Chapter Eight
THAT NIGHT, MEMORIES of a different colony haunt my dreams.
After Port Alberni fell, we had to find somewhere that would take us.
Mum was pregnant with April, making life in the woods a terrifying prospect.
We hiked for months, until we reached the Cambell River Valley, where a choir of disharmonious bleating greeted us.
Goats. They might as well have been angels to our ears.
Mum insisted on approaching the people herding the goats first, even though she was six months along. “I’m the one they’re least likely to shoot. I’ll go down, surrender to them—”
“They’re least likely to shoot me,” I retorted. Even at age ten, I knew it was true. Mum had explained the birds and the bees to me and why that mattered to the people who’d survived the end of the world. Even if I couldn’t have babies yet, I had a great deal of untapped potential.
“And the promise of meeting you is how I’m going to get them to agree to take all of us, including your father.” What Mum didn’t say out loud was that the opposite was also true. If these people proved hostile, then she wanted me with Dad, the more able-bodied of the pair.
The gambit worked. The Astolians trained their guns on her at first, but no one shoots a pregnant woman on sight.
When they approached Dad and me, they were carrying one of Mum’s pearl earrings as a token to assure us she was safe.
Just one. Before she went down, she’d given us strict orders to run if they brought both.
The man I would later come to know as the Grand Astrologue approached me and pressed the earring into my hand. “Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing?”
I gave a faint smile. There was tension in my father’s shoulders. I couldn’t guess whether he wanted me to thank the man, so that these people would like us better, or if he wanted me to tell this stranger to step away. We both settled for doing nothing.
They didn’t bother with anything so cumbersome as paperwork, but like Salt Spring, there were plenty of rules governing Astolia.
The Grand Astrologue gave us a lecture about every stricture we needed to obey as we followed the shepherds back to the compound.
We would have to attend the nightly heart-gather and listen to his preaching.
I wasn’t allowed to wear men’s trousers anymore.
My pants were pink and clearly had Girls Size 12 printed in the waistband by their pre-Quake creators, but apparently, they weren’t appropriate.
Astolia housed twice the number of people as Port Alberni—around six hundred—but the footprint of the compound was much smaller.
The walls were built from abandoned shipping containers, stacked three high, with a man in a crow’s nest at each corner.
Between those guards and the ones escorting the goats back to the compound, there were more firearms than I had ever seen in my life.
Against all odds, I felt hopeful. How could somewhere with so many guns be unsafe?
The compound was crowded, especially with hundreds of goats stuffed into the central pen. The whole place stank. Even on a starved stomach, the stew they fed us tasted off. But they let me have as much as I wanted and for the first time in months, I ate until I felt full.
After supper, they sent me to meet another girl my age, who was instructed to hand over one of her skirts. She seemed to be holding back tears.
“I’m Beth-Anne.” She wouldn’t look me in the face as she passed the stained, goat-hair skirt to me. “And I guess… well, I guess you can have this one.”
I thought of the few books my mum had saved in her grab bag when we fled Port Alberni, including a copy of Peter Rabbit. I would be heartbroken if someone made me give it to a stranger.
I threw my arms around Beth-Anne. “Thank you. I’ll give it back when I get my own.”
Her arms slowly found their place around my back. “Oh… no. You don’t have to worry about—”
“Do you like Peter Rabbit?”
“Who?”
“It’s a story.” I set my bag down and began digging it out. “I could read it to you.”
Beth-Anne’s eyes widened. Blue and open, like a fresh summer sky. She nodded, and we tucked ourselves into a corner of her family’s hut. She loved the story, but once we were done, she didn’t want to linger on the illustrations. Instead, she shoved the book into my bag.
“We’ll keep it safe,” she said.
“Safe from who?”
“They only like us reading certain things at school. Important things.”
“My mum’s a teacher. She says this book is okay. They read it to little kids.”
“Well… still.” Beth-Anne buried it under a sweater. “To be safe.”
“Sure. I guess.” After losing Port Alberni, I was willing to do anything to be safe. I’ve never felt safer than I did that day, unaware that the wolves were inside the flock.
Maybe I should feel lucky that on Salt Spring, I’m treated like a wild animal. Sometimes, it’s safer to be hated than wanted.
* * *
AS SOON AS I wake up, I pack my things and head out. April and I have been separated for long enough and that damn doctor better let me take her away tonight. The sun isn’t fully up when I leave, but I’ve only walked a few paces when I hear someone yell, “She’s awake!”
