Q

QuestionEnglish

Using chapter 2 Cowboy in part one of this novel, answer the following questions... What purpose do the description of flies, fleas and cockraches serve? What happened to the animals at the zoo? Why does Ettie visit Witch? Comment on etties behaviour in the room with the cots The Mark Edyth Bulbring Tafelberg For Charlotte, who loves stories PART ONE My name is Juliet Seven. The date is 264 PC. This year, I am going to wipe out my father and my sister. And then I will off myself. The Machine will record that I lived for fifteen years, worked as a drudge, and that my last address was Room 33, Section D, Slum City. Everything I do this year was spoken of before I existed. And it will be written in the blood of those who survive me. 1 The Monster A man flails in the breakers, thrashing the sea with windmill arms. “Monster!” he shouts. The Market Nags are the first to come screaming out of the shallows, breasts bouncing free from their underwear. “Monster, it’s a monster!” They swirl in circles on the beach, looking for a place to hide. The monster siren pierces the squeals of children being pulled from the breakers by beach wardens waving swimmers towards the dunes. “Get out of the water. Get out!” Their eyes scan the sea. Sun-worshippers jerk free of their torpor and abandon towels and bags. They stumble for the shelter of the dunes, dragging children along with them. “Run. Before the monster gets you. Run!” They urge toddlers along, slapping their blistered legs. The Market Nags gather their wits and clothes scattered on the beach, and follow them to safety. Glee swells my chest as I watch these fools. Buzzing around like flies trapped crazy behind a mesh screen. The sand trickles through my fingers as I wait for my moment. Then, in the chaos of umbrellas toppling onto the sand, I scramble to my feet and get busy. My hands rifle through baskets, slip under towels. What I find goes into my bag. Those who run for the safety of the dunes do not look back. They are oblivious to me and to the rest of us, with our quick fingers, moving among their things. But I watch out as I work. My hands are blind but my eyes see everything and everyone around me. When I am done, I squat on the sand and watch the rest slip away, absorbed by the shadows as though they were never here. Except for one. Kitty. The girl I am always looking out for. I watch Kitty as she sways along the beach, stepping over a bucket and spade. As she kneels to adjust her sandal strap, she reaches into a discarded bag and palms a purse. My knees crack as I rise to follow her. I track Kitty across the sand, watching her stop, scratch her leg, and fix her sandal again. She grabs something off a towel and straightens a flag on a sandcastle. My bare feet mirror her prints on the damp sand. Kitty reaches the foot of the steps leading from the beach onto the main road. “Stop,” a voice shouts. Kitty does not stop; nor does she turn around. She glides up the stairs with the poise of a girl who works at one of the local pleasure clubs. Her back is straight, her breasts thrust forward. All that is missing is a tray of drinks balanced on her hand. “Hey, I said stop.” The voice is too loud and too close. My stomach leaps into my mouth and I swallow bile. Keep walking, Kitty. Don’t look back. But Kitty stops. She turns around, freezing as she recognises the uniform. Green and yellow. A Locust. I read her face, open to me like the expanse of beach sand. I must act now, before it is too late. As the Locust races towards her, I scream and fall down, lie on my back. I whip my head from side to side, roll my eyes, simulate spasms wracking my chest. I whimper, like a child who has had her fingers slammed in a door. The Locust turns around, sprints away from the steps towards me. I tense my body in preparation for a boot in my ribs. This is the Locusts’ favourite way of dealing with children who cause trouble. Instead, though, he kneels down on the sand and eases his hand under my neck. I try not to flinch. I peep at him from under my sunglasses. His face is covered by a sun shield. But he must be a young one, new to his trade. For sure he will soon learn the mean tricks of the Locusts. “Just calm down. You’re going to be all right.” The Locust soothes me with gentle hands until I stop whimpering. Perhaps he is someone’s brother, grown in the habit of comforting a younger sister. A shadow blocks the sun on my face as a man leans over us. “Take your hands off my daughter. She hasn’t done anything.” The Locust turns to him. “She was having a fit. I was just trying to help . . .” His protest trails away as he looks towards the stairs. But Kitty is gone. She is safe; I can breathe again. I wriggle away from the Locust’s gloves and pull myself up. I smile at him. Thank you for caring, my smile says. I force it onto my face like I would squeeze pus from a boil. Smiling at Locusts is one of my strengths from years of practice. I look up at the man glaring down on us. He is the one whose windmill arms had warned about the monster. But he is not my father. He is my handler. I allow Handler Xavier to take me in his arms, and I rest my chin on his shoulder. I bleed a tear through lids that have become cracked by the sun. “Father, father,” I say. The unfamiliar words sting my lips. I cling to him as I have learnt a daughter should. “You can leave her with me,” Handler Xavier says. “She’s soft in the head.” The Locust smacks the sand off his gloves and walks away, rubbing his jaw. I relax and tell my heart to stop galloping. It’s fine. You won’t get caught. Not today. But the Locust stops, looks back, and touches the handset on his belt. I hear the beep-beep as he presses the button. My spine tingles. The Locust straightens the handset and watches us. I shut my eyes tight. If I cannot see him, he will not be there. And when I open my eyes again, he is walking away across the sand. Slowly. Handler Xavier pats my back, his expression tender. But it slides off his face as soon as the Locust is gone. My handler is a man of many faces. The face he made screaming in the water was that of a terrified man warning swimmers he had seen a flesh-eating monster and they should get out of the sea. Fast. The face Handler Xavier shows me after the Locust has left us is of a man alert to danger of a different sort. “The Locust saw something. He’s tracked your number on his handset and he’s going to report it. Stay low and get home fast.” The handler drops me on the sand and strides towards the shoreline. He jogs along the beach. His elbows slice the air and his fists punch the sky. Now he is a jogger, taking his exercise by the seaside. He runs on the spot, throws himself onto the sand, does a set of