Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) (5 page)

‘No. Where you’re going, men aren’t allowed.’

A girl – an actual female! – was waiting for me in the
living room. She wasn’t much older than me, and she was tall and willowy with
very long hair and a crooked smile. I remembered Estelle from the party
yesterday; she was kind of hard to forget, standing out as she did in this
setting with her black clothes, her black boots, her black hair, her black nose
stud and her many layers of black mascara and eye liner.

She moved quickly through the building, and I had to jog a
little to keep up with her stride. She smiled at me often, but beyond asking
‘Have you spoken with Evangeline yet?’ she said nothing.

She led me up the stairs and along the corridor in the
opposite direction to my room. This wing looked identical to the other, down to
the pictures on the wall by the same artist. At the very end, Estelle opened a
door and led me into a second corridor, which I recognised. My nose prickled at
a new scent, powdery and familiar. We passed open doors and I peeked into each
room. A sitting room, a bedroom, a kitchenette; all deserted. The room in which
I’d awakened, the bed stripped now and bare. Several more bedrooms, a couple
with neatly turned down covers and flowers on the windowsill. A nursery with a
row of cots and oh – a glimpse of a little pudgy fist poking between wooden
bars. And then, finally, the last door. Closed.

Estelle knocked and a voice from within called, ‘Come in.’

She opened the door and stood back, gesturing at me to pass.
I stepped gingerly into the room and halted a few steps inside.

It was a large room, airy and bright despite the grey
weather thanks to the whitewashed walls and ceiling and the white-painted
floorboards. The furnishings were simple – a wooden table, a line of wooden
chairs and a four-poster bed with white hangings and a white bedspread. The
whiteness of the room made its occupants all the more striking, for here we all
were, the nine females of Cerulea. Or was that ten?

Along the wall five women were sitting, smiling at me
reverently. Two of them, I noted – who hadn’t been present at my welcome party
yesterday – had swollen bellies. In the bed lay an exhausted-looking woman with
euphoria shining in her eyes. But it was the grey-haired lady standing beside
the bed who drew my attention; or, to be precise, the grey-haired lady with the
tiny baby in her arms.

Well,
that
explained Evangeline’s absence.

Three things struck me instantly about the infamous
Evangeline:

The first was that she was more refined than I’d expected. I
had thought ‘the Mother’, the matriarch of Cerulea, this isolated world of
sugar-free biscuits, would be some weather-faced, wrinkled old woman. You know
the type: wears flowery dresses with elasticated waists and sensible flat shoes
the colour of sewage. But while she was no spring chicken – I’d guess late
sixties – she stood tall and she was slim and elegant in a simple lavender
sheath dress and heeled court shoes.

The second thing I noticed was that everything about her,
from the way she held her head to the set of her jaw to the light in her eyes,
spelled that she saw herself as the alpha female in this room.

The third was that she looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t
place where I may have seen her before.

‘Welcome,’ she said warmly, as if we were old friends who’d
bumped into each other on a street corner by happy coincidence.

‘Um, hello,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I’m Scarlett.’

I waited for her to introduce herself, and the other women
in the room, but apparently she deemed that unnecessary because her next words
were: ‘Come. Meet our newest Cerulean.’

I crossed the room to her and bent forward a little to see
the baby. He was pink and placid and his eyes were open to reveal irises of a
deep navy-blue. When I stood again I saw the women lined up on the chairs were
watching me expectantly, waiting for me to speak, so I said, ‘Beautiful.’

The women nodded and smiled and
mmm
ed their
agreement.

I cast about for something to say.

‘Um, is it a girl or a boy?’

There was a brief silence in the room that made me wonder
whether my careful question, designed to be polite, had offended.

‘He’s a boy,’ said Evangeline.

The room fell quiet. This was hard work. I tried again:

‘What’s his name?’

‘He doesn’t have one yet, Scarlett,’ said Evangeline. ‘His
naming ceremony will be after his fifth birthday. For now, we call him January,
for the month in which he was born.’

January?
I thought.
Right.

‘Come and hold him,’ said Evangeline. There was definitely
no question mark at the end of the sentence.

I flicked my eyes to the woman in the bed. She was silent,
seemingly accepting of Evangeline handing her child out for cuddles here and
there.

‘Oh no, I’m sure…’

‘Have you ever held a baby before, Scarlett?’

