“Why did you dye your hair?” Perpétue’s voice breaks my reverie.
I put my hand up to my head. “What?”
“Your hair,” Perpétue repeats. “You’ve been coloring it, right?”
“It’s showing?” I say.
“Wi,” Perpétue says. She lifts a lock of hair and runs it through her fingers until they brush my forehead. “To here.”
“What?” I rock away from Perpétue. My hair grows fast, but it would take weeks on weeks to grow that much. Near on a deciturn. I’ve been here, awake, only ten days. It’s not possible, unless . . . A terrible thought hits me. How long did I sleep? I thought it was hours, days at most. It can’t have been more than a few days.
“No,” I say. “That’s not right. It can’t be.”
Perpétue reaches for a hand mirror and holds it so I can see. Black hair spreads over the crown of my head, then drops to faded red at my temples. Both colors look wrong beside my face, the red unnatural, the black stark and hinting at someone I’ve never been so long as I can remember.
I look up from my reflection. “How long was I asleep?”
Perpétue hesitates.
“Days? A week?”
“A little over a month,” Perpétue says. “You were in so much pain, we had to keep you under until the doctor said your calcium levels were high enough.” She furrows her brow and presses her lips together as if there might be more.
A month. A deciturn. I push myself clumsily to my feet. Blood sings in my ears. I’ve been trapped here below over a full deciturn.
“Ava . . .”
I stagger away from her, into the common room.
“Where are you going?” Perpétue calls after me.
I don’t answer. A deciturn lost. A deciturn . . . I stumble to the front of the house and grapple with the outer door. In truth, I don’t know where I’m going. There are steps outside, I know, leading down to the pontoons and up to the roof with its generator and water tanks and Perpétue’s chickens, but beyond that . . . I’ve been locked away too long, seeing the world in snatches from the window. I want—no, I need to see the sky.
CHAPTER
.14
The air is sudden bright. It smells of salt, smoke, and fish. Far off, a horn sounds. The sun peaks high overhead, but the close-packed structures around me close off most of the sky.
Up, I tell myself. Higher.
I climb the first step. My knees shake and my legs burn. I need to go up. I anchor my other foot on the next stair, try to push myself faster. I waver. I need to see it. . . . I don’t know why. I know I won’t be able to see Luck, or the ships, or even the stars from the rooftop, but some part of me insists I try. Without warning, my legs collapse. I sag down on the third step.
“Ava, here.” Perpétue appears behind me, her hands outstretched.
“No!” I say. Weeks lost to sleep, and more to Perpétue and Miyole dressing me and feeding me and helping me walk. I want no more of it. I want to haul myself back up to the sky. I want to be a woman again. I want to prove my worth so Perpétue won’t throw me out when she finds I have Luck’s child inside me.
I crawl up the stairs, the concrete scraping my knees through my thin underskirt. Perpétue watches from below. The heat presses on me, thick and wet. Sweat rolls down my back. The light blinds my eyes, and the sun burns. Another step. My skin feels tight. Another. At last I reach up and feel nothing. Air. I raise my head. Only the square metal walls of the generator, the water tanks, a line of clothes flapping in the breeze, and the weathered driftwood hutch housing Perpétue’s chickens break my view of the sky.
I walk stiffly out onto the sun-baked roof. The sky stretches up and up, ablaze with blue. I don’t know how, but it seems broader even than the Void, raked with fine, high, swaths of lambs’-wool white in its upper reaches. The sun burns through like bright, new copper. It takes my breath and dulls the pain in my legs.
Luck, I think. I wish he could see this with me.
I reach the wall bordering the edge of the roof and raise a hand to shield my eyes. Perpétue’s house stands level with the other mismatched structures—some ships, some square houses balanced on pontoons, like Perpétue’s, some a floating scavenge of metal, plastic, tarp, and heavy solar panels angled up to the sky. Crossed laundry lines and footbridges made of driftwood connect it all. The structures rise and fall ever so slightly with the sea, as if they rest on a sleeping giant’s chest. The distant, muddled din of voices and puttering motors, rooster calls, and the tinny blare of handhelds carry over the rooftops.
Some ten or twelve buildings down, the enclave gives way to the brink. The floating desert of plastic spreads out to the horizon. When the wind skirts across it, it makes a sound like wings. Along its coast, dividing the trash plain from the clean, blue water, a sun-bleached city of ships unfurls for miles and miles. I spin around. To the other side of Perpétue’s roof, the world gives way to unbroken blue. The sky and its darker sister, the sea.
“Ava.” Perpétue stands at the top of the steps. “Come down. Your skin will burn, fi. You aren’t used to the sun.”
I swallow. “I don’t want to stay inside anymore.” I hear the pleading in my tone.
“I know.” Perpétue runs her tongue inside her bottom lip. “But you really aren’t well enough yet.”
“I’ll work at it.” My voice sounds so small in the wide open. “Please, so missus, I don’t want to be useless. I don’t want to lie there and have you . . .” My throat closes around the rest of my words. I don’t want to lose any more time to sleep.
“If it takes your mind off the hurt, maybe we can give you some chores.” Perpétue nods to herself. “Some small things.”
“I can cook some, and clean.” I say. “I was on livestock duties before. I could keep the chickens. . . .”
Perpétue waves me to a stop. “Slowly, Ava. For now, you can help Miyole with the chickens and maybe cook some. Your body’s still healing, fi. Too much at once and you’ll hurt yourself.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “Right so.”
I feel some small bit more like the girl I was. Feeding chickens is none like minding a whole crewe of women and girls, but at least it’s something to keep my hands busy and my mind awake while I wait for Luck’s child and try to figure out how to find my modrie.
In the middle of the night, I wake with my innards cramped. I stumble to the cleanroom in the dark, but it’s only when I’ve squatted over the chemical bowl that I feel the blood on my legs. I grope for the light string and pull. It clicks on, filling the room with a brown glow. I stand stock still, staring at the streaks of blood on my thighs and nightshirt until I can make myself understand. My bleeding.
No, I think distantly. That’s not right.