Epilogue At the End, a New Beginning
The chickens are loose again,” said Carine.
Zada looked up from her triple cello. After three months at Beluga Settlement, it was still a joy to see her old friend Carine again.
That didn’t mean she loved to be interrupted in the middle of her work: The Beluga residents, overjoyed to have another musician among their number, had tasked Zada with gathering and preserving as many old songs as she could, and this one was nearly good enough to record.
“How loose?” asked Zada, stalling.
Carine snorted. “It seems like whoever fed them this morning forgot to shut the gate. In fact, it seems like two whoevers in particular left the gate wide open because they were too busy making out in the goat pasture at ass o’clock in the morning. Truly mystifying.”
It wasn’t that mystifying. Daphne had looked so wonderful in the gentle early dawn light. Zada stood, cheeks flaming, and leaned her triple cello against the generator.
“Not to fret,” said Carine. “People make mistakes, it’s fine. But Daphne’s in the middle of story time so it’s your job to help me chase down some very silly little dinosaur descendants before they get themselves eaten by coyotes.”
“Right,” said Zada. So far, the hardest lesson to unlearn had been shame. She’d had no idea how entrenched within her it had been until moving to a place where children weren’t taught that they were perpetually teetering on the edge of some horrific unspoken consequence or catastrophic social ruin.
She couldn’t help noticing how often the other townspeople wound up telling her variations of “It’s okay” or “You don’t have to worry about this.
” The very fact of needing to be reassured so often sometimes made her ashamed, to which Daphne would say, “You can’t feel shame about your shame.
You’ll never climb out of that pit. Focus on something else instead.
Let’s charge up the generator and listen to another Hope Springs Nocturnal song. Come on, we’ll dance it out.”
They’d danced a lot in the past three months.
Sometimes Carine joined them, and sometimes she just sat in a chair and unstrapped her wooden leg, waving it in the air like a baton.
Carine had lost her leg from the knee down somewhere between her Extrication and arriving at Beluga.
She’d been Extricated too quickly to meet up with the sisters beforehand, that was all Zada knew about it.
Carine never spoke about what had happened, only about the fierce joy she’d felt when Tobias the carpenter had shyly offered her a custom-made prosthetic.
The music they danced to varied. Sometimes Zada played old hits with the other handful of musicians in the settlement.
Sometimes Zada, Daphne, and Carine sang melodies from their school days.
Sometimes it was grotto rock. Zada would always treasure the songs she and Daphne had heard on that fateful night, but lately, a new track was playing on a loop in Zada’s head, a reworking of a much older tune, with new words that she repeated to herself as needed: “You count for more / than they ever swore / down at the core / for you have worth / more than your work / here on this earth . . .”
“The sisters are coming by after lunch,” Carine announced as they herded the chickens away from the goat pasture.
“More letters?” Zada guessed hopefully.
“And those apricot cakes they love to make,” Carine said.
The latest batch of correspondence had been promising.
Flora’s systems job had her tracking all of the unauthorized changes made to the Core, and she was secretly working on a formal proposal to have it shut down—with the cracks in the system on full display, it became harder every day for those in charge to pretend that dictatorship by algorithm was a good idea.
It was unlikely that the proposal would be adopted, but it was a start, as was the firing of Mozelle Drogace.
Undoing the legacy of the billionaires who had turned New Ionia into the monstrosity that it was would be difficult and slow work.
Buford and Legislator Bassey were reintroducing her bill to allow non-Heartsong couples to marry. He claimed Flora’s husband, Aiden, had somehow been a big help with it, although reading between the lines, it seemed like Buford and Aiden simply had feelings for each other.
Augusta now worked closely with the nuns, who were teaching her how to operate and maintain a printing press. She’d printed quite a few secret pamphlets to help elect a legislator who was running against Chancellor Fallow, and to expose the truth about Counseling.
Aubrey had kept in touch as well. Trading music with them was fascinating, although slipping them new albums still carried a certain degree of risk for everyone in Aubrey’s circle. The underground was, if anything, busier than before.
But there was no word from Zada’s parents, or Carine’s parents, either.
No word, of course, from Daphne’s grandfather.
Sometimes Zada woke up humming one of her father’s old favorite songs.
She still wasn’t used to the way her stomach tightened when she remembered how far away he was, or what it was like to look her mother in the eye as she was fleeing New Ionia.
Buford’s next legislative effort was an attempt to loosen travel restrictions between New Ionia and the world outside, and some part of Zada still hoped this would make a difference.
Nothing would make a difference for Daphne, who was essentially left without a family.
She kept insisting it didn’t bother her, but Zada noticed the longing in Daphne’s eyes whenever she saw a parent from Beluga hug their child.
Luckily, they could stay busy. Between their Beluga jobs—Zada had her music archives to manage, and Daphne worked at a library made up entirely of paper books—and an hour of farm chores each day, they were also taking classes at night, on any subject they could.
Carine herself taught Intro to Practical Biology to whoever was interested, and seeing her in her element helped to soothe the ache of missing their other friends.
Maybe Flora and Augusta and Aubrey could make it out to visit someday.
Carine and Zada were chasing the last of the stragglers back into the chicken coop when Zada spotted a dot on the horizon.
“What’s that?” Zada asked. “It’s not stirring up the ground enough to be a ship.”
“It’s horses, real ones,” said Carine. “The troupe’s back.”
Zada swallowed. “Soldiers?”
Carine shook her head. “An acting troupe. They come around a few times a year. They do mostly plays about the current moment. We have a standing bargain with them.”
“Huh,” said Zada. “Should we wait around and welcome them?”