push-ups. He glances in the direction of a group of Locusts patrolling the beach. As soon as they have passed, he quits exercising and strolls towards the steps. Whistling. I crouch on the beach, watching swimmers go back into the water as the beach wardens give the all-clear signal. The children settle onto the sand and rebuild their sandcastles. The sun-worshippers ease back onto their towels. They smear their skin with sunblocker and hide behind sunglasses. The danger of the monster is past. Umbrella shadows lengthen, and we do not have much longer to enjoy the beach. When the curfew siren shrieks, many of us must return to the ghetto. I watch the Necromunda, the sea scavengers on their bobbing seacraft, diving far beyond the surf line. The Scavvies’ bodies are black from the sun, their skin leathered by sea salt. Soon their shift will be over and they will return to shore and offload the spoils from the underwater city. The loot is stored in Mangerian warehouses, where it is sorted and then sold to the Posh – the only ones with enough credits to buy relics from the time before the seas rose up and swallowed the world. I wait until the beach has settled back into its rhythm, then force my feet to dawdle up the stairs onto the main street. At some point, people will search their bags for their things and find them missing. But I will not be there to see it. The Posh wander past me in the main street. Perfume fails to mask their sweat smell. It curdles my stomach. There is nothing more disgusting than the smell of the Posh. They play racquet and ball on the sidewalks. They call out to each other in high voices, each syllable an ice chip. Their slanted eyes, shuttered behind dark glasses do not see me. I am a girl of many masks. The one I wore for the Locust was a girl in distress. The face I wear as I kill time on the pavements is the face of a nobody. I become invisible to the somebodies. The ball hits me on the side of my face. A Posh kid laughs. “Nice shot.” The ball rolls into the street. “Hey, you there. Go fetch. Fetch our ball,” he shouts, waving his racquet at me. I fetch it. I wander up and down the promenade, roasting the soles of my feet on the concrete. I wipe sweat and seeping fluid from my blistered face. The siren screams. Back to the ghetto. I check the sun. It hangs low in the sky. Clouds like clots of blood lie over the taxi rank. I hustle for a ride, along with everyone else on their way home. Too many people, too slow. As a taxi rolls away, I jump on and squeeze myself inside. Sun-scorched flesh traps me in my seat. Market Nags laugh and slap their hands on their knees as they recall how lucky they were to escape the monster. “I felt it as I ran out of the water. Did you see the way it chased that child onto the beach?” “It nearly ate me, but I got away.” I make my ears go deaf to their nonsense. The taxi Pulaks, harnessed in pairs, strain as they haul the carriage. One stumbles, and his partner takes his elbow to steady him. The taxi warden up front flicks his whip over the Pulak’s back. “Move faster, you useless sack of bones,” he shouts. My face, squashed against the moist arm of a Market Nag grows numb. Sleep whispers to me. But I must stay alert. The wound on my spine warns me. I claw at my back and the pain jolts me awake. Rule Number Four: never shut your eyes until you are home safe. If I obey Handler Xavier’s rules of the game, I will not get caught. The Pulaks drag us through the gates and over the bridge that spans the river separating the ghetto from Mangeria City. Water the colour of vomit and thick with debris spills from the sewers. The taxi empties at the entrance to our ghetto. Slum City we call it – its official name rejected and long forgotten. My spine tingles. I check to see if anyone is following me. Check again. I am safe. I fix my eyes to the ground and trudge past the Locusts manning the booms. “Where’s your pass?” a Locust says. I stop. He reaches past me and grabs a man trying to slip under the boom. “We’re on curfew. You can’t leave the ghetto without a pass.” “I’ll be really quick,” the man says. The Locust silences him with a gloved fist and turns him back. I stop outside a block of flats in Section O. Home. High-rises shedding their paint. Washing on balconies, people calling out across narrow passages between the buildings. I do not look at them or listen to their gossip. I pretend I am not there. They neither see me nor call out to me. My feet fight with broken toys and rubbish cluttering the stairwell as I take the stairs to the fourth floor. The stench of unwashed children assails me. As I climb, I follow the fungus trail on the walls that is fed by leaking pipes. I wipe my hands down my shorts when I reach my floor. I hear him whistling outside my room. Handler Xavier is pacing the corridor. “What took you so long? Where’ve you been, Ettie?” “I came home at final curfew.” I bow my head under his gaze and enter my room. A girl looks up at me from the mattress on the floor. Kitty Seven, my roommate and partner in the game. Her eyes are red from crying while I have been barbecuing my feet on the streets. Unlike me, Kitty does not wear masks. Everything she thinks is written on her face. And as much as I have tried to teach her to lock down her heart and muffle her thoughts, nothing helps. She cannot learn the way of masks. Even when Kitty is sad or scared, like now, she is always beautiful. Yet it is a mystery. Her nose is too flat, her cheeks are too plump, her eyebrows too thick. It is as though all the pieces have collaborated to make her lovely. When I look at her, I feel that I must be lovely too. That it is something I might catch, like sun sickness. But beauty is not something I have ever been accused of. I toss my sunglasses on the table by the mattress and step over the pile of stuff on the floor: sunglasses, a stack of credits, some jewellery, sunblockers. I empty my bag and add to the pile. “Is that all? It’s a sad haul for such a long day.” Handler Xavier sweeps his eyes across my face. I promise with my hand on my heart and hope to starve to death. My mask hides my deceit. Handler Xavier spends his words like a scrooge. His curt ways make people think he is stupid. But I know what he is. He is a sponge. Always listening, watching, absorbing the words and actions of those in his presence. I have to be careful around him. “You were careless today, Kitty. That Locust saw something suspicious. If it hadn’t been for Ettie over here acting as a distraction, he’d have bust you.” Handler Xavier squeezes my arm. Hard, on my blisters. I do not want his approval, but I must not shrug him off. He must never have reason to doubt me. “Good thing that Locust didn’t report your number, Ettie.” Kitty cowers on the mattress. