“How you going, sweetheart?”
“I’m beneath you, what now?”
The ledge sinks with a rumble. Malia shrieks in terror and lunges for me before I’m prepared. She grabs the back of my leg and nearly wrenches me off the cliff, but I clutch on desperately.
“Climb up, climb up,” I pant.
The ledge breaks off completely. Malia is wailing and hanging on to nothing but my leg now.
“Climb up to my shoulders!”
“I can’t!” she sobs.
Okay. Okay. Either she doesn’t have the arm strength or she’s too panicked to use it.
Leaving my right hand clutching the tree root, I remove my left from the cliff and drop it down. My sense of balance sways and a moment of true fear grips me but I force it away and reach toward Malia.
“Take my hand,” I tell her, even though it could easily pull us both from my hold.
“No, no, no, I can’t, I’ll fall—”
“I will not let you fall. Do you hear me, Malia? I will not let you fall. Reach for my hand.”
She does. I feel her grip in mine, a slippery thing that yanks on my shoulder with enough force to dislocate it. Pain swells but I move the joint enough to know that it’s still in its socket, thank god.
So now Malia is holding onto one of my legs and one of my hands, while I’m still facing the cliff and barely managing to keep my grip. I have to get her up before my muscles give out.
With a scream that comes from somewhere deep in my guts, I bend my elbow as though doing a bicep curl with the entire weight of another human. Her body rises. Her feet scramble at the earth and she manages to lunge for my shoulder.
“Okay, let go,” she tells me. “Josi, let go.”
I have to force myself to let go of her hand so she can grab onto my other shoulder. Her knees clench at my hips, her legs trembling with the effort.
“Okay, climb,” she tells me.
I let out a hysterical laugh. “I’m flattered and all, but honey, I am not strong enough to climb with you on my back. We wait for the ropes.”
“When are they coming? Why aren’t they coming?”
“They are. Take a breath and stay calm.”
A bolt of lightning strikes out at sea. My head is tilted far enough to the side to see a glimpse of its light. Things get really simple when you’re clutching the edge of a cliff in a storm. Things get anatomically simple. Don’t let go. That’s it.
“Gear incoming!” a distant voice bellows from above and the ropes arrive. Attached to the end of one is a harness. I have to figure out how to get Malia into it.
“Okay, Malia. We’ll get you into the harness and you’ll be lifted up.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll wait here and they’ll send it back for me.”
“Oh god, Josi. Thank you.”
“Shhh. Let’s just get ourselves safe before we start that.” I look at the harness. “See those loops? Your legs need to go through them.”
“I’ll never be able to do that!”
“Okay, it’s alright.” I consider our options. “Can you reach your hands through them? Your weight will be lifted from beneath your arms, so it’ll hurt. Plus the harness won’t fit properly so you’re gonna slip around in it, but if you hang onto the rope with your hands you won’t fall.”
“I’m scared.”
I turn my face as far toward her as I can. “I know you are. But listen to me. You are much more than this cliff. You are a strong woman, and you’re not falling, okay? Find all the courage you have. Find it now.”
I feel her nod and then reach for the harness. She gets one arm through but a spray of earth falls on us and Malia yelps.
“Don’t come down!” I roar to the people above.
But it’s too late. She slips, loses her hold on both my body and the harness. I twist and grab for her. I get her forearm and grip on, digging my nails into her flesh.
“Hold on, hold on,” I breathe.
“Josi!” she screams.
“Reach for me!”
Her arm is slippery and my strength is failing. Lightning strikes and in it I see her eyes, her wide, terrified eyes, and then as though in a dream she falls.
*
Luke
I watch Josi climb step by step to Malia. I watch her wake the girl and then I see their bodies move a little, just a little, to the edge of the cliff. It’s hard to make out what’s going on down there – two bodies look like one now – but I can tell they haven’t fallen.
