Horizon. Sophie Littlefield

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      Chapter 2

      AN HOUR AFTER sundown Cass was back in the room she shared with Ruthie, one of three cobbled-together boxes that formed a sloping second-floor addition to an old board-sided house. These were not coveted rooms, but Cass was among the most recent to arrive at New Eden and so she took what was offered without complaint.

       Besides, even with that she didn’t mind. What the builders of the ramshackle house lacked in skill, they made up for in imagination. The rooms lined a narrow hall that overlooked a spacious living room, the body of the original house, whose roof had been sheared off to accommodate the second floor. There were two tiny rooms at either end of the hall, and Ruthie and Twyla loved to use them for imaginary boats or stores or churches or zoos or schools, and since no one really owned anything, they were free to borrow props from all over the house. Buckets became steering wheels, folded clothes became racks of fancy dresses, dolls became dolphins bobbing on imaginary seas.

       Twyla, who was older than Ruthie—nearly five—remembered some of these things from Before. But to Ruthie they were entirely make-believe.

       Ruthie was telling Cass about a book that Ingrid had read them that evening. Fridays were Ingrid’s turn to watch the four youngest children—the girls plus her two sons, age one and three—and she stuck to the most educational books from New Eden’s lending library, biographies and how-things-work and math books. She also made flash cards with pictures of things long gone, like birthday cakes and puppies and helium balloons and ice skates. Cass and Suzanne secretly called Ingrid “Sarge”—at least, they had before Suzanne mostly quit speaking to her—but Cass felt a hollow pang whenever she saw Ingrid bent earnestly over the little ones, pouring herself into lessons they were too young to understand.

       Cass had once felt that passion. When Ruthie had been missing, Cass’s hunger for her daughter was stronger than her own pulse, a primal longing. Now she’d had Ruthie back for half a year, but sometimes Cass felt like she was losing the thread that bound the two of them together.

       So she listened and she listened harder.

       “The fork goes on this side,” Ruthie said in a voice that was little more than a whisper, patting the mattress on the floor. She was a quiet child; she never yelled, never shouted with joy or rage. “The knife and spoon go here. You can put the plate in the middle. That’s where it goes.”

       Cass murmured encouragingly, folding back the sheets and blankets as she listened. These lessons were pointless, but what else could she do? For some, the old rituals brought a kind of solace. Ingrid was such a person.

       The room was illuminated by a stub of candle melted to a plate, and when Ruthie was tucked in she blew the candle out, as was customary. Candlelight was to be conserved, to be used only when necessary.

       “Can I help set the table tomorrow?” Ruthie asked, yawning. Tomorrow Suzanne would watch the kids so the other two could work, the three of them rotating every three days. Despite their troubles, Suzanne and Cass had an unspoken agreement never to let their discord affect the children.

       Cass calculated what needed doing tomorrow—Earl had promised to come to Garden Island in the afternoon and look at some erosion that was threatening the area Cass had tilled for lettuce along the southern bank—but she could knock off after that, come by and get Ruthie. They could help with dinner, eat early and still have time to visit the hospital.

       It had been a long time—too long—three weeks, a month? She hadn’t meant to let it happen, but it had gotten harder and harder to go there.

       But yes, she had promised herself she would be better.

       They could get there in time to help Sun-hi with the last few chores of the day. And Ruthie actually enjoyed the visits—she was too little to be afraid.

       “Yes, Babygirl,” Cass said, trying to keep her tone light. “And then you can wash all the dishes. And dry them and put them away. How does that sound?”

       “Will you help me?” Ruthie asked doubtfully, sleep overtaking her voice. So serious, Ruthie never seemed to know when Cass was teasing her.

       “Of course I’ll help you,” Cass whispered, laying her head down on the mattress next to Ruthie’s, her knees on the carpet. She felt Ruthie’s breath on her cheek. Before long it became regular with sleep.

       Cass kissed her softly and crawled over to the corner of the room where she kept their few special things in a cabinet that had once held electronics, part of a “media center” in a time when media still roamed the earth and electric byways. She ran her hand over the books, the toys and jars of lotion, the wooden flute and the little glass bowl of earrings, and only then did she take down the antique wooden box that had held a board game a hundred years ago. She’d traded a potted lime-tree seedling for the box, which a woman had carried with her all the way from Petaluma in her backpack. On its surface, in flaking paint, was the image of a dancing bear balancing an umbrella on its snout. No one knew what the box meant to the woman, or why she’d carried it all those miles, because not long after arriving in New Eden, she cut her foot on a piece of broken bottle in the muddy shores, and died three weeks later when the infection reached her heart.

       The woman had one good friend, a mute who had walked beside her all this way, who inherited her few paltry things when she died. Who now owned a lime tree.

       Cass ran her fingertips lightly over the painted bear. Then she opened the box, took the plastic bottle from inside and put it to her lips.

       The first swallow burned like heated steel, like justice done.

       The second swallow and all the ones after that went down like nothing.