The Best British Fantasy 2013

by Steve Haynes

  ‘Everyone has to witness it,’ I tried to stay calm. ‘You said so. You said we do scarifications in the Kentledge, in the beer garden.’

  ‘Tonight it’s just you and me.’ He pulled the sheath off the blade.

  ‘You never cut Layce,’ I said desperately. ‘Is that because you love her?’

  A pained expression crossed his face. He poked the knife under my chin and lifted it so I had to meet his gaze. ‘Well, I would fuck Layce. But I’d be thinking of you.’ He stepped back and began to slit my sleeve carefully.

  My adrenaline was hiking up, while he opened a bottle, dripped disinfectant onto a pad of lint and rubbed it over the blade. The light from his lantern gleamed along its edge. I was high on the peak of anticipation, teetering with the void before me. I knew if I tensed myself the agony would be worse, but I was rigid with fear. ‘You goatfucking son of a bitch,’ I spat in Scree.

  ‘Keep talking. I love it when you speak foreign.’ He rolled back his cuffs and spread his hands like an artist contemplating a canvas. He pressed the tip of the knife against my skin, which dented, then the knife sank deep.

  I swear the first cut went straight to the bone. He put all his weight against the blade and dragged it through skin and muscle with a butcher’s precision. I struggled, pulled away. The line he was cutting curved and he cried out in frustration. He seized my shoulder and held it still. He drew the circle deep into my flesh with the knife. He lifted out the blade, then began the first spoke. I clamped my mouth shut and never made a sound – I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. I stared straight ahead into the warehouse. Three lines made six spokes: on the second line my vision went dark around the edges. Blue spots, then unfocussed black patches clouded it. I couldn’t breathe enough oxygen; I dropped my chin to my chest. I could hear blood pattering off my arm, dripping off his hands. Felicitia hummed to himself and started the third line. I fainted.

  At length I became aware of him slapping my face. My arm and my whole side were searing pain. He cut the cords because blood had soaked the knots too tight to undo. I fell out of the chair onto my hands and knees, and rested my forehead on the floorboards. Blood was running in rivers down my arm, over my wrist, and drying stickily on the floor.

  Felicitia had never scarred any other gang member this deeply. Every spoke was a punishment for a time I’d rebuffed his advances. He stepped back and admired his handiwork, then slipped behind me. I felt him grope my arse and his hand sank into the crack. At the same time he reached round and deftly undid my belt buckle. In a trice I was up and glaring at him, squeezing my shoulder.

  ‘Cool it,’ he said. He pointed to the disinfectant and I picked up the pad and pressed it against the cuts, trying to staunch the flow.

  ‘Get away from me,’ I slurred.

  Vance yelled at Felicitia: ‘You go too far!’

  ‘Everybody has it done. You did.’

  ‘Not that deep!’

  ‘I want to know what Jant will do in return,’ he said softly.

  I tried a step and the warehouse spun. I fell to one knee again and my hand went almost automatically to my stiletto knife tucked in the top of my boot. But when I looked up he was again pointing his dagger at me. And smirking.

  ‘Fuck off, Felicitia.’

  ‘Oh, stop giving me ideas. You are so very young . . . and so very pretty.’

  I knelt and concentrated on the pain, thinking I was about to die of it, or of blood loss, and I couldn’t bring myself to move for what seemed like hours. He nudged me with his boot toe. ‘Get up, Jant.’

  ‘Can’t . . .’

  ‘You’re a drug dealer, aren’t you? Go and deal yourself some drugs. Roll up your sleeve and shoot some of that stuff you sell me. Hook yourself up with a dose of cat; I know it takes all the pain away.’

  ‘Felicitia Aver-Falconet, you’re living on borrowed time.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’ He stepped back and bowed, beckoned to Vance and they walked off without another word. I stood up carefully, hunched over my pain, holding my arm, and the warehouse was reeling as I made my way across it.

  As I left the quayside, a figure began to trail after me, scarcely distinguishable in that stinking canal night. Well, let it: I was thanking god silently that the distance was not too far.

