At the halfway point, he could see right across the North Shore. In the middle of the harbour, there was the island Mater Misericordiae, and beyond that, the tall concrete wall that snaked along the southern shore of the harbour, cordoning off the Colony on South Head. And there was the Nekhbet Tower, the morning sun bouncing off its sheer glass walls. It was like a sign. If he returned to the Tower, maybe he could find a clue as to what had happened to his fathers. Somewhere in the old apartment, there had to be evidence of where they had gone, of how he could find them.
When it had all become clear in his mind, he heard the first explosion. A burst of fire and a cloud of black smoke blew out from behind the building. In quick succession, seven other explosions followed. The sides of the Nekhbet Tower exploded outward, sending glass and debris cascading into the city below. Callum put a fist to his mouth to fight back the scream that was swelling inside him as blast after blast rocked the tower. Two small figures, like dolls, leapt from a window, tumbling earthwards like wingless birds.
And then Callum fell too. As the tower collapsed, he lost his grip on the cable. He dropped down, down into the harbour, the slap of the cold salt water signalling the end of his hopes.
28
LIVING WITH LI-LI
‘See, there, just south of the Wall?’ said Li-Li. ‘That white building with the lawns reaching down to the water? That’s where we’re going. That’s our home. The Zenana.’
Bo pressed her face against the smooth glass of the Pally-val window. The Wall snaked its way across the peninsula to a distant ocean-blue horizon. It sealed off the tip of the South Head of the harbour, making the long wedge of land into another sort of island, with the ruined city pushing up against it. In contrast to the blackened buildings and smudges of umber-coloured parkland that made up the city, the land on the peninsula was a patchwork of green gardens and neatly tiled roofs.
Bo turned her gaze to the North Shore, where dark and ragged bushland edged the harbour. Somewhere in that dense tangle, Mr Pinkwhistle was wandering alone and Callum was incarcerated. She couldn’t bear to think of them, lost and trapped. They had been as constant as her shadow and now she felt weightless without them. Like an old reflex, her hand longed to reach for Callum, to scoop Mr Pinkwhistle into her arms or snap her fingers for him to follow. She put her hands in her lap and stared at them and then began to flick through the pages of the book that Meera had given her. It was full of stories she had already read but at least it distracted her from her grief.
‘Do you have to keep your face in that thing all the time?’ asked Li-Li. ‘Meera may have acted impressed but it’s no big deal. It won’t change anything for you. It won’t save you from anything.’
Bo thought to say It will save me from feeling irritated by your prattle! but she shut her book and drummed her fingers against its hard blue cover.
‘It will be so good to be home,’ said Li-Li, leaning across Bo so that she too could see the approach to the Colony. She lowered her voice and glanced at the drones piloting the Pally-val. ‘I don’t ever want to go back to Mater Misericordiae. Never ever again.’
‘You said we were there for our own good,’ said Bo.
‘I say a lot of things because I’m told to say them, not because I believe them,’ Li-Li said in an angry whisper.
Bo lowered her voice too. ‘What did they do to me while I was asleep?’
‘Tests. They were testing you.’
‘But what sort of tests? Did they think I had the plague? What did they do to me?’
Li-Li pulled away from Bo and stared sullenly out the window. ‘How should I know?’ she said.
The Pally-val landed on a helipad at the top of a long, wide avenue and taxied down to the entrance of the Zenana. Two drones and two figures in shroud-like clothes were waiting to escort the girls to a limousine. They were driven down the avenue and into the grounds of a sprawling sandstone mansion.
Li-Li let out a yelp of pleasure as they passed through the cast-iron gates of the Zenana. ‘I’m so glad to be back.’
She flung open the door of the limousine and jumped out onto the wide green lawn.
Bo hesitated.
‘Hurry up, Bo,’ called Li-Li. ‘Come and meet everyone.’ She grabbed Bo by both hands and pulled her out into the sunshine. Bo found it awkward to run in the long skirts that she had been forced to wear, but Li-Li simply hitched them up over her knees, taking the front steps of the house two at a time. She pushed open the double front doors of the Zenana and spun around to face Bo, spreading her arms wide.
