I nudged his side. "When we get home, I promise not to tell everyone how good you're getting at stealing and sneaking around. They'll think I've corrupted you."
"You corrupted me a long time ago." His smile was mischievous, but he didn't nudge me back. He was probably worried about how sick I might still feel. "Now come on. Let's put some distance between us and that cage."
I followed Weevil toward the Colony's square. "Where are we going?"
"We need to find rooms. I waited to claim some until you were out."
"In the boats, Marjorie warned against staying in the old prison."
"Where else would we go? Besides, the wardens were very clear that everyone was to stay in there. The upper floors are quieter, but since they're farther up, it's harder to get help as the sickness worsens."
"I'm going to get better," I said. "We can take an upper floor."
"Don't take any floor," someone behind us said.
We turned and saw Marjorie staring at us. Although she looked just as ill as when I'd first helped her into the boat, at least she was standing, so the medicine had to be helping a little.
"Don't take any room, on any floor," she repeated. "I am warning you. If you want to survive this place, do not go to the old prison."
Questions immediately rushed through my mind, so many that I didn't know where to start.
Why shouldn't we stay in the prison? Where else were we supposed to live?
Would the wardens allow us to stay elsewhere? I doubted that.
I wondered again what was wrong with the prison. Were there rats the size of pigs but with larger teeth? Big gaping holes in the floor? Or too much disease, crowded into one place?
And most important, did Marjorie know a better way to survive?
In cases like this, Weevil had a talent for summarizing. He whispered, "Tell us everything."
Marjorie motioned us away from the prison and over to a clearing past the food tent. Then we stood facing north. Marjorie said, "As soon as I got here yesterday, I started asking around, to see if anyone knew a place to live other than the prison. I met a woman at suppertime, and I'll tell you what she told me. There's no way to go south on this island. Past the infirmary is a tall fence that used to keep the prison inmates trapped here."
"I know about that," I said. "I saw it last night."
"You saw that from the cage?" Marjorie asked. "I didn't think you were up that high."
Weevil looked like he wanted to give me a kick right then, just to stop me from saying anything more. However, Marjorie was clearly breaking rules by telling us her story. She'd hardly turn us in for hinting that we had already broken rules too.
Marjorie shrugged and continued. "The shoreline to the north is harsh, with sharp rocks and a lot of wind. But there is also a cave, almost impossible to see until you're right on top of it. If we go inside deeply enough, then the cave walls will protect us from the winds and we can even build a fire for warmth. The smoke from the fire simply gets sucked out to sea. The caves do flood every afternoon and evening, but we're working during the day and eating in the evening, so it's easy to miss those waters. When I went to the caves, I found other people living there too. They are much healthier than those in the prison. Some claim they've even been cured. Maybe it's the salt water, or maybe the prison's air is too infested with the Scourge, but the caves are your best chance to survive."
"The wardens don't mind?" I asked.
"The wardens don't know, and we want to keep it that way. We have to be careful coming and going, and we do as we're told so that we never draw their attention."
"Why not?" Weevil asked.
Marjorie nodded in the direction of the infirmary. "Get the attention of the wardens, and you're likely to disappear from the Colony. They say only the sickest people go into the infirmary, the ones that need extra care, but from what I saw yesterday, that isn't always true."
"And nobody comes out again," I said. "I heard that too."
This time, Weevil did give me a light kick, which wasn't fair. He was the one who had told me that.
"Do your chores for the day and then have your supper," she said. "When it starts to get dark, find a way to casually slip away from the group. But be careful, because if you're caught, the cave dwellers will be a bigger problem to you than the wardens could ever be. They were very clear about that when I met them last night. They will not accept mistakes that risk giving away their secret."
Weevil and I nodded, and then we all headed back toward the Colony square. As we walked, I said to Weevil, "What is your assigned job?"
