by Patrick Ness
I turn out not to be a natural healer.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get this,” I say, failing yet again to tell the blood pressure of a sweet old patient called Mrs Fox.
“It sure feels that way,” Corinne says, glancing up at the clock.
“Patience, pretty girl,” Mrs Fox says, her face wrinkling up in a smile. “A thing worth learning is worth learning well.”
“You’re right there, Mrs Fox,” Corinne says, looking back at me. “Try it again.”
I pump up the armband to inflate it, listen through the stethoscope for the right kind of whoosh, whoosh in Mrs Fox’s blood and match that up to the little dial. “Sixty over twenty?” I guess weakly.
“Well, let’s find out,” Corinne says. “Have you died this morning, Mrs Fox?”
“Oh, dearie me, no,” Mrs Fox says.
“Probably not sixty over twenty then,” Corinne says.
“I’ve only been doing this for three days,” I say.
“I’ve been doing it for six years,” Corinne says, “since I was way younger than you, my girl. And here you are, can’t even work a blood pressure sleeve, yet suddenly an apprentice just like me. Funny how life works, huh?”
“You’re doing fine, sweetheart,” Mrs Fox says to me.
“No, she isn’t, Mrs Fox,” Corinne says. “I’m sorry to contradict you, but some of us regard healing as a sacred duty.”
“I regard it as a sacred duty,” I say, almost as a reflex.
This is a mistake.
“Healing is more than a job, my girl,” Corinne says, making my girl sound like the worst insult. “There is nothing more important in this life than the preservation of it. We’re God’s hands on this world. We are the opposite of your friend the tyrant.”
“He’s not my–”
“To allow someone, anyone, to suffer is the greatest sin there is.”
“Corinne–”
“You don’t understand anything,” she says, her voice low and fierce. “Quit pretending that you do.”
Mrs Fox has shrunk down nearly as far as I have.
Corinne glances at her and back at me, then she straightens her cap and tugs the lapels on her cloak, stretching out her neck from right to left. She closes her eyes and lets out a long, long breath.
Without looking at me, she says, “Try it again.”
“The difference between a clinic and a house of healing?” Mistress Coyle asks, ticking off boxes on a sheet.
“The main difference is that clinics are run by male doctors, houses of healing by female healers,” I recite, as I count out the day’s pills into separate little cups for each patient.
“And why is that?”
“So that a patient, male or female, can have a choice between knowing the thoughts of their doctor or not.”
She raises an eyebrow. “And the real reason?”
“Politics,” I say, returning her word.
“Correct.” She finishes the paperwork and hands it to me. “Take these and the medicines to Madeleine, please.”
She leaves and I finish filling up the tray of medicines. When I come out with it in my hands, I see Mistress Coyle down at the end of the hallway, passing by Mistress Nadari.
And I swear I see her slip Mistress Nadari a note, without either of them pausing.
We can still only go out for an hour at a time, still only in groups of four, but that’s enough to see how New Prentisstown is putting itself together. As my first week as an apprentice comes to an end, we hear tell that some women are even being sent out into fields to work in women-only groups.
We hear tell that the Spackle are being kept somewhere on the edge of town, all together as one group, awaiting “processing”, whatever that might mean.
We hear tell the old Mayor is working as a dustman.
We hear nothing about a boy.
“I missed his birthday,” I tell Maddy, as I practise tying bandages around a rubber leg so ridiculously realistic everyone calls it Ruby. “It was four days ago. I lost track of how long I was asleep and–”
I can’t say any more, just pull the bandage tight–
And think of when he put a bandage on me–
And when I put bandages on him.
“I’m sure he’s fine, Vi,” Maddy says.
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” she says, looking back out the window to the road, “but against all odds the city’s not at war. Against all odds, we’re still alive and still working. So, against all odds, Todd could be alive and well.”
I pull tighter on the bandage. “Do you know anything about a blue A?”
She turns to me. “A what?”
I shrug. “Something I saw in Mistress Coyle’s notebook.”
“No idea.” She looks back out the window.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m counting soldiers,” she says. She looks back again at me and Ruby. “It’s a good bandage.” Her smile makes it almost seem true.
I head down the main hallway, Ruby kicking from one hand. I have to practise injecting shots into her thigh. I already feel sorry for the poor woman whose thigh gets my first real jab.
I come round a corner as the hallway reaches the centre of the building, where it turns ninety degrees down the other wing, and I nearly collide with a group of mistresses, who stop when they see me.
Mistress Coyle and four, five, six other healers behind her. I recognize Mistress Nadari and Mistress Waggoner, and there’s Mistress Lawson, too, but I’ve never seen the other three before and didn’t even see them come into the house of healing.
“Have you no work, my girl?” Mistress Coyle says, some edge in her voice.
“Ruby,” I stammer, holding out the leg.
“Is this her?” asks one of the healers I don’t recognize.
Mistress Coyle doesn’t introduce me.
She just says, “Yes, this is the girl.”
I have to wait all day to see Maddy again, but before I can ask her about it, she says, “I’ve figured it out.”
