Lotus and Thorn (37 page)

MY VOICE WAS HOARSE,
but I raised it up anyway. The words rasping against my scorched throat. “May the fire cleanse you. May you take wing from the ashes and be remade. You are worthy.”

A tear streaked down my cheek as I knelt in the grit. Mourning the girl I’d known. The ruthless, unflinching woman Marisol had become. And the courage she’d died with.

I wished this was not happening again. I wished this was not how our new world had to begin—built on the bones of the old. But maybe that’s how worlds are made.

Nik and I clung to each other, there in the sand. Each lost in our own complicated grief. Until a cold, wet nose wedged itself between us. Nudging my arm up and out of the way. Insisting that she be included in the hug.

And when she couldn’t stand it any longer, the pup bowled me over. Humid, stinky breath in my face. Cleaning off my tears with her sticky tongue.

“Okay. Okay!” I laughed, pushing her away. “Enough.”

And it was.

• • •

Nik and I held hands as we climbed the steep hill out of the valley in silence. The pup led the way with a wagging tail. Impatient with our slowness, she ran ahead, then doubled back to check on us. Then ran ahead again.

“Do you think that’s who I was talking to on the radio, then?” I asked, thinking out loud. I had so many questions, but this one had been with me since I first discovered the plane. “Do you think it was someone from the LOTUS Corporation, way on the other side of the mountains? Can they really not have known we were here . . . all this time?”

Nik was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “If you infected and then murdered millions of people, I doubt you’d go looking very closely at the end results. Especially if things generally appeared the way you expected them to. I think you’d just try to bury what happened and get on with the job of putting the world back together.”

I nodded. “Do you think our people ever imagined we’d still be hiding here, believing our own lies five hundred years later? Do you think they’d even recognize who we’ve become?”

We crested the ridge, and we could see fragments of the burning plane strewn all across Tierra Muerta. Pillars of smoke staining the early dawn—black against the fading grey.

“I don’t know,” Nik said. “But we’re alive, aren’t we?”

“Well,” I said, gazing up at the open sky, “we certainly are now.”

• • •

We hiked out to the magfly I’d left behind. But when we reached it, I had to coax the pup aboard, holding her while Nik closed the door. She whined a little.

“I know.” I buried my face in her soft fur. “But we’re going home.”

The sky turned pink and ash floated down across the valley like snow. Nik and I stood hand in hand watching the burning wasteland slide past. There were more fires on the Festival Grounds and fear clutched at my heart. What would be left of Pleiades? I hit the emergency brakes, the magfly dragging its rudders in the sand.

But when I got out, I was relieved to see they were simply bonfires, granting light and warmth to the crowded grounds. Behind the crackling flames, the nine buildings of Pleiades stood tall and untouched, shimmering in the rising sun. I had no prayers left in me—I had given Marisol my final one. So I simply let the words float up on the morning air.

“Thank you.”

People were everywhere. Carrying bodies on cots and improvised stretchers. Corralling groups of children. Asking for news of loved ones. And Lotus stood in the middle of it all, her voice booming across the Festival Grounds.

“Conscious patients in the north corner! Unconscious in the east. Dead in west. And if you come across anyone you suspect might not have been dosed by the flys, take them to the south corner.”

Alejo touched Lotus’s arm gently and pointed to Nik and me, crossing the field. Her face lit up and her body, which had been bent with exhaustion, suddenly lifted and stretched taller. She made a tiny understated wave—a happy, sad, perfect gesture in the midst of all the turmoil.

As I returned the wave, I was surprised to realize that she no longer looked anything like Taschen had. Lotus only looked like herself now. And it made my heart hurt and glad at the same time.

But when we reached her, Lotus was all business. She looked at Nik first. “Ada’s gonna be glad to see you. She’s in the south corner dosing people with nanites and I know she could use your help.”

“Of course.” Nik squeezed my hand, already turning and jogging across the field.

“Alejo, can you take the pup down to the tunnels? If anyone can find Jaesun down there, it’ll be her.”

“Jaesun’s missing?” My chest tightened. I had lost too many people over the course of the day.

“The whole tunnel collapsed while they were getting the last folks out,” she said. “We’ve been digging for hours, but there’s so much rubble, it’s hard to know where to look.”

Alejo and another Indigno had already jumped into action—finding a bit of jerky, enticing the pup out to the Reclamation Fields—and I noticed the way they looked at Lotus. With complete confidence. She’d become someone people were happy to follow. She’d become someone
I’d
be happy to follow. And I was glad to call her my sister.

But once we were alone, the face of the fearless leader dropped away and there was my little sister underneath. Her shoulders caved in and weariness crept to the surface.

I pulled her to me, smiling even in my own sadness. “You’re alive!”

