Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(81)
“I was in Vancouver for a year. Now I have come to stay with my cousin. She works on the farm here. Perhaps you know her, Sandra Clement?”
“Yes,” Joyce said, and then a little silence settled between them before she thought to introduce herself. “My name is Joyce Collingwood, by the way. Yes. Just like the station. I was found there when I was a baby.”
“Oh,” the young man said. He seemed surprised but smiled and nodded as though he knew all about it, then looked at her thoughtfully before saying, “You are very pretty.”
Joyce was shocked. The last person to tell her that had been the dowager. Instinctively Joyce pulled the scarf up to cover the lower half of her face. It had fallen away while she had been harvesting the herbs. The cloth hid her blush. Or so she hoped. “You shouldn’t say such things.”
“Truth shall fill the penitent mouth.”
“And discretion council his tongue.”
“I am sorry if I embarrassed you, but you are pretty.”
“A man should not say things like that to a woman he meets in a field. If the deacon hears about it, he will be mad.”
“And he will tell the priest.”
“We have no priest of our own. Not yet.” Joyce paused and her lip quivered a little. “There is one coming tonight.”
“You don’t sound happy about that. Surely you want to have a leader.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “but there is more to it. He is going to marry me.”
That was the first time that Joyce had said it. Hearing it in her own voice was worse than thinking about it and she let out a little sob.
The young man looked concerned and asked, “But surely you are happy about having a husband.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him. He’s probably some old man with cold hands.”
“Are warm hands important to you?” the young man asked.
Joyce looked at him in shock and then broke down entirely. Great sobs erupted. Her head dropped into her hands and she took shuddering breaths. All the weight of the world pressed down on her. She wished that everything would go away. It did not. An arm curled around her shoulder, warm and comforting. Joyce collapsed into the embrace without thinking, pushing against a strong chest as she let her tears flow. It was only when a nail scratched her ear that she realized what was happening.
“What are you doing?” Joyce shrieked as she tore herself free. She toppled forward, landed on her hands and knees, then scuttled away from her comforter like an enraged crab. “What if someone had seen us?”
The young man held up placating hands. “It would be all right.”
“All right? I tell you I am getting married and you put your arms around me?”
“It really will be fine,” he assured her. “We had chaperones. You see?”
Joyce looked in the direction indicated by the young man. She had been wrong about the time. The Penitents had finished their prayers and were returning to the fields. A group of them stood a short distance away, watching her and the young man. Joyce scrambled to her feet, grabbed her basket and fled. When she dared to look back, the young man had his back to her and was deep in conversation with several members of the Convocation who had seen their indiscretion.
Joyce had no idea how she could face any of them after this. She wanted to run back to the market tent and hide under her table but she needed supplies.
In the farthest part of the farm she cut the last of the necessary herbs and then bartered for vegetables. These cost too much but her heart was not in the bargaining. She was disgraced. Despair. Promiscuity. Ingratitude. There was no end to her sins. She could not even imagine the penance that would be laid on her.
With supplies in her basket, she crept homeward. Like a punishment, the wind began to rise in rough gusts, tearing the fog away from the land and raising the stinging grit. Joyce dropped her face behind a hunched shoulder for protection. The scarf was not enough. As she walked, her eyes were drawn to the vast area of the burn where the blackened rectangles were only now softening beneath brambles and the stunted twists of trees. Most of those ruins had been homes before the Fire. Divine wrath had consumed them. The survivors might dispute whether it had been God or Gaia but the truth of the devastation was plain for all to see. The old world had been punished for its evils. Those that did not repent their faults must continue to suffer. That was why Joyce was suffering.
The thought crushed her. She had done something to bring this all upon herself. She had tried so hard to be righteous but she had failed. She deserved the whipping wind. And she deserved whatever was to come. Tears and the flow from her nose soaked the scarf and made breathing difficult as Joyce struggled to carry her burden down the hill. The world, already murky through the dusty glass of the goggles, was now blurred by brimming eyes. Joyce tripped and dropped her basket as she tried to right herself. The food scattered. Turnips and potatoes began to roll downhill. The wind caught the lighter bunches of herbs and spread them across the slope.
Screaming and sobbing, Joyce dove after her precious provisions. Then he was there again. Losing his hat while scrambling after the herbs so that his yellow hair flew in the wind. He captured the errant bunches, returned them to her basket, and then joined the pursuit of the rolling tubers. Joyce wanted to shout at him until he went away but the words could not find their way past the grief. She could not stop him. She could not drive him off. All she could do was watch as he captured each wayward vegetable and stuffed it into his coat until all could be returned to the basket.