Page 74 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

Tomas hadn’t had to think about the answer.

“Kindness, Enid,” he said. “We have to be kind.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN • PASADAN

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The World Might Not Remember

In Auntie Kath’s journals, the transition from the old world to the new one had been gradual. No declarative note announced, “And now it has happened, this is the Fall.” She’d write of empathy for folk living in places half a world away destroyed by storms, Pacific islands vanishing under rising sea waters. Then the disasters moved closer. A pair of cousins displaced when tornados raged through their town. Family friends losing jobs in an economic recession that looked like the previous one, but this one became a depression and kept going on and on until it was normal. It was all so awful, but then it had all been so awful for such a long time, they hardly noticed a change in degree. Like a frog sitting in water slowly turned up to boiling. There wasn’t an anniversary of the day when the Fall happened. The process lasted years.

When Kath’s parents died—that might have been the end of Kath’s old world, Enid decided. Not when the power grid failed, not when airplanes stopped flying. Their death marked a definitive date for the Fall, at least for Kath. Enid had this idea after Kath had died and so couldn’t ask her about it. But it was such a personal moment of destruction. The end of Kath’s old world, certainly, but for everyone else the tragedy would have been more distant, like Pacific islands drowning.

Kath herself marked the end of the old world when she came to live at the clinic. For her, that was definitive proof that things would never be the same again, that the old world was truly gone, that the Fall had already happened and no one had noticed. Kath and other diarists of the time didn’t talk about the new world yet, the culture that grew up on the Coast Road. They hadn’t been convinced they would survive that long. They went from one day to the next, grateful to have made it so far.

They began marking time according to seasons and harvests as had been done centuries past, because it was easier. None of the first survivors could remember exactly when they’d built the barricade to protect the clinic from marauders, or when they’d torn it down because the marauders were gone. They could remember the last Super Bowl and World Series and Olympics and the last movie they’d seen or concert they went to, but not when it was decided that there wouldn’t be another. The Fall didn’t leave a definitive mark on the memory of society, not like such a disaster should have.

But personal memory remained. Kath always remembered exactly when her parents died, exactly the last time she spoke with her brother, and exactly when she herself left the old world behind. Right to the end, she’d been able to tell stories about her friends, the people who’d helped her and taken care of her, and spoken of where and how they died, from accident, disease, or simple old age. The world might not remember, but she would.

The worst storms were the ones that changed you. The ones you remembered not for how bad they objectively were, but for how much damage they did to your own world. Banners, planted in memory.

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Enid was surprised when Dak actually showed up at the committee room, after their last talk and all she’d implied. He knocked on the door, and she called him in. It was late; he carried a lantern. She had another pair of lanterns resting on the table. The light spread to the edges of the room, but it was muted, casting both their faces in shadow. Reminded her of those old days around campfires. In dim light, they probably both looked younger.

He stayed by the door. “Miran said you wanted to see me? You ready to take Tomas back to Haven, then?”

Ah, that was why he’d come so easily. His offer was still on the table, and he expected her to give up the investigation. Just like that. “Have a seat, Dak. Please.”

She had a chair pulled out and waiting. His look darkening, he set down the lantern and sank into the seat. Clasped his hands together and watched her closely. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so nervous.

What did he know? And how much would he tell her? Or would he storm out of the room if she pressed too hard? He’d always avoided her hard questions. He’d always fled rather than face difficulty. Then why was he here? Why had he stayed?

“What is it?” he prompted, after she’d spent too long considering. “What’s this about?”

“I can’t figure it out,” she said. “Why did you decide to settle down? You used to hate complications. Couldn’t sit still for them. Yet here you are.”

“People change.” A pat phrase, easy to say. He watched her steadily.

“I suppose,” she said. “Was it love? You fall in love with someone and couldn’t bear to be parted?” That would have been romantic, to think that he had fallen in love—really and truly this time—and changed because of that.

He chuckled. “Love means lots of different things, Enid.”

Another easy answer. She wondered if he’d ever loved her. She couldn’t remember him ever saying the words to her. Not that it mattered. And what would he say if she asked him that now? Another easy, poetic answer, no doubt.

“Then why?”

“Another interrogation.”

She shrugged. “If you like.”

“Maybe I just got tired.”

Dak likely didn’t know himself. Maybe he was trying to re-create that thing he’d lost as a child, without even realizing it. Maybe he wanted something he couldn’t get from wandering, and maybe Pasadan was just the place he happened to be when he decided to stop.

Sometimes, you could interrogate someone for hours and never get the answer you wanted to hear. Sometimes, people just went silent.

“Never mind. It’s none of my business. Not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

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