Ebony Hill (16 page)

When I wake in the morning my head feels groggy, my tongue furred. I sit up abruptly. The sun slanting in at the window tells me I’m late. The other beds in the room are empty.

Stumbling to the bathroom I stare in the mirror. My hair hangs lank and dull. A rash of spots covers my forehead while the skin across my cheekbones is flaky and dry. The shadows that underscore my eyes are my most dominant feature. I splash water on my face and wonder at the quiet.

Saice and Dev are washing dishes when I enter the kitchen. Saice turns with a smile. “How are you feeling today, Ness?”

“Like my head’s filled with sand,” I tell her.

She comes over and studies my eyes. “No nightmares?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember going to bed,” I confess.

“I gave you something to help you sleep. It worked
faster than I expected.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“No.” She looks as if she’s about to say more but instead turns away, threading her dishtowel over the oven rail and smoothing it precisely. “I’m going to start the ward round.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She shakes her head. “Have breakfast first. There’s porridge on the stove.”

Dev ladles out a bowlful and sets it on the table. “Do you want tea?” he asks.

I nod. “Where is everyone?”

“The first crews went out an hour ago. We thought it best to let you sleep.”

I lift a spoonful of porridge, testing it gingerly against my lip. “Did Anjan go with them?”

“Yes.” Dev pauses. “She told me how upset you were yesterday. I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing Ness. I didn’t mean to.”

I shrug. I’m not sure there’s a right thing to say in the circumstances.

“Saice says you’re to take today off,” he adds. “I thought perhaps you and I might—”

“I can’t,” I interrupt. “There’s Stefan’s burns to dress, that’s a job that takes two, and three fields still to—”

“It’s not up for negotiation.”

“You can’t just arrive and start ordering me around!”

“They’re Saice’s orders.” Dev lets out an exasperated sigh. “Ness, you’re exhausted. You’ve been through a lot. You need—”

“You have no idea what I need!”

He studies me, brows arched. Colour rises in my face. If I was standing I’d probably stamp my foot – which seems not the best way to show how mature I’ve become. I take a shuddering breath and scowl at my breakfast.

“Ness, listen. Everyone here is falling apart. Look at Saice. And Truso is a ghost of himself – that’s about Esha’s death as much as anything. They were once—” He breaks off. “Anyway.” He twists his mug between his slender brown fingers. “There’s no shame in being stressed, but working yourself to the point of collapse is no solution.”

My stomach rumbles disloyally and I dig my spoon into the porridge. The air, as I eat, feels thick with words not yet spoken. When I’ve scraped the bowl clean, Dev refills it.

“It matters to me, what happens to you, Ness,” he says, as he sets the milk jug by my elbow.

I clench my fingers around it. “It’s a wonder that the goats are still producing after all the disruption they’ve been through.”

For the next silent minute I hope Dev’s taken the hint, but he hasn’t. Sinking into the chair opposite, he sets his steepled hands on the tabletop. “Ness, I know you have family still on Dunnett,” he begins. I refuse to meet his eyes. “And I don’t mean to deny their importance in any way, but the truth is, I think of myself as your family here.”

All air seems expelled from my lungs.

“Not that I want to replace them,” he hurries on. “I
can’t do that – I don’t want to. But I feel responsible for you, Ness, like … like an older brother or an uncle.”

My mouth has gone dry.

“And there are others who care about you. Marta and Jago. Saice, too. We all want what’s best for you. I talked to Marta before I came, and to Truso and Saice last night.

We think—”

“What I do is my decision,” I interrupt. “I’m not a child.”

Dev sighs. “Ness, listen. I’m just saying that—”

I stand up. “I’m going to help Saice.”

“She said that you—”

My glare silences him. He raises his hands. “Fine then. Talk it through with her. I’ve no desire to be the big bad uncle. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He smiles in a way that would once have melted my heart.

I take my bowl to the sink, wash it and replace it neatly on the shelf. By the time I have my hand on the door I’ve gathered the words I want to say to him. “You’ll find the field crews working on the slopes just beyond the windbreak,” I tell him. Dev’s expression is noncommittal. As I close the door behind me I add: “They need all the help they can get if people in Vidya want to eat next winter.”

Stefan drifts into consciousness as we change the dressings on his burns.

“There you are,” Saice murmurs. “Stefan, do you know who I am?”

White-faced, his eyes flitter around the room.
“Wha—” he croaks. I fetch water and hold it gently to his lips. “Horses,” he says.

“Thanks be for that.” Saice smiles. “You’re going to be all right,” she tells him in a voice laced with tears.

