Hannah

“You guys are full of surprises,” Cathy said to me upon finding out about Lisa and Miranda.

What the hell are they doing? I thought to myself apoplectically. I told them to be careful not to irresponsibly reveal too much about ourselves to Cathy and they go and reveal to her what they were afraid would cost them their lives in Prospera!

I didn’t feel I was being overly paranoid with respect to Cathy. Not taking any precautions while we were still new to this world and finding our way in it was naïve, and dangerous. I had no intention of lowering my guard the same way that Lisa and Miranda had, despite Cathy’s best efforts to get me to do so.

“You know, Kevin has a thirty minute lunch break, if you’d like I can take you to go and see him, find out how his day’s been going”

“No, its fine; I think he’d prefer to get through this alone, that’s how he is.”

“You’re his girlfriend, you’d know. How long have you two been together?”

“Just the past few months.”

“You look like you’ve been together longer than that; most couples that have been together a short time are much more demonstrative with each other than you are.”

“We have known each other our whole lives.”

“In the woods?” She asked sardonically.

I appreciated Cathy’s sense of humour enough to respond to her wisecrack with a good humoured sly glance in her direction.

“This place is really beautiful; I hope the Americans don’t come up here and destroy everything like they did in that town we saw on the news,” I said.

“That’s what we’re all hoping for,” Cathy answered.

“You’re worried that it might happen?”

“Most people think that what they’re doing isn’t just for oil, that they want more, in which case none of us are safe.”

“What’ll you do if they come here?”

“We haven’t thought about that yet; truth is there isn’t a whole lot we could do. Some went looking for Prospera but none of them have come back so that’s obviously not a very bright idea. We’ll just have to survive as best we can and hope that we don’t get treated with too much cruelty by whoever the Americans send up here.”

I empathised with Cathy, not just with her but with everybody in Canada who had experienced this war firsthand and with those who hadn’t experienced it yet and were living under a cloud of fear wondering if it would ever reach them. Meeting Cathy was the first time we’d met someone like her but it wasn’t the first time she’d met people like us. For years they’d been living with refugees, their fellow Canadian citizens, making their way to their town, bringing with them stories of loss and pain. Seen through that lens it was understandable that Cathy would have taken to us—four lost children—the way that she had, however there were still unanswered questions surrounding her that I couldn’t shake. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that she mentioned Prospera to me again, I thought it was quite clear that she was trying to send me some sort of message, which, whenever she did so, had the effect of increasing my scepticism of her and making it all the more improbable that I would quickly set aside my reservations and place as much faith in her as Lisa and Miranda had decided to. Lisa’s rather quick turnaround on Cathy took me more than a little by surprise and with Kevin away at work left me feeling somewhat isolated, like I was the odd one out in our present group of four.

The rest of the time that we spent that morning with Cathy while waiting for the library to open was pleasant enough. Once we’d gotten bored with the sightseeing location she drove us around to the other sites in the park and when we were done with that she took us to a place to get ice-cream, which was soft and served in what she said was a cone, not like the ice-cream we had in Prospera which was frozen and on a stick, and only available as a winter treat. There were many other treats that we didn’t know about that Cathy promised to introduce us to, which Miranda in particular was looking forward to. Things between Miranda, Lisa and Cathy were growing increasingly cordial, and while my feelings about Cathy had softened a little, a definite distance was beginning to materialize between me and the other three. I was relieved when the time finally came for us to go to the library; it meant an opportunity for me to focus on something other than the growing separation between me and my two lifelong friends.

The Huntingdale library, like the Chamber of Commerce building, the cathedral and the bell tower, was constructed of red brick with ornate metalwork used for the gates, burglar guards, stair railings and light fixtures. The library was much larger than ours in Prospera, but then they didn’t have any restrictions on what people were allowed to read.

“The non-fiction section is on the second floor; I can only take out eight books at a time so be sure to be selective,” Cathy said to us after we’d entered and passed the librarians desk.

“Darren would’ve loved this place,” Lisa whispered to me; we’d been through so much that I’d forgotten we’d left him behind.

There were several young people sitting at the desks that were in the middle of the first floor, poring over books that were opened before them with pens in their hands and notebooks they were furiously scribbling in. This, too, reminded us of Prospera. I remembered Miranda sitting in a chair in the library going over a music score; Lisa checking out a medical textbook, Darren reading a novel. We were far away from home but at the same time not very far away; there were things in this world with which we were familiar and comfortable, enough of them to keep me from feeling like we were in over our heads in this world. I headed straight for the non-fiction section to look for books about the war, Miranda headed for the novels, and Cathy and Lisa just sort of milled around. There were numerous titles to choose from about the war as well as historical texts and biographies that all looked interesting, but learning about the war was my first priority so that’s where I focused my search. I was able to easily select two titles: Black Blood by Steven Greenberg, PhD, about the long history of wars fought by the United States over oil, and Eisenhower’s Final Warning by Michael Hertling, retired naval lieutenant, about the unchecked growth of the US’s military industrial complex. I thought that four titles would be sufficient for a start and was taking my time searching for an additional two when Lisa ran up to me on the second floor to share something with me that according to her was unbelievable. I followed her down to the first floor with my two books in hand, unable to imagine what it was she wanted to show me.

“Look over there,” she whispered to me, pointing at a girl who was sitting at one of the tables who we hadn’t seen when we’d first arrived.

