Fearless

by Tim Lott

  Little Fearless stroked Stargazer’s hair silently but continued looking at the locket. Stargazer noticed that Little Fearless’s eyes were as sad as the last day of summer.

  “What happened?” she asked, separating herself from Little Fearless and seeing what she was holding.

  “He told me that my mother was dead,” said Little Fearless simply. Her dirty face was marked with the track of a single tear.

  Stargazer gasped. “No. Surely it can’t be true.”

  “It is true,” said Little Fearless. “I have always known it to be true in some part of me – ever since I can remember.”

  “What do you mean – ever since you can remember?” said Stargazer, clutching Little Fearless’s hand. “You can remember your mother, can’t you?”

  “I can remember the woman who brought me up. The woman I was with that night when they came for me. But although I loved her, she was not my mother. I know that for sure now.”

  Stargazer looked completely lost. Little Fearless continued to gaze at the locket.

  “The woman who brought me up had a birthmark, you see. It was about the size of a fingernail and the shape of a star, on her face, just below her hairline. She used to tell me that a star had fallen from heaven and left a mark on her. I remember it so clearly. And it’s not there in the photo. Although this looks a bit like the woman I called Mother, when she was much younger, it isn’t her. The woman in the photo is my real mother – I am sure of it.”

  “How do you know?” asked Stargazer.

  “I just do,” she said simply.

  Little Fearless held out the photo to Stargazer. It showed the head of a woman in her early twenties. She was beautiful, with thick dark hair, enormous eyes brimming with intelligence and life, and a wide, smiling mouth. Although there was no obvious resemblance to Little Fearless, there was something about her – perhaps the brightness of her eyes, or the proud, challenging way she gazed into the camera lens – that reminded Stargazer irresistibly of Little Fearless.

  “She’s lovely,” said Stargazer. “Perhaps she had the photograph altered so that you couldn’t see the birthmark.”

  “The woman who brought me up wouldn’t have done that. She was who she was and nobody else,” said Little Fearless. “And she wasn’t my mother, although she loved me like a mother.”

  “Your heart must be broken,” said Stargazer, softly.

  “No,” replied Little Fearless firmly, wiping away a tear. “I cannot grieve long for someone I never knew. And I believe the woman I called Mother, who I did love, and who I am sure loved me, is still alive.”

  “It’s so sad,” said Stargazer. “But we will help you with your loss, Little Fearless. Me, Tattle, Beauty and Soapdish. We will each try to be some part of a mother for you.”

  Later that day, as the evening settled in, Little Fearless met her four friends in their secret place. The rubbish dumps occupied a large rectangle, maybe fifty yards long, between the Food Block and the Living Block. Running beside the dumps was a small, little-used alley where the rubbish containers were stored. It usually stank here, so most of the children, X, Y and Z alike, kept away. But the rubbish lorry had come the day before, so it didn’t reek too badly. There was only one X girl usually patrolling this part of the Institute, X12, known to everyone as Stench. Stench looked after the dumps, but this evening she was nowhere to be seen.

  The girls arranged themselves in a circle on the rough ground, and checked to see if they had been noticed. But to all intents and purposes they were alone.

  After her meeting with the Controller, Little Fearless had decided to try to answer the question that her friends were always asking her. Why was she always getting herself into trouble with him? She told them she couldn’t answer the question without telling them a story. And so they sat and listened as she told them about the night the man with the black cap had come to take her to the Institute.

  They sat in silence, completely absorbed. She told them about the locket, the portrait of her grandparents and the watch that she had brought with her that night. In the car on the way to the Institute she had seen flashes of light from explosions in the distance.

  “It all happened at the time when the bombings were at their worst, and the war in the Outlands was going very badly. There were even those who said…”

  Here Little Fearless paused for dramatic effect.

  “Oroborous was going to topple the City Boss and take everything over.”

  She whispered the name “Oroborous”, even though they were sure no one else could hear. It was taboo to speak it.

