by Mandy Hager
Maryam closed her eyes, trying to make sense of what he'd just said. It was hard to tease out meaning from the flat-vowelled accent of the Territorials at the best of times, but when Charlie got excited he talked so fast, and used such foreign words, her brain grew tired trying to keep up. The white woman Jo was certainly on the detainees’ side, Maryam was convinced of that, but since Sergeant Littlejohn had banned Jo from returning it was hard to know what she could do, when Jo herself had said how little most people in the Confederated Territories cared what happened in the camp.
If it weren't for the fact that Ruth—and Lazarus—were still trapped inside, Maryam knew she might just as well take her chances and try to run. But Ruth would never cope in there alone. Besides, inside the camp she'd at least have food and shelter until she'd recovered enough to make her move. Here, outside the camp, where the ordinary islanders were as dependent on the Territorials as her people were on the Apostles back at home, she couldn't guarantee that she'd survive at all. Charlie and Veramina might have helped her to get treatment because she linked them in a strange way to their daughter, but they could hardly be expected to risk more than that.
“Then show me how to get inside,” she said now, meeting Charlie's eyes and trying to transmit more bravery than she felt.
Charlie held her gaze a moment longer before he nodded. “Right you are.” He stood up and cleared his throat. “We'll ditch the chair just short of the main doors, okay? I'm going to distract the guard for a few minutes, and in that time I need you to slip out and wait for me up by the crossroads. Is that clear?”
She saluted him and forced a smile. “What's the signal when it's safe to move?”
“Attagirl. Just wait until you hear me do one ding-dong of a sneeze, then run like hell.”
He pushed the wheeled chair back out into the corridor and proceeded through the hospital until just shy of the last turn in the run-up to the main front doors. There Charlie slewed off into a side room. He unearthed a small bottle from his pocket and put a finger to his lips to warn Maryam to keep quiet, then he disappeared.
Maryam pressed herself against the very edge of the doorway and listened as his boots clipped across the wooden floor toward the door. Now he began to speak in the native tongue of the islanders and she heard a deep guttural rumble as the man on guard replied. Charlie said something that caused the man to laugh, then she heard two sets of footsteps thump down the entrance steps outside. A few seconds longer and from somewhere outside the building, she heard a loud preposterous sneeze.
Daring not deliberate too much, she sprang from her hiding place and ran as fast as she could down the last section of corridor, clamping the boxes of pills against her body to dampen their manic rattling while she crossed the foyer and slipped out through the open door. She could hear Charlie's voice somewhere off to her left, and glanced over in time to see him wrap his arm around the guard's shoulders and manoeuvre him until his back presented to the door. The putrid stench of phosphate hit her as she tiptoed down the steps, all the time watching the guard, who raised Charlie's bottle to his lips and took a long slow swig. She'd reached the gravel drive now, the sharp edges gouging at her feet as she tried to skim over their surface, though the stones still shifted and rattled underfoot. Then Charlie, bless him, started singing like a sea lion on heat and the guard joined in, blocking out the noisy evidence of her flight.
She ran on until she made it to the crossroads, where she tucked herself under a thicket of phosphate-burnt weeds to wait. Her feet felt shredded, her arm one useless shaft of pulsing pain. And she couldn't regain her breath, the burning in her lungs consuming all the muggy air she tried to drag inside.
The evening had settled in now, the sky a cloudless dome of darkest blue. Watery yellow light spilled from buildings and in the distance a dog barked a doleful monologue. Maryam rose, weaving with dizziness, as Charlie finally strolled up the road alone.
“Good work,” he said. “If Littlejohn knew what a useless drunk old Sevu was he'd blow a valve!” He leaned in close to peer at Maryam's face, and she caught a whiff of something sharp on his breath. “Are you okay? It's best we walk cross-country to avoid the road.”
“I'm fine.”
