PRESSIA
KEY
The door to Pressia’s room is locked. The caretakers come and go with rings of keys, jingling—how many rooms are there? Where’s Bradwell? Helmud and El Capitan? Where are her things—the vial, the formula?
The caretakers never answer her questions. They tell her to get well. “I’m not sick.” They tell her to rest. “I can’t sleep.” They smile and nod and point out the alarms attached to each of the walls in her room. “Push here if there’s an emergency.” The caretakers wear necklaces with emergency buttons attached to them too. But she doesn’t know what kind of emergency to expect. When she asks, they say, “Just in case…”
“In case of what?”
They won’t say.
Each day is the same. Too many days to count; weeks have passed—almost a month now?
The caretakers are all women and golden, each of them, almost glowing. Is it the firelight? Is it that so many of them are pregnant—don’t pregnant women glow? Is it some inner radiance? Most of them have bellies that bloom out from their hips. Engorged.
But it’s not just the caretakers who are golden. The children out in the field are too. They’re sent out at different intervals throughout the day to play. They have sticks and balls and nets on poles dug into the cold ground. Golden, all of them, as if steeped in something slightly metallic, and no fusings or scars or marks. Just skin. The alarms bob on the chests of their coats.
The caretakers bring Pressia trays of food: warm broths, porridges, tall glasses of cold milk—white, white milk, not a dot of ash stirring within it. The ash eaters are everywhere, skittering across spoons, along the edge of the metal bathtub, on the windowpanes, both inside and out. Beetle-backed and lightly iridescent, they seem to work night and day, resistant to cold.
One caretaker told her that they’ve been bred into existence to use their delicate arms to shovel ash into their tiny mouths, to clean the slate—that’s how she put it.
They’re the reason why the sky outside the window is tinged blue instead of gray.
They’re why the sheets, the pillowcases, even the tiny goose feathers that escape the comforter are often bright white. Pressia can’t remember ever seeing something so pristine.
Everything in her room is kept clean. Her sheets are changed every day. In the adjoining bathroom, there is always a new bar of soap. Someone even pulls out the tangled strands of loose hair wound through her brush; each morning it’s clean.
She traces her finger on the window and then looks beyond it. She can see an ancient stone tower, tilted as if leaning into the wind, strange lumbering beasts—the size of cows but with thick, rubbery, hairless coats, occasional tusks—roaming the misty, downward slope. Beyond the herd, there’s the airship, locked to the earth by a mound of greenery; it has been swallowed by vines.
Will they ever get back again? Home. Did it ever exist? And now, after all that’s happened, after all she’s done, does she deserve a place called home? Bradwell, his massive wings—she did that to him. She wants to go back to the way it was before. But there is no going back.
To clean the slate.
But what do you do when the slate cannot be made clean?
Is anyone working on the airship? Have Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud regained enough strength to travel? Will Bradwell ever forgive her?
“This is a waste of time!” She’s lost her patience a few times and yelled at the caretakers. “We have to get back home! People need us!”
They smile, nod, point out the alarms on the walls.
At night, when her room grows dark, the alarms glow red and she hears the howling. It comes every night—dogs off in the distance. Wolves, foxes, coyotes? What howling dogs live in this land? Sometimes she wishes the dogs would circle in closer, threaten to devour her. Maybe she wants to be torn to bits, to disappear.
And she wakes up feeling the same way. It’s her guilt that she wants to be torn to bits, devoured, to disappear. Bradwell. She thinks of him now, her room filling with morning light. After she injected the serum into the birds in his back, after those wings grew quickly and wildly as his ribs and shoulders also expanded, he said, “What did you do to me?” She knows now that she betrayed him. He didn’t want to be saved by the contents of the vial—the medicine that might one day lead to Purifying the survivors of all their scars and fusings. He wanted to die Pure—by his own definition of the word. But she couldn’t let him go.
Alone, still feeling dreamy, she lies in her bed and remembers what it was like in the stone underpass on the hard ground with Bradwell, his hands rough and warm, cupping her face. It was like being fully alive for the first time in her life—alive in every cell of her body. And now, something inside of her feels dead. She feels vacant. Bradwell hates her. She hates herself. She isn’t sure which one is worse. She would do anything to win back his trust, but she knows the damage can’t be undone.
She understands why he hates the idea of being able to reverse his fusings, erase their scars, philosophically; he doesn’t want to reverse or erase the past, the sins of the Dome. But she doesn’t understand why there isn’t even one small part of him—deep down—that desires to be made whole again.
She touches the scar on her inner wrist—a thin, puckered line where the synthetic skin of the doll’s head is traced through with her own nerve endings. At thirteen, she tried to cut off the doll head. She remembers the feel of the knife on her skin. It stung sharply. It was something she was in control of—not something that was happening to her. She would like to be in control. Did she think a stump would be better? Did she think at all? Not really. She wanted only to be free of it.