  “Who is Oro-Oro-Oroborous?” asked Stargazer timidly. Beauty, Soapdish and Tattle glared at her as if she were an imbecile.

  “The bogeyman,” said Tattle, contorting her face so she looked monstrous. “He comes at night to eat Z girls.” She turned away and picked up a black pen, and began drawing something on her arm.

  Beauty looked disdainfully at Stargazer. “Oroborous is the mastermind behind all the terrorist attacks,” she said, as if everyone should know this.

  “No one has ever seen him,” added Soapdish in a low voice.

  “They say he has a tattoo of Oroborous the snake, the ancient symbol of the pagans. Oroborous was always shown curled in a circle, eating its own tail.”

  “Where … where was the tattoo?” asked Stargazer nervously.

  “On his wrist,” said Tattle suddenly, thrusting her own wrist at Stargazer. With the black pen, she had drawn a serpent snaking around it. Stargazer flinched.

  “Is that why they took you away from her, LF?” wondered Soapdish. “Was she a…”

  Soapdish left the sentence unfinished, but Little Fearless knew exactly what she meant. Many of the girls in the Institute were juvies, young criminals who had fallen foul of the curfews and antisocial orders that rained down constantly from the City Boss. Most of the X girls, who seemed to enjoy violence, came from the ranks of the juvies. So did Tattle, who had been a petty vandal and shoplifter. But others had been seized from homes where their parents were said to be terrorists, or followers of Oroborous.

  “I never believed she was a terrorist,” said Little Fearless. “The authorities made a mistake, that’s all. They make mistakes all the time, my … the woman I thought was my mother said. Arresting people who haven’t done anything wrong, just because their identicards are out of date, or they’re heard saying something they shouldn’t about the City Boss.

  “But it’s true she did tell me secret stories of Oroborous, who, she said, was not a terrorist at all, as the City Boss painted him, but a brave and brilliant freedom fighter, and the true friend of the people of the City. I remember she always made Oroborous seem romantic. I think I even wanted to be like him.

  “I don’t care that she wasn’t my real mother. She was always good to me. She loved flowers, and she always made sure I had some in my room, by the side of my bed, so I could look at them before I fell asleep. She said it would help ensure that all my dreams would be good. We both loved white roses. Ever since I came to the Institute I’ve dreamed of seeing one again.”

  Little Fearless took the locket that she believed contained a photo of her real mother out from under her shirt, and stroked it gently.

  “Can I read them, LF?” said Tattle, pointing at the locket. “The words on the back, I mean.”

  Without taking the locket off, Little Fearless turned it over so that Tattle could see the back. All the other girls craned their necks too.

  “It’s too faint. I can’t read it,” complained Beauty.

  “It says: To a true Hero. Always be brave. Always be yourself,” said Little Fearless. “I think it is a message from my real mother. And that is why I am always in trouble with the Controller. Because I have to be brave. And I have to be myself. To stay true to my mother, sometimes I have to break the rules. The Controller despises anyone who won’t follow his rules to the letter, so he tries to crush me.”

  “Why doesn’t it say your name?” said Soa
pdish bluntly.

  “What is your real name, Little Fearless?” asked Tattle innocently, as if she was doing no more than asking the time. Not only was it forbidden to use real names in the Institute, it was taboo to tell another girl your real name. It was thought to be bad luck, and if the Controller found out, you could get into very hot water. They were meant to have forgotten their real names.

  “I promised I would never use my real name again until I became a real person and went back to the City,” said Little Fearless sharply. “All I have now is a slave name, and until I can be free, I will not tarnish my real name. Do you understand, Tattle?”

  Tattle shrugged, clearly disappointed that she hadn’t been issued with a prime piece of gossip. There was a long, slightly embarrassed silence, broken eventually by Soapdish.

  “Are you going to do as the Controller asks, and stop telling stories about when our families are going to come for us?” she asked.