Within minutes, Stefan is asleep again. Saice clears her throat. “I’m sorry,” she says, not looking at me. “I just – I couldn’t—” She turns away suddenly and blows her nose.

I remove the light dressings that cover the worst of Stefan’s wounds. The skin on his torso and arm has already begun to heal, pink and shiny and tight. His hands will take longer, but Saice is hopeful they’ll recover with only a minimum of scarring. Several times a day we gently bend and flex each joint of his fingers so that the new skin learns to stretch. If we didn’t, Saice says he might never regain the full use of his hands.

As I discard the soiled dressings, Saice leans in to inspect the burn, deeper than the others, on his neck and shoulder.

“No sign of secondary infection,” she says in a voice that sounds almost normal. “Relief can sometimes be our undoing,” she adds, without raising her eyes.

Perhaps it was relief that troubled me too.

“I was worried he wouldn’t come out of the coma,” Saice says, “or that when he did his memory would be damaged beyond repair. But he remembered his horses – that’s surely a good sign.” Her smile is watery.

I nod, my own preoccupations pressing. “Dev says you were talking about me last night.”

“Does he? Well, we were, amongst other things.” She
takes a breath, her next words coming out on a rush of air. “Have you thought about what you’ll do next, Ness? I know you were only here on a visit, though of course you’d be welcome to stay. But … you’ve not yet chosen your first placement?”

“I … Marta thinks I should consider land-sci research specialising in regeneration. She thought coming to Ebony Hill would help me decide.”

“And has it?”

I frown. “I haven’t had time to think about it.”

I can almost feel her measuring her next words. “Do you regret being here, Ness? I know how hard this has been and—”

“No!” The word bursts out of me. I shake my head to reinforce it. “I’m glad I was here. I wish none of it had happened. More than anything I wish that Esha—” My voice catches in my throat.

Saice lays a soothing hand on my arm.

I acknowledge the comfort. “It helped, that I could be a little bit useful,” I say in return.

“You’ve been far more than that. Honestly, Ness, I couldn’t have coped without you.”

I colour a little.

“Truso thinks we’ve demanded too much of you,” she adds.

I shake my head.

As we change Stefan’s sheets, she takes up her thread. “Is research what interests you? If it is, then you should certainly follow that course. But … it seems to me it would be a waste of your talents.”

There seems nothing I can say to that. Marta has never shown much interest in discussing my talents – whatever they might be.

“Esha told me you’d nursed Devdan back to health when he was injured on your home island,” Saice continues. “And that you used to help her in the med centre.”

My voice comes out squashed. “Only because she asked me to. She thought I spent too much time alone.”

Saice clucks her tongue. “She believed you had a natural talent for healing. She told me so.”

“That’s not …” My conversation with Farra comes back to me.

“After these past few weeks, Ness, I don’t have any doubt that she was right.” She pauses. “Think about it at least.”

As if my memories have summoned him, the med room door swings open and Farra strides inside.

“Just the girl I want to see,” he says, out of breath. “Mardon tells me you’re an expert on sprains. There’s a young lassie from Decon has twisted her wrist. Perhaps you could take a quick look.”

It feels like a conspiracy. I glance towards Saice, but she pushes a med-kit into my hands and shoos me off with a flap of her hand. “You’ll manage just fine.”

Jofeia is leaning against the blackened wall of the barn, her face three shades paler than normal. “What happened?” I ask.

She tilts her head towards a ladder. “I slipped coming down. I’d have been all right except my hand jammed in
the scaffolding. I heard something crack.”

I glance up at the framing that rests against the barn wall. “It probably saved you from worse injuries,” I tell her. “It’s a long way to fall.”

Jofeia doesn’t answer. I squat in front of her. “How bad is the pain?”

She shrugs, then draws a tight breath as I gently explore her wrist. It has begun to swell, the chafed skin dotted with beads of blood. I move each of her fingers. “I don’t think you’ve broken any bones,” I tell her. “I’ll immobilise it then we’ll get you over to the med room.”

Gently as I can, I arrange her arm in a sling. She winces as I adjust the position. I run my fingers over her elbow and up her arm. She grimaces. “You’ve done some damage to your shoulder as well,” I tell her, fingertips following her collarbone. Her pupils are large with shock.

“She took all her weight on that arm,” Farra says. “It took me a minute or two to reach her.”

Between us we get Jofeia onto her feet, her steps slurring a little as we walk her back to the house.

“Stupid thing to do,” she mutters.

“Better an injury like this than the others we’ve been seeing,” I tell her. “Saice will sort it out.”

“You’re doing fine,” Farra murmurs, though it’s unclear whether his reassurance is intended for Jofeia or for me.

