Deathless Divide
Page 1
Dedication
For every reader who found something worthwhile
in Jane and Katherine’s story.
★ Thank you ★
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
A Prologue: In Which I Arrive at Miss Preston’s
Part One: In the Garden of Good and Evil
Chapter 1: In Which Our Sequel Begins
Chapter 2: Notes on a Broken Heart
Chapter 3: In Which I Have an Uncomfortable Chat
Chapter 4: Notes on a Restless Night
Chapter 5: In Which My Heart Breaks
Chapter 6: Notes on a Horde
Chapter 7: In Which Our Luck Runs Out. Again.
Chapter 8: Notes on a Struggle
Chapter 9: In Which I Learn the Fate of Baltimore
Chapter 10: Notes on a Plot to Save Jane McKeene
Chapter 11: In Which I Cool My Heels
Chapter 12: Notes on the Ones Lost
Chapter 13: In Which I Get a Visit from the Dead
Chapter 14: Notes on the Foolishness of Men
Chapter 15: In Which I Spoil for a Fight
Chapter 16: Notes on a Friendship
Chapter 17: In Which Things Begin to Unravel
Chapter 18: Notes on the Follies of Science
Chapter 19: In Which I Get the Lay of the Land
Chapter 20: Notes on Foolhardy Endeavors
Chapter 21: In Which I Err
Chapter 22: Notes on a Heartbreak
Chapter 23: In Which I Am Saved
Part Two: The Road to Perdition
Chapter 24: Notes on a Card Game
Chapter 25: In Which a Dark Omen Appears
Chapter 26: Notes on an Arrival
Chapter 27: In Which I Consider Domestic Bliss
Chapter 28: Notes on a Curious Wagon Train
Chapter 29: In Which I Am Once Again Fortune’s Fool
Chapter 30: Notes on an Overland Journey
Chapter 31: In Which I Am Flummoxed
Chapter 32: Notes on the Impossible
Chapter 33: In Which I Find that Reunions Ain’t Always So Happy
Chapter 34: Notes on a Bounty Hunter
Chapter 35: In Which I Respond to an Inquiry
Chapter 36: Notes on a Troubling Sign
Chapter 37: In Which Our Plans Change
Chapter 38: Notes on an Expedition
Chapter 39: In Which I Have Regrets and Count My Blessings
Chapter 40: Notes on a Disaster
Chapter 41: In Which I Contemplate My Future
Chapter 42: Notes on the California Trail
Chapter 43: In Which I Realize Life Is Ludicrous
Chapter 44: Notes on a Terrible Idea
Chapter 45: In Which I Fail
Chapter 46: Notes on Scientific Discovery
Chapter 47: In Which My Fight Ends
Chapter 48: Notes on a Happily Ever After
Chapter 49: In Which the End Is Near
Author’s Note
About the Author
Books by Justina Ireland
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Copyright
About the Publisher
A Prologue
In Which I Arrive at Miss Preston’s
The first thing you should know about me, the truest most important thing, is that I ain’t never really had friends. Not back at Rose Hill Plantation, where the kids regarded me as some kind of outsider, the daughter of the plantation mistress and uppity besides; and definitely not at Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls. Sure, Big Sue had some affection for me, and the other girls tolerated me well enough, but there was never a point I had a person that I could confide the deepest yearnings of my soul to in the manner of close acquaintances.
It was my own fool fault.
After the Negro and Native Reeducation Act enforcement officers took me from Rose Hill, the only home I’d ever known, they loaded me on a train and sent me east. It wasn’t because there weren’t any combat schools in Kentucky—there were—it was because there was a greater demand for trained Negro girls in the Eastern cities than there was anywhere else. I didn’t know it at the time, but the whole Attendant business had become big money for folks, churning out girls they could sell to the highest bidder, those fees taken by the schools as reimbursement for the training they provided us. And if the rates they charged us colored girls for our government-mandated training was higher than what families paid for tuition at the fancy Eastern colleges, well, who were we to complain? Life as an Attendant had to be better than whatever hole we’d come from.
So the boys were sent to local schools, to one day be hired out for patrols and die defending a wall somewhere, guarding some town that had no right existing in the first place. But girls like me were put on a train and delivered to fine cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore.
The trip is a blur, mostly because I cried my way through it. Adventure is only swell so long as a body is enjoying the trip. After that, it becomes an ordeal. Mine took me through Ohio and Pennsylvania, and finally to Baltimore, which stank of human misery, fish, and death. It’s a stench you get used to, although it would never smell like home.
We were unloaded from the train, hungry and tired, while the fine ladies of the combat schools haggled over us like animals at market. There was pushing, and maybe some hitting, and the next thing I knew I was on a pony—a smaller, overland version of an armored train—bound for Miss Preston’s.
I didn’t cry once I was gathered with the other girls on our way to the school. There were four of us: doe-eyed Jessamin, who would run off our second year, never to be heard from again; Bessie, who died one spring when she accidentally stepped on a shambler buried in a bramble patch; Nelly, a girl who was fond of reminding everyone how she could read, not that it kept her from dying a week into her stint as an Attendant; and me. We sat in the pony, each trapped in our own private hells as we silently considered our futures.