Eight heads turn toward me. The guys are scattered across the farm, working together to harvest their fall crop.
“Hold up!” calls the one voice I know well enough to recognize, and I slow my gait.
A horse whinnies as Sid pulls the reins of a mule attached to some kind of reaper.
He hops off and one of the other men takes over, driving the mule through the fields, breaking down a line of grain. My nose twitches at the dust.
Sid hurries to catch up with me before I can escape down the gravel drive. “Did you get anything to eat?”
“I’m fine.” I try to ignore him, pressing forward down the path.
“Wait—why are you carrying all that shit?” He’s noticed both the pack on my back and that I have April’s in my arms. “You know you don’t have to cart that stuff everywhere, right? That’s what the apartment is for. Living in.”
I sigh, turning toward him to explain that once again, I am fine. I would rather not leave all my worldly goods on a strange man’s property without anyone to monitor them. But as he draws closer, my tongue lodges in the back of my throat.
He’s dressed in jeans and a worn white T-shirt, chaff sticking to the spots where his sweat has leeched through the cotton.
There’s a hint of the shape of his nipples pressing against the fabric.
My eyes dart around for something else to focus on.
But there’s so much of him to notice and nothing to obscure my view.
Farmwork has rendered him slick, so his shirt clings to every angle of his body.
His piney cologne hits me in the same wave as the natural musk of hard work.
I’m only used to seeing men this bare in magazines.
April found one that compared the beach bods of every guy who ever played Spider-Man and has religiously carried it around ever since, but those pictures never thrilled me the way they did her.
They had muscles so sculpted, the veins were visible.
To me, they looked dehydrated, their bodies seconds away from digesting those pretty little muscles. I never understood the appeal.
Sid does not have the body of some fictional Spider-Man.
His shoulders are rounded, and while there’s a definite narrowing of his frame from his muscular chest down to his hips, there’s still a healthy layer of flesh puckering over his hip bone.
I try not to notice how low his jeans are riding.
He needs a belt, but maybe that felt too restrictive, working in the sun.
At any rate, he needs something to distract me from the thought that keeps circling inside my head, that if I reached out to touch his stomach, it would feel soft and warm.
“So you’re heading out?” he asks. The only response I can muster is a formless gurgle. His brow pinches. “What was that?”
“Oh! Just saying thanks for… thanks.” I blink myself back to sanity, determined to look at his face. Work and sweat have rumpled his hair so some falls forward into his eyes, but if I focus on his broken nose, I can convince myself that this man is not making my stomach spin.
It’s got to be the sweaty shirt. I’ve been starved for male contact, and now my hormones are latching onto the first flash of masculinity they find.
“Sure,” he shakes his head, clearly not believing I’m sincere.
Guilt and anger prickle through me. “No, I mean it. Thanks.”
“Whatever.” He’s clearly taking the bags as a sign I don’t trust him.
Which, to be fair, I don’t. But it’s not personal.
I don’t trust anyone, so he could stop being pissy about it.
I nearly say so, but he swings his arms, agitated, and my eyes are pulled to the roll of his shoulders instead.
“I need to get back to work. You know where you’re headed? ”
“Yup.”
“And you know how to get there?”
“Yes. The bus… does it cost money?”
“No, it’s a basic service. Comes by every hour.”
“Thank you.” With that, I resolutely put one foot in front of the other, walking away.
The gravel crunches behind me. Relief hits me as the tension severs between us. He let me go. I’m not being held hostage on the farm.
As I ride the wagon into town, the polite silence isn’t nearly so comforting as it was yesterday.
It gives me too much time with my thoughts.
I know what I should be focused on—April, in the hospital, waiting for me.
April, who needs medicine. But no matter how hard I try to stay on task, my mind wanders to eight years ago and a boy with hair that stood up straight on end, a gap between his front teeth.
Curtis.
Curtis, leading me beyond the protection of our camp once my mother was asleep.
Curtis, pressing me against an oak tree, his mouth working across mine.
Curtis, peeling off my blouse as he whispered that he loved me.
And me, whispering the same words back. I can almost feel the pressure of his chest against my ribs, stringy and lean.
I don’t know why I’m thinking of him now, except that I keep returning to the same cold truth. He never got the chance to grow into a man the size of Sid Charles. The boy I loved never looked like that.
My hands shake as I open my bag, digging around for something I usually keep buried, for fear it will stir up dark memories. For a second, I worry I’ve lost it, before my hand closes around the small, weathered surface of a carved cedar heart.
I pull it out and press the token to my lips.