"I'm a gatherer," he said. "They know River People are good with herbs and plants, so I'm assigned to find some of the ingredients they use in making the medicines. Most of them are familiar, but there's one I don't know--spindlewill--so it'll be tricky to find it at first. But I'm glad to have the job. The more ingredients I find, the more medicine they can make. I'm hoping to get access to where it's made so you can have some."
I liked that idea. Though I was feeling better at the moment, that was really only in comparison to the fact that death had me in its clutches last night. As long as nothing got worse, I could manage this. Then I could get to the caves and figure out what those who claimed to be healthy were doing. I wished I had my medicine back.
"Come with me," Marjorie said. "I was assigned to work in the laundry too, though I do the washing. You'll be collecting it."
Weevil went in one direction, and Marjorie and I went toward the prison again. "Collect any dirty laundry from the prison rooms," she said. "A large bin should be just inside the prison's entryway, on the main floor. You'll carry the linens down from the upper floors and load them into the bin, then roll it outside for us to wash."
"Sounds like fun," I said, in a tone that suggested this job would be anything but fun.
Marjorie missed the sarcasm. "Be careful in the rooms with those too sick to leave their beds. Their linens are sure to be infested, and that can't be healthy for you."
She left me there, to enter the prison on my own. Staring at the entrance, I fought the urge to run. It felt like walking into a nightmare, dark and full of unexpected monsters that would leave a person shaking in their bed. Perhaps it wouldn't actually be that bad, nor did I believe in monsters. Or at least, I was in serious doubt of their existence. But in the moment, that's how it felt.
I took one step in, clutching at the door's frame as a wave of nausea flooded over me. Right inside the door was the collecting bin, large enough to hold a grown man, though that was hardly its purpose. As I looked around, I realized this was as far into the prison as I ever wanted to go.
A set of narrow steps was to the left of the entry. They'd be barely wide enough for my father's shoulders if he ever came here. I closed my eyes and shook my head. No, my father would never come here. I'd submitted to Doctor Cresh's second test so that they wouldn't have to test my father. He was not sick.
Not sick ... yet. I'd exposed him to the Scourge. And my mother, and countless others. I had to prove it was possible to recover from this, for them.
Looking ahead, the main floor had a low, heavy roof, just as I was sure every other floor had. Rows of cells were on either end of a long dark hallway lit by a single oil lamp at the far end. At least the bars that had once defined this place as a prison were gone and dim candlelight in the rooms flickered through empty doorways.
Much as I already hated my work, this was what I'd been assigned. As Weevil said, our best plan was to not cause any further trouble. I knew myself too well to believe the plan would last for more than a day or two, but I had to be good for as long as possible. The fact was that my life now depended on me staying out of trouble. Every ounce of strength within me had to focus on getting better, and for that, I needed access to medicine, and rest, and food. None of that would come if I was back in the cage, getting pecked by hecklebirds.
I wasn't sure where to begin with the laundry. The collection bin wouldn't go up the stairs, so obvio
usly I'd have to carry everything down. Start with the hardest part of the job; that was what my mother had always taught me.
So I made the climb to the top floor, up four flights of crumbling stairs. A small window was on each landing but they were all closed, making the air stuffy and thick. The odor was unbearable. Was this the smell of death? If I'd done nothing else but smell this place, I'd still have refused to stay here. More than ever, I missed the river country: the fresh, moist air and the scent of wildflowers in the fields where Weevil and I lay to dry off after every dive for fish.
Once I arrived on the fifth floor, I saw the long corridor of rooms that had once been prison cells. Without doors to replace the bars, there was no privacy, no shield between the very ill and those who still had some shred of their former strength. For that matter, there was no hope, no joy, and no sign of living. Everything was an awful shade of dirty gray.
I went into each room and gathered up any piles of linens in the corners of the room. Fortunately, there weren't many people staying on this floor, so there wasn't much to gather. I bound it all in my arms and went back down the stairs. About midway down, I almost tripped on a person sitting right in the middle of the stairs.