  “No,” said Little Fearless simply. “Because they’re not stories. They’re true.”

  “I don’t see how they can be true. The City Boss would never allow it to happen,” said Tattle sulkily. “Let’s face it, we’re stuck here, at least until we’re grown up.”

  “There is something greater than the power of the City Boss,” said Little Fearless, “and that is the love of families for one another. And I’m sure the truth about this prison – which they pretend is a school – is kept a secret from all in the City.”

  The Institute presented itself artfully to the outside world. A cheerful, brightly coloured sign at the front of the Institute read CITY COMMUNITY FAITH SCHOOL FOR RETRAINING, OPPORTUNITY AND HOPE.

  The high perimeter walls were made of mellow pale pink stone covered with ivy. From the outside, comforting turrets and towers could be glimpsed. From the inside, the view was entirely different: the walls were black, ugly metal that reflected no sunlight and had yards and yards of cruel, coiled barbed wire stretched across their tops.

  “This is why, you see, no one has come to rescue us. The City Boss has told them lies. Perhaps they have been told that we are dead, or far away in the Outlands. Or more likely they have been told that we are safe here and being helped to become proper Cityzens. So they may have given up on us, or decided that this is a good place. But a secret as big as this cannot be hidden for ever. When our families and the rest of the Cityzens find out that we are kept in a prison and treated like animals, they will tear the walls down.”

  “But what about the girls that return from the Institute to the City as women?” said Beauty, outraged. “Everyone must know what it is like in here, because the girls would tell everybody.”

  “Oh, Beauty,” said Little Fearless wearily. “You know the truth about the girls who leave the Institute. You all know – don’t you?”

  Now Tattle stuffed her fingers in her ears. “Not listening, not listening, not listening,” she muttered to herself over and over again.

  “I know what you’re going to say, and that’s stupid,” said Beauty, angrily.

  Little Fearless sighed. She believed that the fact none of the girls had ever come back to visit the Institute – or told everyone in the City what was going on here – meant only one thing; and the fact that none of their families, or any of the Cityzens, had ever come to save them proved it beyond doubt.

  The truth was that when the girls became women, they didn’t return to the City at all, as they were promised. Instead, Little Fearless believed that they were just moved into other institutes, institutes which were for women instead of girls and which were probably just as bad as the place they were in now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Little Fearless softly. “Because I know that we are going to leave the Institute. All of us. And soon.”

  “How do you know?” said Soapdish impatiently. “How can you know?”

  Little Fearless looked at Stargazer and Stargazer looked back at her, then lowered her eyes.

  “Because Stargazer has seen it,” said Little Fearless.

  “That stupid kid!” burst out Soapdish. “She doesn’t know anything!”

  “That’s not true,” said Little Fearless. “When she looks at the stars, sometimes she has dreams and visions, and sometimes – often – they come true.”

  Most of the girls had dreams, usually of the time when they were real girls with real names, but Stargazer’s dreams were different. They were unusually vivid and sometimes terrifying, and there were those who believed she experienced visions and possessed the power of prophecy.

  Soapdish snorted with disdain, but Beauty and Tattle stared at Stargazer, as if challenging her.

  “I do see things,” muttered Stargazer.

  “In dreams? Do you mean in dreams?” said Beauty haughtily. “So much happens in dreams that sometimes some of it is bound to come true, by accident. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Not really dreams,” said Stargazer. “They’re more like daydreams. They can happen at any time, and not just during the night.”

  “Is it like watching the vidscreen?” said Tattle.

  There was just one vidscreen at the Institute, heavily censored. On Sundays the girls were required to assemble in the meeting hall for an hour before the Gathering to watch uplifting speeches by the City Boss and sermons by the priests about the greatness and goodness of Eidolon. The X girls had the privilege of watching the vidscreen in the evenings, and were allowed to see some of the more inoffensive game shows and simple dramas that filled the schedules between the endless advertisements and political announcements.