I shook my head.

‘Sit,’ commanded Evangeline.

The row of women smiled and nodded.

After a beat, during which I considered protesting at her
tone and then decided that rocking the boat right now wasn’t wise, I perched on
the edge of the bed.

‘Here.’

And then she was passing him to me, and what could I do but
hold out my hands to receive him? I snuggled the baby in the crook of my arm. He
looked up at me with big eyes framed by impossibly long eyelashes and gave a
soft, satisfied burp. I took a breath. Oh, that was it – the powdery, wonderful
smell was
baby
. My body began a slow, rhythmic sway of its own accord,
and all at once something deep down inside, some primal and unvoicable feeling,
swept through me.

‘A natural,’ Evangeline said softly.

And then, in that instant, I had a terrible thought.

I looked up. The other women were smiling still, and the new
mother in the bed was wiping her eyes.

I looked behind, at Estelle. She was leaning against the
wall and watching me with compassion in her eyes.

I looked down at the baby, little January.

I looked at Evangeline, at her knowing smile and her
piercing green eyes.

All the warm, fuzzy feeling leached away and in its place
flooded in a chilling realisation.

I kept my smile in place as I stood and handed January
carefully to his mother – not Evangeline, though she held out her arms in
anticipation.

‘Thank you,’ I said quickly and I began backing towards the
door. ‘I’m sure you want to rest now.’

‘Not yet,’ said Evangeline. ‘It’s tradition for the women of
Cerulea to come visit a new mother and sit with her and her son for the first
hour after birth.’

‘I see.’

‘And now you’re here, because you’re one of us. And we’re so
happy to have you here.’

‘Thank you, but –’

Evangeline sighed audibly. ‘Scarlett, we must talk. I know
you must be churning with questions. But they’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,
until tomorrow. For today, I’m here to help January and Abigail. Talk with
Jude. Listen to the boy. He cares very much for you. Now, you may go, dear.’

I bit my lip.
May I
indeed.

Estelle opened the door behind me and I took the cue.

‘Thank you. It was lovely to meet you. All of you. And…
January.’ I turned on my heel and walked swiftly to the door.

‘Oh, Scarlett?’ Evangeline called.

I turned. ‘Yes?’

‘You will be happy here.’

Not ‘I hope’. You
will
.

I managed one last smile and then left the room. The door
closed behind me, and I slumped against the wall for a second, then propelled
myself forward to the fire escape I’d used with Jude that first day –
yesterday; was it really only yesterday I’d begun the process of discovery?

I pushed open the door and stepped outside. The air was
thick with a rainy mist and I had no coat, but I descended the steps anyway. I
walked carefully, not too fast, not too slow, along the path that led away from
the hotel, away from the Birth Place, away from the little clique of women to
which, apparently, I now belonged.

Only when I was in a copse of trees, well out of view of the
house, did I begin to run.

Jude found me down at the jetty, in the boat. He didn’t
shout. He didn’t climb in and pull me out. He just stood on the jetty, watching
me. I ignored him and carried on trying desperately to work out how to start
the outboard motor.

After a couple of minutes, Jude said softly, ‘You need the
key, Scarlett.’

‘Do you have it?’ I demanded.

He shook his head.

I turned away. The rain was coming down heavily now, and the
little boat was rocking back and forth on the waves.

‘Come in now, Scarlett. Come back to the house. Get warm and
dry, and we’ll talk.’

Ignoring him, I rummaged in a locker for oars. Nothing.

I looked out to sea. The mainland was invisible beyond the
driving rain, but it was there. How many miles off were we? I’d once swum a
mile or so with Luke, though admittedly that had been on a calm day.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Jude warned behind me in a low
voice. ‘You go in, I’ll pull you out. Drag you back.’

‘
Drag
me?’

Something snapped. All the anger I’d pent up since waking up
here – against Jude, against Cerulea – surged up in me like lava. I rounded on
him.

‘You! You… you… I trusted you. I believed in you. All this
time, I thought you cared. All this time, I thought you were my
friend
.’

‘I am, Scarlett.’

‘Jailer more like,’ I spat.

He held out his hand. ‘Come on. Please. You’ll catch your
death out here like this.’

‘I DON’T CARE!’ I took as big a step as the small boat would
allow, away from him and his reaching, grasping hand. The boat lurched with my
weight.

