But we are completely cut off—from news of what has happened in Waterbury and what is happening in the rest of the country. It’s far too easy to imagine, as another morning washes like a gentle wave over the old, towering oaks, that we are the only people left in the world.
I can no longer bear to be inside, underground. Each day, after whatever lunch we can scrounge up, I pick a direction and start walking, trying not to think about Alex and about his message to me, and usually finding that I can think of nothing else.
Today, I go east. It’s one of my favorite times of day: that perfect in-between moment when the light has a liquid feel, like a slow pour of syrup. Still, I can’t shake loose the knot of unhappiness in my chest. I can’t shake loose the idea that the rest of our lives might simply look like this: this running, and hiding, and losing the things we love, and burrowing underground, and scavenging for food and water.
There will be no turn in the tide. We will never march back into the cities, triumphant, crying out our victory in the streets. We will simply eke out a living here until there is no living to be eked.
The Story of Solomon. Strange that Alex picked that story, of all the stories in The Book of Shhh, when it was the one that so consumed me after I found out he was alive. Could he have known, somehow? Could he have known that I felt just like that poor, severed baby in the story?
Was he trying to tell me that he felt the same way?
No. He told me that our past together, and what we shared, was dead. He told me he never loved me.
I keep pushing through the woods, barely paying attention to where I’m going. The questions in my head are like a strong tide, dragging me back over and over to the same places.
The Story of Solomon. A king’s judgment. A baby cleaved in two and a stain of blood seeping into the floor . . .
At a certain point, I realize I have no idea how long I’ve been walking, or how far I’ve ended up from the safe house. I haven’t been paying attention to the landscape as I go, either—a rookie’s error. Grandpa, one of the oldest Invalids at the homestead near Rochester, used to tell stories of sprites that supposedly lived in the Wilds, switching the location of trees and rocks and rivers, just to confuse people. None of us actually believed in that stuff, but the message was true enough: The Wilds is a mess, a shifting maze, and will turn you around in circles.
I begin retracing my steps, looking for places my heel has left imprints in the mud, scanning for signs of trampled underbrush. I force all thoughts of Alex out of my head. It’s too easy to get lost in the wilderness; if you are not careful, you will be swallowed up in it forever.
I see a flash of sunlight between the trees: the stream. I drew water just yesterday, and should be able to navigate back from here. But first, a quick wash. By this point, I’m sweating.
I push through the last bit of undergrowth, onto a wide bank of sun-bleached grass and flat stone.
I stop.
Someone else is already here: a woman, crouching, forty feet down from me on the opposite bank, her hands submerged in the water. Her head is down, and all I can see is a tangle of gray hair, streaked with white. For a second I think she might be a regulator, or a soldier, but even from a distance I can tell her clothes are not standard-issue. The backpack next to her is patched and old, her tank top is stained with yellow rings of sweat.
A man hidden from view calls out something unintelligible, and she responds, without looking up, “Just another minute.”
My body goes tight and still. I know that voice.
She draws a bit of fabric out of the water, a piece of clothing she has been washing, and straightens up. As she does, my breath stops. She holds the cloth taut between two hands and winds it rapidly around itself, then unwinds it just as quickly, sending a pinwheel of water arching across the bank.
And I am suddenly five years old again, standing in our laundry room in Portland, listening to the throaty gurgle of soapy water draining slowly from the sink, watching her do the same thing with our shirts, our underwear; watching the stippling of water across the tile walls; watching her turn and clip, clip, our clothing to the lines crisscrossing our ceiling, and then turn again, smiling at me, humming to herself. . . .
Lavender soap. Bleach. T-shirts dripping onto the floor. It is now. I am there.
She is here.
She spots me and freezes. For a second she doesn’t say anything, and I have time to notice how different she is than in my memory of her. She is so much harder now, her face so sharp with angles and lines. But underneath it I detect another face, like an image hovering just underneath the surface of water: the laughing mouth and round, high cheeks, the sparkling eyes.
Finally she says, “Lena.”
I inhale. I open my mouth.
I say, “Mom.”
For an interminable minute we just stand there, staring at each other, as the past and present continue to converge and then separate: my mother now, my mother then.
She starts to say something. Just then two men come crashing out of the woods, mid-conversation. As soon as they spot me, they raise their rifles.
“Wait,” my mother says sharply, raising a hand. “She’s with us.”
I’m not breathing. I exhale as the men lower their guns. My mother continues to stare at me—silent, amazed, and something else. Afraid?
“Who are you?” one of the men says. He has brilliant red hair, streaked with white. He looks like an enormous marmalade cat. “Who are you with?”
“My name is Lena.” Miraculously, my voice doesn’t tremble. My mother flinches. She always used to call me Magdalena, and hated the abbreviation. I wonder whether it still bothers her after all this time. “I came from Waterbury with some others.”
