Scarecrow

Hana’s mother came on a Sunday.

Halloway arranged it. Families didn’t come down to the cave, ever, except on families’ day. But Halloway wrote something on a form and signed it and sent it upstairs, and on Sunday afternoon a small woman in a brown coat came down in the lift with a soldier on either side of her, holding a covered dish against her chest like it was the most precious thing in the world.

I saw her in the infirmary corridor. On my way to the nine o’clock lesson, early. She was sitting on the bench outside the door, very straight, with the dish on her knees. She had Hana’s face. The same heart shape. Older, and tired, with lines round the eyes from squinting at things that were too far away.

She looked up when I came down the corridor.

She saw my eyes.

Her heart did the skip. Of course it did.

And then she stood up. And held out the dish. With both hands.

”You are the Dask boy,” she said. Her voice was very soft. Very careful. The way you’d talk in a church. ”Hana wrote. A letter. Dr. Halloway helped her. It took her two days.” She held out the dish a little further. ”It is lamb. I made it this morning. It is for you.”

I didn’t know what to do.

”It’s for Hana,” I said. ”You should—”

”There is another one for Hana.” Mrs. Osei didn’t lower the dish. ”This one is for you. And for the doctor. And for the girl with the lightning.” She looked at me very steadily. ”Please. I have nothing else to give. I would like to give this.”

I took the dish.

It was still warm.

Risa was in the infirmary when Mrs. Osei went in.

She’d been there every evening since the chamber. Reading to Hana from the book with the horses. She got up when the door opened and went to stand by the wall, out of the way, the way she did in Okafor’s office when Sigmund was being shouted at.

I was in the corridor, outside, holding the dish. The door didn’t shut properly. It never did. I heard all of it.

I heard Mrs. Osei say Hana’s name. Very softly. Twice.

I heard the bed creak as Hana sat up.

And I heard Hana try to say it.

”Ma,” said Hana. And stopped.

A long silence.

”Ma—”

I could see it. I didn’t mean to look. But the door was open a crack, and it was a page, and I looked. The patch on the left side of her brain, the stunned place. The threads, reaching. One of them reaching for the word. Reaching, and reaching.

And not finding it.

”Ma,” said Hana. ”Ma. Ma—” Her voice cracked. ”Water.” She stopped. ”No. Not. Not water. Ma—”

She couldn’t find it.

The most important word she’d ever had. The first one. The one she’d said before any other word in her whole life. And it wasn’t there.

I heard her start to cry.

Not loudly. Hana didn’t do anything loudly. A small, broken sound, like something being torn very slowly.

And then I heard her mother. Very quietly. Saying something in a language I didn’t know. Over and over. Soft. The way you’d sing to a baby. And the bed creaking, as she sat down on it.

I stood in the corridor holding the warm dish of lamb.

And then the door opened all the way, and Risa came out.

She walked straight past me. She didn’t look at me. Her face was white and perfectly still, the Friese still, and her hands were in fists at her sides.

And between her knuckles, very faint, blue, it was sparking.

I didn’t follow her straight away.

I took the dish in to Halloway. She was at her desk. She looked at the dish, and at my face, and didn’t say anything. She took the cloth off the top. And the smell came up, lamb and something sweet and something smoky, and filled the whole infirmary, and Halloway closed her eyes for a second.

”Go on,” she said. ”I’ll keep yours warm.”

”The lesson—”

”The lesson,” said Halloway, ”is going down the corridor with her hands sparking. Go.”

It had started to rain.

The night cycle. The long one. You could hear it on the roofs of the buildings in the cave, all of them tin, all of them drumming. Hard and steady and loud. It would go for two hours, Okafor said, so the soil on the fields didn’t dry out overnight.

I found her in the gym.

The old gym, at the end of field two, where she’d taught me at four in the morning, months ago. Watch the spark, not the hand. It was dark. The lamps were off. The rain was drumming on the tin roof so loud you couldn’t hear yourself walk, and water was coming in through the gaps where the roof met the walls, running down in long silver threads into the corners.

