The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“Yes, of course,” Enid said, and did so right then and there, climbing up on a chair while Sam held her steady and Berol handed her a nail and hammer. Between the three of them they managed to do the work of one sober person.

Olive got her implant removed the very next day. She’d wanted it out that night, but the others talked her out of it, mostly by convincing her that drunkenly waking up a medic in the middle of the night couldn’t possibly end well. The next day would be soon enough.

The actual removal felt anticlimactic. There should have been witnesses. There should have been a ritual. It should have been . . . more difficult.

But no, the clinic had already gotten word of the banner from the committee. Enid, Sam, and Berol waited outside. Olive emerged from the back exam room ten minutes later, with a bandage on her upper arm and a startled look on her face, like she couldn’t believe it. Girls got their implants as soon as they started menstruating, and some women never had them removed, only replaced, their whole lives. It was a part of you. Unless you earned a banner, and then you became something else.

“How does it feel?” Enid asked.

“I don’t know,” Olive answered. “I’m afraid to look.”

“I’ll look,” Berol said, picking at the edge of the bandage, and Olive slapped his hand, pulled away, and then hugged him.

“Let’s go home. Right now.”

“What? I thought we were going to go find some brandy, celebrate some more—”

“No, we are going home right now,” Olive said, grabbing his hand and pulling. Her face was flushed.

Enid and Sam stayed out of the house for the rest of the day. Got sandwiches and had an impromptu picnic out by the duck pond, snugged up under a tree. Sam even fell asleep, his breathing turning deep and steady. Enid kept waking him.

“Are you sad? That it’ll be theirs and not ours?”

“Hmm?” he shifted, securing his grip around her. “It’ll be all of ours.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well. I do think you’d have a beautiful baby.”

“So would you. We both would.” And yet, somehow, she couldn’t quite picture what this imaginary baby would actually look like. Would it have light hair or dark? Her round features or Sam’s square ones?

Enid also couldn’t imagine herself pregnant. But Olive—she could absolutely imagine Olive pregnant and glowing from it, the way some women got. In fact, she couldn’t wait to see it.

Sam murmured, “If it happens, it happens. No reason it shouldn’t.”

“But what if we never earn another banner?”

“That’s too far ahead to think about.”

“But—”

“Enid. You’re overthinking it.” He tipped her face up and kissed her, and she melted, grateful to do so.

That was how it worked. Your household earned a banner, one of you had your implant removed, and every child was wanted and cared for.

But no one had cared enough to come looking for Ella. This had kept Enid awake. Why did no one want to learn what had happened to her?

It was like her people already knew she was gone.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////

Enid crossed the bridge and continued up the hill with purpose, just as the Estuary’s inhabitants were waking up and starting morning chores, collecting eggs, milking goats. She had no interest in talking to anyone; they’d told her everything they were going to. Time to move on.

But when she got to Last House, to where the road ended, she stopped. Mart watched her from the front steps. He was just going out the front door; might have seen her coming up the path.

She paused to ask, “How’s Kellan?”

He shrugged. “This whole business has wrecked him.” They had to raise their voices, to hear each other across the distance between them.