Epilogue

Davy Prentiss Jr stood alone on the shore of the ocean, listening to the colossal waves as they crashed on the sand. He had been stood there for a long while, somewhat awed at the sheer scope of the sea. He had never seen the ocean before. He licked his lips, tasting the saltiness from the sea spray on his tongue. Above the sky was grey and thick with clouds which left the water similarly colourless, but for the twisting dark shapes which moved beneath its surface. As the wind whipped around him, Davy felt an arm wrap around his waist.

"You've gotta stop sneaking up on me like that," Davy mumbled. "It's bad enough having your sister jumping out on me at every opportunity now that she's taking Haven's cure."

Lana kissed him on the cheek. The travesty he had once called a moustache was gone now at her request, and he had grown even taller than he had been when Prentisstown's army had first arrived in Haven. Folks said, in whispered voices, that he was the spitting image of his father. It still unsettled Lana sometimes, and the people of Haven, though they had tentatively come to accept and respect the former President's son for his efforts in the war against the Spackle, sometimes looked at him as though he were his father's ghost.

"I can hear your Noise yammering about me!" Avery called, from where she was stood fiddling with a Comms device, trying to call her boyfriend back in Haven to let him know that their journey to the ocean had been a successful one. Deadfall and Starlight stood at her side, just as besotted with each other as they had been the night that Lana had first arrived in Haven. "If you've got something to say, Prentiss, say it to my face!"

"I wouldn't dare," Davy teased, and Avery grinned back at him. It had taken months of fighting side by side, but two had become good friends during the months of struggle between the Ask and the Answer. Some days Davy did not feel worthy of that friendship, or of the special bond he and Lana had built. He rubbed his fingers over the band on Lana's arm, the potential death sentence which he had put upon her, and shame burned inside him like a hot coal. He remembered how the wound had looked some weeks after the night when the Answer and the Spackle had first descended on New Prentisstown, remembering how the band had become red and infected, gooey with puss where the metal cut into her flesh.

Gangrenous, that had been the word Avery had used when she had come to visit him during the war. Avery and Lana had lived up in the hills with Viola and the Answer, while Davy had stayed in town with Todd and his father, struggling to hold together the fragile truce which the warring factions had agreed upon.

"She's sick, Davy," Avery had said as she'd sat down with him in his tent. "Really sick. Almost all of the women on the hilltop have fallen ill with the band sickness. Most are recovering, but…"

"Not everyone," Davy finished for her. Avery had given him a stern look.

"Just tell me it wasn't you, Davy. Tell me you didn't do that to my sister."

Davy had said nothing. Avery saw the truth of it in his Noise, fleshy-coloured and sickly with the knowledge that women were dying because of his and Todd's actions. Avery had stormed out in a rage. As Lana had grown worse, Avery had been adamant that they should not take her arm, and in her insistence the infection had been left too late. Davy, having ridden up to the Answer camp to see Lana, had found her near delirious with illness, hardly knowing who he or anyone else was. He had ridden back to New Prentisstown in tears.

"They're taking her arm tomorrow morning," he had told his father, sitting alone with him at a campfire that night. "The Mistresses say that even then it might be too late. And it's all my fault."

David Prentiss had watched his son with a furrowed brow. He had been acting strangely the past few weeks, ever since he and Todd had begun to grow even closer. Davy was unsure what to make of the relationship, but had been surprised at the positive changes in his father's disposition.

"I'm seeing things more clearly, as of late," the President had said. "Seeing you for the man you are becoming, rather than the one I turned you into."

Davy had stared open-mouthed at his father, astonished.

"You love that girl, don't you?"

Davy swallowed hard. "I think so. Maybe. Yeah."

There had been silence for a long moment.

"Your mother would have liked her," Prentiss said.

Davy felt a thickening in his throat.

"She's special," he said.

The President had smiled wistfully.

"Aren't they all."

