A set of narrow steps was to the left of the entry. They'd be barely wide enough for my father's shoulders if he ever came here. I closed my eyes and shook my head. No, my father would never come here. I'd submitted to Doctor Cresh's second test so that they wouldn't have to test my father. He was not sick.
Not sick ... yet. I'd exposed him to the Scourge. And my mother, and countless others. I had to prove it was possible to recover from this, for them.
Looking ahead, the main floor had a low, heavy roof, just as I was sure every other floor had. Rows of cells were on either end of a long dark hallway lit by a single oil lamp at the far end. At least the bars that had once defined this place as a prison were gone and dim candlelight in the rooms flickered through empty doorways.
Much as I already hated my work, this was what I'd been assigned. As Weevil said, our best plan was to not cause any further trouble. I knew myself too well to believe the plan would last for more than a day or two, but I had to be good for as long as possible. The fact was that my life now depended on me staying out of trouble. Every ounce of strength within me had to focus on getting better, and for that, I needed access to medicine, and rest, and food. None of that would come if I was back in the cage, getting pecked by hecklebirds.
I wasn't sure where to begin with the laundry. The collection bin wouldn't go up the stairs, so obvio
usly I'd have to carry everything down. Start with the hardest part of the job; that was what my mother had always taught me.
So I made the climb to the top floor, up four flights of crumbling stairs. A small window was on each landing but they were all closed, making the air stuffy and thick. The odor was unbearable. Was this the smell of death? If I'd done nothing else but smell this place, I'd still have refused to stay here. More than ever, I missed the river country: the fresh, moist air and the scent of wildflowers in the fields where Weevil and I lay to dry off after every dive for fish.
Once I arrived on the fifth floor, I saw the long corridor of rooms that had once been prison cells. Without doors to replace the bars, there was no privacy, no shield between the very ill and those who still had some shred of their former strength. For that matter, there was no hope, no joy, and no sign of living. Everything was an awful shade of dirty gray.
I went into each room and gathered up any piles of linens in the corners of the room. Fortunately, there weren't many people staying on this floor, so there wasn't much to gather. I bound it all in my arms and went back down the stairs. About midway down, I almost tripped on a person sitting right in the middle of the stairs.
Della.
Naturally it was her. If anyone in this entire camp would be in a place to cause me to nearly trip and roll down three flights of stairs, it'd be Della.
I dropped the laundry and stood tall, ready to fight if that's what she wanted. She must've heard me coming and didn't move out of the way, which meant she was probably here deliberately.
Or not.
Della looked up to me, her face so pale and gaunt that her eyes looked like they'd shrunk in their sockets. "Help me, Ani. I can't do this. I'm going to die here."
I eyed Della for a moment, waiting for whatever trap she was baiting me into. It wouldn't work. I intended to obey the Colony rules now, or at least, most of them. Besides that, I wanted to remain angry with Della, assuring myself that I had been right all along, that Weevil was naive in expressing any sympathy for her, and that she truly was the most horrible creature ever to roam these lands. I tried to believe it, truly I did. But the longer I stared at her, the sorrier I felt. Maybe she was mean-spirited and rude, but maybe I was too, a little. And like Weevil had said, she was definitely scared. So was I. And maybe she was snobbish and self-centered and a lot of other things I absolutely wasn't, for the most part. But whatever Della was, somewhere in the world, there had to be at least one person who was worse than her.
Even if she was the worst, I still needed her help to escape this island. So I sat down beside Della and took her hand in mine. "You are not going to die in this place, do you understand me? Last night I felt the very same way--so sick that every part of me hurt. But I'm a little better today. You just have to keep going and let the symptoms pass."
"They do, when I take the medicine," Della said. "I'm taking too much--I know I am. I'll run out in only another day or two, but I can't help it. Nothing else works."
"Give it to me," I said, holding out my hand for the flask. "I promise to let you have a sip when you really need it, but we must make it last until you're better."
She sniffed. "You think I can get better?"
"I'm feeling better today." I smiled and looked sideways at her. "Surely if I can do this, then so can you."
Her hand was still tight around her flask. "You promise I can still have this when I need it? Even after I took it from you?"
"River People have many faults," I said. "We fight over things that don't matter and back down from the fights that do matter. We work too hard and somehow still produce too little, and frankly, some of us don't bathe often enough. But we never break our promises."
She unscrewed the lid and started to take a drink from it. I went to grab it from her but she said, "This is my first sip today." She quickly took a drink, though it was hardly a sip, and then handed me the flask, which I put back around my neck.
The smell of the medicine wafted up at me, awakening the aches inside me. I wanted a sip too but couldn't take any after I had just begged the flask away from Della. She'd say I had stolen it from her, accuse me before the wardens, who'd surely believe a pinchworm over a grub, and I'd spend another day back in the cage. Maybe I'd sneak a sip this afternoon when she wasn't looking.
While the medicine did its work, I asked Della, "What job have they assigned you?"
"The worst," she said. "Cleaning out the rooms of those who've been taken to the infirmary. Getting their rooms ready for newcomers to the Colony."
I wrinkled my nose. That was a terrible job. In comparison, gathering the laundry seemed like picking flowers. It also confirmed my suspicion that those who entered the infirmary never left it.
Della said, "There's more bad news. My friend Jonas isn't anywhere in the Colony, not anymore. When I asked about him, only a few people knew his name, and those who did said they hadn't seen him since a few days after he first arrived. One man works as an assistant to the wardens and said the wardens probably brought Jonas into the infirmary."
It was likely a place to take those who were about to die so that nobody in the Colony had to see their deaths. Upset like that could create a constant panic here. Perhaps it was better to have quiet disappearances. Out of sight, out of mind.
"I'm sorry." When she was first telling me about Jonas, I'd barely cared to listen. In fact, a part of me had doubted he even existed, because how could this girl have any friend who wasn't imaginary? But when I told her I was sorry, suddenly I was. If I heard Weevil had been taken to the infirmary, it would destroy me.