A.N.: After blitzing through the book, I thought the film adaptation of How I Live Now was exceptional, I thought they did a wonderful job of showing us what Daisy describes, the whimsical feeling of the pre-war parts of the story, Daisy's constant references to the thriving beauty of the English countryside in the midst of war (which as a native English girl, I agree with totally; on a sunny day there is nowhere on earth more beautiful than the English countryside). And I love Daisy and Edmond: The film shows them together as something natural.
It's rare that I don't want to rewrite something completely: I just wanted to do a little snippet, my version of the ending.
How We Live Now
01
She wondered if anyone had ever hoped of an oasis not from the sun but of the sun. Something so extraordinarily, unrelentingly beautiful it couldn't be believed. Yellow irises stood tall and proud, petals unfurled to the sunlight dappled through the trees, the silver-green leaves shimmering and sighing in a gentle breeze that rippled across the water. She sank to the damp grass, her body thrumming but long numbed to pain, smiling in a sort of delirious half-dazed bleary way, wondering if Piper's wood-pixie father might've appeared from a place like this to court Aunt Penn. It wasn't the first time she had entertained the thought that Piper and her brothers must be some kind of mystical creatures.
Eyes bleary, delirious from starvation and punishing overexertion, somehow she made it to her back, staring unseeing into the forget-me-not sky, clouds skudding past idly.
It was a wonder she saw it.
If it hadn't shrieked, she wouldn't have noticed it.
A hawk.
Eddie's hawk.
To pass the time as they marched, Piper had tried to teach her the difference between bird calls; she could now name a dozen birds and for a girl raised in the concrete jungle up until months ago, Daisy thought that was progress. But she would never forget the hawk, the shrill, beautiful sound she made when Eddie had released her back into the wild, as she had swooped and dived joyously.
She blinked, tears of exhaustion slowly dripping down the sides of her face, and stared up, as the large bird swooped and circled. And she knew. Eddie. Edmond's hawk. That beautiful dawn they had climbed the hill…before everything happened. Just her, and Edmond, and the healed hawk with her beautiful dark eyes and elegant head, those striking feathers.
If she hadn't believed in signs or divine intervention or the alignment of the cosmos, in that moment she was converted. The sign of that hawk got them on their blistered, bloodied feet once more, the hours of forced marching forgotten, practically running as they dipped out of woodlands to trace hedgerows and check footpath signs and climbed rickety, rotting stiles, landing in six inches of mud that squelched and made Piper smile distractedly at the sucking noise as they waded out of the muck, determined. Across fields of gold sighing in the breeze and meadows vivid with wildflowers, fields of crops curiously untouched, over fresh green hills, they chased the hawk, relying on the memory of a nine-year-old pixie.
How long had it been since they were here last? Months. Or years? It was still as lush and green and vibrant as the first time she had seen it, seemingly untouched by Man, cocooning them. She recognised now what she hadn't realised then; that nature had seemed to be protecting them from reality, surrounding them with such vibrancy and life that the idea of death and war seemed absurd. Because how could anything bad possibly be happening, when here…absolutely nothing was happening. Nothing but the relentless, minute and unnoticeable struggle for life, Nature's ceaseless battle.
Mother Nature was celebrating, here in this quiet and forgotten pocket of England: the hedgerows were overgrown and heavy with fading blossoms, birds' nests and fruit; ticking, humming, chirping insects the background orchestra to birds trilling their songs to the heavens; clouds billowed idly, occasionally breaking the muggy warmth with brief deluges of cool rain that slid down the neck of her rain-coat and cleared the air for a few hours, cool and warm at the same time, the wildlife exulting in the life-giving rain, everything seeming to burst with freshness and scent. Streams gurgled magically, evoking The Wind in the Willows and lazy sun-drenched afternoons picking wildflowers, their Perfect Day; leaves sighed in the gentle, damp breeze, water dripping from enormous lush leaves as they made their way through the woods, the scent of damp earth somehow strengthening to her, Piper's little hand glued to hers, striding up close as they recognised the lay of the land and trepidation filled them.
