Finder's Shore

by Mackenzie, Anna

  I lay my palm on her shoulder. “You’re safe,” I tell her.

  She stares at me, wild-eyed, fighting her way back to remembering where she is. “Where’s Flet?”

  “Sleeping, same as you’ve been. You’re both exhausted.”

  “But he’ll be all right?”

  “I can’t promise, Hetti. I’ve done my best. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Her eyes seem to take up half her face. “Where’s Saice? Saice was medic at Home Farm.”

  “She still is. I worked with her last summer. When I was just starting my training,” I add, because it’s true in a way.

  Hetti’s eyes dart around the tiny med room. She’s younger than me, but the fear in her face is something I know. “Last summer was when they attacked us. My father —” her voice breaks. I reach for her hand and she clutches it tight. “They made me go with them. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want any of it.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “It wasn’t your fault, Hetti.”

  A sob escapes her. “Cort said it was.” As her words stumble into tears, I think longingly of Jago, the city’s archivist, who would have known what to say to soothe Hetti’s pain. But Jago died last winter, before I had a chance to see him again, his old lungs unable to battle their way past an infection that had settled in his chest. Saice said he was at peace when he died, and I believe her — but it doesn’t make my grief for the old man any less.

  “You said Flet helped you,” I say gently.

  She crumples the handkerchief I pass her. “After … after …” Tears spill from her eyes. “He said it was me — my fault. But I wouldn’t have hurt her.” Snot drips from her nose and she sniffs.

  “Flet said what was your fault?”

  “Not Flet! Flet wouldn’t say such a thing. Cort.” She spits the name. “She was so small,” she wails. “I only held her for a minute before they took her away. He said that I … that …” Her voice disappears in her hands.

  A suspicion is growing inside me. “Who did Cort take?”

  “My little girl. She never even had a chance to cry.” She grips my hand. “I didn’t want her at first, I didn’t want any part of him, but after a while it meant that Cort left me alone. That’s when I started to love her.” One arm hugs her belly. “But she was too small. She should have waited. Cort said it was my fault. He said if I was no good as a breeder, the others might find some other use for me.”

  She stops again, while my imagination fills out her words. “Who is Cort?”

  “A Levine. One of the leaders. He led the brigade’s attack on Summertops.”

  “And got away,” I murmur.

  “He took me and two of the men. He told the others he’d be back, but that he wasn’t leaving me to chance.” Her face contorts. “He meant to the rest of them. I was lucky, in a way, that he wanted me for himself. My mother —” Her emotions overwhelm her again.

  “Your mother is living in Vidya. She’s doing well, Hetti, she works in the kitchens. I saw her just a few weeks ago. She’s fine, and she’ll be even better when she learns that you’re alive.”

  The girl stares at me. “I hate him,” she says. “I want him dead. Dead like my little girl.” She weeps again, violently, then as suddenly stops. “Promise me you’ll save Flet,” she says, her voice strident.

  “I promise I’ll do my best.” I untangle myself from her grasping hands. I don’t wonder that Hetti seems a little unhinged after all that she’s been through. “For now, I’m going to give you a drink that will help you feel better.” I mix a dose of sedative.

  Suspicion flits across her face as I raise the cup. “Flet would want you to get strong again,” I tell her, and feel her relax beneath my hands.

  “He helped me escape,” she says.

  Once she’s fallen asleep, I peer out the door. The scout leaning up against the wall straightens. Yesterday I treated him for boils. It seems a long time ago. “Brenon’s orders,” he says. “I’m to fetch anything you need.”

  “I need to speak to him.”

  “Right here,” a voice answers. I look up to see both Brenon and Tino striding towards me.

  “I’ve given her something to help her sleep,” I say, trying to gauge from Tino’s face whether Hetti told him her story. If she hasn’t, I must. It’s not a task that I relish.

  His big fists clench as I finish. “She’s only a child herself!”

  “This Cort took her back to the Paras’ base?” Brenon asks.

