The Power

by Naomi Alderman

  There is one nun, Sister Maria Ignacia, who particularly draws Allie’s attention. She has dark skin like Allie herself, and soft, brown eyes. Sister Maria Ignacia likes to tell stories of the childhood of Jesus and of how his mother, Mary, was always kind to him and taught him to love all living things.

  ‘See,’ Sister Maria Ignacia says to the girls who gather to listen to her before evensong, ‘our Lord learned from a woman how to love. And Mary is close to all children. She is close to you now and has brought you to our door.’

  One evening, after the others have gone, Allie leans her head against Sister Maria Ignacia’s knee and says, ‘Can I live here all my life?’

  Sister Maria Ignacia strokes her hair and says, ‘Oh, you would have to become a nun to stay here. And you might decide you want other things from your life. A husband and children, a job.’

  Allie thinks, This is always the answer. They never want you to stay for ever. They always say they love you, but they never want you to stay.

  And the voice says, very quietly: Daughter, if you want to stay, I can fix that for you.

  Allie says to the voice: Are you Mary, the mother?

  And the voice says: If you like, my dear. If that’s what floats your boat.

  Allie says: They never want to keep me, though, do they? I never get to stay.

  And the voice says: If you want to stay, you’ll have to make this place your own. Think about how to do that. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.

  The girls play at fighting, trying out their skills on each other. In the water, on the land, giving each other little jolts and thrills. Allie uses that time to practise, too, although she’s more subtle about it. She doesn’t want them to know what she’s doing, remembering the thing she read about the electric eels. She manages, after a long time, to send out a tiny jolt that will make one of the other girls’ arm or leg jump.

  ‘Oh!’ says Savannah, as her shoulder flies upward, ‘I felt someone walk over my grave!’

  ‘Huh,’ says Victoria, as Allie jangles her brain a little, ‘I have a headache. I can’t … I can’t think straight.’

  ‘Fuck!’ shouts Abigail, as her knee buckles. ‘Got a fucking cramp from the water.’

  It doesn’t take much power to do it, and it doesn’t hurt them. They never know it was Allie, like the eels in the tank, her head just above the waterline, her eyes wide and steady.

  After a few months, some of the other girls start to talk about moving on from the convent. It’s occurred to Allie – or Eve, as she is trying to think of herself, even in private – that some of the others might have secrets, too, might also be hiding here until the heat dies down.

  One of the girls, they call her Gordy, because her surname’s Gordon, asks Allie to come with her. ‘We’re going to Baltimore,’ she says. ‘My mom’s family has people there, they’ll help us get set up.’ She shifts her shoulders. ‘I’d like your company along the way.’

  Eve has made friends in a way Allie has always found difficult. Eve is kind and quiet and watchful, where Allie was spiky and complicated.

  She cannot go back to where she came from and, what, indeed, would there be to return for? But there will be no great hunt for her. She looks different now, anyway, her face longer and leaner, her frame taller. It is that time in life when children start to wear their adult faces. She could walk north to Baltimore, or move on to some other nowhere town and take a job as a waitress. In three years’ time, no one back in Jacksonville would know her for certain. Or she could stay here. When Gordy says, ‘Come away,’ Allie knows she wants to stay. She is happier here than she has ever been.

  She listens at doors and around corners. She has always had this habit. A child in danger must learn to pay more attention to the adults than a child loved and cherished.

  That is how she hears the nuns arguing between themselves, and how she learns she might not have the chance to stay at all.

  It is Sister Veronica, her face like granite, whose voice Allie hears through the door of their small sitting room.

  ‘Have you seen it?’ she is saying. ‘Have you seen it working?’

  ‘We have all seen it,’ rumbles the abbess.

  ‘Then how can you doubt what it is?’

  ‘Fairy stories,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia. ‘Children’s games.’

  Sister Veronica’s voice is so loud it makes the door tremble a little, and Allie takes a pace back.

