a person, where they’ve been, what they’ve eaten, who they are. You’ve got some surface wear, my girl, but the rest of your skin is the softest and whitest I’ve seen in my twenty years of doing the good work. Too soft and white for a planet of farmers.”

I’m still not looking at her.

“And then there are the rumours, of course, brought in by the refugees, of more settlers on the way. Thousands of them.”

“Please,” I say quietly, my eyes welling up again. I try to force them to stop.

“And no girl from New World would ever ask a woman if she was a doctor,” she finishes.

I swallow. I put a hand to my mouth. Where is he? I don’t care about any of this because where is he?

“I know you’re frightened,” Mistress Coyle says. “But we’re suffering from an excess of fright here in this town and there’s nothing I can do about that.” She reaches out a rough hand to touch my arm. “But maybe you can do something to help us.”

I swallow but I don’t say anything.

There’s only one person I can trust.

And he’s not here.

Mistress Coyle leans back in her chair. “We did save your life,” she says. “A little knowledge could be a large comfort.”

I breathe in deep, looking around the room, around at the sunlight streaming in from a window looking out onto trees and a river, the river, the one we followed into what was supposed to be safety. It seems impossible that anything bad could be happening anywhere on a day so bright, that there’s any danger on the doorstep, that there’s an army coming.

But there is an army coming.

There is.

And it won’t be any friend to Mistress Coyle, no matter what’s happened to–

I feel a little pain in my chest.

But I take a breath.

And I start to talk.

“My name,” I say, “is Viola Eade.”

“More settlers, huh?” Maddy says with a smile. I’m lying on my side as she unwraps the long bandage around my middle. The underside is covered in blood, my skin dusty and rust-coloured where it’s dried. There’s a little hole in my stomach, tied up with fine string.

“Why doesn’t this hurt?” I say.

“Jeffers root on the bandages,” Maddy says. “Natural opiate. You won’t feel any pain but you won’t be able to go to the toilet for a month either. Plus, you’ll be sound asleep in about five minutes.”

I touch the skin around the bullet wound, gently, gently. There’s another on my back where the bullet went in. “Why aren’t I dead?”

“Would you rather be dead?” She smiles again, which changes to the smiliest frown I’ve ever seen. “I shouldn’t joke. Mistress Coyle’s always saying I lack the proper seriousness to be a healer.” She dips a cloth in a basin of hot water and starts washing the wounds. “You aren’t dead because Mistress Coyle is the best healer in all of Haven, better than any of those so-called doctors they’ve got in this town. Even the bad guys know that. Why do you think they brought you here instead of a clinic?”