  Dripping blood all the way, I staggered down the underpass that led beneath the watermill’s conduit. It was desolate and stank of piss. Concrete stalactites hung from seeping cracks in the ceiling, and muddy footprints streaked the tiles. I hurried through as quickly as I could. At the crossroads by the Moren Bridge, street lamps cast my shadow long across the road. Two rats were fighting in the gutter. They snapped at each other like stunted dogs. I limped past them and painedly made my way from the docklands back to Galt, through the four a.m. landscape of twisted roofs and slippery pavements bordered with open drains, while the amber moon’s sick light laughed at me.

  I crossed over into Cinder Street, off the cobbles onto the wet brown pavement, past the Campion Playhouse, alongside its iron railings. I reached the chemist’s shop, its shutters fastened for the night, and sighed with relief. I fumbled with the key, shouldered the door wide and stumbled inside.

  I kicked the door closed and made my way by a combination of touch and memory across to the counter, and ducked underneath. The counter stood as an ebony barricade between the shelves and outside, the street still visible through the pane in the door. I lit a candle one-handedly and searched the shelves, which were lined with boxes and jars full of potions and pills. Painkiller, I was thinking. Felicitia was right that cat will work. That’s what the addicts tell me it’s like. The ones I sell it to: they care for nothing else. I knocked over a couple of little bottles, spilling some silver liquid; and the dregs of red powder from another, swearing loudly. I didn’t expect Dotterel to be awake yet; he was far too old, and slept as if already dead. My moonlight customers and I were glad of that.

  I picked up the bottle against my chest, but didn’t have the strength to open it. I sat down, panting, and eased the stiffening sleeve of my shirt away from the network of cuts on my shoulder. This action made the bleeding start again. I promise I’ll kill that bastard.

  I smashed the neck off the bottle on the counter top, poured the drug into a beaker and drank it. The pain disappeared – it didn’t ebb or dull, just snuffed out, like an extinguished candle.

  I pawed my way through the shop, under the desk again, and unlocked the door that led down to the cellar, where I slept on a shelf. I made no attempt to bandage my arm, I didn’t care for it at all. I even smiled, thinking how good this stuff was, and how perhaps the addicts I sold it to were correct, all their lax philosophy, all their contorted sense of time.

  Hours wore on and fever set in. When the pain began to pierce the shell of the scolopendium I’d drunk, I sipped more, lay on my impossible bed with the beaker clutched in one hand and listened to my own voice whispering.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said a voice in the doorway. That feline silhouette lounged against the doorframe, its long, stripy hair now scraped back in a ponytail. ‘It’s the best drug in the world.’

  Felicitia? Here? Or was it a hallucination?

  ‘Felicitia . . .’ I breathed. ‘Did you trail me as well?’

  ‘As well? As well as who?’

  My mouth was dry and I gasped. ‘The Bowyers . . . followed me here. They’ll – ’

  ‘No, my love. I’m the one that was following you. I put a guard on your shop. . . you’ll be safe.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut in frustration and tears forced out the corners. He swayed up to stand beside me. ‘You have such an interesting establishment. It belongs to us now – and so do you. Now we view the world in the same way, we should understand each other. Is there anything . . . at all . . . I can do for you?’

  ‘Take me to the hospital, you bloody bastard.’

  He rai
sed an eyebrow and laid his hand on my thigh. ‘In a while.’

  A movement in the corridor made us both start. Serin rushed into the room, levelling Dotterel’s crossbow directly at Felicitia. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she snapped.

  Felicitia backed off at the sight of the gleaming bolt, but then he shook himself and assumed an air of smoothness. ‘Jant, you didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend.’

  ‘Who are you?’ yelled Serin.

  ‘She must be quite something to have seduced our Jant.’

  Serin closed her finger on the trigger. To her eyes he was one of the men who made her life a misery. She meant it.

  ‘I’m the Governor’s son,’ he said quickly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Felix. The son of Kalice Aver-Falconet, Governor of Hacilith.’

  Serin glanced madly from him to me, behind the crossbow that was far too big for her. ‘From the palace?’ she said.

  ‘Just shoot him,’ I said.

  ‘Such hospitality. I – ’

  ‘Out!’