“Did one of them have a scar on her upper lip?” Maddy whispers in the dark. It’s well past midnight, well past lights out, well past when she should be in her own room.
“I think so,” I whisper back. “They left really quickly.”
We watch another pair of soldiers march down the road. By Maddy’s reckoning, we’ve got three minutes.
“That would have been Mistress Barker,” she says. “Which means the others were probably Mistress Braithwaite and Mistress Forth.” She looks back out the window. “This is crazy, you know. If she catches us, we’ll get it good.”
“I hardly think she’s going to fire you under the circumstances.”
Her face goes thoughtful. “Did you hear what the mistresses were saying?”
“No, they shut up the second they saw me.”
“But you were the girl?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And Mistress Coyle avoided me the rest of today.”
“Mistress Barker . . .” Maddy says, still thinking. “But how could that accomplish anything?”
“How could what accomplish what?”
“Those three were on the Council with Mistress Coyle. Mistress Barker still is. Or was, before all this. But why would they be–” She stops and leans closer to the window. “That’s the last foursome.”
I look out and see four soldiers marching up the road.
If the pattern Maddy’s spotted is right, the time is now.
If the pattern’s right.
“You ready?” I whisper.
“Of course I’m not ready,” Maddy says, with a terrified smile. “But I’m going.”
I see how she’s flexing her hands to keep them from shaking. “We’re just going to look,” I say. “That’s all. Out and back again before you know it.”
Maddy still looks terrified but nods her head. “I’ve never done anything like this before in my whole life.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, l
ifting the sash on my window all the way up. “I’m an expert.”
The ROAR of the town, even when it’s sleeping, covers our footsteps pretty well as we sneak across the dark lawn. The only light is from the two moons, shining down on us, half-circles in the sky.
We make it to the ditch at the side of the road, crouching in the bushes.
“What now?” Maddy whispers.
“You said two minutes, then another pair.”
Maddy nods in the shadows. “Then another break of seven minutes.”
In that break, Maddy and I will start moving down the road, sticking to the trees, staying under cover, and see if we can get to the communications tower, if that’s even what it is.
See what’s there when we do.
“You all right?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” she whispers back. “Scared but excited, too.”
I know what she means. Out here, crouching in a ditch under the cover of night, it’s crazy, it’s dangerous, but I finally feel like I’m doing something, finally feel like I’m taking charge of my own life for the first time since being stuck in that bed.
Finally feel like I’m doing something for Todd.
We hear the crunch of gravel on the road and crouch a little lower as the expected pair of soldiers march past us and away.
“Here we go,” I say.
We stand up as much as we dare and move quickly down the ditch, away from the town.
“Do you still have family on the ships?” Maddy whispers. “Someone besides your mother and father?”
I wince a little at the sound she’s making but I know she’s only talking to cover her nerves. “No, but I know everyone else. Bradley Tench, he’s lead caretaker on the Beta, and Simone Watkin on the Gamma is really smart.”
The ditch bends with the road and there’s a crossroads coming up that we’ll have to negotiate.
Maddy starts up again. “So Simone’s the one you’d–”
“Shh,” I say because I think I heard something.
Maddy comes close enough to press against me. Her whole body is shaking and her breath is coming in short little puffs. She has to come this time because she knows where the tower is, but I can’t ask her to do it again. When I come back, I’ll come on my own.
Because if anything goes wrong–
“I think we’re okay,” I say.
We step slowly out from the ditch to cross the crossroads, looking all around us, stepping lightly in the gravel.
“Going somewhere?” says a voice.
Maddy takes in a sharp breath behind me. There’s a soldier leaning against a tree, his legs crossed like he couldn’t be more relaxed.
Even in the moonlight I can see the rifle hanging lazily from his hand.
“Little late to be out, innit?”
“We got lost,” I sputter. “We were separated from–”
“Yeah,” he interrupts. “I’ll bet.”
He strikes a match against the zip of his uniform jacket. In the flare of light, I see SERGEANT HAMMAR written across his pocket. He uses the match to light a cigarette in his mouth.
Cigarettes were banned by the Mayor.
But I guess if you’re an officer.
An officer without Noise who can hide in the dark.
He takes a step forward and we see his face. He’s got a smile on over the cigarette, an ugly one, the ugliest I’ve ever seen.
“You?” he says, recognition in his voice as he gets nearer.
As he raises his rifle.
“Yer the girl,” he says, looking at me.
“Viola?” Maddy whispers, a step behind me and to my right.
“Mayor Prentiss knows me,” I say. “You won’t harm me.”
He inhales on the cigarette, flashing the ember, making a streak against my vision. “President Prentiss knows you.”
Then he looks at Maddy, pointing at her with the rifle.
“I don’t reckon he knows you, tho.”
And before I can say anything–
Without giving any kind of warning–
As if it was as natural to him as taking his next breath–
Sergeant Hammar pulls the trigger.
[TODD]
“Your turn to do the bog,” Davy says, throwing me the canister of lime.
We never see the Spackle use the corner where they’ve dug a bog to do their business but every morning it’s a little bit bigger and stinks a little bit more and it needs lime powdered over it to cut down on the smell and the danger of infeckshun.
