The funeral had been a classic Elysian funeral: the family standing at the base of the wall, looking upward, as Aunt Lucretia’s frail, white-swaddled body was bricked into the top of the wall. They had wept and hugged, and sung the songs from the days before the walls and the Dust had covered everything. They had prayed once more to a god who didn’t exist, a tether to culture and the past, and they had left. From there, everyone had gone back to Lucy’s parents’ house, where a funeral dinner made of rations—more meager than ever in these days after the Sacrifice building burned—waited to comfort their stomachs even if their souls were still bruised with loss.
But Lucy didn’t join them. Instead, in her best dress, with her hair in artful braids, she walked across town to the hospital, feeling lucky that the night was so dark and that no one was out on the streets but her—her and the never-ending march of workmen collecting rations and doing their best to build a new Sacrifice before the Dust Soldiers came. Squeezing people dry, Lucy thought, and for what? It’s too late. We’re just going to die anyway. We could at least go out with full bellies.
Even with no one on the street, Lucy could feel the shadow of doom hanging over the town. It was present in the number of guards—doubled since the day Sal and Asa were exiled—stooping, exhausted in their towers. It was present in the announcements and flyers Mother Morevna sent out, telling everyone that now was not the time to panic; it was the time to use less and give to the Sacrifice. It was present in her own face, how her cheeks had begun to hollow.
Lucy thought of Aunt Lucretia’s sunken stomach and fought back a lurch of grief. She was almost to the hospital, and she had to hold it together there, if nowhere else.
When she got to the desk, Nurse Ada was waiting. Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes the older, white nurses still had a little pre-Elysium meanness lingering in the way they looked at her, the tone they used or didn’t use. Nurse Ada wasn’t like that. Nurse Ada liked girls, like Lucy did, though Lucy wasn’t sure how she could tell. She thought maybe that was one of the reasons they got along. Though most of it was probably that she was a good person—sometimes the only person Lucy could talk to while she was in the hospital.
“Here you are,” said Nurse Ada, pulling a bundle from under the desk. “These are all her things, everything she had during her stay with us. And I am so sorry, Lucy. Your aunt was a kind, sweet lady, and a lot like you in many ways.” Nurse Ada smiled a sad sort of smile. “Always well-dressed.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “And yes, ma’am… she was.”
Aunt Lucretia’s things included a faded blue blanket, a rhinestone brooch, and a tin drinking cup, the one she had used to drink the Dowsing Well water Lucy had kept bringing her long after she knew it wasn’t working.
Customarily, now would have been the time to choose what went onto the platform for the Mourning Night ceremony. (The brooch would have been a likely candidate.) But now there was no assurance of another Mourning Night ceremony. No assurance of life beyond the next couple of months, and Lucy simply pocketed the brooch and wrapped the cup in the blanket.
But getting Aunt Lucretia’s things was only part of the reason she was there. Ever since Sal was exiled from Elysium, Lucy had been coming to the hospital and talking to Nurse Ada about Dust Sickness, finding out more about it, how it infected people, and, hopefully, how to keep people from being infected.
“Ruth, could you man the desk?” Nurse Ada asked. “I need to speak with Lucy more in depth.”
Reluctantly, Nurse Ruth, a bad-tempered elderly white woman, took the desk, and Nurse Ada took Lucy back to her office.
“Do you have anything?” Lucy asked, pulling her handmade notepad from her pocket and her pencil from behind her ear.
“Not so far,” Nurse Ada said. “Only that Dust Sickness seems to be spreading faster now. It’s so strange. Unless the little bit of dust that got in when Sal Wilkerson and Asa Skander cast Dust Dome is to blame?”
“Maybe,” Lucy said, though somewhere inside she knew that was wrong. “But Aunt Lucretia…” Lucy paused, swallowed a lump growing in her throat.