‘We’re home!’ she said.
Li-Li led Bo into an open living area where wide, curving windows arced around the walls, providing sweeping views of the harbour. On a creamy-white window seat piled high with plush cushions and rugs, more than a dozen small girls were seated. They squealed in unison at the sight of Li-Li.
Bo stood shyly at the entrance to the room as Li-Li rushed from one girl to another, hugging them or picking the little ones up in her arms and covering them with kisses. Bo counted seventeen girls ranging in size from tiny toddlers in fluffy pink tutus to long-limbed ten-year-olds.
Finally, Li-Li turned to look at Bo. She held the smallest child on her hip and for the first time, Bo saw Li-Li’s expression was open and happy.
‘We have another sister. This is Bo,’ she said, beckoning Bo across the room. ‘And this little peach I’m holding is Lolly.’
‘How’d they make her so big?’ asked a small blonde girl who stood at Li-Li’s elbow.
‘Serene, can’t you think of something nicer to say to Bo?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Bo, speaking directly to Serene. ‘I just grew this way. One day you’ll be bigger too.’
‘We don’t have any big girls here,’ said Serene solemnly.
‘We have Meera,’ said one of the other children. ‘And Verity.’
‘They’re not real girls,’ said Serene, sneering. ‘They’re not even lady-mummies, they’re boygies.’
‘Serene!’ said Li-Li. ‘You know that’s not kind.’
‘But real girls go away and never come back,’ said Serene.
Li-Li put down Lolly and swept Serene into her arms, tickling her until the small girl squealed and giggled. ‘I’ve come back, though. Haven’t I?’ said Li-Li. ‘Your Li-Li has come back to you!’
Serene looked at her with distrust. ‘But no one else has.’
Li-Li pursed her lips and dropped Serene onto the silky white lounge. She grabbed Bo by the hand. ‘Don’t listen to the mini-pin,’ she said. ‘Come and see your new home.’
Li-Li dragged Bo around the Zenana, showing her one room after another, giving a detailed commentary on the dance room, the dining hall, the indoor and outdoor pools, and the cinema, where a whole wall was taken up by a floor-to-ceiling screen. ‘Not that there are many movies to watch any more,’ said Li-Li. ‘I’ve seen all the ones we’re allowed to see. They’re boring when you’ve watched them twenty times. But they will be fun to watch again with you. I’ll be able to explain everything.’
Bo felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. Li-Li spent so much time explaining things yet nothing she said answered the thousand questions that churned inside Bo’s mind. When Li-Li showed her the bedroom they would share, Bo shut the door and turned to face her.
‘Why won’t you explain what happened at Mater Miseri–cordiae? Why do they keep all these girls here at the Zenana and why are they all so young? Where do they come from? And where do they go? What did Serene mean when she said that big girls don’t come back? Why did you come back? What’s a boygie? You’ve explained why you paint your fingernails bright red and why it’s important to be able to walk around with a book on your head. But you don’t explain anything important.’
Li-Li shut her eyes and her face grew still. ‘Can’t you just be happy that we’re safe? If you ask me secrets, then I’ll have to tell you lies.’
That evening, the girls all ate at a long dining table. As the eldest
girls, Li-Li and Bo sat at one end while Meera and Verity oversaw proceedings from the other. There were fruits that Bo had never seen before, and sweets and puddings exactly like the ones she had read about in books. As she looked down the table, at the rows of little girls eating daintily from their plates, she was struck by how they all looked like princesses. They wore bright dresses and their faces shone with good health. Their hands were small and neat and perfectly manicured. Bo couldn’t help comparing them with the Festers, with their thick manes of matted hair and dirt ingrained in every pore of their bodies.
Meera and Verity looked like queens, their necks laden with gold jewellery and their hair swept into elaborate chignons. Whatever a boygie was, Bo couldn’t imagine that a real woman could be more elegantly feminine.
After dinner, they all went into the living room. Bo was amazed at how much the girls laughed and talked. Even the smallest girls emitted a constant stream of chatter. Bo thought of the silent legion of Festers marching through the bush and once again had a sense of the strangeness of her new world.
