My fingers close around one of Silas’s many blankets. I think I remember my dad once singing the same tune. But I can’t be sure. I’ve never heard it with music before.
THAT NIGHT, MEMORIESof 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 shootme,” 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 meetingyouis 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 wasalso 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 hadGirls Size 12printed 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, Iguessyou 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 ofPeter 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 likePeter 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.Importantthings.”
“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 ASI 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!”