  ‘Are the Gospels themselves fairy tales? Was Our Lord a liar? Do you tell me that there has never been a demon, that when He cast out devils from men He was playing a game?’

  ‘No one is saying that, Veronica. No one is doubting the Gospels.’

  ‘Have you seen it on the news reports? Have you seen what they do? They have powers that men are not meant to know. From where does this power come? We all know the answer. The Lord told us where these powers come from. We all know.’

  There is a silence in the room.

  Sister Maria Ignacia speaks softly. ‘I have heard that it is caused by pollution. There was an interesting piece in the newspaper. Pollution in the atmosphere causing certain mutations in the –’

  ‘It is the Devil. The Devil walks abroad and tests the innocent and the guilty, giving powers to the damned, as he has always done.’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia, ‘I have seen the good in their faces. They are children, we have a duty to care for them.’

  ‘You would see good in the face of Satan himself if he arrived at your door with a pitiful story and a hungry belly.’

  ‘And would I be wrong to do so? If Satan needed feeding?’

  Sister Veronica gives a laugh like a dog’s bark.

  ‘Good intentions! Good intentions pave the road to Hell.’

  The abbess speaks over them all. ‘We have already asked for guidance to the Diocesan Council. They are praying on it. In the meantime, the Lord told us to suffer the little children.’

  ‘Younger girls awaken it in older women. This is the Devil working in the world, passing from hand to hand as Eve passed the apple to Adam.’

  ‘We cannot simply throw children out on to the street.’

  ‘The Devil will gather them to his bosom.’

  ‘Or they will starve,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia.

  Allie thinks it over for a long time. She could move on. But she likes it here.

  The voice says: You heard what she said. Eve passed the apple to Adam.

  Allie thinks, Maybe she was right to do it. Maybe that’s what the world needed. A bit of shaking up. Something new.

  The voice says: That’s my girl.

  Allie thinks, Are you God?

  The voice says: Who do you say that I am?

  Allie thinks, I know that you speak to me in my hour of need. I know that you have guided me on the true path. Tell me what to do now. Tell me.

  The voice says: If the world didn’t need shaking up, why would this power have come alive now?

  Allie thinks, God is telling the world that there is to be a new order. That the old way is overturned. The old centuries are done. Just as Jesus told the people of Israel that God’s desires had changed, the time of the Gospels is over and there must be a new doctrine.

  The voice says: There is a need for a prophet in the land.

  Allie thinks, But who?

  The voice says: Just try it on for size, honey. Remember, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need to own the place so they can’t take it from you. The only way you’re safe, honeybun, is if you own it.

  Roxy

  Roxy’s seen her dad hit blokes before. She’s seen him hit them square in the face, with all his rings on, casual, just as he was turning to leave. She’s seen him punch a bloke till his nose was bleeding and he fell to the floor, and Bernie kicked him in the stomach again and again, and when he was finished he wiped his hands on the handkerchief from his back pocket and looked down at the mess of the bloke’s face and said, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Don’t you
think you can fuck with me.’

  She’s always wanted that.

  Her dad’s body is a castle for her. A shelter and a weapon. When he puts his arm around her shoulders she feels a mixture of terror and comfort. She’s run up the stairs from his fist, screaming. She’s seen how he hurts people who want to hurt her.

  She’s always wanted to have that. It’s the only thing worth having.

  ‘You know what’s happened, don’t you, darling?’ says Bernie.

  ‘Fucking Primrose,’ says Ricky.

  Ricky’s the oldest of her half-brothers.

  Bernie says, ‘It was a declaration of war, killing your mum, darling. And it’s taken us a long time to be sure we can get him. But now we’re sure. And we’re ready.’

  There’s a look that passes around the room, between Ricky and Terry the middle son, between Terry and Darrell the youngest one. Three sons from his own wife, and then there’s Roxy. She knows why she’s been living with her granny this past year and not with them. Half in and half out, that’s what she is. Not in enough to have over for Sunday lunch but not out enough to leave out of something like this. Something like this involves all of them.

