The New World Read Online Free Page A

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-
    ‘Say it, Viola,’ my mother whispers. ‘Please.’
    ‘I’ll take it,’ I say. ‘I’ll take your hope. I’ve got it, okay? Mum? ’
    But I don’t know if she hears me-
    Because her hand isn’t gripping back any more.
    And that’s when something happens, something that makes everything now, something that cuts all the past away, the convoy and everyone on it gone and past, and it’s just me, here, now, so fast, it doesn’t seem real.
    My father. The crash. My mother. It’s not real.
    It’s like I’m watching it all, including myself, from somewhere else.
    I watch myself stand up next to my mother.
    I watch myself wait there in the wreckage for a while not knowing what to do.
    Until enough time passes that something has to be done, so I watch as I climb to where the wall of the cockpit has come apart and look out into the planet for the first time.
    Look out into the darkness. Darkness upon further darkness. Darkness that hides things.
    Things I can hear.
    Animal noises that almost sound like words.
    I watch myself step back into the ship, away from the darkness, my heart beating heavy.
    And then I seem to blink and the next thing I see is myself pulling back a broken panel to the engine room.
    From even farther away, I see myself finding my father, burnt in a nightmarish way from the chest down, a terrible wound on his forehead that would have killed him anyway.
    I watch myself as coldness flows through me, watch as I’m so cold I’m unable to even cry at my father’s body.
    I blink again and then I’m seeing myself back next to my mother in