There is chaos up here. People keep shouting as though their words will make a difference. But it’s down to Josi, and it’s down to Will hurrying the fuck up with those ropes.
When he finally arrives I set up the harness and we fasten the end of the rope to every body we have here. It’s dangerous, because technically every one of us could be pulled over the edge.
Anchored at the end is Blue, the most solid guy I know. Then Eric, Zachariah, Lawrence, Henrietta, Pace, Will and me, at the very edge. I didn’t let Coin attach himself – he’s trembling like a leaf. Instead I told him to watch exactly what was happening below.
“Everyone ready? Brace yourselves.”
I throw the harness and rope over. Ideally we could have thrown two but it’s much safer to get them up one at a time, so long as Josi can hold on. “Gear incoming!” I shout.
We wait for any sign that the ropes are being used but nothing happens.
Coin is lying on his stomach, peering down at his girlfriend. “They can’t get it on!” he exclaims. “I’m going down to help.”
“No!” I roar. “You’ll disrupt the earth!”
But it’s too late. He’s over the edge, scampering down like a monkey.
“Don’t come down!” Josi screams up at us, and then there’s a different kind of scream. A blood-chilling scream.
I hear Coin moan in horror. Profound terror strikes my guts so hard I almost vomit. I inch to the edge and peer down. I can’t see anything at first, but then I make out a single body clinging to the cliff and then a second, much smaller body on the rocks far below.
Oh god.
I close my eyes.
“What happened?” someone is asking.
“Luke? What is it?”
“Are they okay?”
“What happened?”
I don’t know which body is which and I feel rotten to the core to be thinking of this now but I am, I’m thinking of which body fell and which is still clinging to the edge.
Focus.
I exhale slowly. Garner the things in my mind and body that were trained for moments like these. Gather what makes me, me.
“Everything’s okay,” I tell the others. Then I call for Coin to climb back up. The boy does so, very slowly. When he reaches the lip of the tunnel I haul him in and he collapses, sobbing, onto the ground.
“What happened?” Pace asks again, but this time she’s whispering and she sounds scared witless.
I look at them all. “Someone’s fallen. I’m not sure who.”
The grief is palpable but I can’t get lost in it.
I peer down at the surviving figure. “Grab the harness!” I shout to her, but there’s no sign she’s heard me or maybe she’s in shock.
“Whoever is still on the cliff isn’t moving,” I report. “I have to go down and help her.”
Will gets me a second rope and I tie it around my waist. “I need half of you on my rope, half of you on the other. Everyone up the back there, grab onto someone and help anchor the weight.”
A whole bunch of people waiting in the tunnel come forward to help. I climb over and they lower me down. I can’t climb because of my useless fucking hand. It’s so stiff as I grab the fissures in the earth. In the dark I peer down. She isn’t moving. I can’t make out who it is. Please, my heart says. And what a cruel thing to beg for. What a terrible hope.
Finally she looks up and I see Josephine’s face. Great suffocating relief bursts in my chest. I make it to her side
. She’s clinging on, shivering in the cold and the wet, and there’s a ghost in her eyes.
“Josi,” I say. “Take hold of the harness.”
“I said I wouldn’t let her fall.”
“Take hold of the harness.”
I reach over her for the harness and move it to her, helping her to thread it through her left arm first. She won’t move her right, though.
“It’s caught,” she says. “It was the only way I could hold her weight.” There’s something awful in her voice.
I dig at the earth around the tree root and manage to pry her hand free. Her balance shifts and she tugs on the rope. I pray they can hold us both up there, and they do, they hold firm while I get her right arm through the harness.
“Start climbing,” I tell her.
But she doesn’t. She lets out a deep moan of grief and presses her face into the mud. My heart breaks. I don’t let her hear it. “Don’t. Get to the top, Josi. Just get to the top.”
