The Smudger

by Angeline Trevena

  Omori appeared and stood, mouth gaping.

  “Run!” I screamed, but she couldn’t move. Her feet were rooted to the spot, her mouth flapping open and closed.

  I reached out, and my hands scrabbled against uniforms and button and boots. I was on all fours, staring through legs as they took hold of my daughter and marched her back across the room.

  “Mummy!” she cried out, fighting against the hands that held her. But what chance did a five year old have?

  Saji took hold of her shoulders, tried to wrench her free. I crawled forward, touched the edge of one of her shoes.

  “Don’t you take her!” I screamed, the words choked with tears.

  Without any warning, a stun gun whistled, and I saw Saji’s body lurch. I heard him drop to the floor, but I couldn’t see him, couldn’t get to him. The stun gun whistled again, and he cried out.

  “Stop,” I begged. “Stop!”

  The uniforms and the boots retreated, and Omori’s shoe slipped away from my fingers. I scrambled to my feet and followed them, pulling at any arm I could find.

  “Don’t take her, don’t take her!”

  Through the crowd of officers, I saw Tokai, arms crossed, watching.

  “Tokai!” I cried. “They’re taking Omori!”

  Tokai didn’t respond. I grabbed hold of her.

  “They’re taking Omori, help us!”

  She didn’t move.

  I threw myself at the uniforms then, clawing, biting, scratching, tearing at anything my fingers could grab hold of. A stun gun whistled, and the ground found me. I stared up at the sky above, my body unresponsive to my desperate pleas for it to move. All I could feel was pain, burning through me. I heard the slamming of doors, the hum of auto cars, and the screams of my daughter.

  45

  KIOTO

  I stroked Malia’s forehead as she whimpered in her sleep. Her face and arms were striped with scratches, her cheeks were pale and sunken, her breathing rapid.

  I looked up at Narata.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  Narata shook her head slowly. “We need Omori.”

  “I don’t even know how to start with convincing her to come here.”

  “You don’t have to,” Dai said. He was leaning against the door frame, arms folded. “We’ll just grab her. Problem solved.”

  “That is not the problem solved at all,” said Narata. “We need her to be compliant, to agree to being trained up. If you drag her here against her will, Malia will die anyway.”

  “Let me speak to her,” I said. “I have to try.”

  “Then what are you waiting around for?” Dai asked. “Go speak to your sister. Convince her if you think you can. But if you don’t, then we’ll do things my way. And don’t worry about her refusing to train, I can get her to agree to it.” He flashed me a smile. “One way or another.”

  46

  SENETSU

  “How could you just stand there and say nothing?” I was clinging to Tokai’s dress like a child pleading for ice cream. I was aware that everyone in the community hut was staring, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was Omori.

  Tokai pushed my hands away, but I simply clung on elsewhere instead.

  “She’s my daughter, and I’ll never see her again.”

  “You are causing a scene, Senetsu.”

  “I don’t care. You have to do something, you have to help us.”

  Tokai finally looked down at me. She took hold of my hands and pulled me up to my feet. Somehow, they managed to hold my weight.

  “Please, Tokai, please,” I wailed.

  “Get a grip on yourself. Have some self respect.”

  “I’ve lost both my daughters,” I snapped.

  “Yes, you do seem to have a problem holding onto them.”

  I took a step back from her. “How can you say that?”

  Tokai didn’t reply, but looked at me with eyes completely devoid of empathy.

  “Why didn’t you step in?” I demanded.

  “Because this may be the best thing for Omori.”

  “What? How?”

  “You were standing in the way of her progress.”

  “Well, she’ll never make any progress now, will she? She’ll be adopted into a citizen family, and every trace of her trader routes will be educated out of her. She’ll never be able to find her way back to us, and we’ll never be able to find her. You’ve lost the vessel you wanted so badly.”

  “Actually, I know exactly where she is.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie about that? I arranged her adoption.”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  “I will not.”

  I stepped back towards her, my fists clenched tightly. “Yes, you will.”

  “What are you going to do, Senetsu? Attack your own brood mother in front of everyone?”

  I looked around us. The men had stood up from their tables, and several had moved closer, their bodies poised for action.

  “Then they need to know exactly who you are,” I said loudly. “They need to know that you arranged that liberation. That you’re trafficking trader children.”

  Tokai held her hands out and gestured to the rest of the room. “Oh dear, Senetsu, I don’t think anyone believes you.”

  She was right. Or, at least, no one was surprised.

  “They were all in on it too, weren’t they?”

  “Everyone here is willing to do whatever is best for the colony. Even if it’s a difficult decision.”

  “What’s best for the colony?” I looked around at the other faces. “You stole my daughter. How could any of you do that?” I looked to the women, the mothers with their children sat next to them. “How could you take a child away from her parents? How could that be best for anyone?”

  “Omori is safe. And she will be returned to us when the time is right.”

  I stared at Tokai. It was like being in a nightmare where no one could hear you speak. Where you could scream as loud as you could, but no sound came out of you.