  “No. Because it isn’t out there; it isn’t in the world. It’s pictures in my head. I can’t exactly describe it. It’s like thoughts and imaginings, only different. More real, and yet not quite completely real, and yet not make-believe either. Sometimes I see the future, other times just a possible future that may or may not happen. The pictures come at the strangest times – perhaps when I’m ironing the clothes at the laundry and I’ve burnt myself on the hot metal, and am thinking only of the pain. Then suddenly the pain might disappear and these pictures come, these … these…”

  “Visions,” said Little Fearless.

  Tattle snorted. She had heard these stories about Stargazer’s special powers before, and she didn’t believe a word of them.

  “Can’t you see she’s telling the truth?” said Little Fearless angrily. “Are you like the people in the City who can’t tell the difference between truth and lies?”

  “Perhaps it’s true,” said Soapdish quietly.

  Tattle turned her head away in disgust. “I’m not listening to someone who’s spent most of her life in a loony bin.”

  It was true that Stargazer, who was an orphan – her parents had been killed by a terrorist bomb when she was a toddler – had been brought to the Institute from a psych zone. Only Tattle was tactless enough ever to mention it. Many of the girls in the Institute were ill, or disturbed, and were stuck with being labelled mindcrips. They had been sent to the Institute not because they had committed any crime but because it was feared that sooner or later they might. This was what had happened to Stargazer, who had been branded insane after she had insisted that her visions were real.

  “Tell them about the end of the Institute,” urged Little Fearless, ignoring Tattle.

  “I saw strange things only two nights ago,” began Stargazer. “I was awake and looking at the stars, after all the other girls were asleep. As I was watching them, the stars began to dance. I thought I was going crazy, and I was scared, but they formed themselves into pictures and some I could understand and some I could not, but I could not tear my eyes away because the pictures were soaked with meaning and full of tomorrows.

  “Some of the stars became people, great crowds of angry people, standing outside the Institute and shouting – but I couldn’t make out what they were shouting. And then they dissolved, and suddenly I could see the Institute as if from outside, with its cosy walls and ivy leaves, instead of black metal and bar
bed wire, but the camouflage began peeling away like the skin of paint on wood when it has been burnt. And as I watched, the gates burst open and the crowds came in like a vast wave. And I saw the Controller, his head hung low, his spirit broken.

  “Then the pictures changed again. Suddenly I saw all the girls. They were rushing to meet the crowds. Although I did not count them, somehow I knew there were exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine. One girl was missing.

  “Then I saw the walls of the Institute fall, and the buildings razed to the ground, and there were flames and cries, and suddenly all that vanished and there was simply a girl – no, the shadow of a girl – alone on the ground. And the girl, the girl who was missing, the girl who turned into a shadow, her name … her name…”

  At that moment, two things happened. Stargazer fainted; and at the end of the alleyway a figure appeared.

  It was Stench, the keeper of the rubbish dumps.

  Stench marched down the narrow alley, the five girls in the sights of her small, scrunched-up eyes. She was short and wide and as powerfully built as a sumo wrestler, and her uniform was slightly too small, so she seemed to bulge all over the place without being quite able to get out, like an idea trying to escape from her shuttered, closed-in mind.

  Stench was an odd creature. She was far from being the cruellest of the X girls, but she was definitely the biggest, certainly the strongest and quite possibly the stupidest. The strangest thing about her was that although she had landed the job that every X girl wanted to avoid more than any other – that of overseeing the stinking mountains of the rubbish tips – Stench seemed to love her job. She viewed the rubbish as her kingdom, the one thing she could call her own, and she patrolled it and tidied it, and kept it in order as if it were a delicate flower garden. It was said that Stench was always rooting through the rubbish because she believed that one day she would find something precious among the rotting food and broken furniture and empty bottles and cans. She was a pathetic creature, her dull spirit surviving somehow on impossible dreams and hopeless hopes, and many of the Y and Z girls felt sorry for her rather than hating her like they did most of the X girls.