Anarchy

by James Treadwell

  The voice had almost squeaked itself hoarse by the end of its outburst. Marina heard a hint of anger in it. She fell back a step.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “By all that’s green and grows in shit! Are you or are you not a virgin?”

  She glanced over her shoulder again, troubled. “You mean—”

  “A virgin! A maiden! An unplucked flower. An unsullied stream. A white sheet. A corked bottle, a cold fish, an intact proposition, a what-have-you. Are you essayed? Are you broken?” Marina had an uncomfortably abrupt memory of odd conversations with Gwen, almost the only times she could think of when it seemed like Gwen wasn’t saying what she really meant. “Have you conversed criminally? Have you made the beast with two backs? Have you known boy, girl, animal, or object inanimate? Sweet mother night, how hard can an easy question be?”

  “I’m only fourteen,” she mumbled, edging away from the agitation in the voice. In the stories the faeries or little people or Sidhe turned nasty very quickly.

  “You won’t answer?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You refuse? You deny even a yes or no?”

  “I’m going,” she said, and made to turn on her heel, and couldn’t.

  It was as though her feet were fastened to the ground.

  The wet leaves flapped and parted. It was still difficult to see, but perhaps a thing like a small animal stood up among them.

  “Gwen!” she shouted, forgetting herself, and then, “Iseult!”

  “Now now. Don’t alarm yourself.”

  “What’s happening?” She tried to pick up her foot, to take a normal step. Her legs wouldn’t obey.

  “I answered you as fairly as your questions admitted. You haven’t answered me at all. Our conversation is incomplete, accordingly, and may not now be broken off until I am compensated. Rules are rules.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Never mind. Permit the condition of your hymen to remain veiled in the prudent mystery proper to maidens’ matters. I’ll take a better payment now.”

  There was definitely something like a tiny bulbous man, strangely silhouetted, as if disguised by a cloak and hat made out of dust. His voice sounded sharper. The jack-in-the-box had been sprung.

  “A keepsake,” he said. “A memento. Some piece of you to call my own. There’s a thing finer than all my fine words together. And afterward we shall each reckon ourselves fairly dealt with and be on our separate ways. Though you might have selected your companion more wisely, I’ll tell you that for nothing. To use a rustic metaphor, if you hitch your cart to a horse that’s got nowhere to go, nowhere is where you’ll end up.”

  “Iseult!” she called.

  “Precisely. Now, gentle lady. Here’s a question worth its weight in cobwebs. What payment shall I exact? What, what?”

  “Wake up!” Her mouth felt slow, treacly, like her legs. She tried to bend down to fend off the advancing thing and found that she wanted to do the opposite, to keep as far away from it as possible.

  “A toenail? A corn? A handful of down? But then, why set the sights so cravenly low? If ever there were an occasion for boldness, this, surely, were it. An eyelash? A tooth! A yellow tooth, for the pommel of my bodkin or the heel of my boot. Or! Or, or.” The voice paused for a deep inhalation. “A hair! A golden hair, to wear around my waist. Wouldn’t that be fine?”

  “Help!” Marina shouted, her throat unclogging at last. She heard a shuffle from inside the hut. “Out here!”

  “Tsk, tsk. She wakes. More’s the pity. Alas and alack and woe to us both, my hand is forced.” Marina flinched from a sudden sharp pain in her heel.

  “Ow!”

  “Marina?”

  “Gwenny! I’m outside!”

  “Stand down,” sighed the miniature voice. “Your toll is paid. A satisfactory exchange. Though I, for one, will always wonder what might have been.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m here!” Marina shouted, but already she could feel her legs thawing. She looked down and saw the blurry shape losing the little distinctness it had ever had. The voice was suddenly faint and tinny.

  “A red pearl of your half-blood. I’ll sip it from a silver thimble and toast your memory. Rare and precious, by the bouquet, though a smidgen too salty for the finest vintage. I blame the mother.”