  “It sounds like it. She said he was one of their leaders.”

  “Which means it was no breakaway group.” Brenon’s mouth tightens as he weighs the implications. “I’ll speak with her once she’s rested. Have you slept, Ness?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll check on Flet first.”

  “Make sure you get your head down straight after. You look exhausted.”

  As the guard ushers me inside Flet’s dark cell, I wonder whether Hetti’s testimony will protect him from those who wish him ill, and whether Tino is among them. I know from experience that being an outsider can be hard. Strange that I should no longer feel an outsider here, but only now, when I know for certain I won’t stay.

  CHAPTER 4

  The jigger clatters over a rough joint in the line, jolting my forehead against the window. I roll my neck to loosen its kinks and gaze out at the shifting landscape. We’ve already passed the dead lake. It won’t be long before we begin our clanking descent to the ocean.

  Around me, children rustle and shift. Hetti’s story has spread outwards in ripples of fear. There’s no real indication that the Paras plan another assault, but for some, the threat is enough.

  “Truso takes it so hard,” Saice had told me, after a third family announced they were returning to Vidya. “And we can’t afford to lose our work crews at the busiest time of the season, not after last year’s poor harvest.”

  “You can’t blame people for being afraid.”

  “Not for being afraid,” Saice had agreed. “For not standing up for what we believe in. For not standing by Vidya.”

  The child opposite me clambers onto the seat to peer from the window and I reach a hand to steady him. His mother, busy with her baby, glances briefly towards me, stress showing in the lines and shadows of her face. I can’t reproach her, or the others, for wanting to feel safe.

  Jofeia slides into a nearby seat, laying her crossbow on her knees as she twists to face me. “I’ll be glad to see Vidya,” she says. “It’s nearly four months since I’ve been back.”

  I’m not sure I share her enthusiasm: I’ve an argument with Amar awaiting me.

  “Do you think the para will pull through?” Jofeia asks.

  “His name is Flet,” I say. “It was a risk moving him from Summertops so soon, but with Saice caring for him he has a fair chance. He’s a fighter at least.” Her grunt makes me regret my choice of words. If he’d been stable enough I’d have suggested transferring him back to Vidya. At least there the label of ‘para’ would be a little less damning.

  “It’s not his fault that he grew up in a community we disapprove of.”

  Jofeia looks unconvinced. I wonder how many at Home Farm share her opinion, and whether Flet will come to regret making himself an outcast.

  “Are you on leave once we get to Vidya?” I ask, to change the subject.

  She shakes her head. “I’m assigned to the jigger line for the next week, but I should get a couple of nights in the city between runs. If things stay quiet for the next few days, Brenon plans to head back to Vidya to meet with the governors.”

  “Perhaps he’ll be able to convince Hetti to go with him.” The girl had refused to leave Ebony Hill without Flet.

  “We’ll go together when he’s well,” she’d said.

  “But your mother,” Saice had argued.

  Hetti had been adamant, her fixation making me wonder how she’d cope if Flet dies. Saice had been prosaic. “She’s tougher than she looks — she wouldn’t have made it this far if she wasn�
��t. In my experience, Ness, people are either resilient or they’re not.” Her words had carried a weight of resignation about them. Over the past year, Saice has had to deal with the aftermath of the attack. Like Truso, she doesn’t carry the burden lightly.

  “So have you thought about joining Scouts?” Jofeia asks, tugging me back to the present.

  Spiny weeds spill from a fold of hill towards the track, their yellow blossoms bright as beads. “I haven’t yet made a decision.”

  “I prefer it to Decon,” she says. “Bigger challenges.”

  I prefer my challenges to be peaceable, but I don’t feel inclined to say so to Jofeia. Glancing at the mothers and young children around us, I wonder if she’ll one day choose another path — though if she does, I suspect it won’t be for a while.

  The carriage slows as the line angles up the face of the hill. I clamber up to offer Farra my help, but Jofeia is ahead of me. As she and Farra stoop and straighten, working the jigger’s see-saw arm, I remember my first journey to Ebony Hill, with Ronan and Esha. And my first return. Farra had led that exodus, too, seeing us safely back to Vidya.