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder next time.” I dismiss her sorries. “She won’t learn. I’m sick of her.” I set my face in stone, avoiding her swollen eyes. “She flies too close to the sun and I always have to risk the burn for her when she messes up. I won’t pay the price for her stupid mistakes any more.” I know it is not going to work, but I try anyway. I want the handler to take Kitty off the game. To let me work alone so that she will be safe. One day I will not be there to protect her. The handler shakes his head. “She’ll play the game with you until you’re done. She may be slow, but she’s pretty. There’ll be days when we’ll need the men to be looking her way.” Handler Xavier pockets the credits and waves his hand over the stuff on the floor. Yes, he’s counted it. “One of you take this to Cowboy at the market. I’ve got to check on the others. Let’s hope they did better than you two rubbishes today.” When he is gone, I go to a corner of the room and lift a paver from the floor. I reach inside the hole where we two keep our secrets. Safe from the handler. Always looking to catch us out. Among our special things that I had left behind this morning – Kitty’s ribbons, Kitty’s lip paint, Kitty’s hair clips – were two mangoes. One of these apparently exists in the past tense. “Where’s the other mango? I know I had two this morning,” I say. Kitty lowers her eyes. “You’re a greedy-guts, Kitty. Those were mine.” But I am glad. I do not want her getting sick. I toss her the last mango and she catches it with her left hand. Bracelets jangle, sliding from her wrist to her elbow, concealing the scar that reminds me how much I owe her. She tears the plastic off the mango with her teeth. I watch her eat, the juice running down the sides of her mouth. I cannot mask the complaint that comes from my stomach. She opens the doors to the balcony, sucks at the mango as she watches the people below. I slip the book from under my shirt. It has hidden against my stomach most of the day. My skin has been branded with a red rectangle. I open the book, and yellow paper crackles under my fingers. I had snatched it off the beach towel of a Posh who was body-surfing. My mouth fills with saliva at the thought of reading it. Books like this are hard to come by. They are worth at least a hundred credits. If the handler catches me with it he will make me pay in bruises. And if Kitty saw it she would steal it, to buy stuff to make herself more beautiful. I remove the false bottom in the hole that holds our special things, and put the book away. My secret library. Safe from Kitty’s fingers. From the handler’s eyes. There are people who say that a secret is something only one person can know. As soon as you tell someone else it will spread around Slum City like an infestation of flies, becoming everyone’s business. They are right. I have carried my secret around with me since I was nine years old. I have not told anyone about my library, and it has stayed mine. I replace the paver and pack the stuff on the floor into my bag. “I’ll go to Cowboy,” Kitty says, turning from the balcony. “I’ll be careful, Ettie. I promise I won’t get caught.” Not a chance. My Kitty is shedding lives like sunburnt skin. This little piggy is not going to market. She must stay safe at home. “You act stupid. I can’t trust you.” Kitty gnaws at the mango, the stringy flesh catching in her teeth. “Watch out, Ettie. Don’t let the Locusts get you.” She worries her teeth with a nail. Fear prickles on my skin, coating me in an armour of cold sweat. 2 Cowboy I spot Cowboy at the east side of the market next to the taxi rank. Today he has hidden himself between stalls selling shoes and umbrellas. Tomorrow he will be in a different place. If he does not keep moving, the Locusts will catch him for fencing, and send him to Savage City. It will serve him right. He is the worst kind of crook. He tries to steal from thieves like me. People like him go to Savage City if they get careless. And prisoners never escape. They serve their sentences or die, the sun sucking them up like blood spilt on hot sand. That is where my parents were sent, and they did not last long before the sun sickness took them. So the orphan warden told me. I was three days old when I was sent from the birthing station to live with the orphan warden in Section O. All the rubbish kids in Slum City stay there. There are lots of us, packed like lice eggs into blocks of flats stretching from Section O to the edge of the slum. The orphan warden’s deputy is Handler Xavier. They are as thick as thieves. Which is what they are. They also share the same blood, the mother and son. And our sweat, earning credits for them in the game. At the beginning of each month, the orphan warden gives us Bigs our living allowance. When it runs out we play the game with Handler Xavier so we can eat. At the end of the month we get our share of the spoils. A small number of credits that trickle back from Cowboy. Just enough to keep us working. We are the lucky ones. The ones who are quick to learn the tricks of the game. Those who are not chosen by Handler Xavier must scavenge for food in garbage bins at the end of market day. Cowboy is the last link in our game’s chain. I check around the market for Locusts. It is all clear. When I am sure, I wander over and hand Cowboy the bag of stuff that Kitty and I nicked off the beach. Cowboy spits on the jewellery. He scratches it and weighs it in his hands. He counts the sunglasses and sunblockers before dropping them into a bin under the table. I watch him as he counts – I want what is mine at the end of the month, just like everyone else. Handler Xavier says if we do not watch Cowboy he will cheat us quicker than you can say, “Cowboy, you filthy thief,” which is something I often think but never say. Corks dangling from the brim of Cowboy’s hat dance and bob, keeping the flies off his face. I slap one from my lip. They are the size of my fist and bite sore. One day when Cowboy is not looking I am going to make that hat mine. Until then, the flies get me. “Twelve items of jewellery, seventeen sunglasses, and fifteen sunblockers,” Cowboy says. “Eighteen sunglasses. The handler counted.” I did too. He is not going to rob me today. Cowboy’s mouth twists. He knows I watch him. “One pair was broken. I’m not counting it.” The tip of his tongue flickers over his lips. “Is this everything?” He lowers his sunglasses and peers at me from under his hat. His eyes are big. Like mine. Like my mouth. Always at odds. Forever arguing as to which should claim the largest share of my face. “Handler Xavier will be along later with the stuff from the others,” I say. He