“But how do you take oil out of water?” Rax asked tentatively. It was a question he should really have asked his mother.
Dineedi turned to Rax and looked at him properly, then without warning took him by the shoulders and shook him violently. “Aren’t you listening? It’s the law. It’s the law to keep the river clean.”
Rax’s father pushed Dineedi. “Take your hands off my son. Come on, Rax, we’re going home.” He led Rax through the mass of angry fishermen, back towards the village.
“I think we should try to catch some fish,” Rax said weakly. “They can’t all be dead.”
“Not today we won’t,” his father said. “But the sludge will wash away soon. Everything will be OK. You’ll see.”
The sludge had not washed away by evening. When Rax took Sula to the riverbank, there was nowhere on the ground for them to sit without getting sticky and they eventually had to climb a tree.
“Micky says it will take years to clean the water,” Sula said quietly.
“Micky?” Rax squinted.
“My science partner. I told you about him. His father is American.”
Rax bit the insides of his cheeks. “You didn’t tell me about him, and anyway, he’s wrong. The river will wash it away.”
Sula shook her head. “The oil is still coming out. Until they fix it the oil will get thicker and thicker. Micky said it will kill the fishing industry and maybe the whole region.”
“What does he know?” Rax suddenly shouted. He jumped off the branch and fell on to the ground, gashing his knee on a stone and grazing his hands. Oil squelched beneath his fingers. He didn’t want to admit it to Sula, but the riverbank probably wasn’t the safest place for them to be at that moment. Not until the oil was gone. And as his father had said, it would be gone soon. It had better be gone, or they’d go hungry.
“Would you like me to kiss your injuries better?” Sula teased, swinging her legs above him.
“Please do,” Rax said, and smiled. He opened his arms to catch her and she jumped. Rax pressed his nose against her cheek and inhaled.
“What if Micky is right?” Sula asked gently.
Rax sighed. “If he’s right, then maybe we can declare him king. I’ll make him a crown myself.”
“Don’t be touchy.” Sula stared at the ground. Black sludge was seeping between the eyelets of her shoes and making her feet wet. “I’m worried,” she whispered. “That’s all.”
Rax awoke to the sound of screaming. He bolted up in bed and ran into the kitchen. The door was open, and through it he could see his mother in their garden. She was kneeling by the vegetable plot.
Then Mishla was at his side. “Mama?” His sister gasped and ran outside. Rax followed.
His mother stood up. The lower half of her pale blue dress plus her hands and forearms were covered in oil. In her hand she held a tiny root vegetable. It was too small to eat. “It’s in the ground. It’s everywhere. We have to dig out the vegetables that are ready to eat before it smothers them.”
“It’s not urgent, Mama,” Rax said, putting a hand on her slippery arm.
She pulled away. “Not urgent today, maybe. But what about next week? Next month when the ground is dead and nothing will grow? Then what? Will you live on air? Will you eat oil? Maybe you and Sula will eat kisses for supper?”
Rax flinched. Why did his mother have to bring his love for Sula into this? What was happening was not the result of them loving each other.
Mishla put her arm around her mother. “I won’t go to school today. I’ll help you dig out the good ones. And it will be OK. The people who did this will come soon and help.”
Their mother’s eyes grew narrow. “How will they find the culprits?” she snapped. “Everyone’s saying they live halfway across the world in marble palaces where they cannot even see what they’ve done. They are far too busy having servants wipe their arses for them.”
“A solution will come. I’m sure of it,” Rax said. But he wasn’t sure. How could they suck sludge out of the ground? What equipment would they use? Did such equipment even exist? He thought about the time he had spilt a cupful of cooking oil on the kitchen floor. It had gone everywhere. The dark splashes had never come out of the walls.
Rax was lying staring at the cracked brown ceiling of his room, when Mishla tiptoed in. “Rax? You awake?” she murmured.