I wait for my mother to give some indication that we know each other—that I’m her daughter—but she doesn’t. She exchanges a look with her two companions. “Are you with Pippa?”
I shake my head. “Pippa stayed,” I say. “She directed us to come here, to the safe house. She told us the resistance would be coming”
The other man, who is brown and wiry, laughs shortly and shoulders his rifle. “You’re looking at it,” he says. “I’m Cap. This is Max”—he jerks his thumb toward the marmalade-cat man—“and this is Bee.” He inclines his head toward my mother.
Bee. My mother’s name is Annabel. This woman’s name is Bee. My mother is always moving. My mother had soft hands that smelled like soap, and a smile like the first bit of sunlight creeping over a trimmed lawn.
I do not know who this woman is.
“Are you heading back to the safe house?” Cap asks.
“Yes,” I manage to say.
“We’ll follow you,” he says with a half bow that, given our surroundings, seems more than a little ironic. I can feel my mother watching me again, but as soon as I look at her, she averts her eyes.
We walk in near silence back to the safe house, although Max and Cap exchange a few scattered words of conversation, mostly coded talk I don’t understand. My mother—Annabel, Bee—is quiet. As we near the safe house, I find myself unconsciously slowing, desperate to extend the walk, willing my mother to say something, to acknowledge me.
But all too soon we have reached the splintered over-structure, and the stairway leading underground. I hang back, allowing Max and Cap to pass down the stairs first. I’m hoping my mother will take the hint too and delay for a moment, but she just follows Cap underground.
“Thanks,” she says softly as she passes me.
Thanks.
I can’t even be angry. I’m too shocked, too dazed by her sudden appearance: this mirage-woman with the face of my mother. My body feels hollow, my hands and feet huge, balloonlike, as though they belong to someone else. I watch the hands feel their way down the wall, watch the feet go clomp-clomp-clomp down the stairs.
For a second I stand at the base of the stairwell, disoriented. In my absence, everyone has returned. Tack and Hunter talk over each other, firing off questions; Julian rises from a chair as soon as he sees me; Raven bustles around the room, organizing, ordering people around.
And in the middle of it, my mother—removing her pack, taking a chair, moving with unconscious grace. Everyone else breaks apart into flutter and flurry, like moths circling a flame, undifferentiated blurs against the light. Even the room looks different now that she’s inside it.
This must be a dream. It has to be. A dream of my mother who is not really my mother, but someone else.
“Hey, Lena.” Julian cups my chin in his hands and leans down to give me a kiss. His eyes are still swollen and ringed with purple. I kiss him back automatically. “You okay?” He pulls away from me, and I purposely avoid his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’ll explain later.” There’s a bubble of air caught in my chest, making it hard to breathe or speak.
He doesn’t know. Nobody knows, except for Raven and maybe Tack. They’ve worked with Bee before.
Now my mother won’t look at me at all. She accepts a cup of water from Raven and begins to drink. And just that—that small motion—makes anger uncoil inside me.
“I shot a deer today,” Julian is saying. “Tack spotted it halfway across the clearing. I didn’t think I had a chance—”
“Good for you,” I cut him off. “You pulled a trigger.”
Julian looks hurt. I’ve been horrible to him for days now. This is the problem: Take away the cure, and the primers, and the codes, and you are left with no rules to follow. Love comes only in flashes.
“It’s food, Lena,” he says quietly. “Didn’t you always tell me that this wasn’t a game? I’m playing for real—for keeps.” He pauses. “To stay.” He emphasizes the last part, and I know that he is thinking of Alex, and then I can’t help but think of him too.
I need to keep moving, find my balance, get away from the stifling room.
“Lena.” Raven is at my side. “Help me get some food on, will you?”
This is Raven’s rule: Stay busy. Go through the motions. Stand up.
Open a can. Pull water.
Do something.
I follow her automatically to the sink.
“Any news from Waterbury?” Tack asks.
For a moment there is silence. My mother is the one to speak.
“Gone,” she says simply.
Raven accidentally slices too hard through a strip of dried meat, and pulls her finger away, gasping, sucking it in her mouth.
“What do you mean, gone?” Tack’s voice is sharp.
“Wiped out.” This time Cap speaks up. “Mowed down.”
“Oh my God.” Hunter thuds heavily into a chair. Julian is standing perfectly rigid, taut, hands clenched; Tack’s face has turned stony. My mother—the woman who was my mother—sits with her hands folded on her lap, motionless, expressionless. Only Raven continues moving, wrapping a kitchen towel around her cut finger, sawing through the dried meat, back and forth, back and forth.
“So what now?” Julian asks, voice tight.
My mother looks up. Something old and deep flexes inside me. Her eyes are still the vivid blue I remember, still unchanged, like a sky to tumble into. Like Julian’s eyes.
