The woman’s van is parked on the grass a few yards away, rocking in the wind. What a stupid vehicle to set out in during a storm, if you absolutely have to set out anywhere during a storm, Ana thinks. And the woman is wearing a red coat, has she driven all the way from Hed? Maybe she isn’t actually real? Ana is so busy thinking that she barely reacts when the woman steps closer and yells once more:
“A car’s got stuck in the forest, and my husband says that if there’s anyone who can get me to it in this weather, it’s your dad!”
She spits the words out, Ana just blinks, still confused.
“Look… what? I mean, you know, why is a car even out in the forest at a time like this?”
“The woman in the car is having a BABY! Is your dad home or NOT?” the woman snaps impatiently, taking a step into the hall.
Ana tries to stop her, but the woman doesn’t have time to see the panic in her eyes. The empty beer cans and vodka bottles are lined up on the draining board, the daughter has carefully rinsed them so they won’t smell in the recycling bin and she won’t have to feel ashamed in front of the neighbors. Her dad’s arms are hanging listlessly by the sides of the armchair in the living room, but his abused lungs are making his chest rise and fall with the breaths of an addict. The midwife is stressed and her heart is in her throat, so when it plummets to the pit of her stomach the drop is more extreme than she was prepared for.
“I… I understand. Sorry… sorry for disturbing you,” she mutters to Ana in embarrassment and turns sharply toward the door, then hurries out to the yard and back into the van.
Ana doesn’t hesitate for a moment before she rushes after her. She bangs on the window. The woman opens it warily.
“Where are you going?” Ana cries.
“I need to get to the woman in the forest!” the woman shouts as she tries to start the engine, but the damn rust bucket merely splutters.
“Are you mad or something? Do you know how dangerous that is in this weather?”
“SHE’S HAVING A BABY AND I’M A MIDWIFE!” the woman yells back in a sudden flash of rage, slamming her hands down on the stone-dead dashboard of the van.
In hindsight Ana won’t be able to pinpoint exactly what happens inside her at that moment. Maybe it was something poetic, the sort of thing people say in films, that they felt themselves “called by a higher purpose.” But it’s probably mostly the fact that the woman looks crazy in exactly the same way that everyone always says Ana looks crazy.
She runs into the house, feeds the dogs, and turns up the volume of their favorite song by Maya, then comes back with the keys to a rusty pickup in her hand, and a jacket that’s far too big flapping behind her like a cape in the wind.
“WE CAN TAKE DAD’S TRUCK!”
“I CAN’T TAKE YOU WITH ME!” the woman shouts.
“YOUR CAR IS SHIT!”
“YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?” the woman yells.
“YOU’LL BE A HELL OF A LOT SAFER IF I’M WITH YOU!”
The woman stares at the crazy eighteen-year-old. This isn’t the sort of situation they teach you about when you’re training to be a midwife. In the end she sighs resignedly, grabs her bag, and follows the girl to her dad’s pickup.
“MY NAME IS HANNAH!” she yells.
“ANA!” Ana bellows.
It’s kind of fitting that their names are so similar, because Hannah will have plenty of occasions when she alternately swears and laughs at how much this crazy teenager reminds her of herself. They clamber into the front seats and struggle to close the doors properly as the wind peppers the chassis like hailstones. Then Ana sees the rifle on the backseat. She turns beetroot-red with shame, snatches it up, and runs back inside the house. When she comes back she says, without making eye contact:
“He sometimes leaves the rifle in the pickup when he’s… you know. I must have yelled at him a million times about that.”
The midwife nods uncomfortably.
“Your dad and my husband met during the forest fires a few years ago. I think they called your dad because he knows the forest. They’ve been hunting together a few times since then. I think your dad might be the only person from Beartown my husband respects.”
It’s a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood, she feels that her-self.
“Dad’s easy to like, he just doesn’t always like himself that much,” Ana says with a bluntness that makes the midwife’s stomach clench.
“Maybe you should stay at home with him, Ana?”
“What for? He’s drunk. He won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“My husband told me I should only trust your dad if I have to go out into the forest, no one else, and I’m not comfortable with the idea of you…”
Ana snorts.
“Your husband’s stupid if he thinks that old men are the only people who know their way around the forest!”
The midwife smiles resignedly.
“If you think that’s the only reason my husband is stupid, you don’t know many men…”
She’s been telling Johnny all year to take the van to a proper garage, but he just keeps muttering that all firemen can mend their own cars. She’s tried pointing out that in actual fact, all firemen THINK they can mend their own cars. Being married is easy, she usually thinks. You just pick an argument you’re really good at, then repeat it at least once a week for all eternity.
“So where’s this woman who’s having a baby?” Ana asks impatiently.
The midwife hesitates, sighs, then pulls out a map. She took the main road from Hed to Beartown, but hers was the last vehicle that got through, she saw trees fall across the roadway behind her. She ought to have felt scared, but adrenaline stopped her. She points at the map:
“They’re out here somewhere. See? They didn’t take the main road, they tried to take a shortcut along the old forest roads, but most of those are probably blocked now. Is it even possible to get out there?”
“Let’s find out,” Ana replies.
Hannah clears her throat.
“Sorry to ask, but are you even old enough to have a driver’s license?”
“Yes! I mean, yes, I’m old enough!” Ana says evasively, and puts her foot down.
“But you… you have got a driver’s license?” the midwife asks, slightly anxiously, as Ana skids out onto the road.
“Well, no, not exactly. But Dad’s taught me to drive. He’s often a bit drunk, so he needs someone to drive him around.”
That doesn’t exactly calm the midwife’s nerves. It really doesn’t.
6 Superheroes
Matteo is only fourteen years old. He isn’t important to this story, not yet. He’s just the sort of character who passes by in the background, one of the many thousands of faces that make up the inhabitants of a community. No one pays him any attention as he cycles around Beartown at the start of the storm, not just because everyone is busy trying to get indoors, but because Matteo simply isn’t the sort of person anyone notices. If invisibility is a superpower, it was never the one he dreamed of. He would have preferred superhuman strength instead, so he could protect his family. Or the ability to change the past, to save his big sister. But he isn’t a superhero, he’s just as powerless in the face of his existence as the town he lives in is in the face of nature.