He sat up in bed and patted his blanket, inviting his sister to sit, which she did. Then she spoke again. “The teacher said today that the oil company still hasn’t sent anyone to assess the damage to the pipe. Miss Plee said she spoke to her sister in England. It’s on the news stations there.”
Rax hadn’t wanted to know the foolishness Micky had been spilling into Sula’s head, but Miss Plee was different. She was a smart woman. She wasn’t prone to exaggeration. Rax knew this because she had been his teacher only two years before. “What else did she say?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“She said it’s happened before and it takes months for the oil companies to admit fault. It takes years for the oil to be cleaned up. And this didn’t happen in America, so they care even less about it. She said…” Mishla paused to bite on her thumbnail. “She said she’s leaving.”
“Leaving? What will happen to the school?”
“I don’t know.”
Rax nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He knew it was too late to try to reassure Mishla. “You should sleep,” he whispered, and reached out to pat his sister’s shoulder.
“Should I tell Papa?” she asked.
Rax shrugged. “I’m not sure. But you should go to bed now. You have to be up early to make use of the school while it’s still open.”
Without a word more, Mishla stood and headed to her own corner of the house.
“Shit,” Rax said aloud, once she was gone. He stared at the ceiling again. “Shit.”
Rax and Sula carried their shoes through shiny puddles of oil. Tar-like clay and dead bugs stuck to their feet. Usually they chatted and poked each other on their way to find a clean spot beyond the village where they could lie down and embrace, but today they were quiet, and after an hour, when they eventually found a clump of trees with a dry mound beneath their branches, they sat down, leaving a space between them. “You don’t like me any more,” Sula told him.
Rax sighed and kicked the dirt. “I’m hungry,” he admitted, impatiently. “I’ve eaten nothing but a dry piece of bread today.”
Sula searched in her pocket and pulled out a brown biscuit. “Here,” she said mildly. “Take it.”
Rax frowned and shook his head. “I’m not a beggar. I’m not asking you for food.”
Sula shrugged and bit into the biscuit.
Rax sighed. “I want to go back to work, Sula. All I do is wait. I wait and watch my father and mother pacing the house. I watch Mishla getting skinny. I’m starting to think…”
He paused, and Sula took the opportunity to kiss him hard on the mouth. He let her lips press against his but he did not enjoy the sensation – Sula only ever made the first move when she felt sorry for him, and he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him, especially not her.
“What are you starting to think?” Sula asked eventually.
Rax looked at his hands. Dirt and grime were embedded beneath his fingernails. His skin was wrinkled and dry like an old man’s. He couldn’t see his own face but he imagined how it looked – probably similarly withered and beaten. Like Naro’s. “I am thinking it’s been almost six weeks and no one has come to help us. I’m thinking no one ever will. I’m thinking our village is dying.”
Sula sighed and took his hand. “I have to tell you something.” She paused. “We are leaving in three days, Rax. Father is taking us to Bellgik. He has a cousin with a big house and there is a good school near by.”
Rax stared at her. “Are you serious? This is how you tell me?” he fumed. “It’s not true. I don’t believe you!”
Sula bit her bottom lip. A silver frog appeared from behind a rock an
d blinked at them. “Soon there’ll be no water to drink. It’s a graveyard here. But Bellgik is a big place. You could find a job there. We could all go together if your father agreed. Your sister could come to the school. Her school will close soon. Everyone is leaving, Rax.”
Rax nodded. Every day another of his friends came to say goodbye. At first they had been the ones without prospects – with nothing to lose – but yesterday Glenko left the village, Glenko who was the best fisherman he knew. Rax’s father had not come to the door to say goodbye. He had hidden in the back room where he spent his days writing angry letters that no one would ever read.
Sula was watching him. “Will you come with us? Will you try?”
Rax squeezed her hand. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
On their way back to the village, Sula stopped walking and held on to a tree for support. Rax pulled her to him, but he didn’t know what to say. He stroked her back and breathed in her smell. He tried to get his memory working in case he never smelled her again.
