Doc looked at Tye and then trailed after her.
Peter watched them go and Ben used the opportunity to deliver a roundhouse punch to his son’s face. Peter rocked backward and sprawled in the sand, blood dripping from the red mound on his cheek.
Tye sprang forward and tackled Ben and the two men wrestled on the beach. Tye got his legs around Ben and drove his head into the sand. Ben coughed and sputtered as he choked on sand, but Tye didn’t let him up.
“Ben Hasten you’ve lost your shit if you think you can just hit people on this island. Let’s go. You’re spending the night in the hole.” Tye jerked Ben to his feet and shoved him toward the forest.
“I forbid you to ever see that girl again,” Ben said.
Peter said, “Shit don’t mean shit. And that shit is rich coming from you.”
Tye stopped walking, pulled Ben to a stop, and turned him to face his son. “Say you’re sorry.”
“Piss off, Rantic,” Ben said.
Tye punched the back of his leg and Ben went to his knees.
“You run around behind mom’s back with Milly’s ma and you think you can tell me what to do, old man? I’m a fire guard, and you’re nothing,” Peter said. He got up and got in his father’s face. “Get in the way of Milly and me again and I’ll kill you myself.”
Tye pushed Ben onto the path and grabbed him by the back of the neck. “If you run, I’ll break a rib. Maybe two,” Tye said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Marshal. Except, who the hell gave you a badge, Rantic?”
“Look, you want to be the island drunk and embarrass your wife and kids, that makes you a grade A ass. And this shit with Sarah. I—”
“Shut up about Sarah. You don’t know shit,” Ben said.
They’d arrived at the hole.
Wherever people lived, there was the need for punishment, and separation from the herd was one of the strongest forms. Early on, Tye had been the jailor, and he’d dug the hole and constructed the bamboo grate that covered the top. Tye opened the grate and tossed Ben in. “What I know is you’re in there and I’m up here,” Tye said.
“Who’s breaking the rules now?” Ben said. Then he threw up, spilling dark liquid across his cell.
“I’m going to the Womb right now to report the situation. You better be nice or they’ll keep you in there a few days,” Tye said.
“Screw you, Rantic,” Ben said.
Tye closed the bamboo hatch and weighed it down with rocks.
Back in the jungle, his nerves eased and his mind filled with worry over his pairing with Haven. Doc’s words echoed in his head. “She’ll want to have a baby.” Did he want a baby? Tye believed he did, but he also wanted to leave Respite. He wanted to see what had become of the world he’d left behind and discover what it could be again. Doc had also said that option wasn’t currently available, so until it was, what was the sense of putting off the rest of his life worrying about a situation that might never occur?
The night deepened, waves crashed, and the night birds sang.
Chapter Four
Year 2063, Respite
Milly Hendricks stared at her mother’s death-shrunken face and tried to remember the beauty and compassion that had once been there. This woman who had raised her as her own. A twinge of anger sent a spark of pain up her back, and betrayal washed over her. Truths are what people make them, and if Sarah wasn’t her mother, she didn’t know who was. That other person she left behind on The Day was from another life, another world, and Milly didn’t even remember what she looked like.
It all made her want to leave Respite more. Her dress of woven palm fronts chafed and itched, and the flowers around the neckline made her sneeze. She’d done nothing as her mother lay dying, Doc’s anatomy and remedies volume one sitting in her lap describing old world magic called “pills” that could take her mother’s pain away. She should have at least tried to find these pills. She should have done something other than watch her die.
Chief Fire Master Aragorn spoke the nonsense of the guard, and she heard gibberish. She was a fire guard, but she didn’t buy into most of the crap. She joined the service because her mother made her and Peter was doing it, and she had to be better than him.
Old Doc Hampton did his best to make mom look presentable, but he didn’t have much to work with as her final days weren’t kind. She’d taken ill while doing a public reading of the sacred text The Songs of a Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, a story with amazing similarities to their own.
The sickness consumed her, and neither Doc Hampton nor his apprentice, Ren Pendaltine, could figure out for certain what ailed her, but Doc Hampton believed she’d had some form of cancer. Her illness moved too fast to be old age, and whispers of the plague spread across Respite. Had the disease finally found them? Doc didn’t think so, but Milly couldn’t shake the feeling that if they’d had some old world magic, her mother would still be alive. The urge to leave the island rose in her like it had since the day she’d climbed her first tree to get a better look at the horizon.
Milly’s young son, Randy, stood beside her, picking his nose. Milly slapped his hand away. Little boys were so gross. Her husband, Curso, stood on her other side, his arm around her shoulders. His brown skin glistened with perspiration, and he focused
