Her father has to be Japanese—the good king in the fairy tale—and so who is the young man that she’s imagined as her father—the guy with the light hair whose feet pointed inward but played football on the lined fields in high school? Was it someone her grandfather loved? His own lost son?
All of this, she thinks to herself, is what she must tell her mother if she ever sees her, if she’s truly alive—her life up to the moment she sees her again. That desire hasn’t changed, only now she has hope—real hope—that she might actually meet her mother one day.
But can she really have faith that her mother might be alive? Her grandfather is the only one she’s ever truly trusted in the world, and yet he’s lied to her all these years. If she can’t trust him, who can she trust?
Bradwell swabs her neck with alcohol. Rubbing alcohol or liquor? It’s cold and gives her gooseflesh.
“The chips were a bad idea,” Bradwell says. “My parents had enough conspiracy theories to know that they never wanted to have me chipped. They didn’t want a megapower to know where everyone was at all times. Too much power. This chip makes you a target.”
“Wait,” she whispers. She’s not ready yet.
Bradwell sits back.
She gets on her knees.
“What is it?” Bradwell says.
“Partridge,” she says, quietly.
“Yes?”
She isn’t sure what she wants to ask. Her mind is full of questions.
“What is it?” he says. “I’ll answer any question you have. Anything.”
His voice seems disembodied, as if he’s only a dream, not real at all, as if he’s a memory. Partridge has memories of his mother. Was she too young to hold the memories? Memories are like water, she remembers her grandfather saying. It’s truer now than ever. Or does she not remember because her mother wasn’t in her life very much? Was her mother the swan wife who gave her away to the woman who couldn’t have children? “Do you remember me? As kids, did we ever meet?”
Partridge doesn’t say anything at first. Maybe he’s flooded with memories, too, or he’s wondering if he should invent some story for her, the way her grandfather did. Doesn’t he want to be able to fill in her lost childhood, like a real brother could? She would want to do this for him. Finally he says, “No. I don’t remember you.” But then he’s quick to add, “That doesn’t mean much, though. We were young.”
“Do you remember your mother pregnant?”
He shakes his head and runs a hand over his hair. “I don’t remember.”
Her mind is flooded with questions. What did my mother smell like? What did her voice sound like? Am I like her? Am I different? Would she love me? Did she ever love me? Did she just let me go? “What’s my name?” she whispers. “It’s not Pressia. I was orphaned. My grandfather probably didn’t even know me. His last name is Belze. It isn’t mine. And it wouldn’t be Willux.”
“I don’t know your name,” Partridge confesses.
“I don’t have a name.”
Bradwell says, “You were given a name. Someone knows it. We’ll find it.”
“Sedge,” Partridge says, and his eyes fill with tears. “I wish you could have met him. He’d have liked you.”
Sedge is his dead brother. Her dead half brother. The world is frenzied—giving and taking. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Partridge says.
Pressia can’t possibly miss Sedge, and yet she does. She had another brother. She had another connection in the world. And it’s gone.
Pressia clears her throat. She doesn’t want to start crying. She has to be tough now. “Why aren’t you chipped, Partridge?” she asks. “Don’t they have tabs on you?”
“Bradwell’s right about the target. My father said that any son of his could become a target at any time.”
“They put a simple tracking device in the birthday card; maybe there were others,” Bradwell says. “We burned his things.”
“But you put the tracking device on one of the rat beasts,” Pressia says.
“How did you know that?”
“Figured it out.” Pressia wants to get this over with now. No use putting it off. She lies down again on her stomach. “I’m ready.”
Bradwell leans all the way to the floor—to whisper something to her? Pressia turns and rests her cheek on her hand. But he doesn’t say a word. He simply tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s a small gesture—so delicate, like the feathery touch she didn’t think his large hands were capable of. He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid who’s raised himself. He’s tough and strong and angry—but tender, too. And nervous, she can tell by the rustling of wings on his back.
“I don’t want to do this, Pressia. I wish I didn’t have to.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “Take it out.” A tear slips over the bridge of her nose. “Take it.”
Bradwell swabs her neck again, and then she feels his fingers on her skin. His hands are shaking. He must be bracing himself, because he takes hold of her neck and pauses. He says, “Partridge, I’m going to need you.”
Partridge walks over.
“Hold on tight,” Bradwell says. “Here.”
There’s a moment’s hesitation. And then she feels Partridge’s hand holding her head.
“Harder,” Bradwell says. “Keep it steady.”
Partridge’s hands tighten like a vise.
Pressia feels Bradwell press his knee into her back. And then she feels Bradwell’s hand again; he pushes his thumb and fingers into her neck, firmly this time, and then, in the space between, he digs in with a knife as sharp as a scalpel.
She lets out a shriek, a voice she didn’t know she had. The pain feels like its own animal inside of her. The scalpel burrows deeper. She can’t scream again, because her breath is gone. She tries to buck Bradwell from her back involuntarily. And even though she feels like the animal-of-pain has taken her over and she’s become an animal, she knows not to move her head now.
