by Katie Hale
‘Fine.’ I was not thinking about the strangeness of this, of her being there, of her even speaking to me. My head was still filled with triangles. I got up and started packing away my things.
She walked over – glided, somehow – and tried to help me. I wanted to tell her to stop, but she was the type of person I tended to avoid, so I just let her get on with it.
‘Only . . .’ she carried on, with a flick of her hair that caught my cheek, ‘only I thought you maybe weren’t, you know? I thought, maybe, you’d heard what Sam Harper said about you, and, you know, I thought you might have taken it the wrong way?’
Exactly as Naomi Dodds intended, my curiosity was piqued. ‘What did Sam Harper say about me?’
She was separating my pencil from the compasses, looking down at the table and the crater I had gouged out with safety scissors the term before. She was close enough that her perfume caught in my throat.
‘He said you were like a boy, how you pick fights all the time.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Is that all, I thought.
‘I think that’s all he meant though,’ she said, ‘about being like a boy, I mean. Just about picking fights. I don’t think he meant in other ways. Not – you know – sex.’
‘Oh,’ I said again, and then, because I had nothing else to say, ‘right.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, looking at me now, wide-eyed under her big fake eyelashes.
What was all right? Her eyeliner was slightly thicker on her left eye than on her right and it irked me. Why do it if she couldn’t do it right?
‘It’s all right.’ Her voice was cloying, like tinned pears. ‘It’s OK to be different.’
I treated her to my best sardonic smile. Of course it was OK to be different.
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered again.
She leaned in.
She pushed her mouth at me.
Her lips were too warm and moist. They were too close and then they were pressing on mine. They were fat and sticky with lip gloss. They were mushrooms in plastic packaging.
I jerked back.
‘It’s OK,’ she said yet again, as though this was some great truth and I was supposed to divine some hidden meaning from it, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
She leaned in again, her face flat and false at close quarters.
I stepped back into the desk. ‘I’m not a lezzer.’
She frowned and dark ravines appeared in the foundation. She whispered, ‘Oh, come on.’
‘Come on what?’
‘Come on!’ She raised a plucked and pencilled eyebrow. ‘Course you are. No way are you straight.’
‘Fuck off.’
She scoured me with that arch look.
‘I don’t fancy you,’ I frowned. ‘I don’t even like you.’
I packed the rest of my things into my bag. I headed for the door, but Naomi Dodds was there first. She grabbed my face, squeezing. She put her own face up close and I flinched but there was no danger of her kissing me this time. Her eyes were burning. She hissed, ‘Tell anyone about this and I’ll cut you.’
Then she was gone, out of the classroom door and into the last trickle of people meandering home.
*
Once a year, my mother would announce it was a day to paint the windows. She would pass the job to my father and my father would pass the job to me. In this way, our family was a waterfall. My mother hurled her tasks and opinions down our small domestic hierarchy. They pooled in me and hollowed me out, and my father was a smooth rock face who offered no resistance. I grew, hidden and deep, until I was bigger than either of them imagined. People always marvel at waterfalls, and nobody pays enough attention to the chasm underneath.
Today I am painting the windows at the farm. I slap the paint across the frames with a thick brush, letting it fleck the glass and spatter the surrounding stone. Every time this happens, I think about my mother’s neatness and paint all the more haphazardly.
The air is still and thick. As the sun rises higher, I take off my jumper and throw it across the gate, where it hangs heavy like a side of meat. I keep painting. I am tempted to leave the windows of the rooms I never use, but rotten wood means draughts in any part of the house, and I was never one to leave a job half done.
By midday, the sun is blazing and the window frames are ready for a second coat. I unbutton the bottom of my shirt and tie it up around my middle. For a moment I consider taking it off entirely, working bare-chested and letting the sun spread across my uncovered back – but as soon as I think it I can feel eyes on me and my skin prickles. I wrap the fabric tighter across my chest.