In truth, the jagged flakes of rotten rock had bruised her feet, and she still felt weak and wobbly from the surgery. She didn't even want to acknowledge how much her arm hurt. The whole point of the operation had been to stop the pain, yet here she was feeling as sick and overwhelmed by it as the moment the bone first snapped.
She struggled to keep up with Charlie as he led the way across the shadowy ground. She was caked in sweat before they'd even made it over the first scrubby rise, her heart beating so fast the pulses ran together into deafening white noise inside her head.
“Wait,” she gasped to his fast-retreating back. “I have to rest.”
He retraced his steps and tipped her face up with his finger to study her more closely. “Damn it. I knew this wouldn't work,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “How about I carry you until we reach the top?”
Before she could even reply he scooped her up and cradled her as he would a little child, careful not to jolt her arm. She lay there, pressed against his clammy shirt, feeling weak and foolish as he toiled on across the uneven ground. His sweat smelt sharp, and she kept her face turned away from his dewy, drink-laced breath. She knew his actions came from a pure heart, but such intimacy made her nervous and uncomfortable, and she wondered if, somewhere in the longings of Charlie's mind, it was his lost daughter Sarwendah he lugged across this hostile landscape, rather than her.
They stopped to rest three more times before the silhouette of the administration building and the fences came into view. Charlie put Maryam down and crouched low to the ground. He indicated that she do the same. “That got the old muscles screaming,” he panted, wiping beads of sweat away from his upper lip. “Thank goodness you don't weigh as much as your friend Ruth!”
“Ruth would've had the strength to walk herself,” Maryam mumbled, embarrassed by her own weakness. If she couldn't even manage a simple night-time walk, how did she think she could flee this place forever and somehow return to Onewēre and set her people free? The whole plan seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Don't be so hard on yourself, kiddo. Those anaesthetics knock everyone. Even old work-horses like me can be knackered by them.” Charlie pointed over to the darkened building. “See that small lean-to off the side of the main building over there?” She followed the line of his finger and nodded as she spied its low-pitched roof. “That's the toilet block. I've left a window unlatched back there, but once you get inside it's vital you don't make a sound. As well as the guards at the gates, there's always another posted just outside the admin block's main front door.”
Maryam swallowed hard, hoping Charlie wouldn't hear the catch as fear pressed at her throat. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“Okay. Listen carefully. Once you get inside, turn right out of the toilets and you'll see a short corridor. Follow it until it crosses with another corridor, then take the right-hand branch all the way to its end. That's the room. The door is quite sticky, so you'll have to push it hard, but be careful you don't make too much noise. It squeaks a bit, so open it real slow. It's an old first-aid room, so there's a narrow bed of sorts that you can sleep on, but as soon as it gets light you'd better hide behind the junk. Littlejohn is usually at work by seven, so make sure you don't oversleep. Okay?”
Maryam closed her eyes for a moment, picturing his instructions in her head. “Right, then right again. Awake by dawn.”
“Good lass. I'll try to come and fetch you as soon as I can. Hopefully there'll be something in there you can use if you have to pee. But you'll need to drink something, so take this.” Charlie removed the bottle from his pocket and poured the last of its contents onto the ground. “Fill it up with water from the hand basin when you need to—just do it really slowly in case the pipes make noise.”
She took the
bottle and tucked it into the sling along with the pills, feeling it weigh against the main site of pain. No good. Instead, she repositioned it behind her elbow in the fold of the sling.
“All right. I'm ready now.”
Together they inched toward the building, crouching low amidst the cover of scrubby plants that clung on to life in the degraded, rocky soil. The first perimeter fence loomed high above them, riding up where it met the building's outer wall to track across the roof in lethal spirals of barbed wire before the meshed barrier resumed on the other side and ran off into the shadows. When they reached the wall of the small lean-to, Maryam had to fight back a groan. The window Charlie had referred to was set as high into the wall as she was tall, and was no more than one full arm's length wide. How did he expect her to climb into that? Even had she both arms free it would be daunting, with armed guards only a short distance away.
