Fearless

by Tim Lott

  Little Fearless approached the door. Behind her, in the distance, she could still hear the crowd whooping and clapping. She felt small and nervous. The last time she had come to the City, she had been so full of hope and it had all been so disappointing. She told herself firmly that this church would be different from the police station. The whole place was built out of the idea of doing good, after all.

  She stopped outside the door, took a deep breath, and knocked. The knock seemed to echo around the whole church. Little Fearless waited, her heart pounding.

  After what seemed like for ever, the door opened with a creak. Standing in front of her was a man in the garb of a priest. He was very old, with a face mapped with wrinkles like the dry, cracked beds of deep-cut rivers.

  The priest regarded her neutrally. “And what,” he said in an educated, cut-glass voice, “might you be?”

  Little Fearless, slightly annoyed, answered, “I’m a girl.”

  “A girl, you say,” he said, sounding doubtful. “You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” retorted Little Fearless crossly. “You more than anyone should understand that.”

  The priest didn’t seem pleased to be told off by someone half his size with a face covered in muck and wearing a filthy, oversized tweed suit and a purple beret that kept slipping over her eyes – which, he noticed, were entirely different colours, giving her a weird, other-worldly look.

  “Whatever you are, thank you for dropping in but I’m busy. I have a sermon to prepare. My duties to Eidolon must be fulfilled, and I am short of time. Good evening to you.”

  With that he gestured for Little Fearless to leave. But she didn’t budge.

  “Please. I’m sorry if I was rude; I didn’t mean to upset you. I will go very soon, I promise. I just want to tell you something that is very important.”

  The priest took a deep breath and scratched his head. “Well, if you’re a girl and you’ve got some very important information, you’d best come in,” he said at last. “But you’ll have to be quick.”

  Little Fearless entered the room and sat down before he had a chance to change his mind.

  “First things first. Who are you and where do you live?” the priest said gravely as if he was very interested, but at the same time looking at his watch as if he wasn’t very interested at all.

  “I don’t really have a name, and I don’t really have a home,” said Little Fearless. “But if you want to know where I live, it’s the City Community Faith School.”

  At this, the priest brightened up slightly. He knew the Controller faintly. But could this really be one of his outsider girls? He sat down opposite her on the other side of his desk and looked her up and down. And frowned.

  “The City Community Faith School? Then why aren’t you there tucked up in bed being looked after instead of coming to me like this so late at night?”

  “But that’s what I want to tell you,” said Little Fearless urgently. “The Institute isn’t a school of any kind, but a terrible prison. There are rats, and we have to eat dreadful food, and no one is hardly allowed to talk or play, and everyone is given a number instead of a name, and…”

  Little Fearless poured out all she knew about the Institute; she was so desperate to unload everything in her heart that she couldn’t stop talking. All the time, the priest nodded as if listening very carefully.

  After Little Fearless had finished, there was a long silence. Eventually the priest spoke.

  “It just so happens that I know the Controller. He comes to this very church every now and then. He is extremely generous with our collection plate.” The priest regarded Little Fearless for a moment. “To tell you the truth, I find it very difficult to believe what you tell me,” he said finally.

  Little Fearless immediately opened her mouth as if to speak, but the priest held his hand up to stop her.

  “Everyone in the City is agreed that the Controller’s school is a perfectly excellent one. Obviously something has to be done with all the, um, unfortunates and children who are, well, surplus to requirements. It is common knowledge that the school is a well-run and decent establishment.”

  “But how do you know that?” asked Little Fearless fiercely.

  “How do I know it? Well … well…” said the priest, suddenly infuriated at his inability to find an answer. “I know it because … because … everybody knows it. And because the Controller is a respectable and decent man who believes in Eidolon and would not tell terrible lies. Unlike…” The priest fixed Little Fearless with his glare. “Unlike some little girls.”

  “But, sir,” said Little Fearless desperately, rising to her feet in vexation. “Why would I lie? Why would I go to all the trouble of escaping just to tell you a lot of pointless fibs?”

  At that moment, as she rose, Soapdish’s rag doll, Toussaint, which had been concealed inside her jacket, fell onto the priest’s desk. It looked forlorn and pathetic. Somehow it brought home to the priest that the pile of rags standing in front of him was not just an outsider, not just an antisocial or a juvie, but a real flesh and blood child.

  And this seemed to make him even angrier.

  He reached out to grab Little Fearless’s arm, but she was too quick for him. With tears staining her face, she snatched at Toussaint. In her hurry, she scraped the doll against the desk and one of his button eyes fell to the floor. Ignoring it, she threw open the door, sprinted down the aisle and out of the church.

  The priest immediately hurried to give chase, but at that moment, the chief priest appeared, grave and beckoning.

  “You’re late, Pastor. We are all meant to be meeting the City Boss after the gathering, which finished some minutes ago. Could you come and join us?”

  “But—” the priest protested.

  “Right away, please. The City Boss helps to fund this church, and we have to make a good impression. Anything you have to say can wait till later. In the meantime, get up to the reception room now. Praise be to Eidolon.”

