Lisa

Cathy’s father Frank returned home late, and tired. Cathy was busy frying the mutton chops that Kevin had cut up when he arrived. Cathy introduced all of us to him and he immediately went outside to the freezer to inspect Kevin’s work.

“Not bad, how long did this take?”

“About thirty minutes,” Cathy answered.

“That’s including the slaughtering?”

“Yeah, I was surprised at how quickly he finished everything.”

“Okay then, you’ll start tomorrow; I’ll call Roger and tell him to expect you and Cathy can drive you over in the morning.”

And just like that Kevin had obtained work. We stayed at the house for the evening and had dinner with Cathy and her father. To go with the chops Cathy had made steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes with cream cheese. The food was good, and fortunately for us the conversation between us and Frank didn’t enter the territory of our past.

“Where’d you learn to carve up an animal so fast?” He asked Kevin.

“From hunting,” Kevin responded.

“Oh, you’re a hunter! I used to hunt but I haven’t been in years, what did you used to hunt for mostly?”

“Mostly deer and boar.”

“We’ve got plenty of those up here, especially since the wolf population dwindled to next nothing.”

“You’re saying there are hardly any wolves in the forest?” Hannah asked mystified, as we all were having had the run in with wolves that we’d had in the forest.

“We noticed that their numbers were falling and were baffled by it since you’re not allowed to hunt wolves up here; a team of researchers even came up here and lived in a cabin in the woods while they searched for the cause of the reduction in wolves but they couldn’t find one; by now the wolves are probably all gone.”

The cabin that we’d spent the winter in must have been where those researchers had stayed. In the box where we’d found all of the novels that we’d read there had been notebooks filled with written information, graphs and pictures that we hadn’t paid any attention to. Why had they left behind all of their things? I wondered.

“Lisa, Cathy tells me you have some medical knowledge,” he said to me.

“I do, but it’s very rudimentary, just first aid and some basic knowledge of surgery and homeopathy.”

“There’s a clinic in town that was built to service the refugees; they’re always short staffed, even a little knowledge could go a long way there, I’ll call and get you an interview. That leaves Hannah and Miranda, which one of you is the musician?”

“That would be Miranda, she’s a violinist,” Hannah said.

“A violinist, my wife would like that, she teaches music, she has a studio in town.”

“How bad is her cancer?” Hannah asked.

“We found out a few months ago that she had breast cancer. Luckily we caught it early; her doctor says there’s a good chance she’ll pull through.”

“I can play the piano too, not as well as the violin because that’s my primary instrument but I’m still quite good,” Miranda said.

“Really? Well then we need to make a plan for you to visit her and play for her, it would give her spirits a big lift. Hannah, I haven’t heard anything about you yet.”

“That’s because I’m not as skilled as the others, my education was academic; literature, economics, history, politics, and management mostly, finding a use for me is going to be harder than the others.”

“You four are very impressive, I wish Cathy would be more like you and apply herself to something.”

“Dad, not now,” Cathy said to her father, sounding annoyed.

“Okay, well, that’s it for me; there’s a cottage not far from the house, you four can stay there, Cathy will show you the way and help you get settled in,” he said and left the dining room, his meal finished.

We were relieved to have certainty about where we’d be staying that night, at the same time we were aware of the fragility of the security we’d found. We were fortunate at dinner not to have been asked any questions by Frank about where we’d come from or where we’d learned all of the things that we knew; had he asked those questions we would have had a hard time providing him with satisfactory answers. Hannah’s story about us having lived in a cabin in the woods under the care of her mother until she died was not a good enough explanation for where we’d come from. We needed to come up with a new story, one that would pass muster no matter who we were speaking with.

On the issue of not trusting Cathy I agreed with Hannah; her willingness and eagerness to be of great help to us given our mysterious arrival in her town was unusual, enough to warrant a healthy amount of wariness. We walked across Cathy’s family’s farmland in the direction of the cottage that Frank had offered to us behind Cathy, who walked ahead holding up an electric lantern. We walked in silence, each of us ruminating on our first day in the outside world.

“I know you guys don’t come from the woods,” Cathy said after we’d been walking for about a minute, “I don’t know what your real story is but if you want to keep it a secret you’re going to need to come up with a better back-story for yourselves. I told my father that you were just four more refugees fleeing the war so you need to come up with a story that fits in with that; since you don’t know anything about our country or what’s been going on in it I’ll help you to come up with one but you’re going to have to stick to it and learn as much about what’s been going on as possible so you can be as convincing as possible.”

