one almost nine years ago when you were five, and you had woken from a dream.
‘They were falling,’ you had said. ‘All of them.’
I stared through Jorne’s kitchen window at the mist-wreathed pines. Had I dreamed your dream?
Unlikely. More likely was that I had approximated a memory of your description of the dream. But why that particular one? Why not the great-bellied laughing fish, or the coloured animals, or the stalking figures?
Why had it taken so long for that approximation to appear?
What had triggered it?
The questions tumbled from me like the people themselves.
Why had I dreamed at all when I had never dreamed before?
Was it merely too much Hurwein?
Or the memory of Hanna’s vigil?
Where were these questions coming from?
And what if nothing was as I had thought it was?
It hit me like the ice water hit my stomach—a rogue question hidden among the others, using them for camouflage.
I dropped the ladle. It hit the floor. Footsteps approached from outside, and the door opened. I turned.
‘Ima.’
It was Jorne.
‘Jorne, I think… I think something is wrong. What if—’
‘Ima—’
‘By the way, I am sorry for last night. I was not myself and I should not have behaved—’
‘Ima, please—’
I paced the floor, ignoring his urgent face, lost in my own mumbled thoughts.
‘Jorne, what if we’re wrong about everything? What if things are not as we believe them to be, or were not as we believed them to have been? Is that possible? What if we had been lied to, you understand? What if they lied to us? I know it makes no sense, but… but nothing does right now and I don’t know what else to think, it just feels like—’
‘Ima, listen to me!’
I stopped short.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Reed. He’s sick.’
‘LET ME SEE him.’
I burst through Payha’s door to find you sitting on her bed, pale-faced, clutching your chest.
‘I woke up to him wheezing,’ said Payha. ‘He tried to stand, but he collapsed.’
I put my hand on your brow.
‘He has no temperature. Reed, what happened?’
You looked up.
‘I’m fine. I just have a sore chest. It’s probably from when I fell off my board yesterday.’
You coughed, face creased with pain.
‘What else? Your organs, are they functioning? Stools, urine? Are your orifices enflamed or leaking?’
‘Honestly, I’m all right. It’s like that time when I was little, remember? I’m probably just tired.’
You rested back on the bed and closed your eyes, still wheezing.
I turned to Jorne.
‘And where did you sleep?’ I said.
He opened his palms.
‘In my dwelling, as usual. Ima, what has gotten into you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything.’
I stormed outside. Jorne followed.
‘It’s come back,’ I said. ‘I can feel it.’
‘You don’t know that. We were in the sea yesterday. It was colder than usual, perhaps he caught something.’
‘That’s not possible. Just like it was not possible when he was little. I made sure of it, the council agreed, his immune system was to be boosted to prevent serious viruses from entering the ertian system.’
‘Well, maybe it didn’t work quite as expected. Perhaps there was a mistake.’
‘No, no, I saw to it myself, I was there, I was extremely clear, I would not have made a mistake, I could not have…’ I trailed off. ‘Unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘Benedikt.’
I made for the paddock.
‘Ima, wait.’
‘Look after him,’ I said, untying Boron. There was no time for a saddle. ‘Give him water, keep him warm.’
‘Where are you going?’
I was already flying through the forest.
‘WHAT DID YOU do?’
My voice filled the hall with the slam of the thrown-back doors. Benedikt looked up from the stone slab, along with the three engineers who were working with him.
‘Ima,’ he said, looking nervously at the other three as I stormed across the floor. ‘To what do we owe—’
‘What did you do?’ I screamed at him.
The three engineers exchanged glances.
‘Council member?’ said one.
Benedikt paused.
‘Leave us,’ he said. ‘It is quite all right. Go.’
They dropped their tools and hurried out, leaving us alone in the hall.
Benedikt’s face darkened. ‘What are you doing?’
I wanted to lunge at him, I wanted to hoist him from the ground and slam him against the wall. Never had I felt the urge for such violence.
‘I want to know the truth,’ I said.
‘What truth?’
‘You did something to my son.’
‘Really? What did I do, Ima?’
‘You sabotaged him.’
‘How?’
‘His gestation. Somehow you sabotaged his gestation. You made him smaller. You took out the steps I put in to ensure a stronger immune system, you made him susceptible, you made him weaker.’
‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘To make it harder for him, more difficult to prove his