mild disorientation and lightheadedness. Her head has been shaved on one side and is wrapped in white. Her customary headscarf has been replaced with a field dressing. The doctors told her to take it easy, not to lift things, not to bend, not to sneeze. They’re worried about blood clots and burst veins. She’s been in the hospital for three days, and they want to keep her longer, but Julian knows Mia has no time for hospitals or blood clots. Blackpool is a galaxy of peace away.
“Is it possible to get to Blackpool some other way?” Julian asks the British Rail ticket seller.
“Possible?” the ticket woman says. “Yes. Wise? No. Fast? Definitely not. Easy? Pfft.”
“But not impossible?” He is encouraged. Julian is the prince of all nigh-impossible things.
“You’re better off staying here,” the woman says, as if Julian has asked for her opinion.
They can get to Blackpool by traveling north to Leeds, where they can go to Leeds Cathedral and pray for a couple of trains due west. It’s the longest way but the safest, safest if you don’t count Sheffield, which lies between London and Leeds. Sheffield is a major steel producer, and if there’s anything the Germans want to hobble more, besides Liverpool’s ports and Birmingham’s Spitfires and Julian’s girl, it’s Britain’s steel factories. “Don’t wait too long,” the ticket seller says. “The closer you get to Christmas, the fewer civilian trains there will be. The servicemen are coming home. They get priority on the tracks. Even now there’s only one civilian train a day.”
“There’s a number less than one?” Julian says.
“Yes,” the woman says, her voice dripping with disdain. “Zero.”
Julian is not in great shape himself. He needed forty stitches from the top of his trapezoid to the middle of his back. It’s so hard to move his right arm that he suspects that underneath the sliced-up muscle, his shoulder blade may have a fracture. His right forearm is almost certainly broken, but he refuses to put his arm into a full cast. He can’t protect Mia with one arm immobilized. To move a broken arm through pain is one thing. Not to be able to move it at all is another. The doctor fitted him with a field splint and a sling. At least two of Julian’s right ribs are broken. A piece of glass has pierced his cheek. It’s been sewn up, but the bone underneath is swollen and aching. The injury makes it difficult and unpleasant to eat. The Frankenstein gash above his eye is healing poorly. He had pulled out the stitches too soon, and any new trauma to the body opens up the old wound. And his right knee got twisted. He may have an anterior ligament tear. The torn left calf muscle is going to take another month to fully heal. Favoring his right side where most of his upper body injuries are, Julian hobbles like an old man, slightly stooped, limping on both legs.
But despite this, or maybe because of this, he is determined to get Mia out of London. It’s hard not to take the bombing personally. Frankie died in the explosion at the Ten Bells. Liz didn’t die, but she was badly burned. He doesn’t want to point out to Mia the brutal reality, hoping she can see it herself, but there’s no one left to piece together the jigsaw that is Mia if the puzzle maker herself is dead. Most certainly Julian can’t tell Mia the unspeakable truth. If he dies before she does in one of these attacks, there is no chance for her. This struck him as he lay bleeding in the dust of Ten Bells. Their days are like grass. She will vanish as Wild has vanished, a dandelion fuzz in the passing wind, a lover like a flower. If Julian dies, he will never know what happens to her.
As he tries to persuade her with fake persuasion, Mia uses on him the unassailable logic of those whose knowledge of the future is woefully and blessedly nil. “Trains are bombed, too, Jules,” she says. “And what about the cities the trains pass through? Everything’s bombed. Coventry’s been leveled. The entire cathedral is gone!”
“We’re not going to Coventry,” Julian says. “We’re traveling north to Leeds. From there we’ll make a sharp left to Blackpool.”
“Soon Blackpool will be leveled same as the others,” she says. “We have a better chance in London. It’s bigger. More places to hide.”
“Where has our hiding gotten us?”
“Are you here? Am