“Actually, I think
I’m
the one who’s earned the right to be surprised.” She hugged me tight. “You were already reported dead once tonight . . . and then, when I saw the explosion, I was sure.”

“You know about Taschen?” My voice was soft.

Lotus nodded. “I was one of the first ones Nik treated, so once
I recovered, I was able to help other Indignos clear the labs. They found Tasch in that first hour too, but . . .” And she let herself cling to me for a second before pulling herself upright again. “We lost so many of them . . . probably lost a third of the wards.”

A third.
It was a sobering figure.

Inside the Dome, the story was the same. Thanks to the nanites, most people survived the Decontamination Protocol, but not all.

June met me at the door of the Genetics Lab, where an exhausted, but very much alive, Riya was hovering over a sleeping Oksun.

“Are they okay?”

“Yes,” June said, with a tired smile. “Thanks to Ada’s quick thinking, everyone who was in the streets was fine; the concentration of the toxin wasn’t strong enough to kill them. But the gas was piped directly into the Salvage Hall . . .”

“Sarika and her followers.” And I thought of the look of rapture on Sarika’s unmoving face.

June nodded.

It hurt that my last real memory of Sarika was her abandoning me to a mob. Still. She’d been true to own her beliefs. She’d sacrificed herself for them.

“There must have been fifty Citizens down there,” I said.

June took my hand. “I know.”

There had been other tragedies too. Planck and one of the Ellas had died in the riots, along with a handful of other Curadores. And there was Jenner, of course.

But there was good news too. The pup found Jaesun and his group alive and unharmed, if a little hungry and thirsty. Olivia
had been found and revived in Ward C. The Dome was trashed, but intact—along with the Meat Brewery, the water pumps, the generators, and the Salvage Hall. And all through the day, Nik’s nanites continued to win the battle, healing the Citizens and inoculating the Curadores and Mothers.

I was also spared the task I’d been dreading since I’d stepped out onto the Festival Grounds—how to tell people about Earth. It turned out that while I’d been out in Tierra Muerta, Ada had been combing through the LOTUS files and learned all about it, the same way Edison had. News had spread through the Dome like flys and by dawn, everyone knew. All day, I overheard snatches of conversations—curious, disbelieving, angry, even a few people excited about the revelation. But in truth there was so much to do, no one had time to really absorb the idea. That would be for tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that.

Today was for saying good-bye.

• • •

By the time the sun set, everyone was either strong enough to stand, or they were on the pyres.

Lotus and Alejo were at my side, and as torches were laid on the graves, Lotus took my hand. Tasch wasn’t out there in the field, but we were both thinking of her. Mourning her for the second time. Nik took my other hand and leaned in to kiss my head. Nearby, the pup whined from where she sat on Jaesun’s feet, making sure he wasn’t going anywhere.

The Festival Grounds became a field of flames. Blocking out the stars. Even those who could barely walk were there to bear witness to what had happened.

Ada, June, Oksun, and Riya all watched together. Behind them, the ranks of Kisaengs and Mothers were shoulder to shoulder. My pain was reflected on each of their faces and somehow that made it more bearable. The weight of it shared among us all. And I saw it—strong and bright and real this time. What our new world would look like. Who would usher it in.

It would be built out of pain and love, and loss would be its foundation. A house of air and light.

Because that’s how worlds are made.

• • •

We slept out there—Nik and me and the pup—huddled together for warmth. I’d wanted to stay with those we’d lost. To make sure that the fire freed them from this place that’d been their home and their cage.

A noise woke me just after dawn—a harsh beating of the air. My breath puffed out in the chill early morning.

Nik was awake now too. His hair wild. His sleep-fuzzed face searching for danger. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. You hear that?” The noise was getting louder and I got to my feet, looking east, toward the crest of the mountains.

It was a low steady pulse now, throbbing through me. Shaking my bones.

Thooom-thooom-thooom-thooom.

And over the ridge—glowing orange in the new sun—rose three monstrous machines. Their propellers cutting against the air. Descending on the valley.

As they got closer, I could see they were ancient and dilapidated. The bodies had been patched and repatched, until they were
nothing but an overlapping quilt of steel and rust. The only thing shiny on them were gun turrets bolted to the sides. I linked my hand with Nik’s and tucked the LOTUS necklace back under my shirt—the cold metal burning like ice against my skin.

After five hundred years, Earth had remembered
us.

Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang

SARA WILSON ETIENNE
went to college in Maine to become a marine biologist . . . but when her research transformed itself into a novel, she realized that she loved fantasy more than fact. So she gave in to it and wrote
Harbinger
. She now lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and two dogs.
Lotus and Thorn
is her second
novel.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!