Della.
Naturally it was her. If anyone in this entire camp would be in a place to cause me to nearly trip and roll down three flights of stairs, it'd be Della.
I dropped the laundry and stood tall, ready to fight if that's what she wanted. She must've heard me coming and didn't move out of the way, which meant she was probably here deliberately.
Or not.
Della looked up to me, her face so pale and gaunt that her eyes looked like they'd shrunk in their sockets. "Help me, Ani. I can't do this. I'm going to die here."
I eyed Della for a moment, waiting for whatever trap she was baiting me into. It wouldn't work. I intended to obey the Colony rules now, or at least, most of them. Besides that, I wanted to remain angry with Della, assuring myself that I had been right all along, that Weevil was naive in expressing any sympathy for her, and that she truly was the most horrible creature ever to roam these lands. I tried to believe it, truly I did. But the longer I stared at her, the sorrier I felt. Maybe she was mean-spirited and rude, but maybe I was too, a little. And like Weevil had said, she was definitely scared. So was I. And maybe she was snobbish and self-centered and a lot of other things I absolutely wasn't, for the most part. But whatever Della was, somewhere in the world, there had to be at least one person who was worse than her.
Even if she was the worst, I still needed her help to escape this island. So I sat down beside Della and took her hand in mine. "You are not going to die in this place, do you understand me? Last night I felt the very same way--so sick that every part of me hurt. But I'm a little better today. You just have to keep going and let the symptoms pass."
"They do, when I take the medicine," Della said. "I'm taking too much--I know I am. I'll run out in only another day or two, but I can't help it. Nothing else works."
"Give it to me," I said, holding out my hand for the flask. "I promise to let you have a sip when you really need it, but we must make it last until you're better."
She sniffed. "You think I can get better?"
"I'm feeling better today." I smiled and looked sideways at her. "Surely if I can do this, then so can you."
Her hand was still tight around her flask. "You promise I can still have this when I need it? Even after I took it from you?"
"River People have many faults," I said. "We fight over things that don't matter and back down from the fights that do matter. We work too hard and somehow still produce too little, and frankly, some of us don't bathe often enough. But we never break our promises."
She unscrewed the lid and started to take a drink from it. I went to grab it from her but she said, "This is my first sip today." She quickly took a drink, though it was hardly a sip, and then handed me the flask, which I put back around my neck.
The smell of the medicine wafted up at me, awakening the aches inside me. I wanted a sip too but couldn't take any after I had just begged the flask away from Della. She'd say I had stolen it from her, accuse me before the wardens, who'd surely believe a pinchworm over a grub, and I'd spend another day back in the cage. Maybe I'd sneak a sip this afternoon when she wasn't looking.
While the medicine did its work, I asked Della, "What job have they assigned you?"
"The worst," she said. "Cleaning out the rooms of those who've been taken to the infirmary. Getting their rooms ready for newcomers to the Colony."
I wrinkled my nose. That was a terrible job. In comparison, gathering the laundry seemed like picking flowers. It also confirmed my suspicion that those who entered the infirmary never left it.
Della said, "There's more bad news. My friend Jonas isn't anywhere in the Colony, not anymore. When I asked about him, only a few people knew his name, and those who did said they hadn't seen him since a few days after he first arrived. One man works as an assistant to the wardens and said the wardens probably brought Jonas into the infirmary."
It was likely a place to take those who were about to die so that nobody in the Colony had to see their deaths. Upset like that could create a constant panic here. Perhaps it was better to have quiet disappearances. Out of sight, out of mind.
"I'm sorry." When she was first telling me about Jonas, I'd barely cared to listen. In fact, a part of me had doubted he even existed, because how could this girl have any friend who wasn't imaginary? But when I told her I was sorry, suddenly I was. If I heard Weevil had been taken to the infirmary, it would destroy me.
She sniffed. "We'll all end up in the infirmary, sooner or later. It's just a matter of time."
