“What are you doing here?” Calla asks. “You were supposed to go get Colette and the baby.”
Bee draws her arms away from Calla and wipes the hair back from her face, stained red with blood, and stands up straight. “I know,” she answers, blinking, blinking. “He lied,” she chokes out. “He lied about everything.”
“Who?”
“Levi.” She looks down the hallway, to the stairs. Looks down the hallway—as if she can actually see the hall and the stairwell. Her pupils narrow and contract, skipping from Calla’s face to mine. “I don’t think there is a disease,” she says. “There never was. We could always leave Pastoral.”
Calla moves closer to Bee. “But Ash and Turk were sick, their blood was black.”
Bee shakes her head. “He made us see what he wanted us to see. He’s been lying all this time, hypnotizing us. The pox, the border trees, none of it’s real.”
Calla flashes me a look, and I know she’s thinking the same as I am: Was it Levi who made us forget who we used to be? Erased our old lives and replaced them with something else. Lies woven into more lies.
“We have to go,” Calla says, grabbing Bee by the arm and tugging her toward the stairs. “We have to get out of Pastoral.”
We scramble down the stairs and flee out through the back door, into the dark—three figures moving among the tall, shadowed pines. Three figures who are starting to remember who we really are. And one who might be able to see when yesterday she could not.
CALLA
We have the key to the truck.
Theo is ahead of me, his dark shirt swaying in and out of focus in the dull moonlight, while Bee moves beside me. We make our way around the back of the community, along the garden fence where the pale-yellow stalks of corn are now taller than our heads—reaching toward the scattered night sky. We won’t be here for the harvest; we won’t peel back the husks and taste the sweetness of corn when the kernels pop on our tongues.
My heart burns at the thought of it, the lost moments we will never have, but we keep going.
My throat burns too—strangely—the night air cutting like glass in my lungs, the taste of smoke on my tongue. Of ash.
Something is burning.
The fire comes into view like a bloodshot sunrise just breaking through the trees, all crimson and violent.
The birthing hut is on fire.
“Holy shit!” Bee screeches, her voice a metallic, half hiss. Her legs kick into a run, and she moves with an odd sureness, as if she can see the uneven ground ahead of her.
At the door into the birthing hut, she stops, a hand reaching forward, but Theo is there and yanks her back before she can touch the handle.
“They’re inside,” she breathes, flashing a panicked look up at Theo. “They were waiting for me to come back.”
The wail of a baby rises above the growl of the fire—a terrifying sound. And above us, sparks wheel up through the trees, embers disappearing into the dark. A loud crack shudders through the air, and I jerk my gaze back to the hut.
Theo rams his shoulder into the door, but it doesn’t open. He breathes, chest expanding, then throws his body against the door once more, and this time it breaks free and he tumbles inside.
The wind changes direction, turning the air thick and ashy, and I think: This fire didn’t happen by accident. Someone set it ablaze. Someone who wanted a problem to go away.
Theo disappears into the birthing hut, and I stop breathing, stop blinking.
The baby has gone quiet.
Gray smoke spills out through the doorway; embers sail among the treetops, greedy for more tinder, anything that will satisfy its hunger, while Bee fidgets a few paces back from the door, hands twitching at her sides.
Too much time passes. Too many minutes.
I look behind me, and think of running back through the trees to Pastoral, yelling for someone to help. Wake the others. My bandaged arm throbs, my panicked heart pumping blood too quickly through my body.
But just as I start to turn toward Pastoral, Faye appears in the doorway, the gray of her hair the same color of her skin, coated in smoke and ash. She coughs then buckles over, dropping to her knees in the grass. Bee is at her side, touching her, telling her to breathe. Colette appears next, but her eyes are wide and watery, like she doesn’t know where she is, or how she got here. Like she’s lost track of the days.
She stumbles, then spins around, looking back at the door just as Theo emerges from the wall of smoke. He’s holding the baby to his chest, and Colette nearly falls trying to get to him, reaching out for the tiny infant wrapped in a blanket. Theo relinquishes the bundle into Colette’s arms, and the baby makes a small sound, a whimper—she’s still alive.