  “You’ve all lost your minds. All of you.” I jabbed the air with my finger. “I am going to get Kioto. You can’t stop me now. And when I come back, you will tell me where Omori is.”

  “This is the best way to protect your daughter, you’ll see that eventually.”

  “No. I am the best person to protect her.” I prodded my chest. “Me. She should be with me.”

  “You’ve already mutilated her.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve mutilated her mind. Don’t think I don’t know about the little extraction in Akimori. As soon as I get those memories back, Omori will be trained as a vessel. In the meantime, I will be keeping you as far away from her as I can. You’ve done enough damage to her already.”

  “You’ve done nothing to keep her safe.”

  Tokai shook her head slowly. “You’ve been trusting all the wrong people. Maybe it’s time you learnt the truth. Maybe that will help you see that this is the right decision.” She turned and walked towards the door. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  As we stepped outside, she took hold of my hand. It wasn’t a gesture of solidarity or support, it was simply to hold me still.

  “I had a visitor today,” she said. “Look.”

  I looked the way she had nodded and saw Narata.

  “She’s alive?” I whispered.

  “Yes, your precious Okaporo brood mother. She got out before the rogues massacred everyone in Okaporo. How lucky that she managed to save herself. How unfortunate that she couldn’t save anyone else.”

  “She saved me, and Saji, and Omori.”

  “Watch.”

  As Narata left the confines of the colony, three men greeted her. They stood and talked for a moment, heads together, co-conspirators. And then I heard it. The terrifyingly familiar roar of a petrol motor starting up. There was only one group of people that still used the old hybrid engines. Rogues.

  I
looked at Tokai.

  Tokai nodded. “She saved a lot of the children too, and the rooks. Because she knew the massacre was coming. She knew, because she ordered it.”

  47

  KIOTO

  I’d barely got through the door of the coffee shop when a waitress hurried over to me and ushered me back outside.

  “We can’t serve you,” she said, and her apologetic tone even sounded genuine. “The owner, he’s… he doesn’t like traders. I just don’t think you’re in the right part of the city.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I muttered.

  I buried my hands into my pockets and skulked over to one of the benches. I sat down and leaned back. A watery sun was trying its best to break through the clouds, but I didn’t hold out too much hope for its endeavours. This place didn’t deserve sunshine anyway.

  I tugged my hood up over my hair and sat, slumped forward, one hand cradling my chin while my elbow teetered on my knee.

  When I’d come looking for Omori, it had been like an exciting quest to reunite long-lost family. I’d been certain that it would end in happy tears and hugs that you never wanted to end. But right now, part of me didn’t even want her to show up. Part of me never wanted to see her again. The rogues simply wanted to use her, use her as a death warrant for other vessels. I just didn’t know how much I could really trust Narata. My entire heart was split in two, and I couldn’t see a way to reconcile those halves. I wanted to trust her. I wanted to believe that she could get us all away from the rogues safely, but there was a doubt that refused to dissipate. I had to listen to it. It was those doubts that refused to be silenced, that sense of scepticism, of wariness, that had kept me alive.

  Traders didn’t wander far from their colonies. They had a certain level of protection there, and that protection fell away as soon as they left the confines of home.

  I didn’t look up as someone sat on the bench next to me. I could smell their organic coffee, and it was just as bitter as any other.

  “Hello, Kioto,” they said after a moment.

  My head snapped up. “Omori,” I said.

  “It is you.”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly before speaking again.

  “I’d like you to leave Kumonayo. Leave me alone to live my life.”

  “Is that what you really want?”

  She shifted, turning towards me. “Yes.”

  “I thought you’d want to see me.”

  “Not really. I’m sorry. I’m sure you imagined this differently.”

  I nodded. “A little bit, yeah.” We sat in silence for a moment. The conversation had nowhere else to go, but neither of us moved to leave.

  “I didn’t think you knew who I was,” I said at last.

  “I know who you are. I know who, and what I am. Our parents told me everything. How they had my memories taken, and then they were lost. They were keen for me to know who you were though. They showed me loads of photos too. Only up until you were eight, of course, that’s why I wasn’t absolutely certain that it was you.”

  “Your friend in the colony told me where to find you. She said you told her once that, if I ever showed up, she should help me find you. So you must have wanted to meet me at some point.”

  Omori shrugged. “I guess I did then.”

  “What did you want to say to me?”

  She sighed, lolling her head backwards. “I don’t know, Kioto. It was years ago. I was just a child.”

  “But now you don’t want to see me?”

  “I want to move forward with my life. I don’t want to go back to all that.” Her hand raised to her right eye, three fingers extended.

  “But it’s who you are.”

  “No. It’s who you are. A sister I have no true memories of. And it’s who our parents are. Parents I don’t remember too well either. It’s not who I am.”

  “It is. Whether you like it or not.”

  “Then it’s not who I choose to be. I have a stable life here. Parents who look after me. I have friends, an education, a future. There’s nothing for me in the colonies except a whole load of lies.”

  “Lies?”