Lisa was right, it was unbelievable. The girl had skin that was dark, much darker than ours, and her hair grew upward and was extremely compact, forming a round shape. Aside from her physical attributes there was nothing else that differentiated the girl; she was wearing clothes that were the same as everybody else’s and was at the library to do some sort of academic work, just like the other people that were there using the desks. Why was there nobody like her in Prospera? Was the question that Lisa and I asked each other with our eyes, at which point Miranda scampered over to us.

“Did you guys see that girl? She looks so different!”

“We saw, and try to be a bit more discreet,” I warned her.

“What are you guys doing?” Cathy came over and asked.

“We’re looking at that girl; why is her skin so dark, and her hair so different?” Miranda asked her softly.

“She’s black,” Cathy answered, entirely nonchalantly.

“Black? What’s a black?” Miranda asked, without the discretion that I’d asked of her.

“It’s a person who’s a descendent of people from Africa.”

“Africa?” Miranda asked, sounding increasingly confused, as all three of us were.

The astounded look on Cathy’s face said it all: the level of ignorance that we had just displayed was unprecedented and had no doubt further piqued her curiosity about us.

“Follow me,” She said to us, walking up the steps to the non-fiction books.

She led us to a section of books labelled ‘Anthropology’ and ran her finger along the books at the top of the shelf until she’d arrived at a thick book simply titled ‘AFRICA’. She flipped through the pages quickly and held the open book out to us.

“This is Africa,” she said, showing us a map, “and these,” she said, flipping through more pages, “are Africans.”

The people in the picture that she showed us bore a strong resemblance to the black girl in the library; Lisa and Miranda were visibly stunned by this information and were silent and motionless for a good few seconds.

“Where is this Africa? Is it also in Canada?” Miranda asked Cathy.

Again we were treated to a look of absolute incredulity from her; the more she learned of our ignorance the more taken aback she was by it. She placed the book about Africa back where she’d pulled it from and went off in search of another book that she brought back to us and opened to us.

“This here is Africa, and this, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, is Canada.”

“What is this?” Miranda asked.

“That’s the world,” I answered.

Lisa and Miranda gave me the same look they’d given me in the cabin when they discovered that I knew a great deal of things about the outside world that were kept from the vast majority of Prospera citizens, to which I responded with a look reminding them of the importance of keeping our past as Prospera citizens secret from Cathy. They didn’t appreciate my secrecy and I fully understood their feelings but it was not the right time to air them.

“What book is that?” Lisa asked Cathy.

“It’s an atlas; it’s got maps and pictures and information about everywhere in the world.”

“We’re taking this,” Lisa said firmly.

“Where are we on here? Where’s Huntingdale?” Miranda asked.

“It wouldn’t be on here, it’s too small, but we’re up here somewhere,” Cathy answered, pointing to a spot on the map that was to the north of Canada, in the north eastern part of the province of Ontario.

The incredible vastness of the world, which Lisa and Miranda were learning about for the first time, hit them hard, as you would expect it to. They didn’t say anything about how they were feeling having heeded my ocular warning but their feelings of betrayal were palpable. By keeping all of this from them Prospera had robbed them of an entire world. They had already suspected as much for a long time so their feelings of betrayal passed relatively quickly, and with the situation regarding the black girl and my knowledge of the true expanse of the world behind us we went back to what we were doing before. I selected two more books about the war, Miranda selected three novels and with the atlas that Lisa wanted to get we had our eight books. Cathy checked them out for us using her library card and we left.

On the way back to the farm, I thought about how in this world they used technology like the library card scanner we’d just seen to perform tasks that in Prospera we were able to perform perfectly well without the use of such technology. Their use of cell phones for long range communication was indisputably superior to our use of pigeons, but did they really need all of this? Was I beginning to properly understand the reason for Prospera’s existence?

Cathy made a little detour as she was driving us back to the farm from the library. She pulled off the road and stopped in front of one of the stores on the main street, Caroline’s Music School.

“Why are we stopping here?” I asked her as she was getting out of the truck.

“It’s my mom’s studio, there’s something I need to get.”

Cathy went into her mother’s studio and came back out holding a violin case which she presented to Miranda upon re-entering the truck.

“Wow! Thanks.”

“You can thank me by playing something for me when we get home.”

Having not so much as seen a violin for months Miranda was elated to receive the violin from Cathy and was eager to get home so she could play it, just as I was eager to get home so that I could start reading.

Cathy asked us if we would stay with her in the main house instead of returning to the cottage. She assured me that I would have plenty of peace and quiet for reading and promised to answer any questions I might have. Is Cathy lonely? I wondered. Since meeting her we hadn’t heard anything from her about any friends, her mother was in hospital and her relationship with her father was clearly strained. I felt sorry for her if that was the case but had no intention of relinquishing my scepticism of her because of it. She showed me to her father’s study on the second floor where there was a comfortable leather wingback chair I could sit in and do my reading. Before leaving me she asked if there was anything I needed or might like that she could get for me, to which I responded that I was fine. She closed the door after her and I settled into the wingback to begin my reading, shortly after which I heard the sound of Miranda playing the violin. The piece that she was playing was instantly recognizable: Tchaikovsky’s Serenade Melancolique, one of her favourite pieces and a piece that she was able to easily perform solo. Listening to Miranda play, there was always a sense of healing that it brought with it. Her musical brilliance had a graceful quality that pierced through any sense of exclusion people felt from classical music and allowed them to be reached by the pure beauty of it. She was a lovely person to have as a friend; Cathy appeared to have already figured that out.