Lisa

Not for the rest of my days would I forget the sight of Hannah’s child. It was an abomination; no child should ever be born that way and no mother should ever have to go through what Hannah had gone through that night. The seriousness of the situation required me to remain calm and collected throughout the horrible ordeal; once Hannah was safely in the clinic under the care of Sister Audrey and Dr Ahmad the horror of that night started to haunt me. When I closed my eyes I could see the ugliness of the child, I could feel the deadness of it, its wrinkled skin, and I could smell the putrid odour of the blood and the various other fluids that had emerged with the child. As a medical professional I should not have been reacting to it in such a way but it was Hannah and Kevin’s child that had been lost; our closeness made the loss feel like it had been all of ours. I wasn’t just disturbed by the events of that night, I was beset by sorrow the same way that Hannah and—although he didn’t show it—Kevin were.

Miranda was outstanding during this period, taking care of Kristin and Hannah and giving the rest of us less to worry about. Kevin was free to cope with his loss in his own private way, Cathy was able to continue coming to terms with Morgan’s death and at night she was there for me as well, holding me close as my memories of Hannah’s miscarriage reduced me to fits of tears. I wished that there was more that I could do for her to show her how much everything that she was doing meant not just to me but to all of us. Were it possible for us to have a child together I would have proposed the idea to Miranda as a way to reaffirm our commitment to each other but of course we could do no such thing and we weren’t old enough to get married, gay marriage being legal in Canada. I could do nothing more than express my love for her and my appreciation to her and Miranda, being the wonderful person that she was, was happy to hear those words and asked for nothing more.

When Hannah said to us that she was planning on returning to Prospera, I, like Kevin and Miranda, wasn’t all that surprised by it. After a few days Kevin announced that he would help her to make the journey—again, no surprise—and it was left to me and Miranda to decide whether we went with them. On the one hand the four of us had done everything together so it was only natural that we would be thinking of going with them; on the other hand it was Prospera, the place that we had fled seeking a life free from the fear that we had been living in every day, a life that we had found here in Huntingdale. Hannah would never understand our feelings; her head was too far up in the clouds thinking about systems of government and social contracts and population pressures and a whole lot of other concepts we didn’t have any interest in, and considering that Hannah had fled Prospera to be with Kevin, who was leaving Prospera because they’d tried to kill him, it was baffling to us that Hannah would continue to take such an interest in the hidden workings of Prospera. We had a place to stay, we had jobs, we were living with a kind family, we had successfully acclimated to the radical newness of this world and we continued to learn fascinating new things about it on an almost daily basis. Why couldn’t she just be happy? It was entirely irrational that she would think that a better life awaited her in Prospera than she could have here in the outside world, especially when that life didn’t include Kevin, the boy that she loved.

Something very strange was behind Hannah’s decision to return to Prospera. It was true that it hadn’t come as a big surprise to us when she’d first told us about it but thinking about it since then I came to realize that it was extremely bizarre the way that she kept comparing this world with Prospera unable to decide which was better. Of course this world was better! The invasion of the Americans aside we had no reason to think anything harsh enough about this world to want to go back to Prospera. I brought up the issue with Kevin and he told me that Hannah was just as confused by her feelings as we were and he told me about her theory that she’d been brainwashed by her mother, a theory that seemed entirely plausible to me as it had to Kevin. We couldn’t trust Prospera, we had known that since we were small children and yet the enigma of the place proved an unending fascination with us. I too was growing intrigued by the question of what was responsible for Hannah’s unbreakable attachment to Prospera; this was in addition to several other mysteries about Prospera that continued to intrigue us, one of which Hannah brought to our attention a few days after she’d told us that she was going back to Prospera. She had used Cathy’s computer to log onto the internet to use Google Earth to identify the easiest route through the forest and had made a startling discovery. When she scrolled up past Guardian Mountain to get a look at Prospera from the sky there was nothing there. No mill wheel turning under the waterfall, no houses, no school, no outdoor auditorium next to the lake, no dock, no fishing boat, no library, no Central Administration Building, no orchards, no plantations, no stables, no dairy, no greenhouses, no abattoir, no carrier pigeon coop, no food collection points, no lumber mill, no granaries, no blacksmith, no carpentry workshop, no fabric and clothing workshop, no summer cottages. There was nothing but trees, grass, water and rocks. Hannah made a printout and showed it to us and we couldn’t believe what we were looking at.

“How in the world is this possible?” Kevin asked.

“The only explanation I’ve been able to think of is that in Prospera they are in contact with someone here in the outside world who’s keeping them off the radar,” Hannah answered.

“I can’t understand how that’s possible either,” Miranda said.

“Hannah’s right though, it is the only explanation that makes sense,” I said.

“The person that they’re in contact with whose doing this for them would have to be someone very powerful; how would they have made that person’s acquaintance?” Kevin asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Hannah said defiantly.

“You still want to go back? Do you realize what this says about the lengths to which they’re willing to go in Prospera to maintain absolute secrecy? They’ll never let you back in!” I pleaded with her.

“I’m fully aware of what the dangers are and they’re not enough to stop me!”

When did Hannah turn into Kevin and Kevin into Hannah? I thought to myself. We’d seen a remarkable transformation in them in the time that we’d been here in the outside world. Kevin had lost his appetite for adventure completely and was perfectly content with going to work and doing the same job every day and spending the rest of his time with us on the farm, whereas Hannah had worked with unbridled passion to turn the farm around and was planning a reckless return to Prospera. Had Kevin been so afraid during his time in Prospera that he was so relieved to have made it to the outside world his only interest was in just living? To us he had never seemed that afraid when we’d been in Prospera and he’d spent his time there testing the boundaries of almost everything. Perhaps we’d misread him, perhaps we’d never known the true Kevin until now. This Kevin who wanted nothing but peace and a sense of safety was so different from the Kevin we’d grown up with that it was difficult for me to conceive of us being so blind for so long. Hannah had most likely known the truth about Kevin all along and Kevin had probably been open and honest about his feelings with Hannah in a way that he wouldn’t have done with anyone else. Those two had something truly special, a deep bond and an innate understanding of each other that made it impossible for them to love anyone else more than they loved each other. They were soulmates. I wasn’t sure that mine and Miranda’s love rose to the level of theirs and I would never for a second entertain the thought of leaving Miranda and potentially never seeing her again for the sake of acquiring answers to questions that in the greater scheme of things were of zero importance, making Hannah’s insistence on returning to Prospera and what was driving it all the more concerning.