And this is how the next week or so goes. We wake up usually to the rumbling of a train going by overhead, and Penny fetches us all breakfast from one of Alis’ food distributor people. We meet Marissa, the pregnant woman, and her husband Nerev, who spends his days ripping apart fabrics and sewing then back together to make clothes that will fit his wife’s growing belly. Ava takes us walking down the northern and the eastern tracks, to see the fire forums down there, too, and tells us that they’re built where they are because every so often in the tunnels there’s a pipe up to the surface so the smoke can get out. Most of the food is either fruit or packaged things, but Ava likes to make coffee and tea by putting a kettle over the flames in the western fire forum. She also likes to go and talk to Haywood, and Nua and I go with her just to have something to do. Penny goes with us, Nano almost always by his side, because he’s very interested in what Sloan does. I assume it’s because for the past while Sloan has been the one who makes contact with Bayan, but recently she has not been able to. They used to meet every Thursday night at midnight, she tells us the first Friday morning that we’re there, but she waited all night, and the electric fence never turned off.
Penny and Ava just look at each other when she tells us this, and then one of Sigrid’s women comes into the building we’re in, looking for her, and we disperse after this.
Ava lies awake that night, staring at the ceiling of the tent, as Nua finally finishes unpacking the rest of the bag that Bayan packed us. He pulls a few more of Ava’s things out of it, and then when he thinks she’s not looking he pulls out the rope belt and gently lies it on top of her things. And then he pulls out a book, and I raise my eyebrows. “He gave you a book?”
“Yeah,” says Nua softly, looking down at it, and then he shows me the cover. Ava looks at it, and then puts her head back down, squeezing her eyes shut. “What is it?”
It’s the book of fairy tales that Nua had been reading to Keol, just before he died. Nua looks at it a moment more, turning it over in his hands, and then says, “I was reading it earlier.”
Ava makes a noise, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, and then sits up. She winces, rubbing her chest where the stitches are, and then says, “Did she ever.”
She stops, and Nua and I both look at her. He has the lantern near him, so he could see what he was doing, and the light casts her into shadow from where I’m sitting. She makes a noise again, and then says, “Did she ever, like, hit him?”
Nua and I look at each other behind her back, both of us obviously remembering the mess of bruises on the side of Bayan’s face, and she looks over at us. “She did, didn’t she.”
“Yeah,” answers Nua softly. “A little while ago. When they came home.”
Ava groans, burying her face in her hands, and says, “Oh, this is all my fault.”
“It’s not,” I say softly, but she shakes her head bitterly. “It was because he helped me. He helped me get away, to here, and then she told you that I was dead, and now you’re gone, too, she’s probably killed him.”
“I don’t think she’s killed him,” says Nua softly, and Ava laughs humorlessly. “Oh, god.”
“It’s alright,” I say softly, reaching out for her. “We’ll get him.”
She lies back down, her hair spreading out over her pillow, and I move mine towards me a little more so I can curl up too. “We tried to get him to come with us.”
“Me, too,” she says with a sigh, and then Nua turns off the lantern and comes to bed.
Penny comes to find us the next morning. Usually he waits outside, in front of his tent, with his dog at his feet. But today he barges in, waking me up, but not Ava or Nua. I sit up, rubbing my eyes, and he says, “Wow, they really are heavy sleepers.”
“I guess,” I say with a yawn. “I’m not. Good morning.”
“It’s four pm,” he says with a grin, and I make a face. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah, time is weird down here,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Where’s Nano?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Alicia took her for a walk,” says Penny, stretching his arms. He’s on his knees, and his hands reach all the way up to the top of the tent. “Dogs need sun. How do you usually wake them up when you need?”
I shrug. “I just wait.”
“Ah,” he says, clicking his tongue. I yawn again, resting my elbows on my knees, and look back at my wife and Nua, wrapped up sleeping on the mat next to me.
“Ava!” says Penny suddenly, loudly, and she jerks awake, then leans her head back. “You’re not supposed to scare me, asshole!”
“You weren’t waking up,” he says, kicking her foot, and she throws her pillow at him. “Wanna give me a heart attack? I already died once, and let me tell you, it’s not fun.”
Penny laughs easily at this as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, and holds his hand down for her. She grabs it and he pulls her up, then says through a yawn, “Do we have coffee?”
“Nita just came back from shopping,” says Penny. “I brought some to the fire forum.”
I’ve learned by now that whenever he drops a name of someone I haven’t met, it’s one of Shan’s women, who goes to the surface. Nua rolls onto his back as she leaves the tent, and says sleepily, “She really likes coffee now.”