The pony pulled into Miss Preston’s, and for the first time since I’d left home I felt a stirring of possibility. See, Miss Preston’s looked like home to me. Oversized oaks, white split rail fence, deadlier exterior fences, a wide lawn. The school had been built in the manner of a plantation house, and while such a design caused the other girls to suck their teeth and shake their heads, it made me feel something that few places have made me feel: safe.
I do realize that there is a fine bit of irony in the architecture of oppression granting me a measure of peace, but keep in mind I was not always the woman awoken to the dynamics of power I became during my tenure at Miss Preston’s.
As we tumbled out of the pony and into the front yard of Miss Preston’s, the headmistress and school’s namesake descended the front steps to greet us. She was a large woman, and an excess of ruffles accentuated her size. She gave me the impression of a very fancy cake, all layers and joy, and the memory now makes me cringe. Had she been calculating our value to her own plans for ascension, like a villain in a Shakespearean tragedy, even as she greeted us with warmth and affection? I’d like to think not, but I know people too well to believe any differently. Folks are, at their heart, selfish, and anything they tell you is more often than not designed to meet their own goals.
I know, because I ain’t any different.
“Welcome, girls, to Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls,” she proclaimed. “Here you will leave behind your old lives and find yourselves transformed into women of the world. It will be you who attend to and protect the finest and most elite women in this country. You will lead lives of bravery and service, and your future is now full of limitless potential.”
Silence was our only response. Because every sin
gle one of us would have done anything in that moment just to get back home.
“The upper-class girls behind me will escort you to your rooms. You’ll each start with form-one lessons. As you get settled in, the girls will explain to you the household rules. Welcome once again to Miss Preston’s, and I hope you take advantage of the miraculous opportunities afforded to you here at the school.”
With that, we were whisked away to our rooms.
The thing that stuck with me from Miss Preston’s little speech was the idea that we were embarking on a new life. But the problem about starting a new life is you bring your old self with you. Even though I was told that this was a great opportunity and I had a responsibility to grasp it and work toward greatness, I was still the same Jane McKeene that couldn’t help but run off at every opportunity to get into trouble. Back at Rose Hill, rules had been breakable as eggshells, and just as easily disposed of. My impetuousness had, more often than not, been rewarded with indulgence, not punishment, and I suppose part of me had expected somewhat of the same at Miss Preston’s. But that wasn’t to be, and I learned right quick where I stood with the instructors at the school.
Two days after I arrived, I got my first lashing.
That initial night at Miss Preston’s, I had lain in the dark and listened to the crying and sleep sounds of twenty or so other girls. I would have been the oldest girl in my class, if it hadn’t been for a pretty blond-haired girl named Katherine Deveraux. I couldn’t say why I hated Katherine so much on first sight. Maybe it was her bossiness. Maybe it was the way all the other girls gravitated to her, as though her friendship and approval could change their lives. Or maybe it was because she smiled all the time, always smoothing things over when a mistake was made—but there to witness the mistake, every time, without fail.
And so when I committed the crime of taking an extra piece of corn bread at dinner without permission and Miss Anderson dragged me into the yard before the whole school for my first-ever whipping, Katherine was right up front, hands folded in her skirts, looking like an angel sent down to witness my punishment.
I’ll spare you the details of the ordeal. There were ten lashes, and it was more pain than I’d ever endured in my life. After it was done, Miss Anderson made some grand pronouncement, as despots are prone to do, and I knelt there in the dirt without a single regret, because that corn bread was delicious.
But when Miss Anderson left, it was Katherine who came over to me, who helped me to my feet.
“Jane,” she said, her voice high and clear, loud enough for all the girls to hear, “it will be okay. There is no need to cry. This is a trial of your own making, one many of us will surely endure, sooner or later. We are, so often, our own worst enemies.” She smiled that smile of hers. “But the rest of us, we are here for you.”
See, this is the kind of nonsense Katherine would spout, like she just couldn’t help herself. A barb wrapped in cotton, some sort of admonishment tucked into platitudes.
And I was not one to stand for it.
I looked at Katherine, my tears drying cold on my cheeks. “A trial of my own making.”
She blinked, as if surprised at how her own words sounded coming out of someone else’s mouth. “Well, yes. We all wanted an extra piece of corn bread, but only you were fool enough to go into the kitchens and snatch one.”
“There was plenty of corn bread. Why shouldn’t we all have an extra piece?” I crossed my arms even though it made my back scream in pain. A few of the other girls murmured in agreement, and I could feel the questions sprouting beneath them, taking root in that moment. Why did we have to be sent halfway across the country to care for some fancy white ladies that wouldn’t even let us have an extra piece of corn bread? Where was the justice in that?
But Katherine didn’t understand the change in landscape, and she muddled along on her high horse just as best as she could. “Because there are rules. You cannot just go around breaking them. And if you do, there must be consequences. Otherwise everyone would just do as they like.”
