Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“If it takes your mind off the hurt, maybe we can give you some chores.” Perpétue nods to herself. “Some small things.”

“I can cook some, and clean.” I say. “I was on livestock duties before. I could keep the chickens. . . .”

Perpétue waves me to a stop. “Slowly, Ava. For now, you can help Miyole with the chickens and maybe cook some. Your body’s still healing, fi. Too much at once and you’ll hurt yourself.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “Right so.”

I feel some small bit more like the girl I was. Feeding chickens is none like minding a whole crewe of women and girls, but at least it’s something to keep my hands busy and my mind awake while I wait for Luck’s child and try to figure out how to find my modrie.

In the middle of the night, I wake with my innards cramped. I stumble to the cleanroom in the dark, but it’s only when I’ve squatted over the chemical bowl that I feel the blood on my legs. I grope for the light string and pull. It clicks on, filling the room with a brown glow. I stand stock still, staring at the streaks of blood on my thighs and nightshirt until I can make myself understand. My bleeding.

No, I think distantly. That’s not right.

So I’m not . . .

A sound halfway between a laugh and a sob breaks out of me. There’s no smallone. There’s no piece of Luck left in me.

I sink down with my back against the door and clutch my waist. I could cry, but I would be making myself. I can’t feel anything but the shock of it. I’ve lost Luck’s smallone. I’ve lost Luck’s smallone. It’s gone. He’s gone. I couldn’t even do the one thing I’m made to do right.

I get up and clean myself. I take a rag and soap, and scrub at the stain on my nightshirt. This, I know. Scrubbing. Cleaning. Everything raveled right. I can put away the thinking, feeling part of me and exist only in my hands.

I dress and pad barefoot to the kitchen. The moon angles bright and pale through the high windows. A tide of longing floods my chest. The sky. It will be different at night, more like home. I can glimpse the Void without the sun burning my skin. I open the door softly and struggle up the steps in the dark. The perimeter lights of the Gyre reflect in the water, but above, the sky is black and deep. The stars shimmer and wane, and closer in, the sun-touched fins of satellites and small craft burn steady as they climb and fall in an arc over the sea.

Distant lights track slowly overhead. Is one of them Bhutto station? Is the Parastrata still there? Usually we would have restocked our supplies and set sail by now, but what if my father and brother left some men behind to look for me? What if they put out the word of what I did among the other crewes. And what of Iri? And Luck? What’s been done with them? Are they there on the station, cast off, or have the Æther and Parastrata already sounded deep and thrust them out into the Void?

The pain flares back, strong and sudden, through my muscles down to the marrow of my bones. A hard fist of panic presses against my throat. Why am I still here? Why did Iri give herself up for me? What is this body for, if not carrying my husband’s children? Why have the Mercies let me live, if I have no purpose?

I am all acid and heat and truth, brimming at the mouth and eyes. My father and brother have killed Iri, certain sure. And Luck is gone, truly gone. ther Fortune will have turned him out into the Void by now, or killed him some other way too horrible to think on.

“Ava?”

I blink the tears from my eyes.

Perpétue walks toward me. “What are you doing?”

All the softness mothering puts on her face is gone. She folds her arms across the long cotton shirt she wears to sleep. Her legs stick out bare. A deep, puckered scar runs up above her right knee and disappears beneath the shirt’s hem.

I gasp. I’ve seen wounds aboard the Parastrata, but few so bad as the mangle of Perpétue’s leg. “Did you. . . what happened to your leg?” I ask without thinking.

Perpétue’s eyes fall. “Surgery.”

“But what . . .”

“You’re welcome here, Ava, but there are things I’ll never question you about, and I’ll ask you to do the same for me,” Perpétue says.

“I’m sorry.” I never meant to give offense, to her of all people.

Perpétue looks down at the rooftop.

“I’m sorry, so missus,” I say again.

Perpétue shakes her head, as if waving the whole matter away. “What’s wrong? You couldn’t sleep?”

I nod.

“Was it the pain?”

I nod again, though it’s a different pain than she means.

Perpétue nods with me, as if she understands. And she must, with her old wound awful as it is.

I look up at the moon. “I’m bleeding.” I can’t look at Perpétue as I admit it.

Alarm twitches in Perpétue’s face. “Where?” She starts toward me.

I lay a hand between my hip bones where the ache is the worst.

“Oh.” Perpétue looks relieved. “That kind of bleeding.”

Anguish and confusion twist in me. “I thought . . .”

Perpétue lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently. “No, it’s normal, fi. Sometimes when there’s too much strain on our bodies, our courses stop. It means you’re healing.”

I blink. So I wasn’t ever . . . Relief springs loose in me like a snapped coil, and then confusion mixed with guilt. Maybe I haven’t lost it. Maybe it never was.

I laugh suddenly, from the shock of it. Perpétue looks at me odd, but I can’t help it. My body feels lighter without the weight of the smallone I had imagined growing in me and all the worry that came with it. I’m shamed, thinking on it. What kind of woman am I that wouldn’t want a child? But to know I won’t have to go through the screaming pain I saw the older girls in? To know no one will look on me with shame for bearing a child with no father? To know my body is my own, and I am beholden to no one but myself? I know these are low reasons and all my sisters and modries would hiss to hear me say them, but I can’t help the lightness I feel.

“I’m sorry.” I put on a sober face for Perpétue. “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s only . . .”

“Laugh or cry?” Perpétue finishes for me. “Is that it?”

“Right so.” I nod. “Is that so, what you said? About a woman’s bleeding?”

“Wi.” Perpétue frowns at me. “Didn’t your mother teach you these things?”

“No.” If my mother had lived, she might have, but Modrie Reller didn’t think it proper to talk on such things. Most of what I knew, I learned in whispers from the older girls and from watching the animals. “She died.”

“Ah,” Perpétue says softly. “And him?” She nods up at Bhutto station shining above us.

I’ve never spoken Luck’s name to her, but I suppose I’ve said enough for her to piece together his existence.

I swallow. “He’s gone, too.”

“You loved him?” she asks.

I nod.

“It’s not an easy thing, being widowed.” Perpétue looks out at the ocean, a light breeze ruffling her hair.

Widowed. I don’t know if I have any right to that word, but I feel it fits in me. I wince as a fresh stab of pain shoots across my shoulders.

“You’re hurting, fi.” Perpétue takes my arm. “Come below. I’ve got some painkillers that’ll help you sleep.”