Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

Author:Patrick Ness [Ness, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Issues, Law & Crime, Magic, Fantasy, Juvenile Fiction, Violence, Fantasy & Magic, Fiction, Science Fiction, Social problems, Social Issues - Violence, Space Colonies, General, Friendship, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12)
ISBN: 9780763648374
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2010-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

"A whole animal lost," Lee says, "because the Answer lacked an optician."

I laugh, too loud. I roll my eyes at myself.

I finish my own fowl and pick up a new one. "I'm doing three of these for every two of yours," I say. "And I did more loaves this morning and-"

"You burned half of them."

"Because you stoked the oven too hot!"

"I'm not made for cooking," he says, smiling. "I'm made for soldiering."

I gasp. "And you think I'm made for cooking-"

But he's laughing and keeps laughing even when I throw a handful of wet feathers at him, smacking him straight on the eye. "Ow," he says, wiping it away. "You got some aim, Viola. We really need to get a gun in your hands."

I turn my face quickly back down to the millionth fowl in my lap.

"Or maybe not," he says, more quietly. "Have you-?" I stop. "Have I what?"

I lick my lips, which is a mistake because then I have to spit out a mouthful of feathery puffs, so when I do finally say it, it comes out more exasperated than I meant. "Have you ever shot someone?"

"No." He sits up straighter. "Have you?"

I shake my head and see him relax, which makes me immediately say, "But I've been shot."

He sits back up. "No way!"

I say it before I mean to, before I even know it's coming, and then I'm saying it and I realize I've never said it, not out loud, not to myself, not ever, not since it happened, and yet here it is, tumbling out in a room full of floating feathers.

"And I've stabbed someone." I stop plucking. "To death."

My body feels suddenly twice as heavy in the silence that follows.

When I start to cry, Lee just hands me a kitchen towel and lets me, not crowding me or saying anything stupid or even asking about it, though he must be dying of curiosity. He just lets me cry.

Which is exactly right.

"Yes, but we're gaining sympathy," Lee says near the end of dinner with Wilf and Jane. I'm putting off finishing because as soon as I do, we have go back to the kitchens to start preparing the yeasts to cook tomorrow's bread. You wouldn't believe how much bloody bread a hundred people can eat.

I take half of my last bite. "I'm just saying there aren't very many of you."

"Of us," Lee says, looking at me seriously. "And we've got spies working throughout the city and people join us when they can. Things are only getting worse there. They're rationing food now and no one's getting the cure anymore. They're going to have to start turning against him."

"And so many in prisons," Jane adds. "Hundreds of women, all locked up, all chained together underground, starving and dying by the dozen."

"Wife!" Wilf snaps.

"Ah'm only sayin what Ah heard!"

"Yoo din't hear nothin of the sort."

Jane looks sullen. "Don't mean it's not true."

"There are a lot of people who'd support us in prison, though," Lee says. "And so that might turn out-"

He stops.

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