  Roxy says, ‘We should kill him.’

  Terry laughs.

  His dad gives him a look, and the laugh cuts off halfway through a breath. You don’t want to mess with Bernie Monke. Not even if you’re his full-born son. ‘She’s right,’ says Bernie. ‘You’re right, Roxy. We should probably kill him. But he’s strong and he’s got a lot of friends, and we need to go slow and careful. If we do it, we’re gonna do it just the once. Knock everything out in one go.’

  They get her to show them what she can do. She holds back a bit, gives each of them a dead arm in turn. Darrell swears when she touches him, and she feels a bit sorry. Darrell’s the only one who’s always been nice to her. He brought her an extra chocolate mouse from the sweetshop whenever his dad took him over to her mum’s after school.

  After she’s finished, Bernie rubs his big arm and says, ‘That all you can do?’

  So she shows them. She’s seen stuff on the internet.

  They follow her out into the garden, where Bernie’s wife Barbara has one of them ornamental ponds full of big orange fish swimming around and around each other.

  It’s cold. Roxy’s feet crunch on the frost-crisped grass.

  She kneels down and puts the tips of her fingers into the pond.

  There’s a smell, suddenly, like ripe fruit, sweet and succulent. The smell of high summer. A flicker of light in the dark water. A sound like a hiss and a crackle.

  And one by one the fish bob up to the surface of the water.

  ‘Fuck!’ says Terry.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ says Ricky.

  ‘Mum’s going to be pissed off,’ says Darrell.

  Barbara Monke never came to see Roxy, not after her mother died, not after the funeral, nothing. Roxy’s glad, for a moment, thinking of her coming back to see all her fish dead.

  ‘I’ll deal with your mother,’ says Bernie. ‘We can use this, Rox, my girl.’

  Bernie finds a couple of his blokes who’ve got daughters about the right age, gets them to show what they can do, too. They do play-fighting. Sparring each against each, or two against one. Bernie watches them in the garden, sparking and flickering. All over the world people are going crazy about this thing, but a few people always look at anything and go, ‘Where’s the profit in this, and where’s the advantage?’

  One thing’s certain after the sparring matches and practice bouts. Roxy’s got a lot of it. Not just more than average, more than any of the other girls they can find to practise with her. She learns a few things about radius and reach, about how to make it arc and how it works better on wet skin. She feels proud of how strong she is. She puts everything into that.

  She’s the strongest one they’ve found, out of all the girls they’ve heard of.

  That’s why, when it comes time, when Bernie’s arranged the whole thing and they know just where Primrose is going to be, that’s why Roxy comes along, too.

  Ricky pulls her into the loo before they leave. ‘You’re a big girl now, right, Rox?’

  She nods. She knows about this, kind of.

  He pulls a little plastic bag out from his pocket and taps some white powder on to the side of the sink.

  ‘You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ever done it before?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘OK, then.’

  He shows her how to do it, with a rolled-up fifty from his wallet, and tells her she can keep the note when they’re done, perks of the job. She feels very clear and very clean when they’ve done it. It’s not that she’s forgotten what happened to her mum. Her anger is still pure and white and electric, but she doesn’t feel the sadness of it at all. It’s just a thing she heard about once. It’s good. She is powerful. She has this whole day in her fingers. She lets a long arc go between the palms of her hands, loud and sparking, a longer arc than she’s ever managed before.

  ‘Whoa,’ says Ricky. ‘Not in here, all right?’

  She brings it down and leaves it glittering around the pads of her fingers. It makes her want to laugh, how much she has and how easy it is to set it loose.

  He tips a little bit of the powder into a clean bag and pops it into her jeans pocket. ‘Just in case you need it. Don’t do it unless you get scared, OK? Don’t do it in the car, for Christ’s sake.’

  She doesn’t need it. Everything belongs to her, anyway.

  The next few hours are shutter-snaps. Pictures like on her phone. She blinks and there’s a picture. Blinks again and there’s something else. She looks at her watch and it’s 2 p.m., looks a moment later and it’s half past. She couldn’t worry about anything if she tried. It’s good.