Telling the story about us coming from the woods that had exposed us to Cathy was Hannah’s failure and it was a big failure; the look on her face after Cathy had told us that she knew we’d lied to her betrayed the crushing disappointment she felt in herself.

The cottage was more than big enough to accommodate the four of us. Like the cabin in the woods it hadn’t been lived in for a while and needed some cleaning up but it was a roof over our heads and for that we were grateful.

“Tomorrow you can get to work giving this place the cleaning that it needs, for now just get your beds ready and tuck yourselves in, tomorrow’s going to be a busy day,” Cathy said to us upon our entry into the cottage.

The cottage had three bedrooms, one had a double bed and the other two had a single bed in them each. The next day we’d move one of the single beds into the other room with a single but that night Miranda and I would sleep separately.

“There’s a valve outside that you’ll need to open to get water, we shut it off when the last people that were staying here moved out.”

“Who was staying here?” I asked.

“The last farm manager my father hired and his family, it’s been about eight months since they left.”

“Can you show me where the valve is, I think its best if I open it now,” Kevin said.

“Okay.”

Kevin followed Cathy outside to get water into our cottage, leaving Hannah, Miranda and I to continue acclimating ourselves to our surroundings. The furnishings in the cottage were certainly comfortable; the kitchen, living room, bedrooms and bathroom were all well stocked with everything we’d need. The longer we could stay in the cottage the easier it would be for us to make the transition to being citizens of this world. That depended on us doing as Cathy said and making ourselves as believable as refugees as we possibly could. After she’d left us to return to the main house the four of us sat around the kitchen table to decide how to accomplish as much. Hannah had the greatest interest in the war out of us; we decided that she would use the knowledge that she acquired from the books that Cathy would help her to procure from the library to educate the rest of us about it. She would have the time, unlike Kevin and I she hadn’t been earmarked for work; Miranda hadn’t been either but it sounded as if Frank had taken a liking to her and had plans for her that were going to keep her busy.

What Hannah and Miranda would end up doing here to contribute to our upkeep was at that point a mystery to us and the cause of a certain amount of concern. Our ability to support ourselves with work was—as Hannah was constantly reminding us—essential to our survival. We couldn’t make ourselves too much of a burden on Cathy and her father, in the space of just one day they had already been more helpful to us than we could have hoped for and they had their own problems that needed their attention; there was Cathy’s mother who was in the hospital and then there was the brief but no less tense exchange between Cathy and her father at the dinner table. He had said that we were all very impressive and that he wished Cathy would apply herself to something. By Prospera’s standards the only one of us that was impressive was Miranda, the musical prodigy; Hannah, Kevin and I were quite average and couldn’t understand what was so impressive about our application of ourselves to our work; were the standards in this world that low?

That night was the first in months that Miranda and I were apart. I struggled to get to sleep, being alone there was nothing I could do to stop my mind racing with thoughts about where we were, what we’d done to get here and where we were going. As much as we had encountered of this world on our first day that had been overwhelming, on our next day here we’d be going with Cathy out into the world to take our first steps toward becoming actual inhabitants of the outside world. The thought of what we were in store for was exciting but for the most part it was terrifying. Aside from Cathy and to a lesser extent her father we knew nothing of the people here, what to expect from them or how to react to them. I didn’t know if the few skills I possessed would be of any use to the people at the clinic where Frank had said he would arrange an interview for me. Maybe Kevin was going to be the only one of us who was working and maybe we were going to be burdens on Cathy and her father for much longer than I hoped we would be and maybe they’d start asking questions about why we were having so much difficulty getting on and the truth about us not being refugees and coming from a strange background would come out and they’d throw us out of their cottage and then what? I was getting worried by the tenuousness of our situation and my worry was quickly growing into panic which was making me far too anxious to get to sleep.

“Lisa?” Miranda’s voice whispered to me from the doorway.

“You can’t sleep either?” I asked her softly, rolling onto my other side to face her.

“I don’t like sleeping alone.”

“Get in here with me,” I said to her, holding open the blanket, “this bed’s small but we should fit in if we squeeze together.”

Miranda climbed into my bed with me and lay on her side with her back to me. I put my around her midriff and held her tightly to me, feeling my anxiety being soothed by her tangibility.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Lisa, are we going to be okay?” She asked me with concern in her voice, a departure from the new Miranda that we had all been getting used to.