“That don’t sound half bad to me,” a girl said, and there were more murmurs of agreement.
Katherine huffed a little in frustration. “You all are missing the point. I was trying to tell Jane we understand how she feels, that we are here for her after her punishment.”
Maybe it was the way Katherine said punishment, like it was something I deserved. Or maybe it was the way she kept saying that she understood how I felt, even though I was sure that fair skin had never borne the brunt of the lash. Either way, something in me gave way, and my black temper rose up, blotting out all reason.
I drew my hand back and slapped Katherine with all the force I could muster in that broken moment.
It was a good slap. The sound carried throughout the yard, silencing conversations and eliciting a few gasps. Katherine’s eyes widened, impossibly large, and tears filled them, though none fell. A thin tendril of horror uncurled in my middle, and in the back of my mind Aunt Aggie chided me for being too quick to resort to violence to express my feelings, but mostly it felt good to take all the ugliness of the past week and direct it at one person, to give it to them, a gift of pain.
“Maybe,” I said, my voice low, and a few girls took a step back lest the slap become a real dustup, “maybe now you understand a little bit of how I feel.”
Katherine blinked, and her tears finally fell. I was ready for her to hit me back, and I’d have a chance to work out the rest of my homesickness and heartache in a bit of fisticuffs. But instead, she turned on her heel and fled, back toward the main building of Miss Preston’s.
And that is the story of how Katherine and I became sworn enemies.
Sometimes, when sharp-edged personalities like ours rub against each other, it generates nothing but sparks and heat. But after a while, well, they can wear each other down until the pieces fit together. If it hadn’t been for what happened at Summerland, Katherine and I facing the worst ordeal of our lives and each of us only surviving for the companionship of the other, I suspect we would still be adversaries. We’re too different to be anything else.
Which begs the question: What comes next?
Part One
In the Garden of Good and Evil
In a wide sea of wax; no levelled malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold,
But darts, an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.
—Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
—JANE—
Chapter 1
In Which Our Sequel Begins
It’s a curious thing, to watch a town fall to the dead.
Usually, you only discover a place that’s been overrun after the fact: hollowed-out buildings full of shamblers, broken windows marked with the blood of fleeing occupants, scattered ephemera, cups and combs and bottles, the small things that people drop in the midst of headlong flight. It’s an eerie sight, the aftermath of a shambler attack, but it’s an echo of the horrors, not the actual carnage.
Seeing it in action? Well, that’s something I’d hoped never to bear witness to.
And yet I’m actually enjoying watching an ocean of undead overwhelm Summerland.
The dead are too far off for me to smell them, but the sound of their moans carries on the hot summer air to where I stand. The buildings of town are matchboxes; the dead are ants swarming all around. I ain’t never seen so many shamblers in one place, and I can’t help but wonder if this is what it looked like when the dead first rose in the midst of the Battle of Gettysburg, back in 1863.
“Jane.”
I turn. Katherine stands nearby, her arms crossed. Even in the midst of running for our lives, she is beautiful. Her golden skin is flushed, and a few tawny curls have escaped her updo to blow in the wind, her eyes as blue as the hot summer sky. The bonnet she wears should look homely, a fashion relic, but on her it’s lovely, if a bit blood-spattered. You might not know Katherine was a Negro from looking at her—she’s that l
ight—but there is a dusky hue to her skin that belies the truth.
“Do you think Gideon made it out?” I ask. Gideon Carr, a boy about whom I have entirely too many opinions, was nowhere to be found as we escaped. And even though the boy ain’t my problem . . . with his muddy hazel eyes, pale skin, and tousled curls, I kind of want him to be. Which is hard to contend with, since nothing of consequence can come from any such feelings.
“Gideon is resourceful,” Katherine says, an answer that ain’t an answer, “like Ida, your acquaintance from the Summerland patrol. I am certain she was able to see to matters and cleared out before the dead could complicate escape. But we have dawdled long enough. The wagon with the others is going to be out of sight soon, and we should get moving. The restless dead are not going to stay within the town forever.”
Katherine is a bit of a nag, and usually all of her bossiness puts me into a provocative mood. But today I am feeling quite fine, since we have survived a near slaughter, rid the world of some particularly unsavory characters, and found our freedom all in the same fell swoop.
We stopped here because I wanted to take one last look at Summerland, the hellhole where I nearly lost myself. The town had been a Survivalist utopia founded by an unholy minister and lorded over by his sheriff son—a town where Negroes had been put in their place, which was in brutal service to the well-to-do white folks that had come to make it their home. It had been hell, but I’d survived. All that effort, however, had been driven by a single thought: that I had a place to go when all was said and done. Rose Hill Plantation, my childhood home.
Now, from the letter I grip in my hand, the last one my mother had tried to send to me, I know that to be false. I’ve got nothing now but a dream of a faraway place—California—and the hope of finding my beloved Momma and, more importantly, Aunt Aggie. I ain’t seen either of them since Rose Hill Plantation, and my letter-writing campaign was thwarted by Miss Anderson, one of the most vile people ever born and an instructor at Katherine’s and my alma mater, Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls.