The Binding

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Part Two

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Part Three

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Bridget Collins

About the Publisher

PART ONE (#u22348aca-de5e-5b5f-a8a0-6a4893ca99e4)

I (#u22348aca-de5e-5b5f-a8a0-6a4893ca99e4)

When the letter came I was out in the fields, binding up my last sheaf of wheat with hands that were shaking so much I could hardly tie the knot. It was my fault we’d had to do it the old-fashioned way, and I’d be damned if I was going to give up now; I had battled through the heat of the afternoon, blinking away the patches of darkness that flickered at the sides of my vision, and now it was nightfall and I was almost finished. The others had left when the sun set, calling goodbyes over their shoulders, and I was glad. At least now I was alone I didn’t have to pretend I could work at the same pace as them. I kept going, trying not to think about how easy it would have been with the reaping machine. I’d been too ill to check the machinery – not that I remembered much, between the flashes of lucidity, the summer was nothing but echoes and ghosts and dark aching gaps – and no one else had thought to do it, either. Every day I stumbled on some chore that hadn’t been done; Pa had done his best, but he couldn’t do everything. Because of me, we’d be behind all year.

I pulled the stems tight round the waist of the sheaf and stacked it against the others. Done. I could go home now … But there were shadows pulsing and spinning around me, deeper than the blue-violet dusk, and my knees were trembling. I dropped into a crouch, catching my breath at the pain in my bones. Better than it had been – better than the splintery, sickening spasms that had come unpredictably for months – but still I felt as brittle as an old man. I clenched my jaw. I was so weak I wanted to cry; but I wasn’t going to, I’d die first, even if the only eye on me was the full, fat harvest moon.

‘Emmett? Emmett!’

It was only Alta, winding her way through the stooks towards me, but I pushed myself to my feet and tried to blink the giddiness away. Above me the sparse stars slid one way and then the other. I cleared my throat. ‘Here.’

‘Why didn’t you get one of the others to finish? Ma was worried when they came back down the lane and you weren’t with—’

‘She didn’t need to be worried. I’m not a child.’ My thumb was bleeding where a sharp stalk had pierced the skin. The blood tasted of dust and fever.

Alta hesitated. A year ago I’d been as strong as any of them. Now she was looking at me with her head on one side, as if I was younger than she was. ‘No, but—’

‘I wanted to watch the moon rise.’

‘’Course you did.’ The twilight softened her features, but I could still see the shrewdness in her gaze. ‘We can’t make you rest. If you don’t care about getting well—’

‘You sound like her. Like Ma.’

‘Because she’s right! You can’t expect to snap back as if nothing’s happened, not when you were as ill as you were.’

Ill. As if I’d been languishing in bed with a cough, or vomiting, or covered with pustules. Even through the haze of nightmares I could remember more than they realised; I knew about the screaming and the hallucinations, the days when I couldn’t stop crying or didn’t know who anyone was, the night when I broke the window with my bare hands. I wished I had spent days shitting my guts helplessly into a pot; it would have been better than still having marks on my wrists where they’d had to tie me down. I turned away from her and concentrated on sucking the cut at the base of my thumb, worrying at it with my tongue until I couldn’t taste blood any more.

‘Please, Emmett,’ Alta said, and brushed the collar of my shirt with her fingers. ‘You’ve done as good a day’s work as anyone. Now will you come home?’

‘All right.’ A breeze lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Alta saw me shiver and dropped her eyes. ‘What’s for dinner, then?’

She flashed her gappy teeth in a grin. ‘Nothing, if you don’t hurry up.’

‘Fine. I’ll race you back.’

‘Challenge me again when I’m not wearing stays.’ She turned away, her dusty skirts flaring about her ankles. When she laughed she still looked like a child, but the farmhands had already started sniffing round her; in some lights now she looked like a woman.

I trudged beside her, so exhausted I felt drunk. The darkness thickened, pooling under trees and in hedges, while the moonlight bleached the stars out of the sky. I thought of cold well-water, clear as glass, with tiny green flecks gathering at the bottom – or, no, beer, grassy and bitter, the colour of amber, flavoured with Pa’s special blend of herbs. It would send me straight to sleep, but that was good: all I wanted was to go out like a candle, into dreamless unconsciousness. No nightmares, no night terrors, and to wake in the morning to clean new sunlight.

The clock in the village struck nine as we went through the gate in the yard. ‘I’m famished,’ Alta said, ‘they sent me out to find you before I could—’

My mother’s voice cut her off. She was shouting.

Alta paused, while the gate swung closed behind us. Our eyes met. A few fragments of words drifted across the yard: How can you say … we can’t, we simply can’t …