“We’re going to be okay, and there’s especially no need for you to worry, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

We said nothing to each other after that and, ensconced in our love for each other, we eventually fell asleep.

At dawn we were up, as we had been trained to be in Prospera. Frank was up similarly early. We saw him through our kitchen window standing on the porch of the main house with a cup of coffee in his hand; there was no sign of Cathy. As our occupation of the cabin was so sudden there were certain essential items that we were missing. We plugged in the fridge and found the kettle in one of the cabinets but there was no coffee, sugar, tea, milk, bread or anything; the fridge and cabinets were all completely bare; we couldn’t start our day with breakfast or with a warm beverage. Needing to start our day with something I volunteered to go up to the main house to ask if we could borrow some of what we needed. Walking across the dew soaked grass field to get to the house, the air thick with fog and the sky still a dark shade of blue from the barely risen sun, the commencement of our new life in this world felt official.

Frank gave me a warm ‘good morning’ when he saw me, informed me that it would be a while before Cathy would be up and invited all of us to come up to the main house to have breakfast and coffee with him. I was apprehensive about accepting his offer; without Cathy there to help us avoid getting found out as not being refugees the wrong answer from any one of us to a question could mean the end for us here. There was no opportunity for me to decline his invitation; he insisted that we join him and wouldn’t entertain the idea of us having breakfast by ourselves in the cottage. Unable to refuse his offer I left the main house and returned to the cottage to discuss it with the others. They shared my concerns about us giving ourselves away but they didn’t want to do anything to upset Frank given that he’d very generously put a roof over our heads. We ended up deciding to go up to the main house for breakfast with no plan for how to deal with questions about our past; we just hoped he wouldn’t ask us any. Hannah and I offered to make eggs, Miranda said she’d set the table, and Kevin, well, he was busy with Frank.

“Have you not spent any time working in a butcher shop?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Ever used a bone saw?”

“No, I’ve only ever used blades.”

“That’s okay; Roger will teach you how to use all the machinery, since you understand animal anatomy you should be able to pick it all up in a day or so; it’s not absolutely important that you know how to use all the machinery right now so you should be okay in the beginning.”

Frank seemed to be really enthusiastic about us being there, especially Kevin, who he’d really taken to because of his knowledge of meat and hunting which Kevin had only just recently acquired in the forest. While sitting at the table and eating the eggs and toast that Hannah and I had made using our recently acquired knowledge of kitchen appliances, Frank continued to talk with us about the challenges that he was facing, from running his farm to his wife’s illness.

“Cathy told us that you haven’t had anybody managing the farm for eight months,” Hannah said to him, looking to keep the conversation away from being about us.

“That’s right; I let him go because without me being there to supervise him as much as I needed to he ended up treating the workers with disrespect, that’s not something I want on my farm so I sent him away.”

“How’s the farm been doing since?”

“To be honest, not that great; we’re not producing nearly as much as we used to and I just don’t have the time to get it back to what it used to be.”

“What’s taking all your time?” I asked him.

“The Chamber of Commerce; ever since the refugees started coming business owners up here have seen it as an opportunity for more customers, more labour and more business. At the Chamber of Commerce we’re working to ascertain people’s skills, pair them with businesses, get the one’s with no skills into training programmes, work with the resettlement committee to get them into housing, get the farms to donate food for them to eat; there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to help them and at the Chamber of Commerce we’re in a unique position to facilitate that help.”

“We could help you with the farm,” Miranda said, to our collective alarm. She was opening the door to questions about our past, the very subject we were trying to keep Frank away from.

“You know about farming too?”

“Yeah, when we were growing up we helped to plant, tend and harvest crops and fruit, before the winter we’d harvest all of the crops and refine them into grain and we’d pick all the fruit and pickle it in honey, we’d move all the livestock indoors and keep them warm and feed them on grain instead of grazing them, we’ve even helped them to give birth and treated them when they’ve gotten sick; we could do a lot to help you with this farm.”

At that moment, thankfully, Cathy walked in. She was groggy and dishevelled and headed straight for the kettle to make coffee.

“I know I asked you to take Kevin to the butchery today but if it’s too much for you I can take him,” Frank said sarcastically.

“I’ll take him, it’s no problem.”