It wasn't hope that urged them on. Edmond's hawk was the only thing Daisy had faith in; and her own will-power. Keep Piper alive; to keep herself alive.
Eddie's hawk gave them that last surge, filled them with adrenaline, to push ahead those last few miles, to familiar territory. This was Piper's land; she knew it as surely as she knew Edmond and Isaac, and most likely Daisy by now too.
She didn't know what it had cost Daisy to get them both here, slowing their pace, dread curdling with anticipation and the nauseating sense of loss churning in her stomach as the battered Jeep full of trash came into view, exactly where they had left it, and the sandstone house as old as time came into view - exactly as they had last seen it. Without any sign of occupation, that she could tell. It was quiet, but for the birdsong and the hum of insects.
There were no carrion birds, no bold foxes.
Nature had found a way to tell Daisy much more than she had learned from other humans over the last few months.
A few stubborn roses still clung to the front of the house, the overgrown vines vivid and lush: the heavy blooms were pure white, and she wondered whether the Land Army guys had ever stopped to stare and appreciate how picturesque and beautiful the home was. And it was a home. They had sequestered it for the War Effort but it was clearly a home, with the enormous kitchen with zigzag brick floors and the enormous hearth in the living-room with squashy sofas and thousands of blankets, Piper's paintings everywhere and candid photographs of baby Edmond and toddler Piper and a grinning Isaac reminding everyone of their own kids or brothers and sisters.
Maybe that was why they hadn't trashed the house.
Everything was nearly as they had left it, though the cupboards were nearly empty in the kitchen, and most of the furniture had been pushed to the sides of the rooms. There were no broken windows, the doors weren't hanging off the hinges, and even the toilets weren't in a horrific state. The photographs and artwork was still hanging on the walls, Aunt Penn's computer in her study had gathered dust, and even the glittery sign painted by Piper 'Danger - Mummy at Work' was still affixed to the study-door, possibly because no-one had bothered to take it down; the knickknacks on the upright piano were still there, though the decorative candles had long since been used.
The bedrooms were intact, even Daisy's small white room with its thick walls and pretty yellow eiderdown and matching blinds; the vase of bluebells Piper had picked in May when the woods were carpeted with them were colourless and brittle now, and Daisy stared at them for the longest time before Piper brushed up against her, slipping her little paw into Daisy's hand.
Those bluebells, like Eddie's hawk, were proof that…Daisy had once been here, before. Before the world turned upside down, their world, where the vibrant nature all around them had lulled them into the sense that they were untouchable, cocooned in safety - the safety of the adventure, without parents, the safety of their fierce, confusing and intoxicating love.
The weather had started to turn, not dramatically but noticeably; having spent most of the last few months out-of-doors, it was even more apparent that summer had reached its end, and though the house was close, it wasn't hot. The ancient sandstone walls kept out the excessive heat of summer - and would make the wood-burning stoves and fireplaces life-saving in winter.
They checked every room, hand-in-hand, quietly, almost reverentially, and Daisy saw everything through a stranger's eyes. How long had she been here, and enjoyed her life with her family here, before the bombing of London, and the declaration of war? Was it weeks? Or days? She couldn't remember, had only the recollection of true happiness and confusing, consuming love, sinking into the feeling that she had been away for too long, and was home now.
It didn't feel like that this time. Without Gin or Jet or Dink or quirky Isaac or quiet Edmond with his speaking, solemn eyes, or even Piper's incessant humming and chatter and big pretty eyes, the sandstone walls that kept out the heat seemed to stifle the ticking of the insects, muting the birdsong to a soft chorus in the corner of her ear.
The house was quiet, and full of ghosts; her free hand clenched in a spasm, she swallowed the lump in her throat, and glanced down solemnly at Piper.
"Maybe they're in the barn?" She nodded distractedly. Anything to batter away the errant thoughts about the ghosts that might languish in this ancient farmhouse full of personality and lacking the characters who made it vibrant.