She was sitting on the mats. In the middle of the floor. With her knees up and her arms round them and her face down.

And all round her, on the mats, on the floor, crawling across the wet in the corners, there was lightning.

Not big. Not like the range, not like the training hall. Little threads of it. Blue-white. Jumping from her hands to the floor, and from the floor to the wet, and from the wet to the metal frame of the climbing bars, and back again. Crackling. Little bright jumps, all round her, everywhere, like something alive.

She wasn’t doing it on purpose.

I could see that. It was coming out of her the way the tears were. Without asking.

I stopped in the doorway.

The floor between us was wet. All of it. Rain coming in through the roof, running across the boards. And the lightning was in the water. Jumping across it. I could see every spark. Every jump. The air coming apart, the little bright points flying, the way she’d taught me.

If I walked across that floor, it would go through me.

Not enough to kill me. I didn’t think. But enough.

”Risa,” I said.

She didn’t look up.

”Go away,” said Risa Friese. Into her knees. ”Please. Go away. I can’t—” A long crackle of blue went across the mats. ”I can’t stop it. Go away. You’ll get hurt.”

I looked at the water on the floor.

And then I did the only thing I could think of.

I looked at the water between the door and the mats. Just that strip. A path. A yard wide. And I took the water apart. Not into steam. Not into anything that would make noise. I took the salt out of it. All the little bits of dust and rust and mineral that the rain picked up coming down through the cave. The bits that carried the current. Until what was left was the cleanest water in the world. Water so pure it wouldn’t carry anything at all.

And I walked across it.

The lightning jumped at my feet. Reached for me. And couldn’t follow. It stopped at the edge of the clean water, the way the burners in the training hall had stopped at the edge of the gray mist.

I sat down on the mats next to her.

Not touching. A foot away. The way I’d sat on the bench with Sigmund.

A thread of lightning went across the mat between us. Close. I could feel the hair on my arm stand up.

I didn’t move.

”I’m not frightened of you,” I said.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

The rain drummed on the roof. The water ran down the walls in the corners. The lightning went on jumping across the floor, a little less now. A little slower. Like a dog that’s been barking at a door and has started to get tired of it.

”She couldn’t say it,” said Risa. Into her knees.

”I know. I heard.”

”Mama. She couldn’t say Mama.” Her voice was very small. Not the Risa voice. Not the voice that said watch the spark and you’re very calm for a freak and you’re late. A smaller one. Younger. ”Her mother came all the way down. In the lift. With soldiers. With a dish of lamb. And she couldn’t say it. She said water.”

A crackle went across the mat, bright and sharp.

”Seven weeks,” said Risa.

I didn’t say anything.

”Seven weeks I woke up and there was blood on the pillow. Seven weeks. I counted. I always count, I’m a Friese, we count everything.” She lifted her head. Her face was wet. Not from the rain. ”And every morning she said it’s the air. And every morning I said all right. Because she asked me to. Because she looked at me like that, with her chin up, like she’d break if I didn’t believe her. So I believed her.” She laughed. It wasn’t a laugh. ”I’m good at believing people. I believed my father for fifteen years.”

”Risa.”

”I was going to tell. In week three. I got as far as Halloway’s door. And I stood there. And I thought about Father’s letter. You will not involve yourself. And I thought about what Sigmund would say. Regulation eight. Chain of command. And I thought, she asked me not to, and it’s her choice, and who am I.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Sparks went out from her fingers into the wet floor, little and blue. ”And I went back to bed.”

”You went in the end.”

”Seven weeks,” said Risa. ”Seven weeks late. In my nightgown. Crying. Like a child.” She took her hands away from her face. ”If I’d gone in week three, she wouldn’t have been in that chamber. She’d have been on Halloway’s table in week three, with a little ring and a little bleed and nothing pressing on her words. She’d be in Squad Three. She’d be going to Avalon.” Her voice cracked right down the middle. ”She’d be able to say Mama.”