The atmosphere in the kitchen following this second brief and awkward exchange between Cathy and her father became tense but it didn’t remain that way for long. As soon as he finished eating Frank got up from his seat, deposited his plate and cup in the sink and got his things together to leave.

“He has to be there by seven, be sure to get him there on time.”

“Okay dad.”

“And if I can get an interview for Lisa at the clinic today you’ll need to be available to take her.”

“Don’t worry, I will be, I’m not going to work today.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m going to stay here and help them get settled in, Tommy will watch the store today.”

“Okay, but drive by and check on him at least once.”

“Sure.”

Frank then walked out of the house and we all breathed a sigh of relief, Cathy because she didn’t have to listen to any more insinuations from her father regarding her indolence and the four of us because we no longer had to be on guard about what we said about our past. Frank was a nice man, clearly very kind, generous and warm, but with the situation we were in he was a potential threat to our security that we needed to treat with due circumspection. We didn’t have that problem with Cathy anymore because she knew that we’d lied when we’d told her where we’d come from but all that meant was that she was going to keep pressing us for the truth.

Cathy had, as far as we could tell, no fear of us at all despite having figured out that we’d lied to her about where we’d come from. She suspected something about us and was protecting us from her father and keeping us close to find out if her suspicions were true. Hannah told us that when they were talking Cathy had mentioned Prospera, the most credible theory then was that she suspected us of having come from Prospera, which, if I was right, made our job of keeping Prospera a secret all the more difficult. Knowing that, we were in the position of having to decide whether to leave Cathy and her father’s farm for the sake of maintaining Prospera’s secrecy and going somewhere else, an idea I instantly recognized as being absurd the second it entered my mind.

We were in a delicate position with Cathy. We owed her an immense debt for what she was doing for us and we had to be watchful for what she was after from us. Understanding Cathy’s motivations would take time, until then we had no choice but to cultivate a close relationship with her because we needed her, desperately. We needed her for transportation, information and protection and as we learned more about this world we were likely going to need her for even more. Beyond her curiosity about us Cathy appeared to be taking an interest in us for other reasons. The assistance that she was volunteering felt too sincere to be solely for the purpose of learning the truth about us. She was getting something out of it, my sense was that with her job at the convenience store and her father’s frequent remarks about her ‘lack of application’ as he put it, the help that she was giving us made her feel useful, important, and perhaps provided her with a source of distraction from the plight of her mother. We had entered Cathy’s family at a time that required us to be sensitive to their difficulties and the demands they were placing on them; as soon as I had a moment alone with the others I intended to ask them to do the same.

Hannah, Miranda and I accompanied Cathy and Kevin when she drove him to her father’s butchery for his first day of work. Before leaving we cleared the table and washed all of the dishes while Kevin had gone back to the cottage to get ready. The entire duration of the ride into town Cathy went out of her way to assuage any fears Kevin might have about the new experience he was embarking on.

“Roger’s a nice guy; you don’t have to worry about anything from him, but if you do have a problem I’ll leave you with my cell phone number and I’ll tell Roger to allow you to use the phone any time you need; if you need me to I can even come to the butchery.”

“I don’t think any of that will be necessary, I’m quite sure I’ll be okay,” Kevin said in a voice intended to reassure her.

The butchery that Frank owned wasn’t very far from the building that housed the local Chamber of Commerce where he worked; in fact you could get from one to the other with just a short walk. Cathy and Kevin exited the truck after she’d parked on the street in front of the butchery and walked toward the entrance, which had a closed sign on it that Cathy informed us was only for customers.

“Wait!” Hannah called out to Kevin before she too exited the truck. She said goodbye to him with a kiss on the mouth which drew a smile and a raised eyebrow from Cathy.

“I never picked up on that,” Cathy said to Hannah after the kiss, after which she and Kevin went through the door and Hannah returned to us in the truck, looking noticeably anxious.

I could understand her anxiety. Being away from Kevin, whom she loved and who had gotten us safely out of Prospera and through the forest couldn’t be easy for her, especially with us being under the care of Cathy, of whom Hannah was deeply mistrustful. She was also anxious for Kevin, who was alone in an unfamiliar environment with people he didn’t know. The anxiety that she was feeling for him was quite unnecessary. Kevin was strong and capable, he would be just fine; I knew as much and so did Miranda. Our job for the rest of the day was to keep her from getting too worried about Kevin and to get her to trust that we’d be okay for the rest of the day without him.

