The Ask and the Answer

"Tomorrow, Todd," I say loudly, trying to get through his Noise. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Viola! he calls again but the Mayor is already leading him away.

"You promised!" I call after them. "Remember that you promised!"

The Mayor gives me a smile. "Remember you promised, too."

Did I? I think.

And then I'm watching them go, so fast it's like it didn't even happen. But Todd-Todd is alive.

I have to bend down close to the ground for a minute and just let it be true.

***

"And with burdened hearts, we commit you to the earth."

"Here." Mistress Coyle takes my hand after the priestess finishes speaking and puts some loose dirt into it. "We sprinkle it over the coffin."

I stare at the dirt in my hand. "Why?"

"So that she's been buried by the efforts of all of us." She directs me to a place with her in the line of healers gathering by the graveside. We pass by the hole one by one, each of us throwing our handful of dry soil onto the wooden box where Maddy now rests. Everyone stands as far away from me as they can.

No one but Mistress Coyle will even speak to me. They blame me. I blame me, too.

There are more than fifty women here, healers, apprentices, patients. Soldiers are spread out in a circle around us, more than you'd think necessary for a funeral. Men, including Maddy's father, are kept separate on the other side of the grave. Maddy's father's weeping Noise is the saddest thing I think I've ever heard.

And in the middle of everything, I can only feel even more guilty because what I'm mostly thinking about is Todd.

Now that I'm away from it, I can see the confusion in his Noise more clearly, see how it must have looked to find me in the arms of the Mayor, how friendly we must have seemed together.

Even though I can explain it all, I still feel ashamed. And then he was gone.

I throw my dirt on Maddy's coffin, then Mistress Coyle takes me by the arm. "We need to talk."

***

"He wants to work with me?" Mistress Coyle says, over a cup of tea in my small bedroom.

"He says he admires you."

Her eyebrows raise. "Does he now?"

"I know," I say. "I know how it sounds, but maybe if you heard him-"

"Oh, I think I've heard enough from our President to last me a good while."

I lean back on my bed. "But he could have, I don't know, forced me to tell him about the ships. And he's not forcing me to do anything." I look away. "He's even letting me see my friend tomorrow."

"Your Todd?"

I nod. Her expression is solid as stone.

"And I suppose that makes you grateful to him, does it?"

"No," I say, rubbing my face with my hands. "I saw what his army did as they marched. I saw it with my own two eyes."

There's a long silence.

"But?" Mistress Coyle finally says.

I don't look at her. "But he's hanging the man who shot Maddy. He's executing him tomorrow."

She makes a dismissive sound with her lips. "What's one more killing to a man like him? What's one more life to take? Typical that he should think that solves the problem."

"He seemed genuinely sorry."

She looks at me sideways. "I'm sure he did. I'm sure that's exactly how he seemed." She lowers her voice. "He's the President of Lies, my girl. He will lie so well you'll believe it's the truth. The Devil tells the best stories. Didn't your mama teach you that?"

"He doesn't think he's the Devil," I say. "He thinks he's just a soldier who won a war."

She looks at me carefully. "Appeasement," she says. "That's what it's called. Appeasement. It's a slippery slope."

"What does it mean?"

"It means you want to work with the enemy. It means you'd rather join him than beat him, and it's a surefire way to stay beaten."

"I don't want that!" I yell. "I just want this all to stop! I want this to be a home for all the people on their way, the home that we were all looking forward to. I want there to be peace and happiness." My voice starts to thicken. "I don't want anyone else to die."

She sets down her teacup, puts her hands on her knees and looks hard at me. "Are you sure that's what you want?" she says. "Or is it your boy you'll do anything for?"

And I wonder for a minute if she can read my mind.

(because, yes, I want to see Todd-)

(I want to explain to him-)

"Clearly your loyalty doesn't lie with us," Mistress Coyle says. "After your little stunt with Maddy, there are those of us who aren't so sure you're not more of a danger than an asset."

Asset, I think.

She sighs, long and hard. "For the record," she says, "I don't blame you for Maddy's death. She was old enough to make her own decisions and if she chose to help you, well, then." She runs her fingers across her forehead. "I see so much of myself in you, Viola. Even when I'd rather not." She stands to leave. "So please know, I don't blame you. Whatever happens."

"What do you mean, whatever happens?"

But she doesn't say anything more.

That night, they have something called a wake, where everyone at the house of healing drinks lots of weak beer and sings songs that Maddy liked and tells stories about her. There are tears, including my own, and they're not happy tears but they're not as sad as they could be.

And I'm going to see Todd again tomorrow.

And that's as close as I can feel to all right about anything just now.

I wander around the house of healing, around the other healers and apprentices and patients talking to one another. None of them will talk to me. I see Cori

It must be the beer working in me, but she looks so upset I go over and sit down next to her.

"I'm sorry-" I start to say but she stands up before I can even finish and walks away, leaving me there.

Mistress Coyle comes over, two glasses of beer in her hands. She hands one to me. We both watch Cori

"She hasn't. She's just had a hard time of it, that's all."

"How hard?"

"It's her place to tell you, not mine. Drink up."

I take a drink. It's sweet and wheaty - tasting, the bubbles sharp against the roof of my mouth but not in a bad way. We sit and drink for a minute or two.

"Have you ever seen an ocean, Viola?" Mistress Coyle asks.

I cough away a little of the beer. "An ocean?"

"There's oceans on New World," she says, "big as anything."

"I was born on the settler ship," I say, "but I saw them from orbit as we flew in on the scout."

"Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains." She shakes her head in a happy way. "If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean."

"I've only ever been to a river."