  They’ve drilled her in the plan. Primrose is going to be there with just two blokes. Weinstein, his mate, has sold him out. Brought him to this warehouse saying he needs to have a meeting. Bernie and his boys will be waiting behind some of the packing cases with the guns. Two of the boys will be outside to close the doors, seal them in. Take them by surprise, let her rip; all done and home in time for tea. Primrose won’t expect it. Roxy’s only really coming along because she deserves to see it happen, after what she’s been through. And because Bernie’s always been a belt-and-braces man, that’s how he’s survived as long as he has. So she’s hiding upstairs in the warehouse with a peep-hole view down through the grating of the upper level, surrounded by boxes. Just in case. She’s there, looking down, when Primrose arrives. Shutter open, shutter closed.

  When it goes down, it’s quick and deadly and a complete clusterfuck. Bernie and the boys are downstairs, they shout to Weinstein to get out of the way, and Weinstein does this thing, this shrug, like he’s trying to say, Hard luck, mate, hard cheese, but he ducks down anyway as Bernie and his sons advance, and that’s when Primrose starts smiling. And his blokes come in. So many more of them than Weinstein said he’d have here. Someone’s fucking lied. Click goes the shutter.

  Primrose is a tall man, thin and pale. There’s twenty of his blokes here if there’s one. They’re firing, scattered around the entrance to the building, using iron half-doors up against the rails for cover. There are just more of them than Bernie’s men. Three of them have Terry pinned down behind a single wooden crate. Big, slow Terry with his huge, white, acne-marked forehead, and as Roxy watches he peeps his head out from behind the box. He shouldn’t do that, she tries to shout, but nothing comes out.

  Primrose aims carefully, taking all the time in the world over it; he’s smiling as he does it and then there’s a red hole in the middle of Terry’s face and he falls forward like a felled tree. Roxy looks at her hands. There are long electrical arcs passing between them, even though she doesn’t think she ever told them to do that. She should do something. She feels afraid. She’s only fifteen. She pulls the little packet out of her jeans and sniffs up some more
of the powder. She sees the energy running along her arms and hands. She thinks, and it’s like a voice outside her whispering in her ear: You were made for this.

  She’s on an iron walkway. It’s connected to the metal half-doors downstairs which Primrose’s men are using for cover. There’s a lot of them down there, touching the iron or leaning against it. She sees what she can do all in a flash and it makes her so excited she can barely sit still. Her one knee starts jiggling. This is it, these are the men who killed her mum, and now she knows what to do. She waits until one’s resting his fingertips on the rail and one’s leaning his head against it and a third’s clutching on to a handle to lean down low to fire. One of them gets off a shot that hits Bernie in the side. Roxy breathes out slowly through pursed lips. You’ve had this coming, she thinks. She lights up the rail. Three of them go down, backs arching, crying out, fitting and gnashing and eyes rolled back. Got you. You asked for it.

  And then they spot her. Freeze frame.

  There aren’t many of them left now. They’re evenly matched, maybe Bernie’s even got the upper hand, especially cos Primrose is a bit scared now; you can see it on his face. There’s thundering steps on the iron stairs, and two blokes try to grab her. One of them leans close to her, cos that’s scary to normal kids, to any little girl, and it’s just instinct, but she only has to put up a couple of fingers to his temple and let a jolt go across his forehead and he’s fallen to the floor, crying bloody tears. The other one grabs her round the waist – don’t they know anything? – and she gets his wrist. She’s learning it doesn’t take much to stop them touching her, and she feels pleased with herself until she looks down and sees Primrose heading out the door that leads to the back of the block.

  He’s going to get away. Bernie is moaning on the floor, and Terry bleeding from the hole in his head. Terry’s gone, just like her mum, she’s sure of that, but Primrose is trying to get away. Oh no you’re not, you little shit, Roxy thinks. Oh no you’re bloody not.