grunts. “Another brand of sunblocker is on the market today. Double strength. There’s a glut of the old stuff now. Tomorrow I won’t want it.” New sunblockers crowd the market, each stronger than the next. But the sun still manages to penetrate the cream, eating away at my skin. Cowboy looks over my shoulder and jerks his chin in warning. I glance behind me and catch a flash of green and yellow. When I turn around again, all that is left of Cowboy is the flies, dazed from dodging corks. I slip away from the table, my shoulders hunched against the patrolling uniforms. The stalls are selling the usual goods. Everything plastic. Plastic sandals, plastic umbrellas, plastic sunglasses and plastic tubes of sunblocker, five for the price of one. But the sun is shutting its eyes on the day, and food stalls are thin on the ground. Before sunrise tomorrow, the market wardens will leave Slum City and buy whatever is available from the warehouses at The Laboratory. Sometimes the warehouses are empty, and Slum City dwellers roast flies to stay alive. Not me. I do not eat flies. They eat me. And if I do not treat the bites they make me sick. The food queue snakes past a stall selling plastic flowers. I butt in, close to the front. “Hey, what you doing? You can’t squeeze in,” a man says. I roll my eyes and drool as though I am afflicted with sun sickness. “Dead-brain,” he says and leaves me alone. The woman in front of me clutches her shopping bag to her chest, like I am not to be trusted. She is right. If I was standing in front of me in a queue I would also hold on tight to my stuff. I bump against her, and as I do so I lift a shiny clip from her hair. It is the kind of thing Kitty would like. Blood drips from the woman’s bag onto my foot. It is animal flesh, but I do not know what kind. I have never tasted meat. It is expensive, and in any case, Handler Xavier says if I eat meat I will get sick or go mad. You cannot trust the meat that comes from The Laboratory. By the time the queue has taken me to the front there is not much choice, the slabs of banana tell me. The pulp under the plastic wrappers is mottled black and yellow. Eeny meeny miny moe. The queue pushes behind me. Hurry up, we also want some. The Market Nag clicks her tongue. “Come on, girlie. Are you buying or not?” She flaps her hands above the bananas and a glut of flies mosey on over to the next pile. “I want water. And don’t you have mango?” I cannot take banana home to Kitty tonight. She will scream my ears deaf. Last month it was the only fruit I could get and she swore her sweat turned yellow. The Market Nag taps her nose. “Mango is eight times the price of banana.” Sometimes the Market Nags hold back on the food so that they can push the prices up a few days later. That is Slum City for you, everyone out to make a credit off the back of someone else. If the market wardens catch her jigging the prices they will set the Locusts on her. But it is a risk all the Nags take. She hands me two bottles of water, and reaches under the table. She pulls out three balls of fibrous mess, seeping from their plastic wrappers. They are overripe, but they are still mango. I hide two in my bag. She takes my credit, bites it to check it is not plastic, and gives me some change. I suck on the water bottle and 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 myself, cannot ignore it all. But one day I will quit this dumb habit. I walk between the cots and pat a twitching 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 was a lot younger. I did not know if it was still alive or if it had been chopped down in the olden days to boil someone a pot of soup. If it survived, though, I would recognise it. I would find that tree and it would take me up the ladder to the place where Moonface and the Saucepan Man lived. I would disappear into the Land of Treats with Jo, Fanny and Bessie, and eat exploding toffees. Lots of credits later, I still had not found the tree. When I stopped being a dead-brain, I realised that the magic faraway tree never was. Just a bunch of hocus in a book. “We’re going to work the parade today,” Handler Xavier says. Bingo! “Kitty and I will handle the parade with a couple of the others, while you do school, Ettie.” See, I said bingo too soon. It is my own fault for wanting it too badly. Handler Xavier searches my features. I give him my yippee-I’m-going-to- school face, even though school is hideous, right up there with flies and plastic. And even though I do not like Kitty gaming without me. “But Kitty hasn’t done school for days now. They’re going to notice and ask questions.” I shake my head like this bothers me, as if I care about people sticking their noses too close to the game. “I cleared it with the scholar warden last night. I told him Kitty’s down with sun sickness.” Handler Xavier sucks in my concerned face. “But it’s good that you’re being careful, Ettie. You’re sweet. A real team-player.” As sweet as the plastic taste of sunblocker on my fingers. Kitty wipes a wand over her eyelashes. She smoothes her hair and fixes it with the clip she has forgotten to thank me for. She gives the sliver of mirror a smile. One of the smiles she has learnt at school. It is a pretty trick that makes men look at her. It makes me want to smack her face. No, I do not. Of course, I never could. The handler peers out the window. “It’s going to be a hot one today.” Black clouds are massing on the horizon. But they do not signal rain. It only rains before the middle months. These clouds tell me a floater is coming. Burning slicks of oil from the olden days, which still haunt the seas. Sometimes the wind drives the floaters back out to sea, but on calm days they stay close to shore, brooding, until the Scavvies brave the fires and drag them away. When the slicks lurk on the shoreline, the sky is dark for days, and you cannot tell if it is day or night. Except when the sun’s face burns a hole through the smoke. I grab the nose shields from our box of possessions and give one to Kitty. It will not block the taste or allow us to breathe better. But it helps filter the poison and stops your nose clogging up. I leave them both and fly off to school. I take the second star to the right, straight on till morning. I am on my way to Neverland with Wendy and Michael and John. Far below me, the taxis, packed with traders, cross the river to Mangeria City. I swoop over the taxi Pulaks, flying high to dodge the arrows of the Lost Boys. Higher than the trees in the museum. As high as the magic faraway tree, where Dame Washalot hangs out her huge panties before tossing the dirty water. Dodge those arrows, Wendy. Dodge that soapy water, Jo, Fanny and Bessie. “Watch where you’re going,” a Pulak