Sometimes, I wonder who the eyes belong to. My mother maybe, although these eyes are silent and my mother was never one to look without commenting. Maybe my father, or Erik. More likely there is a fox or stray dog prowling, which my subconscious has picked up on. I wear my cotton shirt like armour. When it comes to isolating myself from whatever might be lurking, state of mind is what matters, and for that fabric is as good a defence as steel.
*
What I know is this: survival is not about being stronger than other people. It is about ignoring other people altogether.
Longyearbyen, Svalbard, on the cusp of winter. I stood on the edge of the harbour, wrapped in oilskins, laden with everything I could rescue from the base. Food, blankets, clothes. Even some of Erik’s equipment, though most of the stuff in the labs was redundant by then. In front of me were the boats. The bigger ones called to me, beckoning with their safety of iron and steel. If I had to go out onto the vastness of the sea, I thought, I should make myself larger than I already was.
A breeze whipped up small waves and there was a metal clang from somewhere on the water. I could not have handled one of those boats on my own.
So I turned to the smaller boats. The cold sun rose higher as I stood there, sizing them up, easy prey at the edge of the land and sea. Thank god there were no polar bears any more.
In the end, I chose the largest boat I thought I could handle. It was not very big, but it had a sail – a token gesture for tourists, just for running tours around the peninsula. Still, I thought it could come in handy. I loaded my bags of provisions. I scoured the harbour for stashed jerry cans of fuel, then loaded them onto my little boat as well. I wondered, had it not been for the fuel shortage, would people have taken care to squirrel away this much? Would there have been less?
The boat was small. The boat was possibly too small. I thought this a thousand times in the days to come.
I forced myself to cast off.
The Vikings did this, I reminded myself, as the gap between boat and dock widened. The Vikings did this in their wooden rowing boats – or so Erik told me. They did this without engines or maps, with only a raven to guide them.
I chugged my little boat from the harbour, past the buoys and wave-energy converters bobbing on the surface, out to the open sea, towards home.
*
In those endless days that followed, I learned about the sea. The sea is not a physical thing. It does not exist through force and dimension, through gravity and thrust and resistance. Knowing the mechanics of how a vessel stays afloat, or how the engine propels it forward – these are not enough. The sea is a creature of the mind. It is a leviathan lurking, in perpetual motion, an essay in the impossible.
The sea took all my physics and mathematics and threw them back in my face with the spray. It howled and stung and hissed and slapped. It gloried in my smallness, crashing and swelling with a raucous belly-laugh, like a fat woman bursting out of clothes too tight for her.
I fought her. I cursed and spat. I turned my mind into steel, something sharp and metallic, that could slice through water without rusting. I barely slept. I ate only what was to hand, fighting the waves, existing in the leanest way possible, eating and shitting and pissing where I stood. I stopped being human. I became a machine – less than a machine, a parasite clinging to its host. I barely thought, only operated. I kept on moving forward. I kept af
loat.
Sometimes when I am digging the field or preparing food, I think about history, about all the people who have ever lived. The kings and queens and emperors, the peasants and farmers, scientists and priests, the prehistoric women, the Neanderthals . . . - all that evolution, the weight of history and DNA and adaption, all coming down to me. When I dip the bucket for water and the stream tugs at my hand, I remember where the stream is headed. I remember the weight of the sea, the vile, heaving mass of it, buffeting my little boat, desperate to pull me under, and I wonder why I kept fighting it. Why I still keep fighting.
*
The city has moods. On some days it treats me like a friend, lays out smooth paths to welcome me and offers up an interior of gifts. Some days it is an obliging stranger: Here, Monster – try this turning. Take whatever you like.
Today, the city is cantankerous and cold. The morning has yielded nothing but empty office buildings and a spool of ribbon that I will tie to a pole, and which may or may not work to keep the crows off the field. Somehow, I cannot bring myself to make a scarecrow with a human form.
The road is a barrage of obstacles and it takes hours just to clamber the mile from the city centre. On the chassis of an overturned bus, with a view of concrete and tarmac and shattered glass, I sit and eat two boiled eggs.