The lambing-barn, a mile away from the house and hidden from the roads by ancient trees full of foliage just starting to turn at the corners, ochre and scarlet encroaching on the green like a fire catching. The barn, where they had hidden provisions from Piper, who had gotten into the spirit of what they had considered to be an adventure and foraged and gathered and harvested for them, the way she had since taught Daisy on their journey back home. Where they had snuggled up together and slept in the hay, comforted and secure, and sure the war would never touch them.
Where she and Edmond had come together as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and they were destined to do so. That night played on a loop, sitting in the moonlight as Eddie stared into nothingness, hiding his terror and helplessness in his knitted sweater, finally resting his head against hers when she joined him and his lean warm body relaxed… The warmth and scent of his skin, the pinching sensation and the fullness. The love.
She had never known how starved she was before he filled her. If she could live on Edmond, she would.
He had sustained her. Kept her going. Kept her sane in the quiet; and warm in the dark. She had told him things in her dreams that she would never, ever breathe to Piper. Just the thought of him calmed her.
The thought of him pushed her that bit farther, but what was a mile cross-country after what she and Piper had been through? Urgency overpowered caution for the first time, the familiar surroundings and sense of security in their memories of comfort in this place overpowering all they had learned during their journey back here.
Always forging ahead while ordering Piper to stay close behind but not on her heels, Daisy opened the barn door. Sunlight splashed over old hay and the earthen floor, caught the dust-motes swirling like gold in the air that smelled faintly of animals in a nice way, and as her eyes adjusted she froze.
The shot rang out, loudly and far too close to not have every nerve in her body firing adrenaline full-speed, wood splintering a foot from her stomach from the old barn door. She jumped out of her skin, diving back and almost trampling Piper, yelling at her to run.
"Piper? Daisy."
Her heart in her mouth, her stomach disappeared entirely, her bladder threatening to empty itself, Daisy turned, and there he was.
Isaac.
No trace of his glasses glittered on his face as they always had, shrouded in a heavy rain-coat that was too big for him, he was far more gaunt than she had ever seen him, almost unrecognisable, the curls he had inherited from his mother - the only of three children to inherit them - cropped short and wilted from stress and lack of water. The gun looked too large in his hand, incongruous, especially in Isaac's grip: his cheekbones jutted out, and he had the look of a skinny but growing kid who had suddenly lost too much weight.
He was shell-shocked, it didn't take a genius to see it.
His eyes were big as saucers and glazed, red from crying and exhaustion, his face dirty, lips dried and cracked, bruises healing, purplish and green, his ear was cut and like them, he was covered in small thorn scratches, torn skin, bug-bites scratched until they bled and bruises from sleeping on the ground for weeks.
Isaac took one look at Daisy and dropped the gun.
He burst into tears.
And Daisy grabbed him, and he clutched onto her as if he might drown, and she hugged him back, shocked and her eyes burning to feel just how skinny he had become. His frail body shuddered in her skinny bruised arms, and she hugged him as tight as she could, trying to tell him everything she could just with that one hug; that she and Piper were home, that they were safe, that they were together now, until Piper joined them and squeezed them until Daisy thought she might faint from lack of circulation.
It was Jet who broke them apart. A soft, warm lick of Piper's hand and she relinquished her brother for her dog, the faithful sheepdog who had impressed so many of the Land Army with his skill and Piper's soft low whistle. Piper had had so many rough-and-tough Army guys swooning and wistful over her at the farm, treated like the Queen of Sheba… They knew a treasure when they had seen one, and Piper was.
Jet had found his way home just before Isaac, skinny, his fur matted and unkempt, but otherwise unharmed. He leapt right into Piper's arms and the little girl giggled and cooed as she hadn't in months. She clung to Jet, and Isaac clung to Daisy.
They didn't mention Edmond.
A.N.: Because it was Dink in the book, not Isaac. Infinity War PTSD is still strong with me. And I refuse to believe that Tom Holland is the new Sean Bean, killed in every single film.