shouts. I step off the road and into a gutter full of muck. I clasp the shield over my nose and keep my eyes on the road as I trudge to school. Children loiter outside the education centre and wait for the scholar warden and the teachers to arrive. I edge away from a group of girls leaping in and out of squares on the concrete. Standing outside the circle, I make myself invisible. The fewer people who see you, the less trouble they can cause for you. “It’s Ettie Spaghetti,” a girl says. The other girls stop jumping and crowd around me, chanting. Their pinches tell me how much they like me. I know why they do not like me. It is because I keep to myself. It is safer that way. Apart from Kitty, friends are not something I do. This is one of my rules. Not one of the set that Handler Xavier made me learn from day one in the game. It is a rule I have made for myself. I figure there is only one person you can trust in the world: you. Someone has to be looking out for me one hundred percent. And I am the only one I trust to do this. If I do not survive, there will not be anyone around to look out for Kitty. And she is not strong enough to look after herself. “Ettie Spaghetti,” the girls scream. They dance around and make cow eyes at me. Tick-tick-tick. I wait for Captain Hook’s crocodile to come and chew off their hands. Instead, the scholar warden arrives with the teachers. “Silence.” The warden whacks his cane on the ground and the noise dies. “Get to your lessons. Now.” We disperse into our classrooms, according to our trades. The room for drudges like me is the largest in the education centre. We shuffle behind our desks, and I pick the peeling skin off my knees as we wait for the teacher to arrive. She will spend the day teaching us how to look after the homes and children of the Posh. This is going to be my trade when I turn fifteen. We are all assigned a trade at birth. Our trade numbers are spewed out by The Machine and branded on the back of our spines. You can scrub as much as you like and it never comes off. I know, because I have tried. My trade is right down there in the gutter, with the Drainers who clean the streets. I should have grown used to it by now, I have known about my fate for nearly ten years. Ever since the day Kitty and I turned five, when the orphan warden packed us off for our first day at school. We arrived together, but got separated after the scholar warden examined the marks on our backs. Was it random? Or did The Machine somehow know Kitty would be beautiful and that I would have large hands rough enough to mop up dirt? The people who know things in Slum City could never give me the answer to this. “You were born to serve as drudges. You will work for the Posh until you are of no further use,” the drudge teacher told us. “This is the trade that has been chosen for you.” Everyone clapped and cheered. Not me. I held my claps in my fists and my tongue behind my teeth. The drudge teacher is as old as my trees in the museum. She is retired from her trade and has been tasked by the Mangerians to prepare the next generation for their jobs. At the beginning of the day we are made to recite the drudge pledge. “Louder,” she instructs, scrutinising our faces to make sure we are chanting the oath with pride: “I am proud to work in the homes of the Posh and to raise their children and clean their homes.” Hiding my fury, I spit out the words. Every morning we learn skills that equip us to work in a Posh home. Clean. Polish. Dust. In the middle of the day we are fed water boiled with the discarded plastic that wraps the vegetables in the market. The drudge teacher calls it soup. After eating, we practise what we have learnt. We wash the plates and clean the kitchen and the classrooms. Wash. Scrub. Sweep. As I rinse the plates in the sink, the sounds of music and laughter from the pleasure workers’ classroom taunt me. There, the boys and girls learn how to serve drinks. How to dance and smile and amuse the Posh in the pleasure clubs. And how to treat themselves when they get sick. In the yard outside, I hear the grunts of boys training to be taxi Pulaks. They are kneeling in the yard, tugging at ropes. The students have to stay there, in the sun, until one of them keels over. “Pull together,” the Pulak teacher shouts at them. Our afternoon classes are for child-rearing and serving etiquette. “When a Posh baby is hungry, what must you do?” the drudge teacher asks, pointing at a girl staring out of the window. The girl mumbles and the class gulps fetid air. “Go to the scholar warden. He’ll help you learn your lesson today,” the teacher says. When the girl returns, she ignores the chair behind her desk and chooses to stand. The lesson she learnt from the scholar warden is written in red marks on the backs of her legs. “What must you do when a child cries?” demands the drudge teacher. A boy at the front of the class raises his hand. “You must pick it up and soothe it,” he recites. And pinch it when no one is looking and pull its hair. The teacher looks at the boy, stretches her lips. “Yes, oh yes. And how must you serve the master of the house his soup?” “You must make sure it is hot. But never too hot.” And when he is not looking you must spit in the bowl. The teacher glances at me. “Ettie, you’ve got something to add?” I am one of her favourites. Teacher’s pet. I slap on my sincere and respectful mask. It must never slip. The backs of my legs were taught one lesson too many before I got smart and learnt that teachers’ pets don’t go to the scholar warden for special tutoring. “When you serve the master of the house his soup you must not look at him but keep your eyes on the ground.” And curse him under your breath. The teacher claps her hands. The prints on her fingers and the lines on her palms have been worn smooth from scrubbing Posh floors. “Excellent, Ettie. I can see that you’re almost ready to serve in your trade.” I smile at her. It makes my face hurt. Since learning of my future as a drudge I have tried to change it. Scrubbing the mark at the base of my spine with steel wool was the first thing I attempted. I was seven years old then. It left open sores on my back. The flies feasted on my flesh for weeks. When the skin healed, the numbers showed themselves again. The next time, I applied some of the acid we drudges use to clean pots. It burnt my skin away. But when the scabs fell off, the numbers reappeared. There are stories told by people who know things, stories about people who have tried to escape their trades by running away across the desert. But thirst always drives them back to the city, where they are caught again. They are tracked down by the Locusts who use the handsets linked to The Machine. No one knows precisely how it all works, but one thing is for sure – as long as those numbers are on our spines, there is nowhere to hide from the Locusts. The day drags on, with nappies and teething and the correct way to cure indigestion (hold the brat upside down). My fellow trainees listen and suck it all in. Not me. I will never be a drudge. My fingers feel for the wound on my back. I have seen what the cream does to people’s skin. Another tube should do the trick. I must get another one fast. It is my last chance to get rid of my mark. The months will not stop their march towards my fifteenth birthday. As the teacher closes her lips around the last syllable – “Drudge class dismissed” – I am out of the classroom and running. 