  With my hand spread flat against the window, I gather the rhythmic vibration of the carriage in my palm. Ebony Hill has for a second time brought me something other than I expected.

  “It’s hardly fair, after your last visit, that you should have had to deal with this,” Saice had said, as we readied ourselves to leave.

  I’ve long since given up believing life fair. Was it fair my mama died when I was barely old enough to know her, or that Papa later joined her in an early grave? Was it fair that my Aunt Tilda should treat me and my brother so harshly, or that Colm’s Council on Dunnett so disguised the truth of the world that I couldn’t recognise it when I saw it? If I hadn’t found a stranger washed up on the shores of Skellap Bay, and risked my life to save him, I’d never have known that Vidya and Ebony Hill existed at all. I’d never have known, either, about guns and bombs and the way people who don’t even know each other can hate. Nor had the chance to read books, or to study and become a medic. I’d not have known Esha, or Truso, or Saice.

  And that wouldn’t have been fair either. I didn’t say any of that to Saice. “It’s helped me decide that I’m not going into research,” was all I told her.

  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  “Amar won’t be.”

  Saice’s sudden smile had wiped a decade of cares from her face. “Amar and I trained together, did I tell you? He never had much time for patients. He has no affinity with people. Unlike you.”

  The jigger tops the short climb and curves into a cutting, its clay walls flickering past almost close enough to touch. “It’s all yours,” Farra tells Jofeia, stretching his arms above his head. “Keep the pressure steady on the brake.”

  Light floods back into the carriage as we roll out of the cutting. I crane my neck to catch my first glimpse of the ocean. The track runs downhill from here, the line cutting a broad sweep across the hill. Something flashes on the slope ahead. Farra, walking the length of the carriage, sees my worried stare. “I thought I saw —”

  He cuts me off. “There’s a Decon team out checking the tunnels. And Brenon’s patrol.”

  “The patrol was only supposed to go as far as the dead lake. We’ve passed that.”

  “Decon then.” There’s something he’s not telling me. There have been several sabotage attempts on the line over the past year, none as serious as the first, during last year’s hostilities. I push the memories away. As we begin to pick up speed, Farra relaxes.

  In the seat behind me, a small boy begins to grizzle. His mother, holding his sleeping sister in her lap, shushes him crossly.

  “Can you see the sea?” I ask him. “See how big it is?” He eyes me suspiciously. “When I was your age, I lived across the ocean on an island called Dunnett.”

  He checks the expanse of silvered water below us. “Aren’t any islands,” he says.

  “Not close enough to see. Dunnett’s a long way away.”

  His chin lifts in a skeptical tilt. “Why’d you come here?” he asks, leaning in against his mother’s side. She shifts to accommodate him.

  “Someone once told me stories about Vidya.”

  He considers me doubtfully. “Where’s your mam?”

  “She died when I was young.”

  His mother glances at me.

  “What about your dadda?”

  “My Uncle Marn raised me, and his wife Tilda,” I say. “My brother Ty and our cousin Sophie lived with us too.”

  “Did they come to Vidya with you?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been to the city before?” Farra asks, rescuing me from the child’s interrogation.

  Wordless, he shakes his head. “He has,” his mother says. “We only left a year ago. He doesn’t remember.”

  Farra hunkers down beside the boy. “Well lad, you’ve a treat in store. They have buildings in Vidya that tower higher than trees, and gardens that grow inside houses. There are paths with roofs and walls, and floors that float on the ocean.”

  It’s a fanciful description, and one that catches the child’s attention. His mouth opens a little, his tongue caught between his teeth.

  “And lots of rubble,” someone adds quietly.

  “But no Paras,” the boy’s mother says, low but firm.

  “There’ll be plenty of children to play with,” I promise. “And lots of new things to learn.”