“Stop,” Partridge says.
But Pressia isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to Bradwell. Has something gone wrong? He could paralyze her. They all know this. She feels the tickle of blood running down both sides of her neck. She’s panting now. Her own blood is dotting the floor. She can see it start to pool, dark red. She is bracing herself for more pain. Her body takes on a deep core heat. She remembers the heat of the Detonations, waves of heat that kept coming. She remembers what it was like to be untethered for a moment, a child alone in the world. Does she really remember this? Or does she remember trying to remember? She can see the Japanese woman—young and beautiful—her mother who died, and she is now dying again because that woman isn’t her mother. She’s a stranger to her, a face singed to nothingness. Her skin melts away. She lies among bodies and luggage and overturned metal carts on wheels. The air is filled with dust, and the wave of heat comes again. And then there is a hand wrapped around her hand, her ears flooded with heartbeat. She closes her eyes and opens them and closes them. She once had a toy that was a set of binoculars with a button you could push that would make new scenes appear. She opens her eyes and closes them, then opens them, hoping for a new picture.
But it’s still the dirty floor, the pain, the dirty floor.
She says, “Partridge, did our mother sing lullabies?”
“Yes,” he says. “She did.”
And that’s something. It’s a place to begin.
PRESSIA
EAST
THE BACK OF PRESSIA’S NECK IS padded with a gauzy cloth, moist with blood, and kept tight by a leather band tied around her neck like a choker to keep the padding in place. She applies extra pressure to the aching wound by sitting low on one of the mattresses on the floor and pressing her neck against one of the walls.
The chip, wiped clean of blood, is white. It sits on the floor like a lost tooth—something that was once deeply rooted inside of her now gone. And for some reason, it doesn’t feel like she’s free of it, but that she’s lost another tether t
o someone in the world—someone who was watching over her—and this feels like something she should mourn even though she knows that the watching-over wasn’t some kind of parental love at all.
Bradwell is all furious motion around her. The birds’ wings on his back are pulsating. He pulls out a lawn mower then shoves it back into place. He picks up a hand trowel then stares at the ground.
Partridge sits next to Pressia on the mattress. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s in a frenzy,” Pressia says. “I’d just let him go.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Partridge asks Pressia.
The doll-head fist—she lifts it. The doll’s eyes click open. Even the lids are covered in ash. Its lashes clumped. The small o of its mouth is clotted shut. She brushes over its plastic head with her good hand and feels her lost hand within it. This is how her mother seems to her now—a presence, numbed, riding under the surface of things. “As long as I don’t move…” She doesn’t even finish the sentence. She’s angry at Partridge. Why? Is she jealous of him? He has memories of their mother and she doesn’t. He got into the Dome. She didn’t.
“So that’s all it was,” Partridge says, nodding at the chip on the floor. “A lot of trouble for something so small.” He pauses and then says, “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “Not until you did. I’d never hold back something like that.”
She can’t even look at him.
“I just wanted you to know that.”
She nods. It sends a sharp pain up her neck into the back of her head. “How do you feel about her now?” Pressia asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Is she still a saint? She cheated on your father,” Pressia says. “She had a child out of wedlock, a bastard.” She’s never thought of herself as a bastard before. For some reason, she likes it. It has a certain toughness.
“I didn’t come out here expecting simple answers,” Partridge says. “I’m happy you exist.”
“Thanks,” she says, smiling.
“What’s strange is that my father must have known. He’s been watching you all these years so he had to have known. I wonder how he took the news?”
“Not very well, I bet.”
Pressia folds the chip in her one good hand. Her eyes fill with tears. She thinks of the word mother—lullabies—and father—warm coat. Pressia has been a red dot on a screen, pulsing like a heartbeat. Yes, the Dome has known she exists. They’ve kept tabs on her, perhaps all her life. But maybe her parents have kept tabs on her, too.
Bradwell asks Partridge abruptly, “Did your mother go to church?”
“We got swiped every Sunday like everyone else,” Partridge says.
Pressia remembers the term card-carrying. It was something Bradwell had talked about during his mini lesson—the convolution of church and state. Churchgoers had cards. Their attendance was a matter of record.
“Not everyone,” Bradwell says. “Not the ones who refused to go once it was turned over to the state and then were shot to death in their beds.”
“Why did you ask the question?” Pressia asks Bradwell.
Bradwell sits down again. “Because the birthday card had religious wording. How did it go, Partridge?”
“Always walk in the light. Follow your soul. May it have wings. You are my guiding star, like the one that rose in the east and guided the Wise Men.”
Pressia recognizes the star in the east and the Wise Men from the Bible. Her grandfather has whole sections of the Bible memorized; they were often recited at funerals.
Bradwell says, “But was this typical of your mom?”
“I don’t know,” Partridge says. “She believed in God, but she said that she rejected government-sanctioned Christianity because she was Christian. The government stole her country and God. Once she said to my father, ‘And you. They stole you too.’ ” Partridge sits back as if he’s just remembered this now. “Strange that was in my brain all along. I can almost hear her say it.”