I wanted to say the true thing.

Not the kind thing. I’d learned that from Father. From the balcony with Luna. From the bench with Sigmund. Find the true thing. Not the one that makes it better.

So I thought about it. While the rain drummed. While the lightning crawled. While Risa sat beside me with her face wet and her hands in fists.

”I knew for ten days,” I said.

Risa went still.

”Ten days. I saw it in the corridor. In her helmet. I knew more than you did. I could see it. I measured it every morning. You had a pillow with blood on it. I had the whole thing, all the way down, every vessel.” I looked at the floor. ”And I didn’t go. Not in week three. Not ever. I’d never have gone. I’d have stood in the gallery and watched her die and told myself I was keeping an eye on her.”

The rain hammered on the roof.

”You went,” I said. ”Seven weeks late. In your nightgown. Crying.” I looked at her. ”You went. I never would have. That’s the difference between you and me. It’s not seven weeks. It’s that you went.”

Risa was staring at me.

”And I want to tell you something,” I said. ”Something Hana said. The first night she could talk. She couldn’t say much. She had to put every word down on its own, like a stone. And she said, You. Didn’t. Tell. To me.” I swallowed. ”And I said no. And she was quiet for a long time. And then she said: Risa. Told.”

Risa didn’t move.

”And then she said Good,” I said.

That was when it broke.

Not the lightning. The lightning went out. All at once. Every thread of it, all over the floor, every crackle in the corners, gone. As if somebody had shut a door.

Risa broke.

She put her face down on her knees and cried. Properly. Not the small torn sound from the infirmary. The big one. The one you can’t stop once it starts. The one that comes up from somewhere a long way under everything, from a place you’d forgotten you had. Her shoulders shook. Her whole back shook. She cried the way the twins cried when they were very small and had fallen over and the falling had let out all the other things they’d been holding in all day.

I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t put my arm round her. I didn’t know if she’d want it. I didn’t know how. I just sat there, a foot away, on the mats in the dark, in the gym where she’d taught me to watch the spark and not the hand. And let her cry. And didn’t go anywhere.

The rain drummed.

After a long time, she leaned sideways.

Not much. Just until her shoulder was against mine. Just touching. The way she had outside the infirmary, after the chamber.

And then a little more.

And then her head was on my shoulder, and she was still crying, but quieter now, and slower, and her hands weren’t in fists anymore. They were just lying in her lap. Open. Still.

No sparks at all.

She fell asleep at about half past one.

I didn’t notice exactly when. The crying got slower and slower, and then it was just breathing, and then the breathing went long and even and heavy, the way Toby’s did in the next bed. And her head got heavier on my shoulder. And her hand slid off her knee and lay on the mat between us.

I didn’t move.

The rain stopped at two. The tin roof went quiet all at once, the way it always did, like a held breath. And in the silence you could hear the water dripping in the corners, and Risa breathing, and very far off across the cave, the night pump starting up.

Two o’clock.

I thought about the reading room. The lamp clicking over to blue. Two cups on the table. One hot. One cold.

I didn’t move.

At a quarter to five, the gym door opened.

I knew who it was before I looked. Nobody else came to the old gym at a quarter to five in the morning. Nobody else trained at that hour, on his own, every single day, the way he had since he was nine years old and made a list.

Sigmund stopped in the doorway.

The lamps were still at night blue. There was enough light to see. The wet floor. The water in the corners. The mats in the middle. And on them, me. Sitting very straight, with my back aching and my arm gone dead from the shoulder down. And against my shoulder, with her face turned into my sleeve and her hair over her eyes and her hand lying open on the mat, his sister. Asleep.

He looked at her for a long time.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I waited for him to say something. Anything. Dask.Regulation.What have you done.