With an aching sob she starts climbing. I let her go ahead and then I follow her, staying below in case she falls. We can’t climb the whole way – we have to be pulled the last few meters because the cliff has crumbled too badly. It is an immense relief to my agonized hand. But they pull us both up and we slump onto the cold concrete.
Nobody says it. Nobody even says her name. They just help Josi to her feet and shepherd her back home. There are hands and arms and people to help all the children; Coin can’t walk and has to be carried home. I wait until they’ve all left, until I know they’re safe, and then I turn back to the cliff.
I peer down to the beach, to the child’s broken body there. She was fourteen and she was beautiful and she was ours and for a moment I hoped she was dead.
I sink to my knees and whisper to her. I’m sorry. We were supposed to protect you. I’m so sorry.
*
Josephine
Claire makes me drink something hot and full of sugar. I sit and stare blindly at the wall of the infirmary for what must be a good half hour. And then all of a sudden something occurs to me and I throw off the blanket and start running.
I can hardly breathe as I careen through the tunnels and into the boys’ barracks. A huge cluster of kids is down the end and I push through to find Coin at the center. He’s not making a sound, not speaking or crying. He’s staring at the wall and smoothing his hands through his long blond ponytail, over and over, locked in it. His friends are crowded around, weeping and trying to comfort him but he’s just blank.
He spots me coming for him and flinches. It breaks something inside me.
Instead of whatever he thinks I’m here to do, I reach for his hands and force them to cease their frenzied obsession. “This was not your fault.”
“It was,” he whispers. “I killed her.”
“No.” I pull him against me and he clutches at me and I hold him so tight while he cries. “No, no, Coin. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t.”
“I saw her body. I saw it fall.”
“It’s not your fault.”
*
In the end our wedding night is a terrible, terrible night. When I finally leave Coin it’s only because he’s fallen asleep and his friends promise to stay with him all night. They’re grieving too – Malia was everyone’s friend. She was sweet to all and everyone loved her.
I make my way, bleary-eyed and near catatonic with exhaustion, back to my bed. Luke’s sitting on the edge of it, waiting.
I almost can’t cross to him. I am ashamed of how much better it will make me feel to be in his arms; I don’t deserve that kind of comfort. But I do cross, my body hardly my own, and I sink onto his lap and he kisses me and undresses me and I need him so badly that I can hardly breathe, hardly think. The pain in my chest wells until I’m crying as he makes love to me. And afterwards I sleep more deeply than I have in a long time – since the last bout of depression, probably. I dream of wings and scales and fur. I dream of her body taking flight at the last moment and soaring into the sky with wild joy instead of scattering to sad pieces on the rocks.
Chapter 13
April 22nd, 2067
Josephine
The mats beneath me are soft and I can pretend the scattered pinpricks above are stars, instead of holes in the silo roof. Around me are dozens of young bodies lying close together, “star” gazing the only way we can. Trips to the sea have been banned. Trips outside our gated tunnels are forbidden. My throat closes a little each day as our home begins to feel more and more like a prison. Instead of releasing my fist I have started clenching it tighter. Fear of loss tightens my grip. If I could forbid them from doing anything that might hurt them I would, and even though I can see the irrational nature of such thoughts, I can’t stop them.
We buried Malia at sundown. Collecting her body from the rocks was terrible. She was so absent from the broken thing she became that it made me think for the first time that perhaps we do have souls. Her funeral was on the cliff-top, where her body now rests. Her death was a brutal reminder of how swiftly life changes. The guard can’t come down, nothing can be taken for granted. Coin didn’t go to the funeral – he stayed in bed for a week straight. I know the feeling. It’s one of sifting through quicksand, of weighing a thousand tons, of being too tired to open your eyes, too tired to even breathe.
He’s here now beside me, his feet entwined with mine. I have someone else’s head resting on my tummy, someone’s arm wrapped beneath my neck, a bony knee poking into my rib. We are bodies entangled for comfort and warmth. It’s cold in the tunnels. Too cold to be alone. Too lonely to be alone.
