Page 98 of Earthbound

He had already considered it and run through all the complications. It was certain death now for anyone who crossed the threshold from Mosima to topside. The boundary was the only thing keeping them safe.

Yeeran made a frustrated noise. ‘Could Lettle bring down the boundary? Maybe then we could tunnel out?’

‘By the time she gets here there’d be very few people left in Mosima to save.’ Rayan looked to the queue that had formed of sick people at the quarantine’s border. He stopped counting at fifty.

It could not end like this. They had to try.

‘If we go outside the boundary, we have to ensure we do not get hurt. We’ll need an advantage,’ he said.

‘Malak,’ Yeeran said the name they were both thinking.

‘We’d be losing any leverage we could use in the future,’ Rayan said, running through the ramifications of offering up their one prisoner of war.

‘Yes, but what will leverage matter if everyone is dead?’

Rayan felt as though he had to consider Furi’s thoughts in this as though she were here. ‘Furi would say the risk is too great.’

‘But she would still do it. You know there is nothing she would not do to save her people.’

‘True.’

‘Send me out. I know how to forage, I did it enough times as a child. Plus I’m the only one other than you who has actually seen the flower before.’

It made sense. Rayan wouldn’t be able to leave because of his connection to the city.

‘You might be infected though,’ he said.

‘I will go alone, no one else need come. And once I find the flower, I will return.’

One of the healer’s voices called out from the front of the queue, ‘Single file, remain calm; we will get to you as soon as we can.’ They wore bright purple gloves made of linen.

‘Some of the healers have got sick,’ Yeeran said.

‘The gloves aren’t helping?’

‘They are, but some must have caught the pox beforehand.’

‘Jay?’

‘They’re fine. Tending to Furi still.’

‘Good.’ The wasting pox was an awful disease.

‘Have you already had it?’ Yeeran asked.

‘Yes, when I was seven, before I moved to Waning. In Shah, hister flowers grew on the border of the city, so it was easier to make the cure.’ He knew that having it prior had likely given him immunity, but he wasn’t stupid enough to test the theory and walk among the sick.

He’d been frustrated when Yeeran had crossed the quarantine border to Furi. But he’d understood it. If these were to be their last days, he would have wanted to spend them with Lettle too.

He let his gaze slip from Mosima to the sanctuary as he inhabited Ajax’s sight.

Lettle was watching Afa with tenderness. Even knowing everything he had done she had the humanity to offer sympathy.

Furi had once called Lettle ‘pricklier than a prickle bush’ and he’d never understood that perception of her. Yes, Lettle knew her mind, but there was no one who cared more deeply than she.

A scream pulled Rayan out of Ajax’s sight. A young girl who was being assessed by a healer had collapsed to the ground. It didn’t take long for her to be escorted away on a stretcher into one of the waiting sickbeds.

As much as he wanted to watch Lettle forever, he knew they had no time to waste.