  “What’s wrong?” Marina found she could twist around. In her panic she’d forgotten the name of the woman who stood looking exhausted and confused in the doorway of the hut, clutching a handful of dirty clothes in front of her. “Is someone there?”

  She backed away from the hedge, looking around. “There was—”

  “Is that blood? You’ve hurt yourself.”

  She looked down and saw a red trickle.

  “Let me see.” Iseult, that was her name. She crouched by Marina’s foot. “There’s something in your heel. Did you step on something?”

  “No. Did I?”

  Iseult bent close and then carefully plucked a tiny spike from the wound. More blood beaded around it. She held it in her palm for them to look at in the spreading light.

  “That’s a hawthorn,” Marina said, taking it and rolling it in her fingers.

  “Ouch,” Iseult said. “It didn’t go too deep, you should be all right. I had some bandages but they’re gone like everything else. Let’s see if we can tie something over it. Are you all right now?”

  Was that all it was? Marina was about to say something else, but she felt embarrassed. She knew she was supposed to have let the woman do all the talking. Iseult was already distracted, back inside the hut, turning over Marina’s shift, looking for its least filthy edge; she tore a strip from one of the sleeves.

  “It should be fine,” she said. “It’s not dirty.”

  But when they stopped an hour or two later to take their shoes off before wading a flooded channel, the folded wad of cotton was completely soaked with blood. They tossed it away so Marina could wash her foot in the cold water. Iseult wiped it with a broad blade of grass, frowning.

  “It’s so tiny I can hardly see it.” As they watched, a red drop bulged out. “Must have gone deep. Does it bother you?”

  “No.”

  They folded a corner of Marina’s bag and held it pressed against the pinprick for a while. It too turned gradually black.

  “We can’t stop,” Iseult said.

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  “You sock’s pretty tight. It’ll stop bleeding soon.”

  The stream was at the bottom of lank and marshy fields. Iseult said it was the stream that fed the river that became the estuary; once they were across it they could turn east again and they’d only have a few miles to go, all along roads. But getting across was a long struggle. Where the water had burst its banks the mud beneath was deep and soft, and toppled trees made the channel itself a mossy, slippery labyrinth. Nevertheless they did at last reach the lane above the far slope, where they both sat down gasping. They took their shoes off to tip them out. From Marina’s left one came a viscous red dribble. Her sock was soggy with blood.

  Iseult watched Marina wring it out. Her face was blank with weariness.

  “Let’s get on,” she said. “Let’s just get there.”

  It wasn’t the kind of face you could confess anything to.

  • • •

  Iseult stumbled often as she walked. Her feet dragged. They heard the sound of a helicopter to the north, maybe more than one, though they walked under trees and couldn’t see the horizon. She no longer bothered to shepherd Marina out of sight at every noise. She kept her head down. Sometimes when Marina looked at her she saw her lips moving silently and thought the woman was counting steps.

  Once when they stopped to rest on a toppled stone they heard the churning of a car fighting slowly through the debris in the roads.
/>   Iseult looked up.

  “That’s not far off,” she said.

  Marina had peeled off her sock to see whether it needed squeezing out again. “Should we get out of the way?”

  The woman looked as if she’d do anything rather than stand up. “Maybe it’ll turn off,” she said. They were in a narrow and twisting lane. They’d passed a side road not long before, but it was back down the hill, and retracing any steps at all had become a last resort. The engine sound was behind them too, gunning angrily as it attacked the slope. It was obviously coming closer now. Marina stood up, one shoe in her hand, but there was no gate or gap in the hedge in sight. She looked at her companion, waiting to see what they should do.

  Iseult closed her eyes for a moment and pushed herself to her feet. Instead of hurrying them away, she put an arm tight around Marina’s shoulders, so tight she was half covering her face.

  “Keep your eyes down,” she muttered.