Afterwards, I trudge back towards the parts of the city I know. As the familiar front of the corner shop edges into view, I am already picturing filling my bag from its stocked cupboards. I am already yearning for the farmhouse, the bright flame of the kitchen cooker, the safety and solitude of the easy chair.
The shop door is ajar.
I left it closed. I definitely left it closed tight, the way I always do.
But here I am in the middle of this empty city, and the heavy shop door is ajar.
*
A door – this door – opens when the latch pulls back, away from the strike plate in the frame. The latch is connected to the spindle, so, to achieve this, the spindle must be turned. The spindle is locked into the back of the door knob, which requires a hand to turn it – which in turn requires an opposable thumb and a rotating wrist.
Which in turns means some kind of ape. Which means a human.
*
The door is ajar.
In the gap is a sliver of dark, a sudden expansion of possibility. My skin feels tight, stretched, like all the hairs on my body are keening. I can hear my blood thudding through my ears.
I stretch my hand towards the half-open door and push.
Inside, the shop is mostly normal, jars and empty packets still littering the shelves. But there is one gaping cupboard door that was shut last time I left it. My hand is tight and hot around my metal bar, ready to strike out. I edge through to the back room.
There’s a second when I think the room is empty, when my eyes see nothing but the gloom and lumpy furniture. Then a shift in the shadows – and I spot it.
A creature. A small, ragged creature, hunkering in the corner. It flexes forward into the light, all angle and bone, skinny body low to the carpet. Its skin is scratched and bruised, grey with rubble dust. It raises its pinched face . . .
This creature is a girl. A starved, scrawny human child.
She shouldn’t exist. She can’t. A girl who somehow survived the War and the Sickness and the Last Fall. A girl who endures.
We face each other in the grubby back room of the corner shop. The seconds spiral and build around us. Neither of us moves.
‘Hello,’ I say. My voice cracks.
She hisses and leaps back like a cat.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell her, ‘I won’t hurt you.’
She hisses again, teeth bared, her little fingers curling into claws.
‘Can you understand me?’
She lets out a desperate shriek – a guttural, feral noise, bursting with fear and warning.
All right, I think. All right. Let’s find another way to do this.
I start to crouch, pulling myself down to her level. Her eyes never leave my face.
Slowly, very slowly, I put down the metal pipe. I hold my hands up to her to show they’re empty, hoping she sees that this isn’t a threat. I attempt a smile. The muscles in my cheeks creak and stretch where I haven’t used them for months; I can feel it in my forehead and down my throat, like something unnatural. Maybe it doesn’t even look like a smile. Maybe my face has forgotten how.
The girl’s body starts to relax. She makes another wordless noise, a breathy one which sounds something like ‘her’.
I turn my hands, palms up, and offer them towards her, an invitation to touch.
At first she flinches, but after minutes of squatting till my thigh muscles burn, she crawls out to meet me, hand outstretched. With bird-like hesitancy, her fingers touch mine. She runs her fingers over my cleaner, brighter skin. Her touch is light, agonisingly light. I want to grasp her hands. I want to grasp them tightly, to cling to the solid reassurance that she’s there, she’s real, I am not alone.
I am not alone.
I can hardly breathe for the simple beauty of another human face, the unexpected ecstasy of touch. I want to hug this little body to me till I break it, to know and know and know that I am not alone.
But I can’t scare her away. So I use my free hand to point to myself. Monster, I am about to say – but what if she recognises the word and is afraid? Instead, I think of the most comforting and caring word I can. I point to myself and say, ‘Mother.’
She looks to where my hand points to my chest, and then up at my mouth, like she’s studying its workings.
I try again: ‘Mother.’
Her lips flex and waver.
‘Mother,’ I say again.
She creases her forehead in concentration. ‘Mubber . . .’
I smile at her. ‘Mother.’