  Without another word, the chief priest hurried away.

  It was several hours before the reception for the City Boss was finished and the priest could return to his room. He yawned and checked his watch – a quarter to midnight. He pondered whether it was too late now. Then he picked up the telephone and dialled seven zeros. He was not entirely surprised when the Controller himself answered. It was well known that he allowed himself no more than three or four hours of sleep a night, so dedicated was he to the correct running of the Institute.

  “City Community Faith School for Retraining, Opportunity and Hope. This is the Controller speaking.”

  “Controller. I’m sorry to disturb you. This is the pastor from the Fifteenth Church of Eidolon.”

  “How are you, Pastor? I enjoyed your sermon very much last week. To what do I owe the honour so late in the evening?”

  “I thought I had better call you. Someone came to the church tonight who claimed she was from your school.”

  “What!” exclaimed the Controller abruptly.

  “She told the most remarkable stories … terrible lies—”

  “Never mind all that,” interrupted the Controller impatiently. “Where is she now?”

  “She … er … ran away.”

  The Controller exploded, calling the priest every name he could think of. The priest was shocked. He had always thought the Controller was a decent and god-fearing man, but the language he was using was very ungodly.

  Right at the end of his tirade he said to the priest, “What did she call herself?”

  “She didn’t give her name.”

  And at this, the Controller became even more furious, so that it appeared to the priest that a stream of acid was pouring out of the end of the telephone.

  Then the Controller asked what she looked like. The priest told him that it was hard to tell since she was so mucky and messy and ungirl-like; he was about to mention the one brown eye a
nd the one blue eye, when he saw the grey button that had fallen off the rag doll. He picked it up and held it in his palm. He stared at it uneasily.

  After all, if the Controller could treat him, a servant of the Church, with such anger and contempt, what might he do to a little girl?

  “Well – what else, man?” thundered the Controller. “There must have been something that’ll help me identify her.”

  “No,” said the priest firmly, putting the button eye carefully in his pocket. “I’m afraid not, Controller. Nothing else. I can’t help you, I’m afraid.”

  With that the Controller called the priest a dog-collared dimwit, and hung up with a bang.

  That night, the priest did not sleep well, and dreamed of a soft rag doll with a missing button eye, and the sad shorn hair of a girl with no name.

  After Little Fearless fled from the church, she searched for Angel Square. Eventually she found her way to the three angels, Truth, Courage and Compassion. She stared at them in all their stony, faded beauty, and realized that she didn’t understand – not really, truly or deeply – the words written underneath.

  Was truth what the City Boss said it was? Or was it what the Church said it was? Or was it what the Controller said it was? Or was it something held deep inside you, like a secret? What about compassion? She had looked the word up in a dog-eared dictionary when she had got back to the Institute last time. It meant “suffering with”. What was so virtuous about suffering with others? There was enough suffering on one’s own behalf without taking on everyone else’s unhappiness too. Surely if you had true compassion, your heart would break for all the misery in the world. She understood courage, because she possessed it, but she didn’t understand why she should be given the gift of it while others, like Stargazer, struggled to find it within their hearts.

  Perhaps the words weren’t so corny after all. Perhaps they even mattered. And yet, if they mattered, why had the people in the City allowed the angels to get so worn and faded? Why had they neglected them?

  Everything was a puzzle and a mystery – not at all simple and straightforward like the City Boss had tried to pretend it was, or like the Controller said it was, Little Fearless decided.

  She saw that a laundry van was parked, ready to leave. Again there was the holiday coach with TO THE SUNLANDS on the front. As before, the back of the coach was empty. But this time Little Fearless saw a driver inside, and he seemed to beckon to her, though perhaps he was just adjusting his rear-view mirror.

  She took a step or two towards the coach. Surely this time her absence would be discovered. Everyone would be punished anyway, whatever she did. If there was no point in going back, well, why not head off to the Sunlands?

  She took one more step towards the coach. Why wouldn’t anybody believe her? It was because she was a child and they were grown-ups, and grown-ups only ever believed other grown-ups. It just wasn’t fair, she thought angrily to herself. One thing Little Fearless could not bear was unfairness. And this made her hesitate. Was it fair for her to run away to the Sunlands and leave all her friends in the lurch? Sighing to herself, she knew it wouldn’t be right not to return to the Institute. She couldn’t abandon her friends.

  She would have to suffer with them.

  She stopped walking towards the coach and instead dashed towards the laundry van. Its engine had already started and Little Fearless had to run very fast. Just in time, she managed to open the back doors and throw herself in. As the van pulled away, she shut the doors behind her.

  The laundry van churned and chugged along the route back to the Institute. Just before midnight, she felt the van stop again, the engine turn over, and then the van move forward much more slowly. She knew this meant she was back. Clambering over the piles of clothes, she opened the rear doors, threw herself out and sprinted across the yard to the Living Block and Hall Seven. She crept to her bunk and stripped off her clothes, which gave out a steady reek of gazoil.