“I’m due to look at the water recycler again,” said Carine. “But I can say hi.”
Zada and Carine waited in the shade of the coop fence for the travelers.
Zada still wasn’t used to feeling the sun at its normal strength, not warped and magnified as it had been in New Ionia.
Carine had been right that the climate in the biodome had gotten worse, while the climate outside had slowly recovered.
Zada had yet to truly experience a cold snap. She was almost looking forward to it.
As soon as the actors came into view, Zada and Carine started to wave.
There were maybe twenty of them. Their leader was a small, white-haired old woman who rode her horse with incredible ease.
And to her right, walking a tall brown horse was a woman who reminded Zada almost eerily of Daphne.
It wasn’t just the hair or the eyes or the nose, it was the very dimensions of her mischievous smile.
Zada looked at Carine, but Carine didn’t react. Of course, Carine hadn’t spent the last three months reveling in the ability to stare at Daphne Fallow whenever she wanted.
“Welcome to Beluga Town,” Carine was saying. “You’re the Ameliorators, right? You’re welcome to water your animals, and after that we can see about watering yourselves.”
“Most kind of you,” said the old woman. “The usual deal? Three nights of theater for three nights of hospitality?”
“Of course,” said Carine, leading the old woman away.
Zada snuck a look at the dark-haired woman.
She was older than she’d first looked, with plenty of white strands mixed into the black, and pronounced laugh lines at her eyes, and worry lines at her forehead.
She was the right age, but many people who left New Ionia chose different names, so there was no guarantee she would answer to Iphigenia, if that had ever been her.
Zada was still somewhat shaky on the etiquette surrounding a renaming, and she didn’t want to get it wrong.
“Would you like to see the library?” said Zada instead. “The kids are just finishing story time, I’m sure they’d love to meet some real-life actors.”
A flicker passed over the dark-haired woman’s face, and then she brightened and said, “Oh yes. We’d love to meet them, too!”
Zada kept up a cautious flow of conversation on the way to the library.
The actors had most recently come from Canada.
Their journey on this leg had been mostly pleasant, except for an encounter with some bandits near Toronto, but Terry Chen, the troupe’s stage manager, had negotiated the Ameliorators’ escape thanks to the clever use of prop guns.
“And what do you do?” asked the dark-haired woman.
“I play the triple cello,” Zada told her.
The woman clapped her hands together. “Wonderful! Listen, if you ever want a change of scenery, we would kill for another musician.” She hesitated. “Not kill, of course. Maim? No, that feels too severe. We would verbally devastate someone for a triple cellist, how’s that?”
“Pretty good,” said Zada, “but I’m afraid I must decline. I like the people I’m with too much.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” said the woman.
They had reached the library. Zada shielded her eyes from the solar panels and opened the door. Inside, Daphne was addressing the small group of children who lived in Beluga.
“And that’s why you should never be afraid to ask questions,” she said. “Yes, Juan?”
Juan, who was maybe eight, lowered his hand. “What gives you the right to tell us what to do?”
Daphne laughed, and after a second, Juan joined her.
“Well played, kiddo,” said Daphne. “Well played.” She looked up, and her eyes met Zada’s.
“We left the chicken coop open, didn’t we?”
“Wide open,” Zada confirmed. “Listen, Daphne—” It occurred to her then that maybe this was a bad idea. The woman probably wasn’t Daphne’s mom, or maybe she was but Daphne didn’t want to see her again. Why had Zada simply—
Behind Zada, the dark-haired woman made a sound, not quite a word but not quite a gasp. Daphne caught sight of her, and then the two were running at each other, and the woman was sweeping Daphne into her arms, and Daphne was clutching back hard, and they were both crying.
Zada looked away, trying to give them some privacy. Another member of the troupe, who might have been Terry Chen, smiled at her.
“I’ve got a feeling you should both come to the show tonight,” they said.
That evening, as the sky grew dark, Zada and Daphne sat with the rest of the townspeople in the village green, waiting for the play to begin. There was no stage, but the actors had hung a screen from a clothesline strung between two ancient, weathered-looking trees.
“Did I say sorry about the chickens yet?” whispered Daphne.
Zada laughed. “I think you had more pressing matters on your mind this afternoon.”
“Maybe a little,” said Daphne quietly.
Iphigenia strode out behind the makeshift curtain. Her gaze swept the crowd, lingering a moment on Daphne.
“Hello, Beluga Town!” she yelled, and the town cheered.
“Welcome,” she continued. “Tonight, we bring you a play I’ve been working on for—well, my whole life, really.
It’s the story of a girl who tried and failed to play by the rules and, in the process, lost what mattered most to her.
” Iphigenia’s gaze returned to Daphne. “But it’s also the story of how she survived, and how we’ve all survived.
This is The Ballad of Iphigenia Baker. I hope you like it. ”
As the actors scurried to their places, Zada wrapped an arm around Daphne’s waist. It was still a wonderful shock that she was allowed to do this. Every touch between them still felt like a gift, like a secret.
Daphne ducked in and kissed her on the cheek. “I still owe you for the chickens,” said Daphne under her breath.
Zada grinned. “It’s all right.”
“No, let me make it up to you,” Daphne murmured. Zada was glad the sun was almost down. It hid the absolutely ridiculous expression on her face.
“Shhh!” whispered Carine.
A slight breeze ruffled Zada’s hair. It could’ve been her imagination, but even the wind outside New Ionia felt fresher.
Zada tucked her head onto Daphne’s shoulder, and they sat there together in the dark as the lights went up and the story began.