  She kept him at crossbow point as he walked around her. He winked at me as he left, and she followed him out. I heard the shop door bang. In a second she was back, shaking with relief and dangling the crossbow. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘God . . . what happened to you?’

  ‘This is what it means to join the Wheel gang,’ I said through my fever. She bent close and helped me lift my fingers away from my wounded shoulder.

  ‘He cut me,’ I said. ‘It needs dressing.’

  ‘Show me how.’

  She helped me up to the shop and I sat on a stool while she cleaned my wound and bandaged it carefully. The sky was brightening from misty grey to a deeper blue every minute and a soft, peaceful dawn trailed into this side of Hacilith.

  In the shade of the shop, Serin traced with her finger the lines of blood that were starting to show through my bandage. Her touch was so light – and caring. She whispered, ‘A circle with spokes . . . It’s the Wheel of Fortune. We’re at the bottom now, so the wheel will raise us up . . . won’t it?’

  ‘Out of the dregs.’

  ‘Yes. We have to.’

  A wheel takes more effort to push upwards than it does to spin downward. I was suddenly determined. I would set my shoulders against the Wheel of Fortune and shove.

  ‘We’ll get out of this terrible city,’ I said.

  Serin hugged me tight and kissed me. It was the first time I’d ever been kissed. An awed awakening broke upon me – she really cared! I drew close to her with an abrupt, fierce love.

  ‘We will escape.’ I promised. ‘The Wheel of Fortune will turn for us. We’ll turn it.’

  KIM LAKIN-SMITH

  The Island of Peter Pandora

  Peter caught the fly between his palms. The insect buzzed and tickled.

  ‘Aren’t you the jolly little irritant!’ Peter parted his hands slightly and tried to peep in. When the fly flew out, he snatched at it. A trace of gore stained his hand.

  ‘Funny bug.’ Peter didn’t bother to brush off the insect’s remains, but picked up the wrench and plunged his hands into the Lost Boy’s stomach.

  ‘Those Rogues. They’ll do for me one day,’ said Nibs in his chiming voice.

  ‘Ha! They’d have to catch me first, and Peter Pandora is not easy to tie down.’ Peter lifted his sharp chin a notch. Locating the flywheel under the leather heart, he adjusted the torque. A squeeze of oil from a can and the gears moved smoothly again.

  ‘I am nothing if not exceptional.’ Peter slid the bolt plate back across Nibs’ stomach. He cleaned his hands on a rag.

  ‘You’re the bravest and the best, Peter.’ Nibs craned in his legs, rocked onto his porthole backside and got up off the grass. Steam oozed from his joints.

  Peter nodded sagely. ‘I am.’ When the Lost Boys failed to concur, he shot them a savage look. ‘What say my men?’ He bit his bottom lip.

  The animatronic band wheezed into life at the command.

  ‘The finest mind in the French empire.’ Tootles cradled his fat bowl belly; Peter had fashioned it from a condenser casing and a girdle of steel ribs.

  ‘Master of the fair isle of Tsarabanjina. We are loyal to the last.’ Curly nodded enthusiastically, exciting the frayed wires that poked out his skullcap.

  ‘The last! The last!’ echoed the twin tinies who Peter had not bothered to name. They were rather a nuisance with their rudder flippers that got stuck in the sand or left visible tracks up the banks like turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.

  ‘Slightly?’ Peter adopted a grown-up’s tone.

  ‘I have a headache,’ said Slightly as farts of steam escaped his back boiler. ‘And with mother being on the gin and father having run away with the fairies.’

  Peter crossed his arms. He considered Slightly’s head which had been all but bashed off, with only a couple of wires attaching it to the body.

  ‘The Rogues shall pay for their attack.’ Peter unhooked the wrench from his utility belt and wielded it. ‘What say my men?’

  ‘The finest mind in the French empire.’

  ‘Master of the fair isle . . .’

  ‘Enough!’ cried Peter, and apart from the taps of water pipes and the crackle of wood inside their boilers, the Lost Boys fell silent.

  Three hours later and Slightly’s head sat back on his shoulders. The iridescent blue of day was giving way to the black and oranges of dusk. Peter led his robot band through the tall reeds, kicking up crickets and newborn mosquitoes. The air was full of flavours – cocoa, coffee and sea salt; Peter breathed them in. This was his favourite part of the day, when the stars his father had loved so much began to wink overhead, and the rumble in his belly told him it was suppertime.