A car drove into the village. A man wearing a grey suit and carrying a clipboard stepped out. A police officer with a badge and a gun followed him. The man wrote things down and took some photographs. He walked to the riverbank and back again with the villagers following from a distance, some shouting, “Clean the mess!” and “Stop poisoning our children!” and “Get the crap out of our village!” The man in the suit didn’t approach any of them and the police officer made it clear this was as it should be. Finally the man in the grey suit smiled and they got back into the car. The two men drove away leaving a trail of fumes behind them.
The black puddles in the village were getting deeper. Every bird had flown away. Rax packed up the few things he owned and told his mother and sister to do the same.
“Sula says there’s a school in Bellgik for Mishla, and I know there’ll be jobs for me and Papa. Not fishing but something else. Her father’s cousin has a big house. They’ll help us find something. Something better than this,” Rax said, and pointed through the open window to his mother’s garden covered in an oily black paste.
“My whole life in a bag,” his mother whimpered. She cried until it was dark outside and she had filled her suitcase to brimming. Mishla did not cry. She bit the insides of her cheeks instead.
They all sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Rax’s father to come home from the riverbank where he went every day to check on the oil, to see if any living fish had appeared. Today there was no soup bubbling on the stove.
As the door opened, Rax’s mother inhaled quickly. His sister sat up straight.
“What’s this?” his father asked, looking at their bags. He massaged the bridge of his nose and coughed.
“Papa, we have to leave,” Rax told him. He made his voice as low as it would go so he would sound like a real man.
His father shook his head. “We’re not leaving. My boat is here. Our livelihood is in this village.”
“Not any more. Now our deaths are here, if we stay,” Rax said evenly.
His father banged his fist against the table and Mishla yelped. “I am the head of this household. We will stay, if that’s what I decide.”
Rax’s mother looked at her husband. “No, Jan. We can’t stay. We’re going to Swandisea. My sister will take care of us there.”
Rax flinched. His mother must not have listened, Swandisea was in the opposite direction to Bellgik. If they went there, he might never see Sula again. But this wasn’t the time to argue about the details.
Rax’s father slumped in a chair and pressed his face down on the table. He murmured something no one could hear.
“What did you say, Papa?” Mishla asked.
“This is my home,” Rax’s father whispered. “I have lived here all my life. My father lived here too. And my grandfather. I cannot leave.”
“Yes, you can,” Mishla said bravely. “You must. We all must.”
Rax was staring at his feet. He was thinking about Sula’s neck, how smooth the skin was, how she would tilt her chin back so he could kiss it.
“I am not leaving,” Rax’s father whispered. “Go to Swandisea without me.” He stood up and marched into the back room.
The sun was not yet up. Rax was feeding their mule putrefied fruit. Mishla and his mother were scavenging in the garden for any leftover vegetables they could take with them on their journey.
Soon they were ready to leave. Rax’s father stood outside by the window and looked at the sky as though assessing whether or not today would be a good day for fishing. “We hope you’ll follow us soon, Papa,” Rax said. “It is three days’ walk to Swandisea. Don’t wait until you are starving to do it.”
Rax’s father ignored him. He turned his back and went into the house. On the path, Mishla and his mother began to cry. “Come on,” Rax said. “We have to go before the day gets too hot.”
Mishla walked next to Rax. “Did you say goodbye to Sula?” she asked him as they reached the edge of the village. Her eyes were red and her breath unsteady.
“No,” Rax said.
“You should,” Mishla told him. “We can wait here for five minutes. It’s nothing. You should tell her goodbye.”
Rax thought of Sula’s long legs and her lips. He thought of her hair, spiky and thick when she didn’t have her braids in. He thought of her feet, the second toes longer than the first. He thought of her laugh, which could be cruel when she chose. And the vessels of his heart pumped so hard he had to lean against the mule to stand up straight. “We haven’t time for fussing,” he told Mishla.