4 Reader I run as far as I can, without stopping to put on my nose shield. The hot wind buffets me; sand coats my face; black gob fills my nostrils. I stop when I can no longer breathe. Locusts question me at the boom before I cross the bridge to Mangeria City. “I’m going to the pleasure quarter,” I say. A Locust grabs my arm. “No, you must stay with me.” He pushes me against the boom, his breath foul on my face. “I’ll show you pleasure like you’ve never had before.” I soften my slap on his glove with a giggle, and pull away. It is not yet curfew. He has to let me pass. Locusts jeer as I race in the direction of the clubs where the Posh drink and laugh themselves silly. People from Slum City party here too. Handler Xavier and the market wardens shake hands with the Posh, making deals that the Locusts turn blind eyes to for a cut of the credits. If Kitty was with me, she would have pointed out her favourite places in the quarter. She likes to hang out here when she is not at school or playing the game with Handler Xavier. The men chase her like rats after a piece of meat in the sewers. I am not headed for the clubs for a good time. My destination is the beauty parlour, one of many that service the Posh wanting a make-over before hitting the clubs. But I do not want my hair straightened or my face stretched tight, pinned to my skull so that my eyes appear like slits. I would rather have big eyes and Savage hair than look like a Posh. Traders bustle me off the pavement and I walk in the street, avoiding the Drainers who are elbow deep in waste from the gutters. I dodge sweating Pulaks pulling fat Posh to shops where they buy the food people like me cannot afford and are not meant to eat. I leap over potholes, and three blocks on I reach the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour. The salon is choked with men and women shouting out like a gaggle of Market Nags at the beginning of trading day. Trussed in chairs, they gaze at mirrors, their faces dripping with treatments; hair sweltering under caps. The air is plastic. The ways of the Posh are a mystery to me. They roast themselves on the beach to turn brown. And burn their skin with acid to get white again. “I’ll be voting for the candidate from the sixth family. He looks trustworthy, I think,” a woman says as she bakes inside a plastic body wrap. She has Kitty’s honey-corn skin. Except for her face. The flesh has been burned off, leaving a mask of scab. Underneath, pale skin will grow. Fit for a Posh. “Oh no, I like the candidate from the ninth family,” another says. She picks away at the crust on her cheek. And stops. She must not risk scarring. One of the topics of conversation being thrashed to death in the beauty parlour today is the forthcoming Mangerian election. It should interest me because I am taking part this year. I have to. It is Mangerian law. Everybody who has turned fifteen and is legal, from Posh to trader, has to participate in this event. Or non-event, people who know things say. Behind their hands. There are exceptions to this rule. Past traders who are too old to work. And the Rejects, who cannot work because they are sick or damaged. They do not have any use, so do not matter. Voting in the election has been beaten into me during civic responsibility class for the past ten years. I know it as well as the mark on my spine. Every three years, we must choose the Guardians who run our lives. The slate of candidates is decided by an elite group of Posh who call themselves the Mangerians. They are post-conflagration families who banded together and got things running again after the world blew up and fell apart. The moon’s face was ripped in half, and ever since, she has been winking at us with one eye; the other half of her face is scarred black. These things happened in a time that people who know things remember. The election candidates all come from the Mangerian families. They know best how our lives should be run. It has been like this since year Dot PC. We are grateful: if it were not for them, we would be running around like Savages instead of living happy, useful lives, gainfully employed in a trade. Yes, I know my civic responsibility lessons by heart. Twenty candidates put their faces on the ballot; every Posh, every trader has twenty votes. So even though maths and I are not close friends, I can at least count my fingers and toes. It is no surprise who is elected to play Guardian for a three-year period. I escape the chattering uglies and edge past the row of reclining chairs. I take off my sunglasses and scan the different creams on a tray. I see it – the tube marked with a black skull, hiding under a pile of hair dye. When I use it tonight I will not dilute it. I will not be using it to have Posh skin. It has to be strong. I want the mark on my spine gone. “Ettie, my dear, are you looking for something?” I jerk away from the tray as Me, the brains behind the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour, approaches. A smile lifts his chubby cheeks. “Is there something I can help you with, Ettie dear?” My hand fiddles behind my back for the edge of the tray and fumbles among the tubes. Me comes closer as my fingers fret. No, not this one. That one. My fingers tell me they have found it and I slip it into my shorts. I begin to edge past Me. He darts left, and I go right. He goes right, and I go left. Me thinks it is funny, this dodge-dodge game. I put on my gosh- this-is-fun smile and dodge him a bit more until it gets boring. Humour is not dominant in my personality make-up. “Ettie, come into my parlour and let me make you lovely. With my eye clips and my hair acid I can make you as perfect as any Posh mistress.” Me touches my hair and tweaks the corners of my eyes. “Yes, these fat eyes need a bit of work.” I push his hands away; touching is not a game I play. Especially when there is a tube of stolen cream hidden in my shorts. “Don’t touch Me,” I say. I share name jokes with him sometimes to make him laugh. I