The Mark. Edyth Bulbring
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unwrap a mango as I wander through the market, peeling the plastic off the flesh and flicking it on the ground. Before the plastic touches the earth the flies are on it. They are greedy that way. Like Kitty.
The flies follow me, sucking on my hair and trying to nestle in my neck. People who know things say that in the olden days flies used to be smaller. They were one of millions of species of insect, some of which were beautiful and useful. I know this is true because I have seen pictures in a book. The loveliest were called butterflies. But now there are only fleas and cockroaches. And flies that drive me crazy with their bites.
As I draw near to the section where the Muti Nags sell their magic, a bird screams, “Ettie, Ettie, you slimy Spaghetti. Looking for magic to save you from Savage City?”
I do not know how she does it, but she senses me coming every time. I am extra polite when I speak to her, which is silly because she is just a bird and could not possibly understand. But she scares the skin off me.
“Good evening, Mistress Hadeda, I hope the day has treated you well?” No I don’t. I hope the flies have eaten chunks from the back of your neck where you can’t get at them.
The bird spears a fly with her beak and crunches it with her razor teeth. She stares at me with blind eyes. Slimy white globes. The Muti Nags take the birds’ eyes out the day they hatch to sharpen their telling sense. They should have sewn her beak closed while they were at it. That would teach her to call me names.
“I’ve come to see Witch. She’s expecting me,” I say.
The bird burps, and a trickle of black fluid escapes from her beak. She hops away from the entrance of the building and allows me to pass. I climb the stairs down to the cellar.
Witch glances up and moves a tile on the scrabble board with a seven-fingered hand.
“Don’t touch the board unless it’s your turn,” a man squatting opposite her says. He places the tile back on its square.
I have never met the man, but I know of him. They call him Nelson. I do not know his trade, but wherever he goes, people gather around him. I expect he sells things that people want. He has a half-way-out-the-door face. Looking for the next thing in case it gets away. Kitty would say Nelson is good looking for an old guy, despite his sun-ruined skin. She is forever checking out the men. It is what she is being trained for.
Witch laughs and spreads all fourteen fingers over the board. Taunting him. I glance at her feet, but they are hidden in plastic sandals. One day I will get to count her toes.
They are playing Extinct Species. The board is covered with tiles making up names like zebra, buffalo and rhinoceros. Some of these animals were not always extinct. Many survived the conflagration and were kept in the zoo at Mangeria City. But this was long before I was born.
The zoo is now a sprawl of empty cages trapping sand and litter. There was a problem at The Laboratory and food grew scarce. The flies got eaten and still people were hungry. Some people got very hungry, so they broke into the zoo and ate pretty much everything. No more zoo.
It is a pity. I would have liked to have seen what beef on the hoof looked like. The pictures of cows show them having four legs. And eyes like mine. What is left of them are packets of grey-brown flesh that come from The Laboratory, smelling like open wounds.
Nelson’s eyes rest on me a moment, and then he places four tiles on the board. “Horse. Double word score.” His voice is rough, as though strained though a bucketful of rusty nails.
I kneel down next to him. His bare arm brushes my skin and I edge away. I do not like touching. My eyes scan the board and my breath quickens. I remove his tiles, placing them next to rhinoceros. “You could also get the triple-letter along with a double-word score,” I blurt. Reading is not something that kids like me are supposed to be able to do.
Nelson slaps my hand and rearranges the tiles. “If I do that, she’ll get kangaroo and finish me off.”
Witch glances at the tiles behind her fingers. “Not fair, Nelson. How did you know I had letters for kangaroo?” They laugh together, two cheats that they are.
Witch reaches into a cupboard behind her. “Tell the orphan warden to take two spoons a day. It’ll soothe her bones.” She hands me a bottle. “I’ll see you next month when it’s finished.”
I leave them and stand at the top of the cellar stairs and listen. I like to do this. To listen to people when they do not know I am there. You never know what you will learn that may earn you a credit.
“She can read. That’s unusual,” Nelson says.
“Yes, it’s not usual. But in every other respect, she’s the most ordinary of girls.”
“Could she be the one?”
“Of course not. She’s a rubbish from Section O. One of Xavier’s game-babies who does exactly as she’s told,” Witch says. “There was a time when I saw a spark in her. But now there’s not a Savage gene left in her body.”
“Are you sure the tellers have it correct?”
“The birds have spoken about a girl,” Witch says. “Xavier is convinced he knows the one they cry out about. But I think he’s dreaming.” The scrabble pieces rattle as they are swept off the board.
As I lean forward to hear better, pain hits me on the back of my neck. Not a fly, but a beak. I turn and find the bird’s gooey eyes on me.
“Ettie Spaghetti. Your ears will burn in Savage City.”
I swat the bird away and run outside into the light.
I visit the orphan warden’s office on the ground floor. Most of this floor and the two above overflow with cots. And kids with noses that run like sewers.
The warden avoids the cots the way I keep shy of Locusts. She gets the older kids to look after the Smalls during the day. When kids turn five they must look after themselves, so they move to the floors above with the Bigs. Kids like Kitty and me.
At the end of the day, we have to clock in with the orphan warden and report that all is well, whether this is true or not. She does not worry too much about us as long as she gets her carer credits from the Mangerian Welfare Department.
She is slumped over the table, snoring. Babies’ cries fill the air. The noise does not seem to bother the warden. So I try not to let it bother me. I tap her on the head and she jerks awake, grabbing the bottle of bug juice in front of her.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want any. I’ve got water.” I have drunk bug juice before, when water was scarce. After I had vomited my guts out, it made me sleep. It is made from fruit that the Market Nags have not managed to offload during trading hours. The rotting fruit attracts flies, which sink to the bottom where their juices add to the flavour. It is sold outside the pleasure clubs, huge stinking drums of the stuff.
“Ettie,” the orphan warden says, a smile splitting flesh made blotchy by years of bug juice.
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve brought you some medicine from Witch.” Both of us know it is not for her sore bones. It is to keep the Smalls quiet at night. A couple of drops before bedtime and they sleep like the dead until the Bigs resume the morning shift.
“Were you a good girl today?”
“I was at school learning my drudge trade,” I say.
“And Kitty?”
I tell her Kitty also attended the class that would equip her to become a pleasure worker. “She’s upstairs sleeping, but we’re both present and correct and have eaten and are clean.”
“You’re a good girl, Ettie.”
Yes, I am. But of course I am not. She knows I have been gaming with the handler. But this is another thing we pretend. I leave her with her bug juice.
The cots in the adjacent rooms scream for me. I suck in my breath against the smell and do what I have done for ever. I cannot help