“That’s Onomatopoeia,” Lawrence says, pointing at a group of holes. He’s been creating constellations in our ceiling and giving them silly names. He, Alo, Teddy, Henrietta and Coin have grown inseparable since the accident, the five of them having been with Malia when she fell. I still don’t really know what happened that night, but I know it bound them together with iron.
“Why Onomatopoeia?” Hen asks.
“He’s the god of pfft and shhhhh and swish and ahhh. Those three stars there are his harp twanging and that cluster is his butt farting.”
Amid the giggles Teddy mutters, “Only one of those is an onomatopoeia, genius.”
“What’s that group there called?” Alo asks.
“That’s Gluteus Maximus, the Queen of Donkeys. She has a giant ass beneath her.”
They erupt into laughter. He’s got a theme going tonight, clearly.
With a peek over my shoulder I see the entrance is still empty. Where is he?
“Who are you looking for?” Georgie asks me. It used to unnerve me how closely she watches me, and how many inane questions she asks, but I’ve grown used to it. I think she’s just a super curious kid. Thankfully she was nowhere near the cliff when Malia fell, and like most of the other kids, missed seeing the horror of it.
“No one.”
“Who do you think?” Lawrence sneers, then makes orgasmic noises not appropriate for children.
“Sometimes I swear you’re five years old,” Hen tells him with a sigh of long suffering. His noises only get louder.
Someone shoves him and the effect is knock-on – a knee connects and sends an elbow into a shoulder into a foot and soon everyone is grumbling in irritation and snapping at Lawrence to shut up. He laughs, unperturbed, and pulls Alo into a rough tumble that has absolutely no concern for the many other people nearby, including me. They land on my stomach and I give a mighty oof.
“Now that’s an onomatopoeia,” Teddy announces.
Alo and Lawrence scramble off me with hasty apologies. I regain my breath and get to my feet. There must be murderous rage in my eyes because both the boys shrink. The other kids are laughing at their expressions.
“Haven’t had enough training for one day, huh?” I ask. “You wanna fight?”
“Not with you.”
“Well, too bad, you little thugs.”
They’re not exactly little, actually. They’re sixteen years o
ld and happen to be the biggest of all the teenage boys, meaning they’re bigger than me. I point at the others to make a circle and then I dart in at Lawrence, stepping behind his foot and throwing my shoulder into his chest. He hits the mats hard but I’m already sweeping my leg around to take Alo’s feet from beneath him. Within a few seconds they’re both flat on their backs, winded.
As the kids cheer a voice asks, “Attacking the children again, are we, dear?”
I whirl to see that Luke has finally arrived.
“We’re not children!” Lawrence is outraged but all Alo can do is giggle as he manages to get his breath back. “Besides, she’s a chick. I’m not about to smash a chick.”
I roll my eyes and don’t bother with that one, since he obviously knows it’s untrue. The girls launch into a tirade about how sexist and asinine he is, while I go help Luke pin up the large white sheet.
“All sorted?” I ask.
He grins and nods.
“Sweet. Little bastard doesn’t deserve it though.”
“He may be a little bastard but he keeps morale up. They’ll all love it, anyway.” Luke spins around and clears his throat.
They continue chatting and laughing. He’s too polite.
“Quiet, losers,” I say.
The kids fall silent with curiosity.
“Life’s been rough lately,” Luke says, “so we thought you deserved a treat. Tonight’s screening is the 1960 classic Hitchcockian film Psycho. Just don’t sue us for showing inappropriate content to minors.”
There is a moment of silence as they realize what he means and then a gasp of delight runs through the crowd, followed by ear-splitting squeals and booming cheers of ecstasy. Lawrence jumps into the air with fists pumping, crowing at the top of his lungs, while the noise level could wake the dead.
I burst out laughing at the scene, and Luke throws his arm around my shoulder with a grin. “I don’t think they’re keen.”