  As before, Stargazer was awake and waiting for her. Pale and gaunt, with her watery green eyes made all the bigger by her cropped hair, Stargazer spoke in a steady, still voice.

  “Little Fearless, are they coming now?”

  “What?”

  “Our families … are they coming?”

  Little Fearless looked down at her. “Of course they are, Stargazer. But I will have to go back one last time. I haven’t found enough of our families yet. Not enough to burn down the walls and throw the Controller out into the gutter.”

  “But they are coming, aren’t they?”

  “Yes … yes,” said Little Fearless, feeling ashamed that she had failed, and guilty that she was lying to her best friend. “Of course they’re coming.”

  Stargazer gave a broad smile.

  The door to Hall Seven swung open. In came the Controller with Lady Luck and the Whistler and Stench and Bellyache.

  The beds were checked, as usual. But once again, of course, no one was missing.

  This time the Controller was even more furious than before.

  “Something very serious happened again tonight.” His hands trembled wildly. He left a long silence so that everyone would realize just how serious it was. “Someone, despite all my warnings last time, escaped once again and went into the City.”

  This time the Controller didn’t even bother to pretend that “escape” was the wrong word. A buzz of excitement and anxiety spread around the room.

  “I have no idea, yet, how she did it. But I will find out.”

  Then his voice changed. It became softer, more of an appeal or a question. “Don’t you understand how much harm this does to you all? I hate to punish any girl. You are like my own children; you mean the world to me. I live to make you all into good Cityzens. Dust can be turned into diamonds. Even rubbish can be useful. Surely you are all old enough to understand that society requires order and obedience to make it work properly. I’m trying to help you.”

  Little Fearless resisted the temptation to make a rude noise. But to her amazement, there was the sound of an insolent, defiant belch from somewhere. A tiny one – too faint for the Controller or the X girls to hear.

  It was Stargazer. The belch had been the best she could do, but Little Fearless guessed that she had meant it to be louder. Little Fearless looked at her with amazement. She couldn’t help but grin. Stargazer grinned back.

  The Controller noticed Little Fearless and Stargazer smiling at one another and immediately pounced on them. “Do you think this is funny, Z73?”

  “Sir. No, sir, Controller.”

  He glared at her, then Stargazer. Then he turned back to address all the children. His voice was thin and sharp once more. “I want the girl who did this ungrateful and wicked deed to come and stand in front of me. Right now.”

  Nobody moved.

  “You must understand very clearly. I will not stand for this kind of behaviour. It is not good for anybody. It is not acceptable. If the individual who did this wicked thing does not come forward right this moment, every single one of you will be punished once again. And it will weigh hard on you.”

  And then he swivelled, and he looked directly through his tinted spectacles into the brown and blue eyes of Little Fearless. A worried murmur spread around the dormitory. Little Fearless blinked. But her mouth stayed firmly closed.

  The silence went on and on. Eventually the Controller spoke again.

  “As before, I am far more concerned with catching the X girl who must have helped the miscreant. And I promise that if the girl who left the Institute will tell me who it was, then I will not punish her at all. In fact … in fact…”

  The Controller seemed to be searching desperately for a way of winkling out the traitor. He gave a wide and what he hoped was an unthreatening smile. “In fact, I will reward her! I will make her an X girl – and give her the job of the X girl she replaces.”

  Stench blanched. She was absolutely sure now that Little Fearless would give her away. After all, Stench believed that what Little Fearless
wanted more than anything else was to be the queen of the rubbish tips.

  But Little Fearless said nothing.

  The silence built like thunder out of earshot, all vibration and threatening promises.

  “So be it,” said the Controller in a bitter, razor-wire voice.

  The next morning, the five friends met together in the laundry toilets, which were filthy and reeked worse than the rubbish tips. They were allowed five minutes in there twice a day, and they all arranged to take their breaks at the same time. No X girls could hear them in here, but they could be interrupted at any time.

  “Did you find my parents?” asked Soapdish eagerly.

  Without replying, Little Fearless took the rag doll out of her pocket and handed it to Soapdish. “I’m sorry, Soapdish. I couldn’t find them. And poor Toussaint’s eye fell off.”

  Soapdish nodded, as if it was exactly what she had expected. She took Toussaint from Little Fearless and held the doll tightly to her breast. “It doesn’t matter. I’m always having to sew new buttons on him. Thank you for trying. And thank you for keeping Toussaint safe. You are very brave. But I knew it was hopeless. You need to end this now,” she said, placing Toussaint gently in her pocket. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Everything here is just getting worse,” said Tattle. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you ran away again and got caught.”

  “I want to try one last time,” said Little Fearless flatly. “If I fail again, I will confess it all to the Controller, and so no one else will be punished.”

  “You are brave,” said Soapdish. “But you’re also losing your mind. Whoever you go to, they’ll never believe you.”

  “If at first you don’t succeed, try again,” said Beauty. “But if you try again and it doesn’t work, perhaps you should give up.”

  “But I’ve got a plan,” said Little Fearless. “I can prove to anyone outside how much unhappiness there is here.”