Banished

You know you’re the future, Hailey

Gram’s words, the dozens of times she’d given me that strange, hungry look-they chased each other around my head, trying to take hold, to grow into full-blown terror. I fought back, focusing on the feeling of Prairie’s warm hands on mine. After a moment, I realized something-the bandages were off her arm, and the wound that Anna had stitched closed already looked better.

Healers can’t help each other, but we’re strong. That was what she’d told me.

I was strong. I grabbed that thought and held it tight.

“So explain it all to me now.”

“There’s not much more to tell. Just the one rule: you must never heal someone who has died. Their body will come back, for a while anyway, but their soul is gone. They don’t feel love, or pain, or any emotion at all. They respond to basic stimuli and will eat and even sleep, though they don’t dream. They can’t make decisions for themselves, though they can hear and process instructions and will do whatever they are told.”

“Rascal does what I say. If I tell him to come, or stay, or-You knew, didn’t you?”

“I… yes, I was pretty sure from the moment I saw him. That’s why I went looking for scars on him.”

“How could you not tell me? How could you know what I had done to him and, and let me keep him in the car with us, let me keep touching him-”

“Hailey, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t know how to tell you without upsetting you-”

“Without upsetting me? I’m so far past upset, I can’t believe-”

“I had to keep you calm,” Prairie cut me off. “I truly am so, so sorry, Hailey, but you weren’t ready to know.”

We were silent for a moment, and I realized it was true. I had been so close to falling apart these past few days. One more thing might have tipped me over the edge.

“How long have you known about… what happens? If you heal, after?”

“Mary used to tell us stories,” Prairie said. “Horror stories, I guess, meant to scare us so we wouldn’t be tempted. When she was a little girl, one of the other Healers couldn’t help herself and she brought back a cat, a pet she loved, and it was just like Rascal. It frightened all the children, the way it just sat on the porch, not moving. People wouldn’t walk by the house.”

“What happened to it?”

Prairie bit her lip. “Mary said it started to… well, its body began to decompose. The bodies of the healed dead can’t sustain life forever.”

“Oh my God,” I cried, fresh horror surging through my brain. Would Rascal start to decompose? Was his body rotting already?

“One day someone-they never found out who-broke the cat’s neck. It was a blessing, Mary said.”

“But I thought they couldn’t be killed.”

“There are a couple of ways-the brain stem has to be destroyed. A… decapitation would work. Crushing of… that area of the brain… A sharp break of the vertebrae could accomplish that, if… Well, you get the idea.”

“It was good person, compassionate person,” Anna cut in.

I noticed Kaz in the doorway and realized he’d been listening, a pair of steaming cups in his hands. He came forward and set the cups down. His eyes met mine and there was sadness in them.

“I’m sorry about Rascal,” he said quietly, “but it’s not your fault.”

“It is. I did it. No one else.” I didn’t add that at some level I had known that what I was doing was wrong, when I felt the energy rushing from me to Rascal’s lifeless body. Even before I knew I was a Healer.

“How… long?” I asked when nobody spoke.

“The decomposition takes longer than it would in a normal death,” Prairie said carefully. “Depending on the health of the person-or animal-it can take up to two or three times as long for the tissues to fail. And other conditions affect it too, of course.”

Heat, I thought, and humidity and insects, all the things we’d learned about in science. I felt like I was going to throw up. I hadn’t noticed anything yet, except the bad smell, and Rascal had been a young, healthy dog, but how long until his fur began to fall out and his body filled with gases and his skin began to break down?

I pulled my hands away from Prairie’s and covered my face, trying to keep the tears at bay. “I can’t stand to see him,” I whispered. “Don’t make me look at him.”

“He’s outside,” Kaz said. “You’re here, with us. It’s all right.”

I wanted to believe him. He knelt in front of me and Anna leaned in and we all huddled together. Their hands comforted me, patting my shoulders and squeezing my fingers, and it helped. I felt closer to Anna and Kaz than to people I had known my entire life. And as for Prairie-I couldn’t imagine life without her now.

But I knew I was still alone in one important way. I’d done the thing that must never be done, the thing Prairie and my mother had been warned about since childhood. I’d done the unforgivable. And I couldn’t help wondering how many ways I would suffer for it.

I thought of Prairie when her face clouded over with private grief. I recognized the solitary pain at her core. She carried a secret with her too, and I wondered if I would be like her someday, marked with a kind of suffering that other humans couldn’t understand.

“What did you do?” I asked her. I had to know if it was connected to the things that had happened, to the thing I had done. “Why did you leave Gypsum?”

Her face went pale, but it wasn’t surprise I saw on her face. Almost the opposite-a kind of resignation. “Not tonight,” she said, exhaustion making her voice husky. “There’s been enough to deal with tonight for all of us.”

“Stop putting me off,” I protested. “You owe me the truth.”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. I promise. After we’ve all had a chance to rest. The sun will be up in a few hours, and we won’t be able to do what needs to be done unless we get some sleep.”

I wanted to fight her, but fatigue was winning. Despite the shock of learning about Rascal, despite having a whole new nightmare to worry about, I was desperate to close my eyes and let sleep steal in and erase everything, if only for a few hours.

“Promise,” I begged in a whisper.

“I promise.” She looked directly in my eyes when she spoke, and in the pale green depths I saw reflected a shadow of myself.

She stayed in Kaz’s room with me for the rest of the night. I insisted that she take the bed, and when she protested, I curled up in the nest of blankets with Chub. I was asleep before she finished telling me not to worry.

CHAPTER 21

IN THE MORNING she was gone, the bed neatly made and sun streaming through the window when Chub and I woke up. I found her in the kitchen, after I’d taken Chub to the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth.

Before I could demand that she keep her promise and tell me the story, she handed me a travel cup of coffee.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said. “Grab a bagel and you can eat on the way. Anna will watch Chub.”

Anna came into the room just then, her face pale and tired, but she gave me a smile that looked like it took some work. There was no sign of Kaz in the house, and it seemed smaller without his presence.

“Go, go, you two,” she said, giving my arm a little squeeze. “I’m making gulasz, we’ll have big lunch when you get back.”

I wasn’t hungry, but I took a bagel from the platter Anna had set on the table. It had been split and spread with cream cheese studded with dried apricots. Anna pushed a paper napkin into my hands.

“I don’t want to go out there,” I said, hating the way my voice went high and thin, but the horror of last night was stirring and threatening to return. I was desperate to keep the panic under control, but I knew if I had to walk