To Davy's great surprise, his father had ordered Lana to be brought into town the next morning, along with a handful of other sick women in similar dire states. By the end of the day, using a secret medicine they had been working on apparently for weeks, New Prentisstown's Doctors had been able to stave off the infections to such a degree that none of the women had needed to lose their infected arm. In his typical style, the President had paraded Lana along with two of the other successfully treated women in front of the crowds, bathing in the applause. After the rally, Davy had gone to his father and thanked him with a hug. For the first time in a long time, Davy had felt loved.

But that was all over now; the Spackle war, the sickness with the bands, all of it. Captain Hammar was dead, and Captain Tate, too, who had never been quite the same after his regiment was bombed. Lana's father was long dead, and so was Davy's, drowned in this very ocean of his own choice. The sickness of the bands, it had turned out, had been his doing all along, designed to kill as many of the women as possible. Still, he had seen the light a little in the end, by deciding to put everything he had into finding a cure to undo the wrong he had done. Davy had to cling to that.

He thought of Todd, his first friend, who had been shot and almost killed by the Spackle leader, and who lay comatose now in a Spackle infirmary, with little hope of ever waking up again. He felt, in some way, that that was his fault, too. It had been a miracle when Lana had been saved; surely after all he'd done he did not deserve two miracles in one lifetime.

Lana squeezed his arm.

"Are you okay?" she asked, sensing the introspection in his Noise.

"Yeah," Davy said, though his voice betrayed him. Lana hugged him close, burying her head against his shoulder. His Noise regained a shimmer of its natural rosy glow. He rested his chin on her head, breathing in the scent of honey and smoke.

"I'm glad we came," Lana said. "To say goodbye, you know?"

Davy looked out to the waves again, nodding. They were both grieving for the family they had lost, but they had built a new family in each other. This had been the place where Cliff Collins had promised to take his daughters, to save them from the horrors he himself had inflicted upon the town of Haven. Davy watched the small rippling waves that lapped around his feet, seeping into his shoes. The water was ice-cold. He hoped that his father, in spite of all that he had done, had not felt any pain.

"Our fathers were complicated men," Lana said. "Terrible, in many ways. But that doesn't mean we have to live with their guilt. And it doesn't mean we don't get to say goodbye."

"Yeah," Davy said sadly, and kissed her hair. He turned back to the waves again. "Bye, Pa."

Lana held his hand. He squeezed her own, knowing that whatever else he might regret in his life, he would never regret a moment with her.

"It's bloody freezing out here," Davy said. "Do you want my jacket?"

Lana smiled at him adoringly. "I thought I was supposed to be the one who could read your mind, not the other way around."

The two laughed. As Davy shrugged out of his coat, he heard Avery yelling from the other end of the beach. The two turned to see her running towards them, Byron's denim jacket flowing out behind her.

"What's wrong?" he shouted.

"It's Todd!" Avery yelled, waving the communications device over her head.

Davy felt his stomach drop. Lana squeezed tightly at his arm. It was then that the two saw that Avery was smiling.

"He's awake!" she cried, handing Davy the Comms device and throwing her arms around either of their shoulders. "Todd's awake!"

Davy stared into the monitor, hardly believing it could be true. Viola was there on the tiny screen, weeping with joy; she moved the camera to the side so that the trio could see Todd in frame with her, too. He looked drowsy, half-asleep with his auburn hair in disarray. He gave a dizzy sort of wave. Davy stuttered something between a laugh and a sob.

"You'alright, mate?" he called.

"I've been worse," Todd said, smiling slightly. "Being dead isn't as bad as you might think. I was glad for the rest, if I'm honest, after everything we've been through the past year."

"Well don't get too comfortable," Lana grinned, throwing her arms around Davy's neck. "There's a lot you need to catch up on."

"Hang on a sec," Todd said to Viola, pointing at the screen, "are those two a thing? Like a thing-thing?!"

Avery laughed, and shut off the com. She pocketed it and started off backwards towards the horses.

"Come on, you two," she said, beaming, "let's go home."

Lana and Davy smiled at one another. Hand in hand they followed after Avery, leaving the tumbling roar of the ocean behind.

~Fin~