While Li-Li busily chatted with the smaller girls, Bo retreated to the window seat and gazed out across the harbour to the spot fires on the far North Shore. She was locked in thought when a blast of music began to play from a loudspeaker and all the girls let out a shout of excitement. Some of them began to jump around, dancing and laughing as the music grew louder. Bo turned to watch as Li-Li tried to organise the smallest girls into rows but as soon as her back was turned each child spun away, caught up in the music and her own chaotic whirl. The song they danced to was nothing like the wild cacophony of the Festers. It was high and sweet, full of rhythms and tones that Bo had never heard before. It stirred a longing inside her that made her look away from the colour of the dancing girls and back to the dark North Shore. Callum would love this music, this moment when the room was filled with sound and movement. She thought of the way he had danced and twirled before the Festers’ bonfire and tried to imagine him among the whirling young girls. Even though he had grown up in the Colony, he hadn’t known this place existed. Why weren’t Colony boys allowed in the Zenana?
As if Li-Li could see Bo’s thoughts wandering into dangerous territory, she grabbed her hands and dragged her to her feet. The little girls danced around her, waving their arms in the air. ‘Dance with us, Bo. Dance,’ they shouted as the music grew louder and the whole room swelled with sound. Li-Li put her hand on Bo’s shoulder and bumped her with her hip, deliberately and in time to the music. Bo caught her breath. An unnameable feeling bubbled inside her the same way it had when she danced with the Festers, but this time it made her laugh. For the first time in her life, she felt graceful, as if when Li-Li led her in the dance, her body knew exactly how to move. A thin sheen of sweat covered her skin but she felt clean and unburdened. When Lolly stretched her hands out, Bo swept the tiny pink-and-white girl into her arms and whirled her about in the air so the child shrieked with excitement.
When the music subsided, all the girls collapsed on the floor in fits of giggles. ‘You make fun,’ said Lolly. She wrapped her arms tightly around Bo’s neck and covered her face with kisses. ‘I love you, big Bo. You love me too?’ Bo stroked Lolly’s face and looked into her eyes. No one had ever told Bo they loved her and yet this tiny girl who barely knew her said it so freely. Without understanding what instinct possessed her, Bo kissed the little girl on the cheek and cuddled her close. ‘I love you too, little Lolly.’
Early the next morning, Bo woke to find a child standing beside her bed, holding a breakfast tray. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. Li-Li was already awake and sitting propped up by fluffy pillows, sipping a steaming cup of tea.
‘Thank you,’ said Bo, reaching for her cup.
‘You don’t have to thank him,’ said Li-Li. ‘It’s his job.’
Bo looked at the child and her heart leapt in her chest. ‘Flakie?’ But he looked so different. His hair had been shorn within a centimetre of his scalp and his face was scrubbed clean. He wore a long-sleeved white uniform with small gold buttons. He didn’t look at Bo when she spoke to him but kept staring straight ahead, a fixed smile upon his face.
Bo took the tray and shoved it onto the bedside table. She grabbed him by both arms and gripped him hard. ‘Flakie, it is you, isn’t it? How did you get here? Where are Callum and Roc and the other boys? What have they done with them?’
Flakie kept smiling fixedly, his eyes vacant.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Bo, turning to Li-Li. ‘Why is he like this?’
‘That’s how he’s supposed to be,’ said Li-Li. ‘That’s what I mean. Boys are dumb. I can’t see what you like about them. They’re all so dopey.’
‘This isn’t normal,’ said Bo. ‘Something’s happened to him. He wasn’t like this before.’
‘They’ve trained him. He’s meant to be like that. We’re not allowed to have the older boys or drones look after us, or even look at us, so they send us these stupid little boys.’
‘Flakie,’ said Bo, shaking him by his shoulders. ‘Flakie, wake up,’ she shouted.
At that moment, Meera came into the bedroom. She snapped her fingers at Flakie and he trotted over to her side.
‘That’s enough, Bo. You’re not allowed to touch the servants.’