Charlie reached up and tugged the window open as far as it would go. “It's gonna be a bit of a balancing act, kiddo,” he whispered, “but just take your time. I'll hoist you up onto my shoulders, then you go in backward—that way I can help to balance you till you're through. There's a good ledge on the other side where you can put your feet.” He patted her head, perhaps sensing her disquiet. “It's just as well you're such a runt, eh?”
Maryam bit back a retort. A runt? He'd hit on her soft spot, a painful reminder she was still more child than woman—in body, if not in mind. But she had no time to stew over the insult. Charlie was squatting down against the peeling weatherboards and tapping his shoulders.
“Climb up here with your back to the window so you can go in feet first.” He took her hand and helped her clamber from his knee up to his shoulders, holding onto her ankles to balance her as he slowly rose up to stand.
She felt vulnerable and exposed in the thin hospital nightgown, but she was right at the level of the open window now, so she gripped the top of Charlie's head to steady herself as she snaked her first leg through the void and felt around for the ledge with her toes. Once her first foot was stable, Charlie reached up and supported her under her armpits while she hooked her other leg over the sill, then he helped to guide her as she slithered through. But just when she thought she was safely clear, she knocked the sling against the side of the opening and the empty bottle clinked against the wooden frame. For a moment both of them froze, Maryam anxiously holding her breath, before Charlie must have decided it was safe and stepped away from the wall.
She balanced on the window sill and stared out at him, too scared to speak. Below her, he mimed how she should shut the window and fix its catches tight. When he had finished she waved her thanks, trying not to panic as she watched him fade off into the shadows, out of view. From here on she was on her own.
Glancing behind her, she realised she was perched above a toilet, and cautiously inched down onto the rim of the bowl. More securely balanced now, she eased the window shut, moving as slowly as a sea slug to avoid further noise. Sweat was dripping freely down her temples and her legs had started to tremble uncontrollably by the time she'd secured the latches and climbed down to the floor. She collapsed onto the toilet seat and waited for the panic to pass.
At last she removed the bottle from her sling and unscrewed the cleverly devised cap, glad she'd seen Charlie undo it earlier: she'd never have guessed. She placed the mouth of the bottle beneath the basin tap and turned it only a fraction, her ears on high alert as the first drops fell. The sound was so subtle she risked turning the tap a little more, allowing a tiny stream of water to flow into the bottle's mouth until it filled. Then she made her way out into the corridor. The wooden floorboards felt spongy beneath her feet, so she took one footstep at a time, careful to place her weight down gradually then pause again between each step. By the time she faced the door to her hiding place her pulse was running fast and jittery, her arm throbbing in perfect time.
Little by heart-stopping little, she turned the handle of the door and pushed. Nothing. It would not budge. Again she tried, pressing her shoulder against it to add extra weight. She gripped tight to the handle, ready to stop if she pushed too hard and the door decided to creak open, but instead it gave way with a scraping sigh. All the little hairs at the base of her scalp sprang up as she tried to gauge whether the sound had been loud enough to alert the guard.
But her luck seemed to be holding, and within five minutes she was safe inside the stuffy room that Charlie had so casually referred to as the belly of the beast. Now all she could do was wait. She took two more of the painkillers, pulling a face as she swallowed the tainted water. Whatever had been inside the bottle tasted foul. Then she curled herself up on the hard little bunk, wriggling around until her arm was comfortable enough, and closed her eyes—sending out a plea to the universe that Charlie would rescue her first thing tomorrow…before she was discovered by anybody else.
It was still dark when Maryam woke from a restless sleep to find her arm aching, and her bladder bloated and uncomfortable. She downed two more of the painkillers, then put her mind to the other pressing problem at hand. If she sneaked back out along the corridor to the toilet she risked alerting the guard; if she stayed inside the room she wasn't sure if she could hold on till Charlie returned to set her free. There was no other option but to find some kind of receptacle to use, as he had said.
