Page 4 of Fable for the End of the World

Mom sighs thinly and makes her way to the couch. It’s a staggering, arduous walk: she’s still nursing a twisted ankle she claimed to have gotten from tripping up the front stairs. But I haven’t seen her outside in more than two weeks.

“People die from ice pick headaches, you know.” She collapsesonto the couch in a heap. “And it’s not the headaches that kill them. It’s the pain—so unbearable that they’d ratherdie. Dr. Kuiper had a patient with chronic ice pick headaches whohangedhimself.”

“Did you see Dr. Kuiper again today?” I’m glad it’s Luka who asks, not me.

Technically Caerus is the only institution that grants medical licenses. They do virtual appointments, and airlift patients to City hospitals for more complex procedures or surgeries. You can get Dr. Wessels down on Main Street to set your bone or cure your cold for fifty credits (or a skillful barter), but Mom doesn’t trust uncertified doctors. She shells out who knows how many credits a week to video chat with her Caerus doctor.

“Yes,” she says. “I explained everything to him. He sent me another prescription. It needs to be taken with food.”

And how much did he charge you for that?The words rise in my throat, but I snap my lips shut before they can spill out.

Beneath her silk housedress—which looks brand-new, probably delivered by Caerus drone while I was working at the shop—Mom’s chest rises and falls slowly. She’s curled in on herself like a mollusk, fists under her chin.

“I’ll get you dinner,” I say. I’m not hopeful about what’s in the kitchen, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

“I don’t want any of that instant garbage you eat. Dr. Kuiper says I need to be eating fresh fruits and vegetables. To keep my immune system up.”

I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to worry, because we can’t afford to have the power turned on right now, so the microwaveisn’t going to work anyway.

“We probably have some apples,” Luka offers. “Let me check.”

“No, let Inesa,” Mom says. “You work hard all day. She just sits behind a counter. Come here and watch with me.”

Her tablet is propped up on the arm of the couch. I glance over at the screen, and then wish I hadn’t. It’s open to the VOD of the live stream—paused, for now. Sanne is mid-leap, frozen in arrested motion, her white dress a blur against dark green trees. And behind her—

I look away, nausea pooling in the pit of my stomach. I know this isn’t the first time Mom has watched it. She’s one of the millions of citizens of New Amsterdam who caught the Gauntlet live, eyes trained unblinkingly on their tablets so they didn’t miss a moment of it. I wonder if, in her rewatch, Mom is focusing on different things. Little things she might have missed, like the way Sanne’s tears mingled with the rainwater until they were the same rivulets that ran down her face.

The thought jolts me, like an electric shock. While Luka settles down on the couch beside Mom, I go into the kitchen. My whole body feels strangely shaky, the way it does when I’ve gone a while without eating. But I’m definitely not hungry now.

The bruises around her throat—

I shake my head and blink, clearing the memory, and open the icebox. There are a few mealy-looking apples, but Mom won’t want those. Instead, I light the stove and boil water for potatoes. We only have the powdered kind, but potatoesarea vegetable. I think.

Fixing Mom a meal she won’t complain too much about is asupreme feat. The potatoes are reconstituting, bubbling like a witch’s brew. I take down two cups from the cabinet, fill them with water from the five-gallon bucket, and open a new packet of decon-tabs, peeling off the generic Caerus wrapping. Cherry-flavored, Mom’s second favorite. We’re out of peach.

The water in Esopus Creek, and in most of the outlying Counties, is far too polluted to risk drinking. Caerus’s solution is decontamination tablets, chalky little pills that we drop into every glass. I watch the tablet sizzle and dissolve, dyeing the water a pale pink. The carbonation always makes my nose burn.

Caerus probably realized that they’d lose half the population of New Amsterdam in a matter of weeks if they didn’t make the decon-tabs cheap, so we can almost always afford them, at least the unflavored ones. But Mom hates those, and since she’s already in a bad mood, I use the cherry.

When I bring out the potatoes, Mom curls her lip.

“Sorry,” I say. “We don’t have much else. I’ll go down to Mrs. Prinslew’s tomorrow and see what she’s got.”

The VOD is paused again, thankfully. I don’t risk so much as a glance toward the screen.

“Do you really think this is enough for your brother?” Mom protests. “He spends the whole day hunting in the wet and cold. I’m not asking forme. But for Luka—”

“It’s fine, Mom,” Luka cuts in, his voice muffled around a bite of potatoes. He’s already wolfed down half the plate.

I don’t take my own meals in front of Mom anymore. It’s too much of an ordeal. She likes to pinch the bit of fat on my upperarm, right above my elbow, holding on to it as proof that I could stand to eat a lot less than I do.

Mom eats in small, reluctant bites, letting the potatoes fall off her spoon and splatter on the blanket. In between mouthfuls, she gives dramatic, full-body shudders.

“It’s so cold in here,” she says. “Is the heat off?”

Her innocuous tone pricks at me. She knows the heat is off because we can’t afford it at the moment, and it’s gotten too embarrassing for Luka and me to keep begging coal off the Mulders next door. Maybe if I weren’t so tired, so rattled by my experience with Floris, I would keep my mouth shut and let Luka handle this one. But he’s still shoving potatoes into his mouth, and his finger is hovering over the play button on the tablet, threatening to turn the video back on.

So I bite out, “Yes. It’s too expensive right now.”

---