‘He’s not a servant!’ shouted Bo. ‘He’s one of the Festers. I want to see the other Festers. What have you done with them?’
Meera pushed Flakie out into the hallway and glared at Bo. ‘There are no such things as Festers. You mustn’t talk about them. You’ll frighten the other girls with your stories. If you keep talking like this, we’ll have to send you back to Mater Misericordiae.’
Li-Li jumped up and put her arms around Bo. ‘Bo was having a bad dream and the boy gave her a fright, Meera. She must have been dreaming about those silly old Festery things, really, truly. She was making piggy noises in her sleep, so that means she was having bad dreams, doesn’t it? That boy didn’t knock when he came in. He scared us and Bo woke up frightened. That’s all that happened.’
Li-Li turned to Bo and squeezed her cheeks, ‘It’s all right now, Bosey-Wosey. It was all a bad dream and now you’re back in the real world, safe and sound.’
As soon as Meera had pulled the door shut, Bo slapped Li-Li’s hands away.
‘Why are you lying?’
Li-Li looked at her coldly. ‘To protect you, of course. Though I don’t know why I bother.’ She stood up and straightened her nightgown. ‘For someone so smart, you can be incredibly stupid. Can’t you see you put everyone at risk, not least that poor, dumb drone of a boy?’
‘What are they going to do to Flakie? Will they punish him?’
‘You don’t need to worry about what they do to the boys. Don’t you understand? We’re the ones that have to be careful. We’re the ones that they want to hurt.’
29
HUNTING DOWN A DREAM
Callum lay for hours in the baking sun. Somehow, he had managed to make it to shore but there was no strength left in his body by the time he crawled onto a rock beyond the point. As the sun began to set, he staggered into the bush. Scrambling up the trunk of a Moreton Bay fig tree, he found a comfortable resting place in its nexus of branches. Darkness settled over the North Shore and he discovered he wasn’t the only one seeking shelter in the tree. A flapping legion of black creatures wheeled out into the night sky, shrieking to each other until he had to cover his ears. It was the stuff of nightmares. After hours in the cold harbour, and the long, hot afternoon trudging through the bush, his body ached for rest. Despite the traffic of bats, he fell into an exhausted sleep.
An hour before dawn, Callum woke, cramped and stiff, to find the air was sharp with the scent of fires. A pall of smoke hung over the south shore as the Nekhbet Tower continued to burn. Callum turned his back on it and headed north. Late in the afternoon, when he’d almost given up hope, he wandered into an abandoned garden full of gnarled fruit trees. Plump peaches hung from the branches. Callum rea
ched up to pick one, but something sharp hit the back of his hand.
‘Ouch!’ he yelled.
‘Hey, Scab,’ shouted Festie, jumping out from between the fruit trees, slingshot in hand. ‘These ones been baited. You’d be done like Blister if you ate any. How did you get here? Did the Festers escape? Did Roc get away too?’
‘Maybe a couple of others are free. But not Roc,’ said Callum, shutting his eyes and remembering the chaos of the night of the breakout.
‘Not Roc,’ echoed Festie, his voice heavy with disappointment. Callum couldn’t look at him. He hung his head in silence.
Festie sighed. ‘Well, you better come and eat something, then. I got a fire and some crickets on the coals. C’mon, mate. You look done in.’
On a craggy rise overlooking an inlet, Festie had built a small camp. ‘I figured the houses weren’t safe for a while. Too many squadrones and baiters around.’
Callum was amazed to see two figures in the camp, sitting in the shade of a peppercorn tree. Bug had a long piece of twine tied around his waist and secured to a branch. Crouched beside him, bobbing from foot to foot, stood Mr Pinkwhistle.
‘He’s peculiar, that critter,’ said Festie. ‘Seems to have some sort of programming that protects kids. Watch this.’
As soon as Festie untied Bug, the toddler jumped up and ran towards the fire with a squeal of excitement. Mr Pinkwhistle was between the child and the flames in a flash, herding the little boy away from the fire and back to the shade of the peppercorn tree, as if the boy was a sheep to be corralled.
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