‘Muvver.’ ‘Almost,’ I tell her. ‘Mother.’
‘Muvver. Mothah.’ She frowns. ‘Mother.’
‘Yes,’ I smile again, looser and easier this time. ‘Mother.’
She touches my chest, eyes on my face. ‘Mother.’
I take her hands and slowly rise. The girl stands with me, eyes still on mine. I smile at her again, and she smiles back: a fresh, honest smile that splits her face and again makes me want to hug her too hard.
‘Come with me,’ I say, hoping my tone and gestures will convey the words she doesn’t understand. I lead her over to the high cupboards. She follows me warily, but it is clear that she has decided – for the moment – to trust me.
Reaching up, my hand comes back with a tin of tomatoes. She watches as I puncture the top with the chisel I carry on my belt and hand it to her.
‘You can drink it.’ I puncture another one for myself and demonstrate, sucking the tomato juice through the hole.
The girl copies me, uncertain at first. Then the sugary tomato juice hits her tongue and her eyes blaze, and she gulps it down greedily. When she finishes, her top lip is tomato red and she is breathing excitedly. I give her the rest of my can to finish.
After both cans are gone, she grins at me, panting with the excitement of so much goodness consumed so quickly. She spreads her hands across her belly and looks down.
I watch her and I fall a little bit in love with her.
She is older than I first thought. Her body is petite and angular, a starved tautness to her skin and an untamed wildness behind her eyes. But her chest curves smally, and there are sproutings of downy hair in her private places. I quickly look away, back to her face. I focus on her boundless joy at fullness and the taste of sugar – old and young together, so that trying to guess her age would be impossible. For a moment I wonder how she got like this, how she became such a blank slate, with no language, no way to communicate. I wonder what happened to her to turn her into this.
But that is not what matters. She is lost and alone in this big broken empty world. I can help her. I can teach her language, and I can teach her survival. I can fix her.
Now that I have
found her, I cannot let her leave me. Now that I know I am not alone, I do not think I can be alone again. There could be others . . . The thought flashes into my mind and I feel it stick: if there is a girl, this girl, here, so close to where I’ve made my home, then maybe there could be others.
I watch her trying to suck any last vestiges of tomato juice from the cans – loud desperate slurps that leave her gasping and light-headed. I think of the blackened fields on the edges of towns, the emails from my dying parents, the houses left like living museums by sick or fleeing occupants. I think of the emptiness I have walked through to get here, and I remember how the smell of burning hung around the base for thirty-eight days. Whoever pays the greatest price gets to survive the longest . . .
There are no others. There can’t be. There is only me, and now her.
‘Come with me,’ I say again, packing more cans into my backpack. As I leave the shop, I look back at her, smiling. She follows, one small hand still spread across her full belly.
We walk all the way back to the farmhouse. I keep thinking she will stop and refuse to walk further, or will turn back towards the city to be somewhere she knows, but she doesn’t. She stays with me, all the way home.
When we reach the farm, one of the chickens is still scratting in the yard. The girl stops to watch it. The chicken pauses, one claw held tentatively above the ground, its head cocked to one side. It lets out a hollow, curious cluck, and the girl shrieks with laughter. The chicken squawks and flaps away back to the barn.
I take the girl into the house. The embers in the kitchen fire are still glowing, so I add kindling and prod the fire into life. The girl sucks in her breath and moves closer.
I point: ‘Fire.’
She looks at me, and I point again. ‘Fire.’
I say it three more times before she joins in.
‘Fire,’ she says eventually.
‘Yes.’
‘Fire,’ she says, pointing, and then, ‘Mother.’
And when I nod and smile, she grins her enormous face-splitting grin.
*
Night arrives unexpectedly. I have been so focused on the girl – on her watchful eyes, the way the room seems much smaller around her, as though I have forgotten what it is like to exist in a space with another person – that I have not yet closed down for the night the way I usually do. By the time I go out into the yard, the chickens are already roosting in the barn, and all I need to do is shut the door.