I hope it works better on infeckshun than it does on smell.
“Why ain’t it never yer turn?” I say.
“Cuz Pa may think yer the better man, pigpiss,” Davy says, “but he still put me in charge.”
And he grins at me.
I start walking to the bog.
The days passed and they kept passing, till there was two full weeks of ’em gone and more.
I stayed alive and got thru.
(did she?)
(did she?)
Davy and I ride to the monastery every morning and he “oversees” the Spackle tearing down fences and pulling up brambles and I spend the day shovelling out not enough fodder and trying and failing to fix the last two water pumps and taking every turn to do the bog.
The Spackle’ve stayed silent, still not doing nothing that could save themselves, fifteen hundred of ’em when we finally got ’em counted, crammed into an area where I wouldn’t herd two hundred sheep. More guards came, standing along the top of the stone wall, rifles pointed twixt rows of barbed wire, but the Spackle don’t do nothing that even comes close to threatening.
They’ve stayed alive. They’ve got thru it.
And so has New Prentisstown.
Every day, Mayor Ledger tells me what he sees out on his rubbish rounds. Men and women are still separated and there are more taxes, more rules about dress, a list of books to be surrendered and burned, and compulsory church attendance, tho not in the cathedral, of course.
But it’s also started to act like a real town again. The stores are back open, carts and fissionbikes and even a fissioncar or two are back on the roads. Men’ve gone back to work. Repairmen returned to repairing, bakers returned to baking, farmers returned to farming, loggers returned to logging, some of ’em even signing up to join the army itself, tho you can tell who the new soldiers are cuz they ain’t been given the cure yet.
“You know,” Mayor Ledger said one night and I could see it in his Noise before he said it, see the thought forming, the thought I hadn’t thought myself, the thought I hadn’t let myself think. “It’s not nearly as bad as I thought,” he said. “I expected slaughter. I expected my own death, certainly, and perhaps the burning of the entire town. The surrender was a fool’s chance at best, but maybe he’s not lying.”
He got up and looked out over New Prentisstown. “Maybe,” he said, “the war really is over.”
“Oi!” I hear Davy call as I’m halfway to the bog. I turn round. A Spackle has come up to him.
It’s holding its long white arms up and out in what may be a peaceful way and then it starts clicking, pointing to where a group of Spackle have finished tearing down a fence. It’s clicking and clicking, pointing to one of the empty water troughs, but there ain’t no way of understanding it, not if you can’t hear its Noise.
Davy steps closer to it, his eyes wide, his head nodding in sympathy, his smile dangerous. “Yeah, yeah, yer thirsty from the hard work,” he says. “Course you are, course you are, thank you for bringing that to my attenshun, thank you very much. And in reply, let me just say this.”
He smashes the butt of his pistol into the Spackle’s face. You can hear the crack of bone and the Spackle falls to the ground clutching at his jaw, long legs twisting in the air.
There’s a wave of clicking around us and Davy lifts his pistol again, bullet end facing the crowd. Rifles cock on the fence-top, too, soldiers pointing their weapons. The Spackle slink back, the broken-jawed one still writh
ing and writhing in the grass.
“Know what, pigpiss?” Davy says.
“What?” I say, my eyes still on the Spackle on the ground, my Noise shaky as a leaf about to fall.
He turns to me, pistol still out. “It’s good to be in charge.”
Every minute I’ve expected life to blow apart.
But every minute, it don’t.
And every day I’ve looked for her.
I’ve looked for her from the openings outta the top of the bell tower but all I ever see is the army marching and men working. Never a face I reckernize, never a silence I can feel as hers.
I’ve looked for her when Davy and I ride back and forth to the monastery, seeking her out in the windows of the Women’s Quarter, but I never see her looking back.
I‘ve even half-looked for her in the crowds of Spackle, wondering if she’s hiding behind one, ready to pop out and yell at Davy for beating on ’em and then saying to me, like everything’s okay, “Hey, I’m here, it’s me.”
But she ain’t there.
She ain’t there.
I’ve asked Mayor Prentiss bout her every time I’ve seen him and he’s said I need to trust him, said he’s not my enemy, said if I put my faith in him that everything will be all right.
But I’ve looked.
And she ain’t there.
“Hey, girl,” I whisper to Angharrad as I saddle her up at the end of our day. I’ve got way better at riding her, better at talking to her, better at reading her moods. I’m less nervous about being on her back and she’s less nervous about being underneath me. This morning after I gave her an apple to eat, she clipped her teeth thru my hair once, like I was just another horse.
Boy colt, she says, as I climb on her back and me and Davy set off back into town.
“Angharrad,” I say, leaning forward twixt her ears, cuz this is what horses like, it seems, constant reminders that everyone’s there, constant reminders that they’re still in the herd.
Above anything else, a horse hates to be alone.
Boy colt, Angharrad says again.
“Angharrad,” I say.
“Jesus, pigpiss,” Davy moans, “why don’t you marry the effing–” He stops. “Well, goddam,” he says, his voice suddenly a whisper, “would you look at this?”
