The Refuge Song (33 page)
Authors: Francesca Haig
“Not Leonard, though,” I said. And I realized that we still had to tell Zoe about Leonard's body hanging from the tree.
Piper saw my lips tighten. “It's not hopeless, Cass. We have the alliance with the Ringmaster, and his army. We freed New Hobart. The news of the refuges and the tanking is spreading fast. We've found out the truth about the Council's plans for the blast. You destroyed the Ark, with all those tanks, and whatever pieces of the blast machine they hadn't already taken. And we've found Elsewhere.”
What he said was true. But like everything, these days, it was doubled. New Hobart was safe from the Council for nowâbut I wasn't sure how long we could trust the Ringmaster. He would approve of us destroying the Ark, but his reaction to Paloma, and the news of Elsewhere's cure for twinning, was less certain.
We had found Elsewhere, but the Council and their blast machine were searching, too. Either the people of Elsewhere would be our saviors, or we would be their doom.
I stared down at my hands, holding the wooden rail at the stern of
The Rosalind
. Since that day in the silo, I sometimes looked at my own body with incredulity. Zach was my twin, but it had felt as though it was Kip's death that I could not possibly survive. But here I was. The same hands. The same heart, still churning blood. Since Kip had taken that leap, I'd punished my traitorous body every day, for continuing. I'd embraced the cold, and the hunger, and the exhaustion, as if they were my dueâuntil those moments in the flooded Ark, when I'd caught myself fighting for my life. And there'd been no noble desire to save the resistance in my mind during those breathless moments in the tunnels. Only my own desire for life. Hope was not a decision I made. It was a stubborn reflex. The body squirming toward the air. The taking of the next breath, and the one after that.
Months ago, when we'd looked down toward the distant sea from McCarthy's Pass, Piper had told me that there wasn't only ugliness left in the world. Believing that had very often felt like more of a stretch than believing in Elsewhere. But in the flooded Ark, I'd fought for life. And I was glad of itâglad to feel the ship's wood beneath my hands, as I stood and watched the horizon with Zoe and Piper at my side.
Paloma would be waiting for us at the prow, and there would be information to share, plans to be made. The conflict had spread, somehow, to encompass the world. For all my visions, I could not see my way through it. But for these few moments I stopped trying. I allowed my body to be enough. I remembered what I had said to myself, as a child, when I was trying to resign myself to my newly branded face:
This is my life now
. Here, on
The Rosalind
, I let the words unfold in my mind once more:
This is my life now.
The emphasis had shifted.
I spoke out loud to Zoe and Piper the words I'd not yet admitted to myself. “Before, when I refused to kill myself, it was because I was protecting Zach. Now, it's not Zach I want to save.” I looked up at them. “It's myself. I want more days. I want to see more things like this.” I gestured at the sea below us, the gulls hoisting themselves on the wind coming off the cliffs. “I want to listen to bards again. I want to get old, as old as Sally, and have a head full of memories instead of visions.”
It felt wrong to be smiling. That small declaration,
more days
, felt more audacious than ever in the face of the Ark's secret.
All my memories were entangled with death. But I claimed them, nonetheless, gathering them up as I'd gathered the fragments of Leonard's guitar. There, facing the sea, I closed my eyes and let myself remember.
acknowledgments
My exemplary agent, Juliet Mushens, has been the best possible partner for this series, with invaluable support from Sarah Manning, and from Sasha Raskin in the U.S.
For their clear and insightful reading and advice, I warmly thank my editors Natasha Bardon at HarperVoyager (UK) and Adam Wilson at Gallery Books (USA). I would also like to thank my excellent copyÂeditors, Joy Chamberlain and Erica Ferguson.
Clara Haig-White and Andrew North have been patient and thoughtful advisers throughout the writing process. Sarah Heaton helped me to arrive at the title.
I am enormously grateful for the work of Florence Laty, Aysel Durmaz, and Julie Bonaparte, who helped to care for my son while I wrote this book.
about the author
Francesca Haig grew up in Tasmania, gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Chester. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and anthologies in both Australia and England, and her first collection of poetry,
Bodies of Water
, was published in 2006. In 2010 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship.
The Fire Sermon
, her first novel, was published in 2015. She lives in London with her husband and son.
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Jacket art by Tony Mauro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-6719-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-6726-0 (ebook)