The Ask and the Answer

“Why not?”

“Oh, the fish are the size of your boat and they swim up alongside and look you in the eye and tell you how they’re going to eat you.” She laughs a little. “And then they eat you.”

I laugh a little, too. And then I remember all that’s happened.

She looks at me again, catching my eye. “It’s beautiful, though, the ocean. Like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

“You miss it.” I drink the last of my beer.

“To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it,” she says, taking my glass. “Let me get you another.”

That night, I dream.

I dream of oceans and of fish that will eat me. I dream of armies that swim by and of Mistress Coyle leading them. I dream of Maddy taking my hand and holding me up from the water.

I dream of thunder making a single loud BOOM! that almost breaks the sky in two.

Maddy smiles when I jump at the sound of it. “I’m going to see him,” I tell her.

She glances over my shoulder and says, “There he is.”

I turn to look.

I wake but the sun’s all wrong. I sit up, my head feeling like it’s a boulder, and I have to close my eyes to make everything stop spinning.

“Is this what a hangover feels like?” I say out loud.

“There was no alcohol in that beer,” Corinne says.

I snap my eyes open, which is a mistake as black spots form everywhere in my vision. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to wake up so the President’s men can take you.”

“What?” I say, as she stands. “What’s going on?”

“She drugged you. Jeffers in your beer, plus bandy root to disguise the taste. She left you this.” She holds out a small piece of paper. “You’re to destroy it after you read it.”

I take the paper. It’s a note from Mistress Coyle.

Forgive me, my girl, it says, but the President is wrong. The war is not over. Keep to the side of right, keep gathering information, keep leading him astray. You’ll be contacted.

“They blew up a storefront and left in the confusion,” Corinne says.

“They did what?” My voice starts to rise. “Corinne, what’s going on?”

But she’s not even looking at me. “I told them they were abandoning their sacred trust, that nothing was more important than saving lives.”

“Who else is here?”

“Just you and me,” she says. “And the soldiers waiting outside to take you to your President.” She looks down at her shoes and for the first time I notice the anger, the rage burning off her. “I expect I’ll be interrogated by someone less handsome.”

“Corinne–”

“You’ll have to start calling me Mistress Wyatt now,” she says, turning towards the door. “That is, in the unlikely event that both of us get back here alive.”

“They’re gone?” I say, still not believing it.

Corinne just glares at me, waiting for me to rise.

They’re gone.

She left me here alone with Corinne.

She left me here.

To go off and start a war.

[TODD]

“Fission fuel, sir, soaked into clay powder to make a paste–”

“I know how to make a bush bomb, Corporal Parker,” says the Mayor, surveying the damage from his saddle. “What I do not know is how a group of unarmed women managed to plant one in full view of soldiers under your command.”

We see Corporal Parker swallow, actually see it move in his throat. He’s not a man from old Prentisstown, so he musta been picked up along the way. You go where the power is, Ivan said. But what about when the power wants answers you ain’t got? “It may not have been just women, sir,” Parker says. “People are talking about something called–”

“Look at this, pigpiss,” Davy says to me. He’s ridden Deadfall/Acorn over to a tree trunk, near where we’ve stopped across the road from the blown-out storefront.

I chirrup to Angharrad, using my one good hand to tap the reins. She picks her feet lightly over the bits of wood and plaster and glass and foodstuffs that are scattered everywhere, like the store finally let go of a sneeze it was holding in. We get over to Davy, who’s pointing at a bunch of light-coloured splinters sticking straight outta the tree trunk.

“Explozhun so big it rammed ’em straight into the tree,” he says. “Those bitches.”

“It was late at night,” I say, readjusting my arm in the sling. “They didn’t hurt no one.”

“Bitches,” Davy repeats, shaking his head.

“You’ll turn in your supply of cure, Corporal,” we hear the Mayor say, loud enough so Corporal Parker’s men hear the punishment, too. “All of you will. Privacy is a privilege for those who’ve earned it.”

The Mayor ignores Corporal Parker’s mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and turns to have a short, quiet word with Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Morgan, who then ride off in different direkshuns. The Mayor comes over to us next, not saying nothing, face frowning like a slap. Morpeth stares viciously at our mounts, too. Submit, says his Noise. Submit. Submit. Deadfall and Angharrad both lower their heads and step back.

All horses are a little bit crazy.

“Want me to go hunting for ’em, Pa?” Davy says. “The bitches who did this?”

“Mind your language,” the Mayor says. “You both have work to be getting on with.”

Davy gives me a sideways glance and holds out his left leg. The whole bottom half is covered in a cast. “Pa?” he says. “If you ain’t noticed, I can barely walk and pigpiss here’s in a sling and–”

He don’t even finish the sentence before there’s that whoosh of sound, flying from the Mayor faster than thought, like a bullet made of Noise. Davy flinches back in his saddle, yanking the reins so hard Deadfall rears up, nearly dumping Davy to the ground. Davy recovers, breathing heavy, eyes unfocused.

What the hell is that?

“Does this look like a day you can take off?” the Mayor says, indicating all the wreckage of the store stretched around us, the husk of the building still smoking in some parts.

Blown up.

(I’ve been hiding it in my Noise, doing my best to keep it down–)

(but it’s there, hidden away, bubbling below the surface–)

(the thought of a bridge that blew up once–)

I look back to see the Mayor staring at me so hard I’m blurting it out before I can barely think. “It wasn’t her,” I say. “I’m sure it wasn’t.”