His sister nodded and walked ahead so she could take her mother’s arm and prevent her from slipping in the oil.
Rax watched them and then, without knowing why, he turned around. He saw a figure in the distance waving. He knew it was Sula. He would always recognize her, even from far away. And he knew he ought to go to her and tell her that soon they would live six days apart. That he wasn’t coming to Bellgik after all. But he couldn’t bear to see her again. He especially wouldn’t be able to bear it if she tried to touch him. He turned away and moved quickly until he caught up with his mother and Mishla.
“Do you really think your father will follow us soon?” his mother asked.
“Papa’s a smart man,” Rax said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was packing up his things right now.”
He turned again to look at Sula, but she was gone. He sighed and gripped his mother tightly, while overhead a dark cloud covered the sun.
“Money talks. Sadly. And this is the reason why so many people face injustices. I have been particularly appalled by oil companies’ lack of responsibility when it has come to major spills, and their paltry commitment to the communities they have destroyed. This was the inspiration behind ‘Sludge’; I wanted to write about an imagined place in the developing world where their way of life was entirely devastated by a major corporation’s irresponsibility. I care about the environment not because I’m a tree-hugger but because it’s in the interests of humanity to care about the planet. I just wish governments and big businesses cared too.” Sarah Crossan
BYSTANDER
Frances Hardinge
Learning about the witch trials at school gave me nightmares, so of course I passed them straight on to Isobel. That’s what big sisters are for.
I told her all about the witch hunts in Salem and in Britain – the lies, the crazy accusations and the torture of the so-called “witches”. I made her imagine being trapped in a leg-crushing device and thrown into a pond with her right thumb tied to her left toe so she couldn’t swim.
So of course poor ten-year-old Isobel woke up screaming in the middle of the night, saying that the Witchfinder General wanted to burn her.
“Hush now, Izz.” Mum smoothed back Isobel’s hair and gave her a hug. “It was all a long time ago, and it can’t get you. Nobody does that sort of thing any more.”
Afterwards, out on the landing, Mum tore a strip off me.
“Kay – why do you tortu
re your sister?”
I almost told Mum about my nightmares, but she would just have sighed and told me not to be a baby. If I came home with a broken leg, I bet she’d say I was trying to get attention.
Scaring Isobel was silly and cruel, I knew that. I was three years older than her – old enough to know better – and I suppose that was why I did it. Isobel was allowed to be a “baby” and somehow I never was.
In the worst nightmare I was sort of me, but sort of someone else, and I was on trial as a witch. Everyone was there – Mum, Dad, Isobel and all my friends – and none of them would look at me. That was the worst part. Terrible things were going to happen, and nobody would stop it or speak up for me. Nobody would save me.
I could feel the threat of the pins and crushing machines, like teeth that might close on my flesh. But instead the witchfinders took me away to a room and made me walk back and forth, back and forth.
It wasn’t too bad at first, but hours went by and I started to get dizzy. And whenever I sat down, or fell down, men came in and hauled me to my feet again and made me keep walking. Then most of a day had gone, followed by most of a night, and my legs were shaking and I wanted to sleep, or cry, or throw up. Then the sun was coming up again and the sight of it through the window made me feel properly sick, and I tried to sleep in tiny bursts, just closing my eyes for an instant, but they wouldn’t let me. The next day was so long, and my eyes felt dry, and then the sun was setting and my legs wouldn’t hold me any more, and my head weighed a ton, but they kept hauling me to my feet, and slapping me awake, and forcing me to walk. And it went on and on, and I cried and cried, and I would have killed for sleep, died for sleep, done anything for sleep, and my brain became a mad fog, and I started to see things: shadows shaped like smiles, and rats in the corner of my eye, and writing on the backs of my hands.
Witch, the men said, over and over again. Witch. Witch. Admit that you are a witch.
In the last moment of the dream before waking, something cracked in my brain and I began to believe that they were right.
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