The room was still too dark to identify all the bulky shapes piled around her, although over by the one small window she could just make out a set of cupboards topped with open shelves. On closer inspection, it seemed the shelves were laden with poorly stacked books and papers amid a jumble of boots, bottles and small boxes—nothing that obviously lent itself to aiding her now. Then on the top-most shelf she spied an empty container that looked just like the glass jugs she'd seen in the kitchens aboard Star of the Sea. That would do! She took it down, careful not to dislodge the surrounding piles of junk, then squatted over it, greatly relieved. Her urine smelt strong and acrid, nearly overflowing the top before she was done. Finally she returned the jug to its original position on the shelf, grinning as she imagined someone trying to identify this unknown liquid in the days to come.
Outside was so silent it seemed as if the world was holding its breath right at that magical tipping point between night and day. With dawn so close, she decided to stay awake rather than risk oversleeping when Sergeant Littlejohn was due. She thought about him now, the squat bald-headed commander of the camp, and how he'd shown so little interest when she and Ruth and Lazarus had first arrived. At the time it had puzzled her, how someone could care so little for the trauma the three of them had endured—the storm, dear Joseph's death, the sinking of the boat—but now she knew he cared for no one: that, as the representative of the Confederated Territories, his sole responsibility was to prevent any outsiders from reaching his country's more desirable shores. It didn't seem to matter that people were desperate and fleeing likely death, this camp was designed to hold back the so-called heathen hordes, and he was the perfect man to detain them all together, as unimportant to him as undersized fish beached in a net.
She tucked herself back up on the narrow bed but dared not close her eyes, instead running through the terrors of the last few months as though the abuses she'd witnessed could somehow strengthen her resolve. And, indeed, they did: the fury that built inside her every time she conjured up such memories stirred again. Once, she'd worried how such thoughts fuelled her fiery anger—believing it to be unfitting for a Blessed Sister—but now she'd come to recognise that without such moral outrage she'd never have the nerve to act.
To be taken from her parents as a toddler, raised to believe that she was Chosen by the Lord to serve him in some glorious and special way, only to find that she and all the other Blessed Sisters were nothing more than sacrificial vessels for their precious blood, had mired everything she'd been raised to believe. But when she and Ruth and Joseph had defied the Apostles and escaped, along with Lazarus—the chief Apostle's son—their discovery of the forsaken
Marawa Island seemed to prove the Apostles’ frightening claim: that every human being beyond their own small island, Onewēre, had been destroyed.
And when their boat was shattered by the storm and Joseph's life stolen by Te Matee Iai, she'd almost started to believe Ruth's assertion that the Apostles’ claims were true. But after they'd been plucked from their burning boat and brought to this detention camp, she'd come to realise that the wrath of power-hungry men was just as ruthless as anything the Lord would do—if there was a Lord at all. She doubted now. Would never again put faith in anybody but herself. This was the way things had to be, she decided, if she had any hope of seeing through her crazy plan. Of course, there were still kind people like Charlie and Veramina, and the woman Jo, but from now on she would take control, and use her fury as the kindling to sustain the fluttering flame of hope inside her heart. She would return to Onewēre. Would take back the cure and use it to expose the Apostles’ lies.
Just as her eyelids were drooping again she heard the strangled crow of the mangy old rooster who strutted around the camp accompanied by his scraggly flock of hens. He sounded so pompous she almost laughed aloud. In some ways he reminded her of her father, Natau: so pumped with self-importance he didn't realise how easily his cold-blooded masters could choose to wring his neck. Her father thought he controlled the village of Aneaba, but he was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Apostles’ lies—another posturing rooster whose time was past. She knew it was sinful to think of her father this way, but his rejection of her when she had sought out his protection hurt far more even than the devastating news of her mother's death.