The New World

I swallowed away my tears again. ‘So you’re telling me the only choice I have is which way I’m going to be terrified for the rest of my life?’

He laughed and opened his arms. ‘And at last a smile,’ he said.

And he did hug me.

And I let him.

But in my chest, there was still fear, and I didn’t know which kind it was. Fear with hope, or fear without it.

***

It takes what seems like forever to unbuckle my belt, hard to do when you’re hanging upside down against it. When it finally comes undone, I fall away from the seat, sliding down the wall of the cockpit, which seems to have folded into itself.

‘Mum?’ I say, scooting over to her.

She’s facedown on what used to be the ceiling, her legs twisted in a way I can’t really look at-

‘Viola?’ she says again.

‘I’m here, mum.’ I push away the things that have fallen on her, all the files and screenpads, everything broken as we tumbled, everything that wasn’t fastened down broken to pieces-

I pull up a large metal plate off her back-

And I see it-

The pilot’s chair was torn from the floor, tearing away the back panel of it, turning the backrest into a shard of metal-

A shard that’s gone right into my mother’s spine-

‘Mum?’ I say, my voice tight, trying to lift it further off her-

But when I move it more, she screams, screams like I’m not even there-

I stop.

‘Viola?’ she says one more time, gasping. Her voice is high, broken. ‘Is that you?’

‘I’m here, mum,’ I say, lying down next to her so I can get close to her face. I push away a last bit of glass that’s covering her cheek and see her eye looking wildly around-

‘Sweetheart?’ she says.

‘Mum?’ I say, crying, brushing away more glass. ‘Tell me what to do, mum.’

‘Sweetheart, are you hurt?’ she says, high and fluttery again, like she can’t really take a breath.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Mum, can you move?’

I put a hand under her shoulder to lift her, but she screams again, which makes me scream, too, and I let her go back to how she was lying, on her stomach, on the ceiling, the metal shard in her back, blood coming out of it slowly like it was no big deal, and everything around us broken, broken, broken.

‘Your father,’ she gasps.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘The fire-’

‘Your father loved you,’ she says.

I stop and look at her. ‘What?’

I see her moving her hand, trying to worm it out from under herself and I take it gently, holding it with my own. ‘I love you, too, Viola,’ she says.

‘Mum? Don’t say that-’

‘Listen, sweetheart, listen to me.’

‘Mum!’

‘No, listen-’

And she coughs and the pain of it causes her to scream again and I hold her hand tighter and I barely even notice that I’m screaming along with her.

She stops, gasping again, and her eye looks up at me, more focussed this time, like she’s trying really hard, like she’s never tried harder to do anything in her entire life. ‘They’ll come for you, Viola.’

‘Mum, stop, please-’

‘You’ve been trained,’ she says. ‘You stay alive. You stay alive, Viola Eade, do you hear me?’ Her voice is getting louder, even though I can hear the pain in it.

‘Mum, you’re not dying-’

‘Take my hope, Viola,’ she says. ‘Take your father’s, too. I’m giving it to you, okay? I’m giving you my hope.’

‘Mum, I don’t understand-’

‘Say you’ll take it, sweetheart. Say it to me.’

My throat is choking and I think I’m crying but nothing feels attached to anything and I’m here holding my mother’s hand in a wrecked spaceship on the first planet I’ve ever been to, in the middle of a night I can see through a crack in the ship’s hull and she’s dying, she’s dying, and I’ve been so horrible to her for months-