  “Someone once told me,” Farra says, “that there are tiny little people who live in the rubble and help us put everything back together.” He has several of the children’s attention now. “They’re only as big as your little finger, so it’s very slow work. But sometimes you can see where they’ve been along, fixing things up.”

  A girl peers around her father’s knee. “What do they look like?”

  Farra begins to embroider his tale, shaping his words to fit the world that they know. As I watch their faces, I only wish it could be true. Once, a long time ago, I used to tell my cousin Sophie such stories, just as my father once told them to me. I wonder where the first stories came from.

  At the foot of the hill, one of the fathers joins Jofeia on the jigger arm and we skim along the coast. Sunlight scatters off the rumpled surface of the sea, waves breaking up around the skerries that lie like a broken necklace off shore.

  Soon after, we reach the first of the tunnels. Swinging her weight on the brake lever, Jofeia slows us to a crawl. Farra slides the door open and swings down from the carriage, jogging ahead of the jigger into the dark mouth of the tunnel.

  When he jumps nimbly back on board, I raise an eyebrow. “I thought Decon had checked the tunnels?”

  “No harm in checking twice,” he says, as we pick up speed. Farra glances at the woman seated across from us, as conscious as I of the fear that simmers just below the surface. “You sometimes get a rock fall,” he says.

  The jigger line weaves along the flat ground that lies between the rocky ridge of hills and the shore. As we pass the tumbled fences that a year ago surrounded a settlement, anger burns in my belly. The families who lived there were no threat to the Paras, but still they were obliged to abandon their hard-won homes. That they’re safe in Vidya doesn’t make up for all they’ve lost — and for what? Maybe Hetti or Flet could provide an answer to that.

  The rattle of stones jars me back to the present. A woman cries out as a rock thuds against the jigger’s side. Disturbed from sleep, a child wails. On the slope above, more rocks begin to roll.

  Farra leaps forward to join Jofeia on the jigger’s handle. I spring up and hurry in his wake. The carriage sways as we pick up speed and I lurch sideways, falling against two children. Someone screams as a rock crashes against the window, shattering the pane into splinters of flying glass.

  “Everyone down,” Farra bellows.

  A child sobs. Dropping to my knees, I crawl towards the young mother. Her face and neck are bleeding but not badly. Her son
screams in protest as I pincer shards of glass from his arm.

  A second pane splinters as more rocks thud against the jigger’s side. “Anyone else bleeding?” I call.

  A slow, thudding rumble draws my eyes up the slope. A boulder the size of a cart has begun to roll on the hillside ahead. “Farra!”

  Impossible to tell whether we’re on a collision course; whether we’re better to speed or brake. The rock begins to bounce on the rough terrain.

  “Stay down. Wedge yourselves between the seats,” Farra shouts.

  I can’t take my eyes from the boulder’s bounding leaps. Its fall is perfectly timed. Someone begins to weep. The jigger’s brakes bite with the harsh shriek of metal on metal.

  The boulder lands with a thud I feel through my knees, rebounds and soars towards us. I grit my teeth as it thumps down, pulverising everything beneath it, vaulting on, thudding on the rocks at the sea’s edge, veering sideways, cast off-course by the uneven ground, crashing at last into the ocean. It’s flown right over us.

  Relief surges through me, though I know we’re not yet out of danger. Farra strides past, yanking the door wide. “What —?”

  He flips his crossbow from his shoulder. The carriage sways as the brakes let out another prolonged scream. “Everyone hold on!” he calls, his eyes meeting mine.

  There’s no time for questions. The last thing I see before the darkness swallows us is the stony ground sliding past in a blur as Farra leaps from the open door.

  The barrier is midway along the tunnel. We’ve just time to slow before hitting it, but even so the impact sends me skidding down the carriage. I fetch up against the legs of a seat, something heavy pressed against me. All around, voices break into a cacophony of cries and complaints.

  “Quiet!” Jofeia’s voice cuts through the noise. The adults, at least, comply. “We’re all right, but we need to keep calm. We hit something on the line.”