She still wants that. The vial and the formula get her one step closer to that possibility, but Bartrand Kelly confiscated these things—what they all risked their lives to unearth. If she can get these things back into the Dome where there are scientists still working in labs, it wouldn’t just help her. No. There could be a future where all the survivors are whole again.
She rubs her hidden knuckles locked within the doll’s skull and rakes her fingers up her arm. She wants to be whole. After all these years, who wouldn’t?
A key rattles the lock. The knob turns. It’s a bright morning.
Pressia sits up and scoots to the edge of her bed, waiting.
Fedelma is the only caretaker whose name she knows. She’s in charge of the other caretakers and pins her hair like two horned knots on top of her head. She has more power and maybe for this reason she’s allowed to do more talking. Pressia is relieved to see her.
Fedelma is pregnant too. Her belly is a taut drum she has to negotiate around, and she’s not young. Her hair is graying at the temples. The skin around her eyes crinkles a bit when she smiles. She pushes the heavy door wide open with one hand, holds a tin tray aloft with the other. “Did you sleep?” she asks.
“Barely,” Pressia says, and she drives to the point. “I want to see Bartrand Kelly.” She hasn’t seen him since the first day—a blur of noise, thorns, blood, and wings—when they were all loaded into a cart and taken in. “He has things that belong to me.”
“He’s good to his word,” Fedelma says, setting the tray on the bedside table. “He’ll tell you everything when the time is right.”
Everything. About her mother and father? About the past? Bartrand Kelly was one of the Seven. He was friends with her parents when they were all young. He knows more about her parents than she ever will. It seems incredible to her now that she ever hoped to find her father here. She misses him even though he’s a stranger to her.
“And the airship? Is he just going to let it stay covered by vines out there?”
“The vines are camouflage for now. They’ll keep the airship safe from predators and bands of thieves. It’s why the vines were bred to be carnivorous. A protection.”
Bred to be carnivorous? Pressia thinks. Somewhere there are laboratories, breeding grounds…
Fedelma reaches out and gently holds Pressia’s wrist—not that of the doll head, no. Fedelma is startled by the doll head, disturbed by the way it’s fused to Pressia’s fist, though she tries to pretend she isn’t fazed by it.
“What are you doing?” Pressia asks.
Fedelma pulls up Pressia’s sweater sleeve, revealing her arm. “See? Your skin has started to turn a bit golden,” she says. “Your food is laced with a chemical that deters the vines—a scent that emanates from your skin.”
Pressia sees it now too. The faintest hue. She pulls down her sleeve. “People don’t like to be poisoned,” she says.
“People don’t like to be choked to death by thorned vines.” This is true. Pressia saw how the vines almost killed Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud. “Eat,” Fedelma says, pushing the tray toward Pressia.
“Why won’t anyone tell me about the alarms? What are you afraid of?”
Fedelma rubs her arms as if chilled. “We don’t speak of it.” She walks to the window.
“I’ve heard the howling.”
“The wild dogs are ours. They help keep us safe.”
“Why won’t you just talk to me? Tell me the truth.”
“We’ve never had strangers arrive. We don’t know how to treat them, except as something foreign, maybe a threat.”
“Do I look like a threat?”
Fedelma doesn’t answer. “One of yours has started walking the grounds. I don’t know how he’s gotten permission. He was the one worst off when you arrived. Maybe he hasn’t gotten permission at all and yet he’s out there. I’ve seen him two days in a row now.”
Pressia gets up and walks quickly to the window. “Bradwell?”
Fedelma nods. “He’s a bit unsteady on his feet still since…”
The domesticated beasts have been herded elsewhere, but the children are there—running with balls and sticks. Much of the toys seem new, as do the hats and scarves. Christmas just passed. Did they get them as gifts? They shout and whistle. A few are singing in a small group, making hand gestures in unison.
One little girl in a bright red sweater skirts the edges of the groups. She’s holding a doll to her chest. Pressia imagines herself at that age with her own doll—the one that’s fused to her fist, forever. It was new once—its eyes shone and clicked in unison. To be new. To feel new. She can’t imagine…
Another girl walks up to the one with the doll—an identical twin. The two of them link arms and keep walking.
So many children, so few adults. They’re repopulating. They have to. Where’s Bradwell? “Do you see him now?” Pressia asks.
“No,” Fedelma says. “But he’s out there somewhere.”
“I have to go out too,” Pressia says.
Fedelma shakes her head. “You need to eat. You need your sleep. If you’re going to get stronger, you need—”
“I need to see him—with my own eyes.” Pressia walks to the door, which Fedelma forgot to lock behind her.
“No!” Fedelma says. “Pressia! Stop!”
But Pressia’s already through the door and starts running down the hall. She finds a stairwell and pounds down the steps. She can hear Fedelma behind her. “Pressia! Don’t!”