‘Well, I do,’ he said, and he stepped onto the boat, grabbed
me and hauled me none-too-gently back onto the jetty.

I fought him, clawing at his grip on me, but he was strong
and resolute as he pulled me up the jetty.

‘It’s for your own good, Scarlett,’ he told me grimly,
tugging me up the path that led back to the house.

I went limp, and he grabbed me and tried to keep me up.

‘What are you… stand up, will you!’

As he was busy struggling with my dead weight I reached out
a hand and pickpocketed the mobile phone from his jacket pocket – I’d seen the
shape of it, rectangular and solid. In a split-second I went from limp to
upright, and the moment his grip loosened on me I shoved him away, hard. I
caught a glimpse of him lurching back into a bush as I turned, and then I ran,
phone in hand. As my feet thundered over the wet ground my hands fumbled on the
keypad. Unlock. Call.

No reception. Not even an E for emergency call coverage.

Damn it. Damn it!

I ran up a hill: height, that was what I needed.

No reception.

The wind caught my wordless cry of rage, but it was cut off
abruptly when the breath was knocked out of me. Hard. Ground in my face.
Elephant on my back.

‘Scarlett?’

The weight lifted and I gasped in air.

‘Scarlett, did I hurt you? I’m sorry – I had to stop you.’

His hands were on me, gently turning me. I twisted violently
around, scrabbling back on my rear end, away from him. But he grabbed me and
held me in place.

‘Let go of me! You can’t keep me here – you can’t!’

‘Scarlett. Stop. Look – look why I’ve got you.’

He let go of me with one hand and pointed behind us. I
risked a glance.

My run up a hill had brought me to a clifftop. I was a few
paces from the edge.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘You nearly ran right off it. Scared the life out of me.’

I stared out at the water, rough in the rain and greyer than
I’d even seen it in Twycombe.

‘I’d kind of hoped we were done with near-death experiences,
Scarlett.’

When I said nothing he sighed and then stood up. ‘Come on,’
he said. ‘Back to the house. You’re filthy.’

I was? I glanced down at myself and noted in a detached sort
of way the brown smears and pine needles all over me. I brushed a few off. Then
I looked around. We were on mossy ground underneath a tall tree at what must have
been the northernmost tip of the island. The furthest we could be from the house
– and the closest we could get to the mainland?

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I can’t go back there right now. Can we
just sit? And talk?’

‘You want to talk? Not shout, not run – talk?’

I nodded. Jude’s rugby tackle had knocked something out of
me. Hope. He’d sent a clear message: escape wasn’t an option. Which left only
opening my eyes to the walls of the prison I had woken in, and searching for
any weak spots.

Jude stood awkwardly for a moment, and I saw him glance
toward the house. Then he sat down, back against the tree. I scooted back a
little so I was within the circle of ground kept dry by the branches above. We
sat quietly for a little while, looking out to sea. The rain started to
solidify into tiny white flakes that settled on the ground. But here, in our
little circle, it was dry, if not warm.

‘What did Evangeline say to you?’ asked Jude at last.

‘That I was one of them, and a natural.’

‘A natural what?’ He watched me warily, waiting for some
explanation.

I gave it to him in black and white: ‘I held a baby.
January.’

Out over the sea snow was falling onto the waves and
disappearing into the grey. I wished to be a snowflake. I wished to disappear.

‘They’re all boys, Jude,’ I said. ‘The baby in the cot – a
blue blanket. The little ones being dinosaurs. Boys. The kids listening to
Peter
Pan
. Boys. Lots of boys, and more than a hundred men. And just nine women,
Jude. Nine. One a new mother. Others with bumps. And the rest, I bet they’re
pregnant too. Or working on it.’

I turned to him. ‘Am I right?’

He huffed out heavily, his breath creating a little cloud
between us. ‘Evangeline said she would explain it to you,’ he said. ‘She’s the
Mother. It should come from her.’

‘Well, “Mother” is clearly busy right now with more
important things. And you know what? I don’t think those answers I’m needing
can wait. Because I’m here, right here, freaking out, Jude.’

‘I know. I know! But I’m not supposed to – that is,
Evangeline…’

‘You can at least tell me what you know. The women. The
Birth Place. Is that why you brought me here? Is that what I’m here for?’

His eyes locked on mine. They were smoke and steel and
velvet.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Women on Cerulea are mothers.’