Saice confirms my diagnosis and gives Jofeia a mild sedative. “Bed rest for the next twenty-four hours,” she says, ignoring the woman’s mumbled objections. “We’ll reassess once the swelling is under control.”

As we head for the kitchen, Saice looks at me sideways. “And you still don’t know what you should be doing with your life?” she says.

My feet halt of their own accord, but before I can answer, Ronan bursts into the hall. “One of the men said Jofeia was hurt,” he says. “What happened? How is she?”

“She’s sprained her wrist and torn some ligaments in her shoulder,” Saice tells him. “Ness took care of it. She’ll be fine.” Ronan glances back and forth between us. “She’s in the med room,” Saice adds. “Don’t disturb her if she’s already asleep.”

Ronan nods and edges past. Saice steers me into the kitchen. “Tea, Ness?” she asks.

I take the mug she offers me and sigh my wishes through its steam: that I could wind our lives back to before Esha and Ronan and I cycled to Summertops, that I could fend off the expectations that press and poke at me, and – most of all – that its steaming contents might somehow fill the hollowness that Ronan’s sudden appearance has opened up within me.

Sharing a room again with Anjan is both a pleasure and a burden. Her bed creaks as she throws herself down, complaining of aches in her arms and legs and back.

“It takes time to get acclimatised to physical work,” I say, hearing an echo of Manet’s words when I was newly arrived at Ebony Hill – it feels a lifetime ago.

“I know,” Anjan moans. “I just wish it was already done.”

I shrug. “Wishing won’t change it.”

She looks at me sidelong. “Ness, have you talked to Jago yet?”

“Not today. Is something wrong?” My mind is already running through his injuries.

“No, I mean, about the things that happened here: your experiences.”

I settle back in my bed. Jago has been recording the stories of the survivors from Summertops, and of the rest of the community. “He shouldn’t be working so much,” I say. “He needs to look after his health.”

Anjan makes no answer.

“I’m going to be an archivist,” Tanlin announces. “I told Jago so, and he said that when we get to Vidya, I’ll be able to visit the archives. He said I’d be good at listening to people’s stories.”

“I’m sure you will,” Anjan says.

“You’re lucky to have him as your grandfather. He’s nice. I wish he was coming back with us.”

Turning on my side, I close my ears. I don’t want to think about who’s going back and who’s staying. I don’t want to think at all, not about Vidya, or Dev, or Dunnett, or Ronan. Most of all, I don’t want to think about Ebony Hill.

“Ness.” I’m midway across the yard when Ronan’s voice pulls me up. I’ve hardly seen him the last few days. I wrap my arms across my chest.

Ronan’s hands are stained dark with grease and there’s a smear on one cheek, crossing at an angle his fresh-minted scar. “I wanted to let you know,” he says, looking as awkward as he sounds. “I’m not going back to Vidya.”

I nod. I didn’t expect that he would.

“I’ve already told Truso,” he adds, the words hurrying from his mouth. “I’ve volunteered to go up to Summertops.”

The breeze that licks around the side of the barn is cold on my skin.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not yet.”

“They’re leaving in two days.”

“I know. I … Dev wants me to go with them.”

“He told me.” Ronan shrugs. “You should do what you want.”

What is it I want? I want to belong. I want the world to stop changing around me. I want—

“There you are.” Aiya lays her hand on my arm. “Jofeia is asking for you, Ronan, and Ness, I promised Devdan I wouldn’t let you overtire yourself. I’m sure Truso can do without you for one afternoon.”

“Dev should mind his own business,” I snap.

Ignoring her startled frown I march to the rear of the barn, where the smell of fresh-hewn planking is pungent and sweet, and jerk a hoe from the rack. Ronan is already hurrying away towards the house. I don’t know which annoys me most: that Jofeia has Ronan jumping to run her errands, or that Dev thinks he can tell me what to do even when he’s not here.

He left two days ago for Dales, to get news for Lara of her brother. He’d be far more use on the field crews alongside the other new arrivals from Vidya. We already know that Lara’s brother is fine – Ronan talked to him after the siege at Dales. But that wasn’t enough for Dev.

Trying not to think about the list Truso compiled of the wounded and killed, I stomp out of the yard and up the slope beyond, my mood easing as I reach the brow of the hill. On its far slope, small flags of green flutter in rows across the hillside. Though clouds scud
like whitecaps above Ebony Hill, the scattered storms of early spring have finally dispersed and today, for the first time, there’s the promise of summer in the air.

A low whistle attracts my attention and I turn to see a scout – one of our sentries – raise an arm. I wave back. I know him. He was one of the bomb victims, though his injuries weren’t serious – at least, not as serious as some.