  “Everyone’s lied to me. Or, at least, someone has every time. I wouldn’t know what’s the truth and what isn’t.”

  “Did you know that our parents are dead?”

  Omori dropped her focus to the floor and shook her head. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel about that,” she whispered.

  “There’s nothing you’re supposed to feel. Whatever you’re feeling is the correct response. That’s what’s real. That’s what you can trust.”

  She looked back at me. “Then I feel nothing. Look, our parents told me all these amazing stories about you. They talked about how brave, and clever, and beautiful you are. They said that we were inseparable, like one child with two bodies. They made you sound like the big sister anyone would dream of having. But no one can be that perfect.”

  “No one is. We used to fight a lot too. I used to tease you until you pulled my hair, then I’d go crying to Mum and get you into trouble.” I shrugged. “We were sisters. We did what sisters do.”

  “But then Tokai started telling me different things about you. About Okaporo. She said that our parents favoured you, that they had always loved you more than me. She said that they’d wished that you had been the vessel so that they could have left me behind instead.”

  “That’s not true—”

  Omori held up her hand. “It made sense to me, because all our parents talked about was you, and how amazing you were, and how much they loved you.” She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at them. “It made so much sense.”

  “What else did Tokai tell you?”

  “She told me that you were jealous of me being the vessel. That you hated me for being the special one. She said that you told the rogues where I was because you wanted them to kill me. That you caused the massacre.”

  My fists gripped the front edge of the bench. “I don’t believe it. That’s not true at all.” I felt angry tears rise up from my stomach, pressing at the backs of my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want Omori to mistake it for guilt. “I lost everything in the massacre. Everything.”

  “I’d mostly dismissed that too. It seemed too far fetched for an eight year old. But then, I saw you sat here with that rogue the other day, and I thought that it must be true after all.”

  “No, he’s—” I clamped my mouth shut. I couldn’t tell her that he was my captor, not when I needed her to agree to come with me. I dropped my head into my hands. “Urgh, I can’t explain. You just need to trust me.”

  “That’s the whole problem. Everyone wants me to trust them, but they only tell me half truths, or no truths at all.”

  “I love you, Omori, and for eleven years I thought that you were dead. I thought my whole family was dead. I thought that Okaporo was lost altogether. But, suddenly, you’re back in my life, and I love you just as much as I ever did. I want no harm to come to you. I would gladly give my life for yours. I promised you that on the day you were born, and I don’t intend to break that promise.”

  The words weren’t good enough. The emotion was boiling inside me, pressing into every vein, pushing its way through me. And I needed to get it out, but I couldn’t find adequate sentiments for its escape.

  Omori shook her head slowly. “It’s just words, Kioto. And they’re easy enough.”

  I exhaled. “Actually, you’d be surprised.”

  “What were you expecting to find after so long? Me desperate to return to the life I once had?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Look, I have your memories. I can restore them for you. If you can’t trust anyone else, surely you can trust yourself. Once you have them, you can make up your mind about everything.”

  She frowned. “How do you have them?”

  I held my hands up defensively. “Purely by coincidence. Or luck, or even fate perhaps. I stumbled across a mer
chant, and his smudger had them.”

  “A slave?”

  “Yes. I bought her. So we can restore all of them to you. You won’t have to piece your life together through things that other people tell you. Or don’t tell you.”

  “I don’t know. I feel weird about the whole process. Having someone digging around inside my brain, looking at whatever they want.”

  “It’s not like that. I wouldn’t do that.”

  She smiled bitterly. “But I’d have to trust you.”

  I nodded. “I’ve got one of your memories, the smudger, Malia, still has the rest. Just let me give you this one memory, and you can see what the process is like. It will take mere seconds, if you’re open to it. Memories want to return home. It will slip into your brain, and you’ll barely even notice it happening.”

  Omori exhaled deeply. Her eyes flicked from side to side as she thought it over. She nodded quickly, just the once.

  “Close your eyes,” I said. “And you need to relax. Don’t fight me. Just accept the memory, and we’re done.”

  Omori closed her eyes and nodded again.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I placed my hand on her forehead and closed my own eyes. She resisted me, pushed me back out. Her mind was locked shut. This wasn’t a technique any normal citizen knew. This was something she’d been taught, and she’d been taught well.

  “Relax,” I whispered. “You’re blocking me.”

  The block tentatively gave way, softening, until I was able to push my way through it. Omori’s memory rushed out of my head without any instruction or coaxing at all. It knew where it really belonged. As soon as it was gone, I withdrew. As I did, I felt her barrier return.

  Omori blinked several times before her eyes focussed back on me.

  “How did that feel?” I asked her.

  “Weird. But not that unpleasant.”

  “Who taught you to block your mind like that? That’s not something you just do automatically.”

  Omori looked at the floor. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about it.”

  I put my hand on her leg. “It can be our secret. We used to have lots of secrets together. We had a little notebook that we used to write them in. We decided to bury it once, and the next day it poured with rain. When we dug it up again, it was nothing more than mush.”