I started to tell her what Marjorie had said about the caves. More than anything, Della needed hope right now, and knowing there were people who claimed to have been healed of the Scourge would mean everything to her. However, the caves weren't my secret to share. Just as I had promised Della to return her medicine, I had promised Marjorie not to tell anyone about the caves.
I did make one more promise in that moment, a silent one this time. I promised myself never to go into the infirmary. Never.
I stood and held out a hand for Della to get to her feet also. "Here's my idea. If you help me gather the laundry, I'll help you clean out those rooms. It shouldn't matter to anyone if we share our work, as long as it gets done."
Della eyed my hand with suspicion. "Why would you help me? You've been horrible to me, and I've been almost as bad back."
I briefly considered arguing the subtle moral differences between what we had done to each other, but then remembered I might need this girl's help to escape. Also, I remembered that I was trying to be her friend. It felt like hugging a hecklebird.
So I shrugged that off. "I'm not helping you, and you're not helping me. We're sharing the work. Besides, no matter how we've behaved to each other, I'm not a horrible person, and I don't think you are either."
"I didn't used to be," she said. "And I don't want to be anymore."
She took my hand and stood, then helped me carry the laundry down the stairs. That tired her out, so we decided to stay on the main floor and collect laundry there. I let her wheel the bin while I gathered linens from the rooms.
Della showed me how the rooms designated for her to clean were marked in chalk with an X. "The X means--"
"I know what the X means," I said, drawing in a deep breath. "Let's get this over with."
The rooms were already bare of any personal possessions. Most of the people who came to the Colony had brought nothing with them, and those who did took what little they had with them into the infirmary. While I cleared the laundry from the room, Della emptied the chamber pots and straightened up. Then, after blowing out the candles, we erased the X and moved on.
We did the same on the second floor, though this time both of us had to make multiple trips down the stairs to finish our jobs. It helped that the rooms were empty, with everyone out in
the Colony doing the jobs to which they had been assigned.
Well, all of them were empty except for one. An older woman lay on her prison bed, which was really just a square of concrete raised off the ground. She had a single blanket and no pillow. Della was already in there when I walked in, so I backed up and stayed in the doorway.
When she saw me, Della whispered, "What do we do?"
I shrugged. "Nothing can save her."
"Failing to help a needy person is as bad as causing the need in the first place," Della said. "My father taught me that."
I thought back to our boat ride here and felt a stab of guilt. I had caused Della's need for medicine and then failed to help her. A double crime.
The woman groaned, and Della said, "Ani, I need my medicine."
I grabbed the flask with one hand, ensuring she couldn't get it. "You've had some today."
Della picked up a dropped flask from off the floor and shook it. There was nothing inside. "I've had some. But she hasn't."
So I lifted it from my shoulders again and returned it to Della, who immediately gave the poor woman a sip. I watched that, wondering if Della had reached a delirious stage of her sickness, one that made her believe she was a kind and compassionate girl?
Or had I been delirious, thinking all along that she was more horrid than she ever actually was? While on the stairs, she had tried to tell me she wasn't as terrible as I thought. I'd figured that was the kind of thing terrible people said to make themselves feel better. Maybe she was speaking the truth.
Once we finished climbing to the third floor, Della leaned her head against the wall. "Don't you feel sick anymore?"
I did, but less sick than I would've expected. River People were stronger than the townsfolk, so this was clearly my determination paying off. Although in some ways, I was beginning to think maybe the townsfolk had their strengths too.
Taking in her pale, trembling form, I said, "You wait here. I'll take care of this floor."
When I came back with the first load, Della had pushed the window on the landing wide open. She glanced back at me and smiled. "There's more than one way to get laundry downstairs."
I shared her smile and immediately pushed the laundry through the window. It fell in a scattered pile in front of the entrance to the prison, right where I could pick it up before delivering it to Marjorie. Perfect!