“Be quick about it.” He chides me when I take too long admiring the etching on my mum’s old knife. I have a few other pieces of her: a pair of pearl earrings; a tiny glass perfume bottle, scent faint, but lingering. Even with those mementos, I’m hesitant to let the knife go.
“Will we ever see these again?” I ask.
“No. But their value will count towards any fees you rack up at the hospital,” says Sid, passing us some cloth masks to fit over our mouths and noses.
When I finally drop that last knife, Bandana Man gathers them up. My lungs tighten and I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the flimsy mask I’m wearing. We’re helpless now. True, these men don’t want us dead. And Sid Charles has been remarkably forgiving, considering his hand is still bleeding. But plenty of colonies play the long game. They gain your trust, then they strike.
I haven’t gone unarmed for a single day since we left Astolia. The only reason my family got out of that compound was because once we were beyond the gates, itwas easy to run. That’s not an option on an island.
But April’s eyes are fixed on Salt Spring’s looming form. It’s our last hope. So, I follow her up the ladder that leads onto the sailboat deck, Sid and his men trailing behind me.
“James, get your ass up here.” Sid calls. At that, I turn to see one of the guys lingering on the shore.
“Right. Just making sure no one’s coming,” he says, but there’s a hint of sadness in his voice, as if he wanted to stay outside of Salt Spring’s fences a little longer. Or maybe I’m just projecting. There is a definite chance I’m projecting.
The final guy climbs aboard, and the three of them take up posts at the front of the ship, guns trained on the shore. The captain calls out and someone casts off. As the ship pulls away from the broken-down dock, the world wobbles beneath us. I grab onto a bench, trying to feel secure, but it’s no use. Everything is shifting, carried by the sea.
As the nose of the boat swings away from Vancouver Island and towards Salt Spring, I shift on my bench, not wanting to lose sight of my old island. The shore retreats slowly, never far enough to vanish beyond the horizon. Home—such as it is—will always be across the water. Tantalizingly out of reach.
Then there are footsteps, and my view is obscured by the guards walking around to keep their guns aimed at the Crofton beach. Sid Charles looms ahead of me, casting his shadow over the past I’m leaving behind.
ONCE WE’RE UNDERWAY, a man comes up from below deck and introduces himself as the doctor. I’m slightly annoyed when he tends to Sid’s hand before checking on April, but that’s a problem of my own making, so I don’t complain out loud. He changes the bandage and applies some ointment to the site that makes Sid wince.
“Keep an eye on it for any sign of infection.”
“You got it.” Sid flexes his hand against the bandage and a lump of guilt forms in my throat. Just now, I realize that I spent our entire conversation on the beach so caught up in saving April, I never apologized for hitting him with my slingshot. I want to call out asorry, but before I work up the nerve, he strides back to his post next to the other guards, pulling out another cigarette as he goes.
“Thought you were trying to quit,” one of them says.
“Shut up, James.”
“Okay, so what’s the story here?” The doctor’s voice pulls me away from watching them.
“It’s my sister, April. She got sick.” I place a hand on her shoulder, giving her permission to take over explaining.Usually, I do most of the talking around strangers, like Mum did when she was alive. But April knows her symptoms better than anyone, so she might as well take the lead.
She talks the doctor through how for the past several weeks, she’s struggled with dizzy spells and fatigue. They go over the weight loss and the dehydration. The doctor points out this could all be explained by malnutrition, which is when I speak up again.
“We wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t different. Something iswrong. Something new,” I insist. “Maybe we haven’t been eating the best, but we’re always good about water. Why’s she so thirsty all the time if something isn’t wrong?”
“Perhaps you caught a stomach bug? Untreated water can—”
“We boileverything.”
It’s like he assumes I don’t know how to take care of her, but my Mum loved science. We have a decent grasp on what’s safe and what isn’t, which is why we’re still alive. He still goes through a host of other questions, asking about any other symptoms she might have—a raised temperature, congestion, headaches, vomiting, the list goes on. Some of them she has, like the headaches, others she doesn’t. (We are thankfully vomit free.)
“You can take your mask off,” he says finally. “I want to check your ears, nose and throat.”
With that, he pulls out a small case of instruments that look reassuringly like the ones in old picture books. It’s almost fun, watching him use this old tech to examine April, right up until he checks her throat and goes, “Oh.”
“What is it?” I ask. Poor April can only make a concerned wheezing sound, since she still has the stick thing pushing her tongue down.
“She’s got the beginnings of oral thrush,” he says, indicating a white patch towards the back of her tongue. “How old did you say you were?”
“Fifteen,” she says, once the stick is out the way.
“Hmm.” The doctor pulls out his own walkie-talkie and clicks it on. “I’ve got two young females, both malnourished. Ages twenty-five and fifteen. Have a wagon ready when we arrive and notify the hospital. The kid needs immediate intervention. Immigration should meet us there.”
“Roger that,” someone calls back through the speaker. They must have the ability to reach all the way to Salt Spring’s shore, which is frighteningly powerful.