“Yeah, caffeine seems to be her drug of choice,” says Penny laughingly as he waits for us to fully wake up, and as I stretch I hear Nua say under his breath, “Now that nicotine isn’t an option.”
I snort and Penny glances at us. “Hm?”
I shake my head to say that it’s nothing. I don’t think Penny knows how much she used to smoke and with her long history of lung-related issues I don’t think he’d approve. I’m not really looking to get my wife in trouble with her long-lost twin so we just follow him out towards the fire forum, a little ways away. Ava is inside the little building, and a kettle is sitting over the fire. She looks up at us when we come in, and Penny goes over to sit next to her, tearing apart the loaf of bread. As he hands Ava a piece, Nua says, “Whose is that?”
Ava looks down at her hand, at the band around her ring finger, glistening with four tiny diamonds set into the gold, one for each man she’s been married to, and the band around her thumb, simple, gold, the same as mine and Nua’s. She touches it gently, glancing at Penny, then says quietly, “Keol’s.”
Nua smiles a little, and I feel something in my stomach. I miss Keol, I can’t imagine what Ava feels, with every beat of her heart. But before we say anything, Sloan comes into the fire forum, carrying a little bag. “Hey, guys.”
“Hey,” says Penny. “Where have you been?”
“Talking to Haywood,” she answers, putting the little bag on the folding table. “These are yours, Ava.”
“What are they?” asks Nua, going into the bag, and then he says, “Oh, nice.”
I look over; the bag has a bunch of batteries in it, for the lantern.
“What did Haywood say?” asks Penny, and Sloan shakes her head. “Nothing new about your mother. We have ears out, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
Ava stands, running her fingers through her hair, and says, “When are you supposed to go back to the house?”
“Not until next week,” she says apologetically, and Ava swears under her breath. “God, I need a smoke.”
“A what?” says Penny incredulously, turning to look at her. “A smoke?”
Oh, cool, so we’ll just tell him, I guess. She turns to him, anger flashing through her eyes now, like whenever anyone at home tried to tell her anything about the cigarettes. “Yeah. I need a smoke.”
“You had a lung disease,” he says, standing. “You knew about it, and you still-”
“Yeah,” she interrupts him, her voice defensive. “And I knew that I was dying. They” -she jerks her head over to where Nua and I are standing- “never saw me without a cig in one hand and a lighter in the other, and that’s why Keol’s dead. That’s why I couldn’t get his lungs, either, why they had to tear into a whole other dead guy to bring me back to life. Because he had tiny little black spots.”
Her voice drops quiet as she stares directly into Penny’s face. They’re inches away from each other now. “All over his lungs, like the ones they found on mine when I was sixteen. Before they spread. Probably because I spent two years blowing smoke in his face. I was dying, Penny, so who gives a shit? Maybe if I managed to kill myself with cigs a year ago Aber would be free and Keol would be alive and I would be with Owen right now instead of you.”
She turns on her heel and stalks out of the tent.
Penny gapes after her, then glances at her two husbands incredulously. “You let her smoke?”
“We couldn’t really do anything about it,” says Nua, and Penny sighs in exasperation, his eyes still full of worry, and follows her out. Sloan clicks her tongue, and then leaves, too.
I swallow, looking up at the ceiling, then says quietly, “She blames herself for Keol.”
“Either she killed him with smoke or she killed him with sex,” says Nua under his breath, falling onto the chair. “And now he’s gone and she isn’t. Of course she’s guilty.”
I don’t exactly blame her. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking right now, the guilt that must be constantly pressing into her head right now. Would she rather have died than lived with us, here, with Penny? Was her friend, her first prominent, who killed himself after their marriage, was he more precious to her than her twin brother? I couldn’t imagine trading Abigala for Ava.
As I think the thought, though, I realize that it might not be exactly true.
I haven’t thought about Abigala in a little while. But ever since Ava gave me the information she had gathered about her, everything about her new government job, about her four husbands, her children, I haven’t been able to think about her in the same way. Everything she promised me she would never do. Her betrayal hurts me more than I thought Ava’s did, when I realized she had left us; but I’m not mad at her about that. I had trusted Abigala. I thought she was looking for me while I was trapped with Miss Lilly, I thought she was looking for me as much as I was looking for her, but it turns out she was just…I don’t even know. I keep meaning to talk to Ava about it. I know that Ava knows more than she’s told me, but it’s never the right time to bring it up, because we’re all worried about Bayan right now. Abigala is safe, at least, wherever she is, whatever she’s doing. And that’s more that can be said for the rest of us.