Skirting the newly sprouted crop, I tramp towards the first block of potatoes. Hope flowers in my chest when I see the progress the field crew has made. It isn’t too late. Part of me would like to be here for the summer’s-end harvest. If it hadn’t been for the paras, I’d have applied to come back – for the harvest at least. I still could. I needn’t go back to Vidya at all. And yet …

Truso strides across to welcome me and direct me to a task. There’s a buoyancy in his step that tells me he too has caught the promise of summer in the air. “The wheat is looking good,” I say.

“And the potatoes are all in at last – a few weeks behind schedule, but these earlies will be all right. For the maincrop, it’ll depend on the autumn we have, and I’m not about to predict that. We’ve lost an early field of corn to weeds and we’re too late now for rye, but we might manage a winter crop next year – I’d been thinking of trying it. This gives me an incentive.” He pauses. “How are you, Ness?”

“All right.”

“Are you sleeping?”

“Enough.” I fix him with a firm eye. “And you?”

His lips jump in a flickering smile that acknowledges my point: we’re all in the same boat.

“Truso.” I study the ground between us, moulding my thoughts into a shape to lay before him. “Do you think Dev’s right? Do you think I should go back to Vidya?”

“It’s not up to me, Ness.” Truso’s eyes roam the rows of potatoes that stretch leafy hands towards the sky – the ones we planted the week we first arrived. “Are you saying you’d rather stay?”

I hear my breath in my throat, dry and hurried. “I don’t … it’s too soon.” In my belly I start to feel the press of sickness that gathers each time I pass the little cemetery with its graves, raw as wounds. I can’t tell Truso of how I walk the long way round to save myself from seeing them – or the others, unmarked, that lie further up the hill. Or how that comes to nothing compared to the horrors that haunt my dreams, and the way my heart skitters and pounds at every unexpected sound: a slamming door, a clatter of cutlery, even loud voices in the yard.

“Maybe on one of the other farms,” I suggest. Truso’s expression gives nothing away. “Marta once suggested that I go into land-sci research,” I add, though I know I’m fooling neither of us.

Truso grunts. “They run some valuable programmes,” he says slowly.

I don’t answer.

“Choosing a placement is about finding a balance between your interests and your talents,” he says. “That’s easier for some than for others, but it’s ultimately down
to you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to what Marta and Devdan advise, but it’s your decision, Ness, not theirs.”

“What do you think?” I ask.

Truso sighs and tugs at his beard. “I’m not qualified to give advice.” He stares towards Ebony Hill. “My guidance has served no one well.”

“What do you mean?”

He flails an arm. “The buck stops with me Ness. I couldn’t protect us. I should have seen it coming. I—”

“That’s rubbish!” I burst out. “No one could have known what the paras would do.”

“We knew they were aggressive towards smaller groups. I should have anticipated something like this; planned for it. If I had, Esha and the others might still be alive.”

“It’s foolish, thinking like that. You’re just torturing yourself.” I pause to study the lines of fatigue around his eyes. “No one blames you,” I tell him.

His smile is bleak. “I do, Ness. That’s enough.”

There’s nothing I can say to that.

Truso visibly gathers himself. “Come on,” he says, gesturing towards the hoe that hangs loose in my hand. “Those potatoes aren’t going to mound themselves.”

Silent, I trail after him to where the field crew is scattered along the rows of young plants. Slipping into the bending rhythm of the work, I push the need for decisions from my mind. Better not to think, about either future or past. Better to attend only to the task at hand and ignore the fact that, deep down, I suspect Saice is right: I do know what I should do with my life.

Whether or not I’m ready to admit it.

The flat light of early dawn leaches over the hills, washing pale the world and the faces gathered around me: Saice, Jago, Ronan. The tableau reminds me of another dawn departure. Saice swoops forward, her stringy arms wrapping me tight.

Holding my shoulders square in her hands, she stares direct into my eyes. “You’ve got my letter,” she says. “Marta would be more fool than I credit her if she ignores the strength of that recommendation.”

I nod. Marta is so far from my thoughts she feels like someone imagined.

Saice gives me a last smile, then Jago takes hold of my hands. “Take care, Ness,” he says. “Don’t let what’s happened here taint your view of Vidya.”

There’d be no gain in telling him it already has.

“I wish you were coming with us,” I say, voice tight as an unfurled bud.

It’s a foolish wish, for the walk would be beyond him, even though we have only half of it ahead of us – one of the scouts arrived last night to tell us that Alek would be waiting with a jigger, of sorts, beyond the place where the paras’ bomb damaged the line.

“I’m more use here,” Jago says. “Telling your story can be a way of healing, and who better to listen than an archivist recorder with time on his hands? And besides,” he smiles, “my old lungs prefer it to the city.”