Pressia wishes that she had words from her mother that she could draw up from her memory, a voice. If her mother was the one singing her the lullaby, then she has something—lyrics, someone else’s words.
Bradwell says to Partridge, “So maybe it’s sincere.”
“If it’s sincere?” Partridge asks.
“It’s useless,” Bradwell says.
“If it’s sincere, then it means what it means,” Pressia says. “That’s not useless.”
“For us right now it is,” Bradwell says. “Your mother wanted you to remember certain things. Signs. Coded messages, the necklace. So I was hoping this would lead us to her. But maybe it was her way of saying good-bye, of giving you advice to last a lifetime.”
They’re all quiet a moment. Pressia turns around and leans her back against the cool wall. If this was her mother’s advice, what did it mean? Follow your soul. May it have wings. Always walk in the light. She imagines her soul having wings. She imagines following that soul. But where would it lead her here? There is nowhere to go. They’re surrounded by Meltlands and Deadlands. And there is no untarnished light—everything exists beneath a gritty veil of ash. Pressia envisions the wind pushing the veil as if it rests over a woman’s face and her breath billows the veil—her mother’s face, hidden from view. What if her mother truly is alive, somewhere? How would you lead someone, knowing the world was about to be wiped clean of markers?
“You are my guiding star, like the one that rose in the east and guided the Wise Men,” Partridge says. “Do you think she wants us to go due east?”
Bradwell pulls a map from the inside pocket of his jacket, the map they’d used to find Lombard. He spreads it out on the floor. The Dome, of course, is north, surrounded by barren terrain that gives way to some burgeoning woods before you hit the city. The Meltlands appear as gated communities in clumps surrounding the city to the east, south, and west. Then beyond that ring is a stretch of Deadlands.
Bradwell says, “Those hills in the east were a national reserve.”
“And in the fairy tale, the swan wife burrows underground. Maybe she is in an underground bunker in those hills,” Pressia says.
“So, tomorrow we head east,” Partridge says.
“But that could be dead wrong,” Pressia says.
“I don’t like the expression dead wrong,” Partridge says.
“East is all we’ve got,” Bradwell says.
Pressia looks at Bradwell’s face. She can see the light flecks of gold in his dark brown eyes. She’s never noticed them before. They’re beautiful—like honey. “It’s all we’ve got?” Pressia says to Bradwell. “You’ve paid your debt, okay?”
“I’m still in this,” Bradwell says.
“Only if you’re in it for your own sake.”
“Okay then, I’m in it for my own sake. I have selfish reasons. Does that work?”
Pressia shrugs.
Bradwell lifts her hand, opens her palm, his fingers on her fingers, and drops the necklace into her palm. “You should wear it,” he says.
“No,” she says. “It’s not mine.”
“But it is yours now, Pressia,” Partridge says. “She would want you to have it. You’re her daughter.”
Daughter—the word sounds foreign.
“Do you want it?” Bradwell asks.
“Yes,” she says.
Bradwell unlatches the dainty clasp. She swivels around, lifts her hair, careful of the bandage. He reaches over her head, holding the necklace with each hand. He locks the clasp. Once it catches, he lets go. “It looks nice,” he says.
She reaches up and touches the pendant with one finger. “I’ve never worn a real necklace. Not that I can remember.”
The pendant sits on Pressia’s chest below the leather choker keeping the padding on the back of her neck in place, sitting in the dip between her collarbones. The gem gleams a brilliant blue. This necklace once belonged to her mother. It touched her mother’s skin. What if it was a present from Pressia’s father? Will she ever know anything about he
r father?
“I can see her in you now,” Partridge says. “It’s the way you tilt your head, the gestures.”
“Really?” The possibility that she might look like her mother makes her happier than she’d have ever expected.
“That,” he says, “right there, in your smile.”
“I wish my grandfather could see it,” she tells them. She remembers how, as he gave her the clogs, he said that he wished it were something more beautiful, that she deserved something beautiful.
Here it is, a small piece of beauty.
PRESSIA
PISTONS
PARTRIDGE IS THE FIRST TO FALL ASLEEP. He’s lying down on his back, his injured hand over his heart. Pressia’s on the other pallet, and Bradwell’s on the floor; he insisted, but now Pressia hears him shifting around, trying to get comfortable.
“Enough. I can’t sleep with your rolling around all night,” she says. “I’ll make room for you.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Oh, so you get to do all the favors and get to be a martyr too? Is that how it works?”
“I didn’t come after you just because I owed your grandfather a debt. I tried to tell you earlier, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“All I’m hearing now is that you’re going to sleep on the floor, and I’m supposed to feel guilty about it.”
“Fine,” he says. He gets up off the floor and lies down next to her on the pallet.
She’s lying on her back, but Bradwell can’t—the birds are there, settling to sleep. He curls toward Pressia. For a moment, she can almost imagine that they’re out in a field under stars, a clear night. The room is quiet. She can’t sleep. “Bradwell,” she whispers. “Let’s play I Remember.”