The Dream Widow Read Free Page A

about that.”
    Mary put an arm around Badger and hugged her. “No, dear. There’s nothing to be sorry about. As long as the two of you are happy, don’t worry about me or anyone else.”
     
    WILSON DROPPED OFF the rest of the venison with his mother and tried to catch a few hours of sleep. He’d normally be moving to Office where most of the partnered couples stayed, but because of the refugees from the destroyed village there was no space. Luckily the rectory had a few unused rooms and Father Reed had given them permission to clean out one. The grey floor and walls still smelled from the scrubbing soap.
    Maybe it was the smell, maybe it was the ceremony the next day, but Wilson couldn’t sleep. He squirmed fitfully under his blankets then finally threw on a jacket and wandered up and out of the underground rectory to the northern part of the village.
    Dark peaks surrounded the long valley and protected Station on all sides like pointy-headed priests bowing heads in the moonlight. Unlike the tribal villages in the wilderness or the buildings from the old days, just about all of Station was underground. Concrete mouths in the earth led down to entrance tunnels guarded by massive steel doors. Wide patches of hemp, corn, beans, and vegetable gardens covered the flat land of the valley. In the north lay a large corral and barn for the sheep and goats.
    Wilson greeted a few guards on his way to the Tombs. He passed a fence and a rusted sign with only one legible word––“Station.” He descended into a tunnel and pressed a code into an old keypad. The concrete below his feet shook as the metal door slowly ground open.
    Inside, crimson light glowed from strips along the walls of a small room. In the center of the floor was a worn metal square edged in yellow and black stripes.
    Wilson ignored the panel and walked to a door on the far side of the room. Nearby was another old keypad and a yellowed board with rows of multicolored tags on tiny hooks. He entered the code Jack had given him and walked down a stairwell that spiraled into the earth.
    Stepping into the black cistern would have been impossible without a special trick. Wilson concentrated and whispered a poem Badger had taught him.
     
                Eyes made of light
                Eyes made of sun
                Eyes made of moon
                Restore my sight
     
    The black lightened to dark grey, enough to see the steps. This and the other poems he’d learned over the summer activated the centuries-old technology implanted in each villager at their coming-of-age ceremony.
    At the dusty bottom of the stairwell Wilson opened an unlocked door into a vast cavern, walls lined in multiple levels of ebony caskets. A circle of five overturned fishbowls flickered with light on the smooth floor in the center. Four were dark and covered with dust. One glittered with blue liquid.  Inside floated an old man, his limbs blunted by stumps and his body covered in a web of black cables. Yellow pinpoints of light flashed at the base of the dome.
    “Good morning,” said a voice like a can being crushed underfoot.
    “Hello, Jack.”
    “You haven’t come to see me for a while.”
    “Sorry. I’ve been busy this week. Had to teach a bunch of people about the implants.”
    “So why the late night? Nervous about tomorrow?”
    Wilson shook his head. “Jack–”
    “It’s normal. At least, it used to be. I don’t know what normal means these days.”
    “How about you? You were married once, right?”
    Static filled the air and Wilson covered his ears.
    “I was young,” said Jack. “Barely a corporal when the war busted out. Not THE war and not India, but Pakistan. Joanie and I got married right before my unit deployed. We didn’t have time for a ceremony.”
    “The old days. Tell me about them,” said Wilson.
    “We had everything. Travel anywhere on the planet in a few hours. Read, watch, taste, drink whatever you wanted. So many