“Mine too, old or not.”

“Perhaps that will bring you back to us,” he says,
squeezing my hands.

I smile thinly. Perhaps. Perhaps distance will dull the sharp edge of my memories. “Look after Anjan,” I tell him.

She’d chosen not to come outside to see us off. “I’d feel like an intruder,” she’d said. “I’m only a visitor here.”

“So am I.”

Anjan had shaken her head. “You’ve earned your place in the community.”

Her words had left me winded. I wonder now whether they’re true.

With our farewells done, Saice and Jago and I stand awkwardly. Tanlin skips into our silence, taking no pains to hide her pleasure at leaving. “We can walk together,” she says, reaching for my hand.

When Truso strides towards us she slides away. “Good luck, lass,” he says. “And my thanks for all you’ve done.” He pauses. “Esha would have been proud of you.”

My voice curdles in my throat.

“You know you’ll be welcome any time you care to come back.”

Forcing a smile, I try to feel proud of my decision to leave. That it surprised no one but me makes me feel no less a traitor. Maybe Anjan was right.

Truso moves on, spreading farewells and thanks – reminding people, too, that they’ll be welcome if ever they decide to return. Some will. Vidya will be hard after the freedom of Ebony Hill – even after this.

Around me people move restlessly, ready to depart. I study the group: two young families from Dales and another from Pinehill, most of the survivors from
Summertops, Catha and her daughters, a young couple from Home Farm whose children were sent back to Vidya with the first evacuees – in all, four men, eight women and eleven children.

Alongside those lost in the war, the exodus leaves Truso with a sizeable hole in his workforce, ameliorated a little by the seasonal workers from Vidya. But seasonals can’t mend the less tangible damage. My eyes drift towards the low hedge that hides the farm’s crop of fresh graves. It will be a long time before the Ebony Hill community regains its confidence and morale. Glancing back towards the farmhouse, I catch sight of Truso, on his haunches and deep in conversation with one of the departing children from Summertops. If anyone can mend Ebony Hill’s spirit, I think, it’s Truso.

“Right then,” Farra calls. “Let’s get moving. We’ve a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

People shuffle and mutter around me, picking up bags, calling for children. I swallow hard as our last farewells are made.

Eight scouts flank us, eyes scanning the slopes ahead as though they expect trouble. I tend to the view that any paras left in the vicinity will have their hands full with Brenon – but that’s no reason to be reckless. I’m grateful for the escort the scouts provide, and pleased to find Farra amongst them.

As we tramp out of the yard, Ronan falls in beside me. “I’ll walk with you to the first ridge,” he says.

Ronan has made his decision as I’ve made mine. I wonder if he has as many doubts.

“Where’s Jofeia?” I ask.

Colour creeps up his cheeks. “I don’t know.”

According to Aiya, he’s been like a lovesick calf these past few days. “Jofeia should know better than leading him on,” she’d said only yesterday, hefting her chopping knife.

“She’s flighty, that one,” Manet had agreed. “And too old for him.”

I decide against mentioning their collective wisdom to Ronan. “Will Jofeia be based at Summertops?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “At Home Farm. Lynd wanted to send her back to Vidya, but Saice vetoed it until her shoulder improves.”

Saice didn’t mention it to me. “She’ll be fine in a few weeks,” I tell him.

He doesn’t answer. Above us the sky has warmed to a drift of pink and gold, the clouds tattered like the fringes of a fresh-shorn fleece: a mackerel sky my Pa would have called it. Maybe Devdan would choose the same description.

We walk in silence past the abandoned farm buildings and over the rise to where the jigger line starts. I wonder if, like me, Ronan is remembering the day we arrived.

“Esha told me you didn’t want to come to Ebony Hill,” he says suddenly, startling my feet to a halt.

“It wasn’t that. I just … I didn’t know what I wanted.” I skip a step to catch up.

“I’m glad you came,” he says.

My breath feels suddenly tight. “Glad” is not a word I can use. And yet… And yet there’s more to having been
here than just the paras’ attack. I scowl at the grass where it’s begun to grow stealthily up alongside the empty rails.

“And that you know now.”

I have to bend my mind backwards to find what he means: that I know now what I want. “I think I do,” I tell him.

He’s silent a few paces. “I just know I’m better here than in Vidya,” he says.

I study him. “If it hadn’t been for the paras, that would be true for me as well. But … I have to get some distance from this.” I wave an arm around the straggling group of refugees. “I’ll come back to help with the harvest,” I say, surprising myself. “If Marta lets me start straight away in med-sci, I should be due my first leave by then.”