“Right, it’ll be a couple of hours before the library’s open, until then why don’t I show you around a little,” Cathy said to us when she re-entered the truck having left Kevin behind in the butchery.

Driving off, Hannah looked back at where we’d left Kevin with a look of such distress on her face that I had to place a strong hand on top of hers to draw her attention away and give her a reassuring nod of my head.

“You really don’t have to worry about Kevin, he’s perfectly safe with Roger,” Cathy said to Hannah from behind the wheel, sensing her distress about being separated from Kevin. How reassuring her words were going to be given Hannah’s mistrust of her I didn’t know; for my part I trusted Cathy when she said that Kevin would be fine.

When we’d stopped at the butchery and Kevin had gotten out of the truck Miranda had moved from the backseat where she’d been sitting to the front seat next to Cathy where Kevin had been sitting. After her moment of insecurity with me in bed last night she was back to exuberantly embracing the new things of this world. In Prospera the only music we had to listen to was classical, jazz, folk and whatever the musicians experimented with. The music of this world was radically different than what we were used to and Miranda as a musician herself was fascinated by it. Sitting in the front seat she fiddled with Cathy’s radio having quick listens to the various stations. When she arrived at one that was playing music she left it there and listened to the song until it ended; if the song was catchy she even danced to it a little, to Cathy’s amusement. I could see why Hannah had identified Miranda as the one who was the most likely to give away our secrets but in Cathy I didn’t see someone of malicious intent. Hannah was inordinately anxious about this world, which was odd given that she was the first one to insist on accompanying Kevin on his journey. Her mistrust of Cathy, her concerns about leaving Kevin behind, it all pointed to a deep sense of unease within her. I was worried about her, about her ability to adapt to this world and sustain herself in it. It was an issue that would require Kevin’s assistance; nobody could help her more than he could.

Huntingdale was much larger than it had first appeared to us the previous day. That morning we weren’t as awe-struck by everything as we had been the previous day when we were seeing it all for the first time; we were able to take in more of what was around us and Cathy, because we were killing time, was free to act entirely as our guide. She drove along streets that were for the most part deserted and pointed out to us the town’s various landmarks as we passed them. The first stop on our tour was the bell tower, located directly in the centre of town, across the road from which was the cathedral, which Hannah said she’d explain to Miranda later when she asked what it was for. Next on the tour were the courthouse, the hospital, and the bridge that crossed the river and took you into the park, a large preserved area of forest, wildlife and streams. A series of interconnected roads inside the park led to various sites that were for camping, hiking, picnicking and sightseeing. Cathy drove us to the site for sightseeing, right at the top of the park. We arrived at a large, empty car park that was surrounded by railings and had five binoculars facing in the direction of the town. Cathy parked the truck next to the railing with the binoculars and we all got out to take in the view. The entire town was visible from where we were; we could see every landmark that Cathy had driven us by and even a few of the farms that were located close to the town. Standing up there and looking down on Huntingdale brought back vivid memories of the night we’d fled Prospera. It had been over three months since then, time that had brought about extraordinary discovery and change, in none of us more so than in Miranda. I sat in the back seat of the truck with the door open and watched her walking along the railing trying to use the binoculars and thought of the time when we’d returned from exploring the forest and she was a mental wreck from the fear that she was feeling. It was wonderful to see her feeling so free, that alone made everything that we went through to get here worth it.

“You need to put some change in it,” Cathy informed Miranda, “wait there.”

She opened a compartment next to the steering wheel and pulled a handful of coins out of it that she took to Miranda.

“Is this what they call money?” I asked Hannah, holding up one of the coins that I’d reached forward and extracted from the compartment.

“Yes, you get coins like this and you get paper bills, which are worth much more.”

“Lisa! Come see this,” Miranda called to me from the binoculars which Cathy had showed her how to use.

On my way to Miranda, Cathy and I passed each other as she was returning to the truck. She smiled at me as we passed each other, as if to communicate to me how sweet she thought Miranda was. We had nothing to fear from Cathy, that’s the conclusion that I reached that morning after the time that we’d spent with her since the previous day. She may have been curious about us and was biding her time to learn the truth about us but it was impossible for me to imagine us suffering some cruel fate at her hands. I needed to get Hannah to see this and thought I’d start by revealing one of our secrets to Cathy. I walked up to Miranda, who was looking through the binoculars, put my arms around her from behind and started kissing her neck.