He didn’t.

He walked across the floor. Quietly. Across the wet boards, in his training clothes. He stopped in front of us.

And he looked at Risa’s face. Very closely. At the red eyes. At the tear tracks, dried now, on her cheeks. At her hands, lying open and still, with no blue in them at all.

He took his jacket off.

His training jacket. The one with the inside pocket. The one with his father’s letter and the small black notebook in it. He took it off, and folded it once, and bent down, and laid it over her. Over her shoulders and her back and her arms. Very carefully. The way you’d put a blanket on someone who was sleeping in a chair and you didn’t want to wake them.

Then he straightened up.

He looked at me.

Just for a second. In the blue light. With his narrow face perfectly still.

And then he turned round, and walked back across the wet floor, and went out. And the door swung shut behind him.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t say anything at all.

Risa woke at half past five.

All at once. The way Okafor woke. Her eyes opened and she sat up and she was awake, with the jacket sliding off her shoulders into her lap.

She looked at it.

She knew it. Of course she knew it. She’d grown up with it. She picked it up. She turned it over. She felt the inside pocket, the weight of the notebook and the letter, and she went very still.

”He was here,” she said.

”At a quarter to five.”

”What did he say?”

”Nothing.”

Risa looked at the jacket for a long time.

”Nothing,” she said.

”He put it on you. And looked at you. And left.”

Risa folded the jacket. Very carefully. The way he had. And held it against her chest, the way Mrs. Osei had held the dish of lamb.

”He’s never,” she said, and stopped. ”Not since I was little. Not since before the stain came out. He’s never once—” She stopped again.

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

She got up. Stiffly. She looked at the floor. At the strip of clean water I’d made by the door, still there, a different color from the rest. She looked at it for a moment. Then at me.

”You walked across that,” she said. ”Last night. With me throwing lightning everywhere.”

”Yes.”

”You could have just gone away. When I told you to.”

”Yes.”

Risa looked at me for a long time. Her eyes were still red. Her hair was a mess. She had a crease down one side of her face from my sleeve.

”Watch the spark,” she said. Very quietly. ”Not the hand.”

I didn’t understand.

”You did,” said Risa. ”Last night. You didn’t look at my hands. You looked at what was coming out of them.” She held the jacket tighter. ”That’s what I was trying to teach you. All those mornings. I didn’t know that was what I was teaching you until now.”

She went to the door. She stopped there, with her hand on it.

”Thank you, Lucas,” said Risa Friese.

She’d said my name before. A few times. At the fern, mostly, when something was wrong. Never like that.

And she went out.

I went to the reading room at six. I don’t know why. I wasn’t going to read anything. I just wanted to sit down somewhere that wasn’t wet.

The two cups were on our table.

One was empty. Rinsed. Turned upside down on its saucer, the way Luna always left hers.

The other one was full. Coffee. Cold. Gone gray and still, with a thin skin on top. Sitting exactly where she always put it. Beside my elbow. Beside the neuroanatomy book, which was open, and turned round, just a little, so you could read it upside down.

There was a note under the cup. A strip of paper torn off the edge of something. In her handwriting. Small and very straight.

Risa needed you more. That’s where you should have been.

Brainstem again tomorrow. You’ll have forgotten it.

— L.

I sat down.

I drank the coffee. All of it. Cold, and gray, with the skin on top.

It was the best coffee I’ve ever had.

Day 230. Hana couldn’t say ”Mama.” She said ”water.”

Risa. The gym. The rain. The lightning came out of her the way tears do.

I made the floor clean, a yard wide, and walked across.

She cried until she slept. I didn’t move.

Sigmund came at 4:45. He put his jacket on her. He didn’t say anything.

She said ”Thank you, Lucas.”

Luna left the coffee anyway.

Mrs. Osei’s lamb is in Halloway’s oven. I haven’t eaten it yet. I’m going to share it.