stay friendly with Me because on nights when I miss curfew and do not want to risk the Locusts at the booms, I sleep on one of his reclining chairs. I leave Me shadow-dodging, and walk past nail bars and massage parlours to a flat on the seventh floor. I knock on the door and wait, tapping my fingers against my leg as feet shuffle down the passage. Come on, old man. Come on. I don’t have all day. When he opens the door, he peers at me through his sunglasses. His nostrils quiver as he sniffs the air. He sniffs again and gives a shy smile. His gums, as pink as a baby’s, say he is happy it is me (and not Me, who bugs him for rent). I do not smile back. He must not know how happy I am to be here. I like to keep my visits to Reader on a strictly professional basis. “Ah, it is thee, the lovely Juliet,” Reader says. He is the only person I know who calls me by my birthing name. I scowl at him in case he sees how much I like it, and he stops. Reader talks funny. At first I used to think he was ripping me. But now I know he talks like he does because this is who he is. He pulls me inside, his fingers touching my waist, pinching and probing. “What is it you have concealed?” I duck away from his hands. “Get off.” I clutch my stomach and follow him into the flat, removing the book from under my shirt. “What is it?” he says again, sniffing the book I am holding up to his face. “ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .” He handles the book as though it was the last surviving butterfly. He turns the pages. “Ah, Charlie, how I remember you, my old friend.” “I found it last week. It was chucked away near the beach.” Baring his gums, Reader chuckles. I come to him with books that have been discarded, abandoned, thrown away. Never stolen. “Chucked away? It is a good thing you rescued it.” “You can have it for your library.” “Ah, the bounteous Juliet. As generous as you are comely.” It is not in my nature to be generous. There is a price for my gift and I will be sure to claim it. Reader runs his hands over the cover. He feels along the books in his bookshelf until he finds it a home. “I do not own this one. But it is not a very valuable book.” He is lying. I know how much he wants it by the way he touched it. He turns to me. “How much would you say it is worth? A half-hour, perhaps?” “Five hours,” I say. He says one. I say four. He says one and a half. We haggle until we settle on three hours. “So, where were we?” he says. “We had just started. She’d spotted the white rabbit and followed it down the hole. She was about to drink something, and we stopped reading.” I wait for him to fetch the book. “It’s where I left it last time I was here.” “Yes, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland .” Reader shuffles past the books on the shelf. Too slow, too slow. His fingers tremble along the spines of the books. He is doing it on purpose to drive me crazy. “How many times have we read that book over the years?” He pulls a face. “It is a bit young for you. Perhaps you could choose another?” Not a chance. “I get to choose what I read in my three hours. Else I’ll take Charlie and be gone.” “If you must, you must. Get it yourself.” He adjusts the sunglasses on his nose, turns around, stretches out on the couch. I find the book and ease myself into a chair. Reader settles his head on a cushion and raises his hand. “You may commence.” I find my place and begin to read. I feel hungry for the story and gobble up the words. Like Kitty with her mango. Reader thumps the side of the couch. “Slow down, child, the words will wait for you. Treat them with respect.” He pulls a blanket over his legs. “When you read so fast it disturbs the rhythm of my dreams.” This is the deal I have with Reader. I bring him books I nick during the game, and he lets me read the books in his library. But I have to read out loud to him. And slowly. He says my voice is so boring it helps him sleep. The arrangement used to work fine for me when I first learnt to read, but now I wish I could speed through all his books by myself. People who know things say that in the olden days people read books on machines. All the books in the world lived on machines so small you could hold them in your hand like a real live book. The books in Reader’s library had all been dumped in landfills because no one wanted them any more. They liked their machines better than the books. But everything went melt-down. The virus ate the books on the machines. And when most of the trees died and the oil dried up or spilled into the ocean, people burned the books they found in the dumps. I hunt down any that escaped the burnings. They are sold in special shops in Mangeria City, together with the stuff the Scavvies salvage from the underwater city. Only the Posh can afford to buy these books. I read chapter after chapter, as Reader snores. He shudders awake and asks, “How long have you been reading?” “An hour.” I know it has been close on three hours, but if he learns the truth he will send me home, saying he has paid me in full. “No, I mean when did I first teach you?” Reader knows when it started. But he likes me to tell him again and again. It is as though he wants us to have a story that we share together. Like friends. I tell him the story as quickly as I can. I want to get back to the Queen of Hearts who hates white roses. I was nine years old when we started. I had been gaming at a Mangerian sports show with Handler Xavier and Kitty. The pickings were rich. Silver necklaces and gold timepieces. And there was a book. I did not know what it was when I found it at the bottom of a Posh bag. I picked it up and held it in my hands. I turned the pages. It was a picture book of birds. Not beastly ones like Mistress Hadeda, but birds of many colours. I knew, as I looked at the pictures, that I was holding magic in my hands, so I took it to Witch to trade. “I want magic to get rid of my mark,” I said. Witch laughed at me. “Oh, Ettie, no magic under the sun can remove the mark.” She looked at the book, grimaced. “I’ve got no use for pictures. All the wisdom I want lives with the tellers. But I know someone who may want this.” She sent me to Reader. In return for the book, he taught me the alphabet. The next book I brought him, he traded a lesson in reading words. The words became sentences. We stumbled through nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Eventually, I could read. I visited him at the end of his working day, and he squeezed in a few hours before curfew. Some people get lucky with their trades. He got to be a teacher, instructing Posh children how to read. Now he is useless, and he has been forgotten among his books in the flat above the salon. If the Locusts caught him living