  ‘Did any tuck survive the raid?’ he called over a shoulder.

  ‘Papaya, banana, sweet potato.’ Tootles sounded proud of their haul. Peter had hoped for a fish supper, but he let things slide. His men had survived being attacked by the Rogues when collecting provisions earlier that day. Plus, they could always go a-hunting again tomorrow.

  ‘A banquet fit for kings,’ he managed. His spirits cheered at the sight of the raggedy tree house with its smoke stacks and the fat brass trunk of his father’s telescope pointing skyward.

  ‘Run on ahead, you and you,’ he told the twin tinies. ‘Get the water boiling under the supper pot. Light the lamps.’

  The pair set off, rudder feet swishing through the reeds. A minute later, Peter saw the glow of lamplight at the windows. Smoke trickled from one of the tall stacks.

  Peter entered the clearing. Tootles, Slightly, Curly and Nibs arrived alongside, oozing steam and sweating oil. Moths danced in the twilight like fairy folk. The detritus of scrub and husk made a noisy carpet underfoot. ‘No creeping up on me,’ thought Peter smugly.

  He stepped onto a wooden palette, grabbed hold of the ropes and heard the winch start up. The ground dropped away and he sailed up to the tree house, that great nest of palm leaves, reeds, flotsam and jetsam, turtle shell, coral chunks and drift wood. Crawling in at the tarpaulin-covered entrance, he slammed a large iron lever forward and sent the palette back down to fetch the others.

  Standing up and placing his hands on his hips, Peter took in the chaos of the room. The hairy trunks of seven coconut trees sprouted up through the living quarters. Golden Orb spiders nestled among the eaves, their sun-coloured silk forming a glittering canopy.

  ‘Home sweet home.’ Peter rocked back onto his heels and separated his toes, planting them on the reed matting with a satisfying sense of grounding.

  James and Wendy Darling had come to Tsarabanjina – a tropical island located northwest of Madagascar Main Island and forty nautical miles from Nosy-Be – in the year of our lord 1889. A twelve-man strong crew assisted them to offload the numerous tools of Mr
. Darling’s trade – spy glasses, constellation maps housed in leather tubes, an oversized compass with gold and ivory inlay, easels and other drawing apparatus; and, of course, his pride and joy, a giant brass telescope. Mrs. Darling, meanwhile, was content to haul ashore her own box of tricks – metal-working tools, saws, hammers, piping, sheet steel, and every conceivable nut, bolt and screw. And while many ladies would have protested at the steaming wilderness, Wendy embraced it. Befriending the tribe on the south side of the island, she enlisted those strong, cocoa-skinned men to help her build an observatory among the trees.

  Peter had been four years old, his sister Bella, six months. Leaving behind the dreary greys of London for Tsarabanjina’s endless blue sky and ocean, both children felt as if they had stumbled upon paradise.

  Three years later came the Three Bad Events as Peter called them. First, a tremendous cyclone storm which sunk his parents’ dhow offshore. Second – and by far the more devastating – the death of both his parents from Typhoid Fever. What made it worse was that both of these incidents happened within two weeks of one another. And third, the islanders muscling in on his and Bella’s seclusion and insisting so kindly and so absolutely that the youngsters go with them. Peter had refused with every violent response he could muster. Bella, though, went with them. At the age of seven, Peter had found himself alone with only the sounds of the waves lapping the shore and the contents of his mother’s workshop for company.

  ‘Time to fill your cakehole.’ Slightly stood at the brink to the observatory. His insides turned over with a faint clanking sound.

  Peter peered into the telescope’s eyepiece. Venus, the morning star and his father’s life’s work, shone in the night sky. ‘Such an elegant turn of phrase, Slightly,’ he muttered.

  ‘Want me to put on false airs like Rogues?’ Slightly elevated a backside flap and let out a guff of steam.

  Peter slid the cap across the eyepiece and made his way across the room, weaving in and out the map stands and tables full of paperwork. He slapped Slightly on the arm, producing a hollow rumble.