Then the wanderers remarried everyone.
It’s not unusual to lose a husband or wife. Widowers, especially, sprout up as women bleed out or die in childbirth, and hapless men are left with cooking, cleaning, and parenting they are utterly unprepared to do. There is usually a mother, or sister, or aunt happy to take care of a bereaved man, especially if they themselves are barren. But the wanderers encourage remarriage, and while there has been the rare man who prefers to set up housekeeping with a sterile, set-aside sister, most seek out new wives avidly; widows are in high demand. Courtship is no-nonsense but friendly, the weddings cheerful and jokey. Remarriages breed the occasional household with three or four children. These rich, chaotic families cause ripples of envy even if the husband and wife soon grow to dislike each other, or the children beat one another with fury in the shadow of evening.
This time, after the sickness fully ended, the wanderers took all of the bereaved into a cold field, commanding them to pair up and get married before the day was out.
People wept and trembled. For some, their dead spouses weren’t even buried. As the wanderers loomed around them, they shakily, obediently tried to pick the person they thought would be best. A few men fought over Mrs. Moses, the young pretty one, and nobody wanted to marry old Mrs. Adam, the dung collector’s widow, who still smelled like an outhouse. Caitlin’s father didn’t even show up. There were more men than women, and a few were left wifeless.
The couples got married then and there, and negotiation about houses immediately followed. Now there are empty houses for the new families from the wastelands. Many daughters got new fathers, and cried and cried. The boys who got new fathers grieved too. Those who saw strange women installed in the place of their mothers sobbed. For days, everyone on the island seemed to be constantly weeping, eyes swollen and seeping constantly like festering wounds.
Mr. Abraham’s son died, and so every time anyone cried at school he would struggle not to join them. The tears in his eyes were visible anyway, and that made more children break down.
And yet yesterday, nobody cried in class. Today, so far, nobody has cried. Mr. Abraham has delivered a dry-eyed lecture on arithmetic and then the many uses of tree bark. Emily Abraham, who sits across from Vanessa, absently picks and scratches at a scab on her leg, and Vanessa watches a thick bead of blood slowly descend in a stripe from her knee to her ankle. The squeak of charcoal on slate is almost unbearable.
The normalcy of it all makes Vanessa feel oddly guilty. When she could finally leave the house, the weight of the dead came crashing down on her, multiplying with each name until the breath was pressed from her. Letty, Frieda, Rosie, Lily, Caitlin, Hannah—the names didn’t seem to end. The slick black grief entered her once more, flowed across the ground and rained from the sky, turning everything dark and dull. All the pregnant women died with their babies inside them. There are so many bodies, most of them rotting already, and a disgustingly sweet stench hangs in the air and coats Vanessa’s skin with a film of death. She heard there is such a glut of bodies that some had to be chopped up and dumped off the ferry so the crops wouldn’t be overwhelmed with rot.
Now it feels like they’re pretending it didn’t happen, these dry-eyed children. Vanessa fears they’re letting down the dead, and yet they’re all so close to dead anyway. Everyone is pale and slow, and half of the children are still coughing. Vanessa feels tired and sick all the time, even though she never actually had the sickness. At recess, the girls just sit. They stare into space, they sigh, they lean on the friends who are left. Slowly, Vanessa can see the younger children recovering, like flowers regaining their height after a cold snap. They unbend and blossom, have moments of laughter and play, before the cold stares of their elders turn on them and they sink guiltily back into the shadows. And suddenly, Vanessa seems to be one of these elders. The children’s laughter infuriates her, their bold resilience when she is broken and dead.
Everyone is eating better now. People exchange stores, and there are rabbits and milk and berries. Every day after school, Vanessa finds Mother sitting with some woman in the kitchen, or having just returned from someone else’s house. Dust collects in the corners, and stains grow on the tabletop. Everyone is so busy consoling each other, and yet nobody speaks to the children. Vanessa is pretty sure they don’t know what to say.
Father is also gone, meeting with the wanderers, planning, plotting. They’re not going to bring in the new families until autumn. Father talks about “recruiting” and Vanessa doesn’t know what it means. He’s always irritable, and sometimes just angry, snapping and making Ben cry. Vanessa saw a bruise on Mother’s leg the other day, which made Vanessa think of poor, dead Caitlin Jacob. Now that Caitlin is gone, Vanessa remembers her small braveries, and she weeps for ever thinking her weak and useless.
Rachel Joseph reaches back to scratch her shoulder and then drops a folded piece of paper on Vanessa’s desk. Her posture is so similar to Letty’s that Vanessa stares for a while, unsure if she’s dreaming. Vanessa’s hand has healed to a pink, puckered scar, but it still hurts to move her fingers. Clumsily, she opens the note; written in minuscule letters is “Church. Midnight. Janey.” Vanessa stares as if the words are gibberish, remembering the thrill that would have run through her, back when she was young and people were alive. Right now all she can muster is a faint flare of curiosity.
Janey hasn’t come back to school, but Vanessa knows she’s still alive. She assumes they have just given up on educating her, since Janey knows more than anyone already. She misses her keenly. Vanessa thought a lot about dream islands, lying in her bed at home waiting for the world to start or end. She wondered if the wastelands were just another island, a big one, with stockpiles from the world before. She wondered if maybe she could swim to another island, if anyone has ever tried.
Maybe Janey will tell them. Maybe she’s been to another island, and that’s why they haven’t seen her. Maybe she’s been going to another island all along, and she brought the sickness back with her. With Janey, anything is possible.
Feeling a stab of excitement for the first time in months, Vanessa can’t suppress a happy sigh. Rachel twists around when Mr. Abraham isn’t looking and half smiles. Vanessa smiles back at her, expecting her face to crack from it. The air feels foreign and cold on her teeth, and her cheeks ache. Then tears fill her eyes, and she crumples and puts her head on her desk.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Vanessa