He has to tell her something more. He takes a deep breath. “I saw that I would do this in a dream,” he finishes.
Margaret doesn’t laugh at him. Her expression does not change at all, but there is a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “You will be the father, and I will be the mother.”
He hesitates. “You believe me?”
“Why shouldn’t your dream be as real as anyone else’s? Why shouldn’t you do what you say you will? Tessa says you’re special. I know what she means. I can tell by looking at you. By listening to you. I don’t have dreams anymore. I don’t even have hope. I want both again. If I come with you, I think I will find them.”
He shakes his head. “It is dangerous in the ruins, outside the compound walls. You know what’s out there, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“I can’t be with you all the time. I might not be there to protect you when you need it.”
“Or I you,” she replies without blinking. “Life is a risk. Life is precious. But life has to be lived in a way that matters. Even now.” She reaches out her hand. “Take me with you. Give me a chance. I don’t ask for anything else. If you decide it isn’t working out, you can bring me back or leave me. You are not bound to me. You owe me nothing.”
He does not believe this for a moment, knowing that if he agrees to take her with him, he is accepting responsibility for her on some level. But the force of her plea moves him. The intensity of her eyes captivates him. He sees strength in her that he has not often found, and he believes it would be a mistake to underestimate it.
“She does not belong in the compounds,” Tessa says quietly.
“Nor do you.”
But in the end it is Margaret who goes with him and Tessa who stays behind.
*
IT WAS MIDMORNING when he departed with Cheney for the waterfront.
The day was overcast, but not rainy, the air thick with the taste of chemicals and the smell of putrefaction. The wind was blowing off the water, the ocean waste spills making their presence known. It was like this on the coastlines when the wind was blowing the wrong way. The spills, which had taken place even before the start of the wars, had all but overpowered the natural cleansing ability of the oceans and left millions of square miles fouled. Their poisons were dissipating, but the detritus washed back up regularly through the estuaries and inland passages to clog the shorelines and remind the humans that the damage they had done was mostly irreparable. Some of those poisons were carried onshore by the wind, which was what Hawk could taste on the air. He closed his mouth, put a cloth over his face, and tried not to breathe.
A futile effort, he knew. The poisons were everywhere. In the air, the water and the land, and the things that lived in or on all of it. There was no escaping what had been done. Not for the humans alive now. Maybe for those who would be born a hundred years down the road, but Hawk would never know.
He had waited with Owl until the others awoke, eaten breakfast—a meal consisting of oatmeal, condensed milk, and sugar, all of it salvaged from packaging that time and the weather had not eroded—then called the others together to give them their marching orders. Panther was to take Sparrow, Candle, and Fixit and try to retrieve the stash of bottled water that the latter had discovered with Chalk on the previous day. Bear was to take Chalk up on the roof and retrieve the water storage cylinders, which would have absorbed their purification tablets by now. River was to stay with Owl to help look after Squirrel. He had given strict warning that no one was to go outside alone or to become separated from the others if out in a group. Until they found out what had done such terrible damage to the Lizard they had stumbled across yesterday, they would assume that everyone was at risk.
“So that changes things how?” Panther had sniffed dismissively as he headed out the door.
Hawk had waited until Panther’s group was gone and Bear and Chalk had departed for the roof, then warned Owl again to keep the door barred until she was sure who was on the other side. Just to be certain, he had waited on the other side of the metal barrier until he heard the heavy latch click into place.
Now he stood outside in the street, waiting while Cheney relieved himself, thinking of the dead Lizard, still bothered by the mystery behind the damage it had incurred and determined to find out what had caused it. To do that, he needed to visit the Weatherman. The sky had turned darker and more threatening, as if rain were on the way. And it might be, but it was unlikely.
Days like this one came and went all the time, gray and misty and sterile. Rain used to fall regularly in this city, but that wasn’t true anymore.