Should she be running while pregnant? How old is she anyway?
Pressia finds a heavy door to the outside.
The air is cutting and damp. She walks swiftly through the field of children, all of them golden.
One group is playing a game where some form a loose circle and the others, inside of the circle, spin and spin.
Look in a looking glass.
Look for a match.
Find yourself! Find yourself!
Don’t be the last!
The children in the ring shout the song, and then the dizzy children start chasing the others, fanning out across the grass.
But others, not playing the game, stop and stare at Pressia. And now that she’s among them, she spots another set of twins. She sees a third who looks identical. She’s never seen triplets before. She doesn’t want to stare at them, though; she doesn’t like being stared at herself.
A boy with jet-black hair says, “Look!” and he points at the doll-head fist. Pressia refuses to hide it.
Fedelma, huffing behind her, shouts, “Quiet, boy! Go on about your play.”
Pressia heads toward the stone tower; she needs to get a better view. These kids remind her of what things might be like in the Dome. The breathable air, the lack of deformities, scars, and fusings. She wonders where her half brother, Partridge, is now. He turned himself back in to the Dome. Is he finding people who will help him find a way to take over his father’s reign? Will he remember those suffering on the outside? Will he do the right thing? Is Pressia doing the right thing, imprisoned here, wasting precious time? Will Bartrand Kelly be true to his word?
“You shouldn’t be out!” Fedelma shouts after her. “You’re under strict orders to recuperate! If Bartrand Kelly knew about this, it wouldn’t be good. Are you listening? Are you?”
Pressia runs the rest of the way to the tower, her lungs stinging from the cold. She takes the small circular staircase two steps at a time, pulling herself up the handrail with her good hand. She presses the side of the doll’s head to her chest, as if it can hear her pounding heart.
The tower is round with a peaked roof. The narrow windows are just casements—no glass. The wind tunnels in. The stone is cold and weathered, with patches of slick moss. She stops at one of the casements and looks out—rolling fog, another view of the airship. The vines rustle and the airship seems to bobble a little. Are the vines digging in so deeply that the ship itself is shaken by them?
Will they ever get out of here? Without the airship, it’s not possible.
She moves quickly to the next casement—a few beasts, the kind she can’t name, nosing grass near a stony ledge.
She hears Fedelma’s boots on the stairs. Pressia turns and there Fedelma is, breathing heavily.
“Should you be running after me in your condition?” Pressia says.
“Should you be out running around in your condition?” Fedelma counters. They both left the main house without coats. Fedelma clamps her arms on her chest, atop her belly. The wind whips the fine hairs that have spun loose from the two pointy buns on top of her head.
“Why do you think I’m sick?” Pressia asks. “Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud—they were the ones who almost died. Not me.”
“They’re sick from the thorns’ puncture wounds, but your case is more serious, in some ways. You’re sick of heart.”
Pressia’s startled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she does. Her pain is inside of her like a heavy stone that has been laid on her chest. Guilt, loss, betrayal. She moves to the next narrow window and looks out. She sees only sky and earth and distant trees. An ash eater is crawling up between the tightly wedged stones. She nudges it with the tip of her finger.
“You have to heal within,” Fedelma says. “It takes time.”
Pressia’s eyes fill with tears. The weight feels so heavy it’s hard to breathe. It brings pressure to her lungs, sharp aches inside of her chest.
“Kelly wants to see you today. All of you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I’m not supposed to have told you.” She sighs. “He’ll help you, but he’ll want something in return.”
“What?”
Fedelma dips her head to a window. It’s quiet for a moment, except for the children playing in the field and the wind. “There’s the one you’re looking for,” Fedelma says, and she steps back from the window. “Have a look.”
Pressia moves quickly.
Bradwell is walking downhill through the tall grass. Three pairs of massive wings are hunched on his back, dovetailing at his boot heels. The tips of the wings drag behind him. He’s not used to the weight of the wings, and the harsh shifts of wind push him. The wings make him ungainly, clumsy, and tentative—almost like a colt trying to get used to new legs.
Fignan, ever loyal, follows him, the black box of his body suspended on his spindly legs connected to his wheels, which flatten a narrow swath of grass behind him.
She remembers the syringe in her shaking hand and how she injected each of the three small birds embedded in his back. He wanted to die on his own terms. She robbed him of that. Still, he’s alive. Her heart thrums in her chest. She can’t apologize for saving him, no matter what. She can’t.
And he’ll never forgive her for that.
He stops, and for a moment, she wonders if he can feel her eyes on him. But he doesn’t turn toward her. He looks up at the sky—birds wheeling overhead. He’s still pale from the loss of blood, but his jawline is sharp, his eyes steely. He takes a deep breath, which broadens his chest. As he watches the birds glide, one of his wings twitches, almost imperceptibly.
Turn. Turn and look at me, she urges him. I’m here.
But he hunches again and keeps walking into the wind.