How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea Read online

  All they had to do was admit that she was never waking up.

  Sally Mitchell opened her eyes.

  The ceiling was so white it burned, making her eyes begin to water in a parody of tears. She stared up at it for almost a minute, unable to process the message she was getting from her nerves. The message wanted her to close her eyes. Another part of her brain awakened, explaining what the burning sensation in her retinas meant.

  Sally closed her eyes.

  The doctor was still pleading with her family, cajoling and comforting them in turn as he explained what would happen next if they agreed to have Sally declared legally dead. His voice was no more or less compelling than the buzz of the machines around her. None of his words meant anything to her, and so she dismissed them as unimportant stimuli in a world that was suddenly full of unimportant stimuli. She focused instead on getting her eyes to open again. She wanted to see the white ceiling. It was…interesting.

  The second time Sally opened her eyes, it was easier. Blinking came after that, and then the realization that she could breathe—her body reminded her of breathing, of the movement that it required, the pulling in of air through the nose, the expelling of air through the mouth. The respirator that was supposed to be handling the breathing process began beeping shrilly, confused in its mechanical way by her sudden involvement. The stimulus from the man in the ceiling-colored coat became more important as it grew louder, hurting her ears.

  Sally sat up.

  More machines started to beep. Sally winced, and then blinked, surprised by her own automatic reaction. She winced again, this time on purpose. The man in the ceiling-colored coat stared at her and said something she didn’t understand. She looked blankly back at him. Then the other people in the room started making noise, as shrill and confused as the machines around her, and one of them flung herself onto the bed, putting her arms around Sally and making a strange sound in her throat, like she was choking.

  More people came into the room. The machines stopped making noise, but the people kept on doing it, making sounds she would learn were called “words,” asking questions she didn’t have answers for, and meanwhile, the body lived. The cells began to heal as the organs, one by one, resumed the jobs they had tried to abandon.

  Sally Mitchell was going to live. Everything else was secondary.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Part I: Around the World in Eighty Permits, Seventy-three Blood Tests, and More Trouble than the World is Really Worth

  Part II: A Fantastic Voyage into the Land of Venomous Snakes, Improbably Large Spiders, and Marsupials

  Part III: Small Planes, Large Fences, and a Rather Daunting Number of Zombie Kangaroos, Because That Is Exactly What This Day Needed

  Part IV: In Which There Are Kangaroos Absolutely Everywhere, and No One Is Properly Upset About the Situation

  Part V: In Which Everyone Is Very Relaxed about the Probable End of the World, and a Reporter Is Cast into Mortal Danger for No Good Reason

  Part VI:: Going Home

  Meet the Author

  Also by Mira Grant

  Bonus Material

  About Orbit Short Fiction

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Mira Grant

  Excerpt from Parasite copyright © 2013 by Mira Grant

  Cover design by Wendy Chan

  Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First eBook edition: July 2013

  ISBN: 978-0-316-21898-6