The Mark. Edyth Bulbring
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blanket and cover a small foot. Hush, go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning, I promise. But when the sun rises they will know me for a liar.
I turn down the wicks on the lamps. The cots will not burn on my watch. I remove a plastic toy from a sleeping fist. She can have it back tomorrow. There will be no chokers tonight.
A low whistle at the door warns me I am no longer alone. “What do you think you’re doing?” Handler Xavier’s eyes bite my hand. “Stealing toys from babies, Ettie? I see I’ve trained you too well.”
I silence my protest with a sly smile and pocket the toy. He must think what he likes. I leave him in the nursery with his contempt.
I climb the stairs, but Kitty is not there when I open the door to our room. I rage. I panic. And crack my knuckles from thumb to pinkie. When my middle finger refuses to snap, I start again. Five cracks. That should keep her safe.
As the sky darkens, balls of light flicker on in the streets, dispensing the heat caught from the sun. The light from the pavement fills my room.
I lock the door and take a book from my library and reach for my other secret. The tube of cream I hide under my books. The death mask on the tube has been squeezed flat.
I lift my shirt. The fabric is stuck to the lesion on my back. I detach it with care. I must not disturb the fresh scab. I squeeze the last of the cream onto a piece of cloth and apply it to the base of my spine. It eats into my skin. I ignore the pain and rub it into the wound. In a few days I will hit bone.
I stretch out on the mattress and read my book. It is about a boy called Peter Pan who loves stories and never wants to grow up. He has a fairy called Tinker Bell who is as small as a flea. Many of which have taken occupation of my mattress and are dining on my blisters.
I finish the book and try to fall asleep. I chant: “I believe in fairies.” Over and over. But I do not believe in them. I do not believe in anything.
The sun has begun to warm the room when Kitty wakes me. She rolls me over and curls into a ball, pulling a pillow over her head. I move closer to her but she shifts away.
There was a time when Kitty could not hold me close enough. My skin has grown cold since then. As Kitty snores, I hold onto a lock of hair that has escaped from under the pillow. And cover her with a sheet.
Witch’s bird circles above my Section O flat. I try to sleep, but the creature screams her warning, “Ettie Spaghetti is going to Savage City. Ettie Spaghetti is going to fry in Savage City.”
The sore on my spine chafes against my shirt. I run my fingers over the pain. I can no longer feel the raised numbers etched onto my skin. The cream is working its magic. It must be.
I want to shout at the bird that she is wrong. I am not going to Savage City. When my time comes to run, the Locusts will not be able to track me.
3
Drudge School
Kitty scowls at the morning with bloodshot eyes. She stinks of bug juice.
The smell is a dead giveaway: she broke curfew last night and crossed the river without a pass to the pleasure clubs in Mangeria City. This is where she goes. I know, because I have followed her.
“If the Locusts catch you, you’ll be in for it. Or if Handler Xavier finds out he’ll give you a fat lip,” I say, glaring at her. “He says we must never do things to draw the Locusts’ attention to us.”
I hand her a piece of soap.
She lathers her skin and splashes herself with the water ration I had fetched from the outside tap. Rub-a-dub-dub. She likes to scrub her nights away. She soaps her left arm, underneath the bangles, rubbing the scar there pink and shiny.
“Oh, shut up and stop nagging,” Kitty says. “I can always dodge the Locusts at the booms, and there’s more than one way of crossing the river.” She snaps her fingers at me and I toss her a towel.
I am as familiar as Kitty is with the ways into Mangeria City after curfew. I have tracked her to the banks of the river after the sun has gone down. There, a hundred metres from the bridge, hidden among the dunes, groups of Scavvies wait with their seacraft. For just one credit, they take us across the river. But they do not promise to bring us back.
The Locusts patrol the river banks, and when they catch the Scavvies they beat them up and threaten to lock them away in Savage City. But mostly the Scavvies pay a bribe and go on their way.
“They’ll put you away in Section AR. You’re not old enough to go to the clubs,” I say. Section AR is the place for attitude readjustment, for kids with problems. There, they get sorted. And when they come out, they do not have any attitude at all.
Kitty holds her head in her hands. “Buzz off, Ettie. You make me sick. Just get off my back and mind your own business.”
When Kitty says things like this it makes my chest sore. But I must be hard on her. If I am not around to watch out for her she could get hurt.
I pass her a pair of shorts. Kitty and I are the same height, but she struggles to fasten the button around her belly. And her shirt strains over her chest, where mine sags.
She grabs the water from the table by the mattress and downs it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She squeezes one of the mango balls. “It’s too squishy. Couldn’t you have done better?” But Little Miss Muffet eats it anyway.
Kitty talks with her mouth full. Greedy for the next bite. “I’ll graduate in a few months. Then I’ll be legal and can hang out there all the time when I’m working.” She spits a piece of plastic on the floor. So there.
I do not know what it is with Kitty and the pleasure clubs. Yes, I do, actually. It is the Posh and their credits. Especially the men. They are attracted to Kitty like the filth that is drawn to the banks of the river. Always looking at her. Stroking her. Calling her “pretty Kitty”. She likes this. I wish she did not. But it is what she has learnt at school.
Kitty guzzles the other mango ball while I cover my body with sunblocker. Protecting her skin is not something Kitty has to worry about too much. Her skin is the colour of roasted corn. She does not burn like me. I have Posh skin. Pus-coloured flesh.
There is a familiar whistle outside the door, and I let Handler Xavier in. He has plans for us today. I hope it is not more beach. My skin is raw from yesterday. Sometimes, if I hope for something hard enough, it happens. And other times I hope, but there’s nothing. It gets a bit tricky so I wear my don’t-care mask and wait for Handler Xavier to call the shots.
“We need to stay off the beaches for a couple of days. The monster scam worked lovely yesterday, but we can’t do it again soon,” he says.
One day people will get wise to it. They will realise that nothing lives in the sea. That the only monsters are the ones in our minds, growing fat on stories told by the Mangerians. Stories to keep us in the ghetto, away from the cities across the seas that survived the big drowning after the conflagration.
“Use this.” Handler Xavier hands me a tube of sunblocker. “The old stuff won’t protect you.”
It is not like he cares when I burn. But if people do not see my eyes he says I can pass for a Posh, and that could be useful in the game.
I smear the sunblocker on my face and arms. It smells of plastic. Everything smells of plastic in Slum City. When I breathe, I smell plastic. When I eat, I taste plastic. And when I sweat, my skin is coated with abnormally shiny beads.
“So, if it’s not the beach, what’s it going to be?” I am hoping it is the parade. Then, after gaming I can give the handler the slip and go to the Tree Museum. Let it be the parade. I hope so. No, I do not.
I love trees the way Kitty loves mangoes. There is a forest that survived the burnings, it is at the museum in Mangeria City. I used to save my credits and visit the museum and stroll among the trees, looking for the magic faraway tree. I had read about this tree when I