behind the city gates, they would send him to the place in Slum City for people who have outlived their use. They call it Section PT. It is the place for the past traders, run by people like the orphan warden who take money from Mangerian Welfare for keeping old rubbish out of the way of useful people. Mostly, they are left to rot in their beds. But I have never visited Section PT, so I do not know for sure. It is not a place I have ever had a use for. The first book I read by myself was The Wizard of Oz . It is a book about a girl called Dorothy who is an orphan like me and lives in a place that is grey. She must be the most dead-brain girl in the whole world, because all she wants to do once she gets to Oz, is go back to her grey home and her grim carers. For Dorothy, there is no place like home. But I like the wizard. He is a fraud who keeps everyone guessing. Reader repeats his question, and I answer: “I found a book and you taught me to read when I was nine years old.” One sentence is the most he will ever get from me. Reader sighs and settles back on the couch. “You may now continue with Alice.” An hour later, I come to the end of the book. The couch is snoring. I push myself off the chair and steal across to the bookshelf. My fingers travel over Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . My eyes stop. I see another copy of the book. And two more. Four copies of the same book. Foolish old man. When he realises he has given me three hours’ reading time for a book he already owns he will be mad. I cannot help grinning. My fingers travel over another set of books and I pick one out. The pages are covered in tiny bumps. The work of insects, I suppose. Rows and rows of hard little eggs. My fingers start itching and I put it down. “Why have you stopped reading? You woke me,” the couch says. I grab another book and tuck it under my shirt. “I’m finished. I have to go.” Reader walks me to the door. I stop to scratch my leg and he bumps into me. His sunglasses fall onto the floor. And so does the stolen book. “What is it?” Reader says, sniffing. We stand, looking down. I wait for him to chase me away from his library for ever. If he does, I will rat on him and the Locusts will take him to Section PT where he will rot. “You have dropped something.” He is not looking at the book. He is looking past it. His eyes are covered in a gooey film, they remind me of Witch’s bird. “Yes, my bag.” I crouch, pick up the book. I hold it in front of his face. I move it from side to side. The eyes, like litchi pulp, do not flicker. “Make sure you hang onto your bag as you walk the streets, Juliet. There are tricksters out there.” He gives me his baby-pink smile. I do not scowl at him. I allow my face to mirror how I really feel; for once, I put my feelings on my face. It is not like I care squashed banana for the blind old mouse. But sadness puckers my face as I look at Reader, surrounded by books he can no longer read. He lets me out and stands at the door. As I walk down the corridor to the stairs he shouts, “Juliet, perhaps I will see you next week?” I know he will not see me because he cannot. But I stop and call back. “Maybe.” The sun’s face dips behind oil clouds as I race to the bridge. The curfew siren has sounded and this billy goat gruff is late. The troll is waiting. I should have stayed at Me’s. The Locusts must not search me tonight. There is a book against my stomach and the tube of cream in the back of my shorts. Two secrets they cannot discover. The mark on my spine tingles as I approach the boom. I slow my feet and loll my head. I gather my spit and allow it to dribble down the sides of my mouth. I stagger up to the Locusts and lurch like the Posh after a night in the pleasure clubs. “Fly sickness. She has it bad,” a Locust says. “Let her through. But don’t touch her.” I reach the boom and they step away. “Stop,” a voice says. It was Kitty’s terror yesterday. Today it is mine. I stumble on. “Hey, I said stop!” I turn around. And the Locust attaches his glove to my shoulder. 5 Posh Trouble I am reading The Hobbit , the book I had snatched off Reader’s bookshelf fourteen suns ago. It is about a fat creature with hairy toes called Bilbo Baggins, who does not like adventures. Except he gets dragged into one by Gandalf the wizard and some dwarfs. He meets trolls and orcs too. And Gollum, who loves riddles as much as he loves his precious ring. The story happened long before the conflagration. It was a savage time for sure. I feel under my shirt for the base of my spine. I finished off the last of Me’s tube of cream last night, and the scab is hard and crusty at the edges. I must not pick it until I am sure it is dead. It is not in my nature to thank a Locust. But if the Locust at the boom had not noticed the tube fall that day I visited Reader, my mark would be half cooked. “You dropped something,” he had said to me, releasing his hand from my shoulder. I glanced down at the tube of cream in his gloved palm, but when I reached out to take it he pulled back. I looked up into the face obscured by sunglasses and a nose shield. A smile like the half moon brightened the lower part of his face as he placed the tube in my hand. His glove holding mine. “Thank you,” I said to him. Then pulled away and ran. And slowed to the gait of a girl afflicted with fly sickness when my senses returned. There is a whistle outside my door and I conceal the book. I arrange my face and open the door to the handler. “Where’s she?” Handler Xavier says, looking around for Kitty. It is not a riddle, it is a question. So I do not have to think too hard about it. Kitty was at the pleasure clubs last night and did not come home. I spent the night pacing, cracking my knuckles and toes, hoping. If I told the handler the truth he would spend the morning searching for her and I would have to go to school. Not that he would be worried. He would want to give her a black eye for breaking curfew. And he would know she was gaming on the side and had credits he could take off her. The Posh at the clubs become stupid with their credit purses when watching the dancing boys and girls. “She heard there’s a wagon load of fig coming to the market. You know how she likes fig?” Not as much as mango. But fig is Kitty’s next-best thing. Handler Xavier checks my face, but my honest mask is plastered on. “She was going straight on to school after the market. That’s what she said this morning.” Kitty has not said anything like this for days. She is not talking to me. “You’re not the boss of me. You must leave me alone,” she said the last time we spoke. “I can’t wait for the months to pass until we graduate and I’ll be free of you.” “Ditto,” I said back to her. With a sore chest.