Give the Dark My Love(68)

“Not one step further.” Elder Gryff stood in front of our yard gate, a gun leveled at my chest. He wore a heavy cloth mask over his face, and his eyes were wide with terror. Behind him, people clutched stones. Not just children—neighbors. Friends. Kyln, the boy Ernesta thought was handsome. The Petrasens, whose son I had cared for when the mother was laid up in bed with her second child. There was Lorrina, the butcher. Tears streamed down her face, but she gripped her heavy rock.

“They’re dead,” I said, my voice pleading. I turned to the house and saw Nessie in the door, afraid to step out onto the porch. “Please, let me and my sister leave. We’re not infected. My parents . . . they’re already gone.”

“Go back inside.”

“They’re dead!” I screamed. “We can’t stay in there with them!”

Elder Gryff tilted his head, looking down the barrel of the gun. His finger was tight on the trigger.

“Please,” I begged.

“We can’t risk it,” he said.

Up and down the street, more than a half dozen homes had black cloth over the windows. Our village was dying, and the council was trying its best to save who was left. A part of me understood it. Agreed with it. But my parents were dead inside that house, and this mob wanted to trap me with their corpses.

“Please,” I said again. “We’ll take the mule cart and go. I have friends in the city.”

“You could infect every village you pass on the way out.” Elder Gryff’s voice was choked.

I bowed my head, turned, and went back inside. Ernesta shut the door behind me, the sound of the metal latch echoing throughout the house.





FORTY-TWO


    Nedra



I sent Ernesta to the kitchen as I gathered Papa’s stiffening body onto a quilt and dragged it down the hall lined with the books he loved so much. I put him on the floor beside Mama, and then I doused the fire. My sister and I did what we could to pay respect to our dead parents. We said the Oryon prayers. Nessie lit candles near their eyes, so that the light could guide their souls to the afterlife. I took off their shoes and rubbed dirt into the soles of their feet so that it would be easier for their spirits to leave the bodies. We carried out the traditions, we mourned as we were able, and we slept that night in each other’s arms, huddled in the corner opposite my parents’ corpses.



* * *



? ? ?

The next morning, I blinked away the fear and panic and sorrow and forced myself to become Nedra the student, not Nedra the daughter. I took Ernesta by the hand, and we left the room where my parents were laid to rest, shutting the door firmly behind us.

“How long will we have to wait?” I asked my sister.

“A week,” she said. “When the Sens fell sick, Elder Gryff made us all wait a week, then he shouted to see if there were any survivors.”

“Were there?”

Ernesta didn’t look at me. She was staring at the loaf of bread Mama had made, still sitting on the counter. “The middle child, Ivynna. She came outside.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “I’m glad one of them lived.”

“Her hand . . .” Ernesta looked down at her own hand, extending her fingers in a way I knew Ivynna must not have been able to. “They sent her back inside and waited another week. When she didn’t come to the door a second time, they burned the house.”



* * *



? ? ?

We busied ourselves with emptying out the cabinets, laying all the food on the kitchen table. We left Mama’s bread on the counter. We weren’t going to eat that.

“This will last us the week,” I said. “We just need to be careful.”

“I’m not hungry,” Ernesta said.

We sat down at the table, and we tried not to think about what was behind the closed door of the front room.



* * *



? ? ?

That night, Ernesta and I slept in our beds, our hands bridging the distance between our mattresses.

“Tell me about the school.” Ernesta whispered. “And the people you met, and the city. Tell me about Grey.”

I pretended to be asleep.



* * *



? ? ?

Ernesta and I went through the motions of being alive, but we moved carefully, as if we’d planned these slow dance steps, picking our way through the house, our eyes sliding over the closed doors. We lit a fire in the kitchen for light—the black curtains blocked the sun, and the oil in the lamps would run out quickly. In the stifling heat, I spread open the book Master Ostrum had given me.

I read every word Bennum Wellebourne had written on those pages. I studied it closer than I’d studied any book before. But there was nothing about the plague.

Ernesta opened the trunk at the end of the hall, the one that held Mama’s crafts—gifts she had been making for us for when we married or moved away from home. Mama had started working on it when I first received my acceptance letter from Yūgen, but already there were two quilts inside, one for me and one for Ernesta. Nessie took hers and lay in bed, clutching the cloth against her chest as if it were a doll.

My eyes blurred as I struggled to read. I didn’t want Wellebourne’s words. I wanted Papa’s. I felt guilty to put aside the text Master Ostrum had given me, but maybe there was something else on Papa’s shelves, something like my great-grandmother’s journal.