The Ask and the Answer (Page 53)

I stop, mid-swing.

Davy’s staring at me, his mouth open.

All the Spackle are edging back, terrified.

And from the ground, 1017 is looking back up at me, red blood pouring from his weird nose and the corner of his too-high eyes but there’s no sound coming from him, no Noise, no thoughts, no clicks, no nothing–

(and we’re in the campsite and there’s a dead Spackle on the ground and Viola’s looking so scared and she’s backing away from me and there’s blood everywhere and I’ve done it again I’ve done it again and why did you go oh jesus dammit Viola why did you leave–)

And 1017 just looks at me.

And I swear to God, it’s a look of triumph.

{VIOLA}

“Water pump’s workin agin, Hildy.”

“Thank you, Wilf.” I hand him a tray of bread, the heat still coming off it. “Could you take these to Jane, please? She’s setting the tables for breakfast.”

He takes the tray, a flat little tune coming from his Noise. As he leaves the kitchen shack, I hear him call out, “Wife!”

“Why does he call you Hildy?” Lee says, appearing at the back door with a basket of flour he just pounded. He’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and the skin up to his elbows is dusty white.

I look at his bare arms for a second and look away quickly.

Mistress Coyle put us to work together since he can’t go back to New Prentisstown any more either.

No, I will certainly not forgive her.

“Hildy was the name of someone who helped us,” I say. “Someone worth being called after.”

“And by us, you mean–”

“Me and Todd, yes.” I take the basket of flour from him and thump it down heavily on the table.

There’s a silence, as there always seems to be when Todd’s name comes up.

“No one’s seen him, Viola,” Lee says gently. “But they mostly go in at night so that doesn’t–”

“She wouldn’t tell me even if she did.” I start separating the flour into bowls. “She thinks he’s dead.”

Lee shifts from foot to foot out. “But you say different.”

I look at him. He smiles and I can’t help but smile back. “And you believe me, do you?”

He shrugs. “Wilf believes you. And you’d be surprised how far the word of Wilf goes around here.”

“No.” I look out the window to where Wilf disappeared. “No, actually I wouldn’t.”

That day passes like the others and still we cook. That’s our new employment, Lee and me, cooking. All of it, for the entire camp. We’ve learned how to make bread from a starting point of wheat, not even flour. We’ve learned how to skin squirrels, de-shell turtles and gut fish. We’ve learned how much base you need for soup to feed a hundred. We’ve learned how to peel potatoes and pears faster than possibly anyone on this whole stupid planet.

Mistress Coyle swears this is how wars are won.

“This isn’t really why I signed up,” Lee says, pulling another handful of feathers off the sixteenth forest fowl of the afternoon.

“At least signing up was your idea,” I say, fingers cramping on my own fowl. The feathers hover in the air like a swarm of sticky flies, catching everywhere they touch. I’ve got little green puffs under my fingernails, in the crooks of my elbows, glopped in the corner of my eyes.

I know this because Lee’s got them all over his face, too, all through his long golden hair and in the matching golden hair on his forearms.

I feel my face flush again and pull out a furious rip of feathers.

A day turned into two, turned into three, turned into a week, turned into the week after and the week after that, cooking with Lee, washing up with Lee, sitting out three days of solid rain stuck in this shack with Lee.

And still. And still.

Something’s coming, something’s being prepared for, no one’s telling me anything.

And I’m still stuck here.

Lee tosses a plucked fowl onto the table and picks up another one. “We’re going to make this species extinct if we’re not careful.”

“It’s the only thing Magnus can shoot,” I say. “Everything else is too fast.”

“A whole animal lost,” Lee says, “because the Answer lacked for an optician.”

I laugh, too loud. I roll my eyes at myself.

I finish my own fowl and pick up a new one. “I’m doing three of these for every two of yours,” I say. “And I did more loaves this morning and–”

“You burnt half of them.”

“Because you stoked the oven too hot!”

“I’m not made for cooking,” he says, smiling. “I’m made for soldiering.”

I gasp. “And you think I’m made for cooking–”

But he’s laughing and keeps laughing even when I throw a handful of wet feathers at him, smacking him straight on the eye. “Ow,” he says, wiping it away. “You got some aim, Viola. We really need to get a gun in your hands.”

I turn my face quickly back down to the millionth fowl in my lap.

“Or maybe not,” he says, more quietly.

“Have you–?” I stop.

“Have I what?”

I lick my lips, which is a mistake because then I have to spit out a mouthful of feathery puffs, so when I do finally say it, it comes out more exasperated than I meant. “Have you ever shot someone?”

“No.” He sits up straighter. “Have you?”

I shake my head and see him relax, which makes me immediately say, “But I’ve been shot.”

He sits back up. “No way!”

I say it before I mean to, before I even know it’s coming, and then I’m saying it and I realize I’ve never said it, not out loud, not to myself, not ever, not since it happened, and yet here it is, tumbling out in a room full of floating feathers.

“And I’ve stabbed someone.” I stop plucking. “To death.”

My body feels suddenly twice as heavy in the silence that follows.

When I start to cry, Lee just hands me a kitchen towel and lets me, not crowding me or saying anything stupid or even asking about it, though he must be dying of curiosity. He just lets me cry.

Which is exactly right.

“Yes, but we’re gaining sympathy,” Lee says near the end of dinner with Wilf and Jane. I’m putting off finishing because as soon as I do, we have go back to the kitchens to start preparing the yeasts to cook tomorrow’s bread. You wouldn’t believe how much bloody bread a hundred people can eat.