  The car was startlingly loud now, louder even than the telephone had been. It rounded the corner behind them a moment later. Her breath caught for an instant when she saw it. She thought it was the one with the shouting man and the frantic dog; but when its noise died abruptly to a coughing grumble and a head poked out to look at them, the head turned out to be different, yet another person, not even slightly like anyone she knew. She had a brief impression of a face as much animal as human, small and surprised, black circles around the eyes, before she did as she’d been told. The arm around her stiffened.

  “Well met,” said a woman’s voice.

  “Morning,” Iseult said.

  The other woman’s voice chuckled in a way that made Marina think of Caleb. “Need a ride?”

  “No,” Iseult said. “Thank you.”

  “Is that your daughter? That girl should be inside.”

  “She’s fine.”

  Marina heard another voice, a man’s voice, from deeper inside the car. “Engine’s running.”

  “Where you off to?” said the first voice. Marina couldn’t help a quick glance to check whether it belonged to the small face.

  “We’re on our way to some friends.”

  “Oh aye.” The woman leaning out of the car chuckled again. A woman, Marina now saw, though nothing like either Gwen or her sister. She’d smudged her face with charcoal, making those thick circles around her eyes. Her hair was tied up behind her. Two black feathers were stuck in the knot, crow’s feathers. A dead crow had been tied to the front of the car, wings spread open and going ragged. The car itself was box-shaped and mostly black, with a white cross badly painted from top to bottom and front to back.

  “We don’t have anything,” Iseult said.

  “No one here’s planning to rob you, dearie.” The car rattled heavily and its grumble stopped. Marina felt Iseult’s fingers tighten on her arm. “From up-country, are you?”

  “Wild guess,” said the man. Marina couldn’t see any more of him than a shape behind the car’s smeared and spattered front window. Iseult’s shoulder nudged at her head. It took her a moment to understand she was supposed to look down.

  “Look like you’ve had a hard time of it,” the black-eyed woman said. “Just the two of you, is it?”

  “We’re okay.”

  “Your girl’s bleeding.” Marina was staring at her feet. She watched as a tiny zigzag of blood spilled through the dirt and onto the grass, making a drop as bright as a ladybird. “Hey. What’s your name? Are you hungry?”

  At the mention of food Marina couldn’t help herself.

  “My foot doesn’t hurt at all,” she said, looking up. “But we’re very hungry. We haven’t eaten for a day.”

  She felt Iseult’s grip go hard as wood. There was a peculiar extended pause, like when she and Gwen did one of their plays and one of them forgot the next line.

  “Nicely spoken girl,” the man said. He’d leaned across to the woman’s side of the car, and Marina caught a glimpse of a face with a beard that was frizzled and rounded, not long and straight like Caleb’s.

  The woman smiled, which made the marks around her eyes look like a mask with a woman’s face half-hidden beneath it. “Sounds to me, dearie, as if you might have bitten off more than you can chew. Eh? Trust me, you’re not the only ones. Here, Tam, don’t we got plasters in the box still? These two are on our side, obvious enough.” She dug around in the car for a moment and then handed a paper bag out toward them. “Here you go. Up to us to look out for each other now, isn’t it?” She shook the bag. It made a whispery rattle. “Raisins,” she said. “Not the freshest but they’ll do. Go on.”

  “I don’t have anything to give you,” Iseult said.

  “Course you don’t. Did I ask you to? The days of everything having to be paid for, that’s all finished now, isn’t it? Go on. Your girl’s half starving. Chew slowly, makes ’em last.”

  Iseult didn’t say anything, so Marina ventured a hesitant “Thank you.”

  Both people in the car laughed for some reason.

  “Well brought up too,” the man said.

  The woman shook the bag again. “Want me to drop this in the road?”

  Iseult uncurled her arm and stepped forward. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful,” she said. “We’ve had a difficult journey.”

  “Hop in, then,” the man said.

  “No.” Iseult snapped the answer back almost before he’d finished speaking. “We’re all right.” But she took the paper bag from the woman, to Marina’s intense relief.

  He banged something shut inside the car. “Can’t find the plasters,” he said, leaning farther across the woman. “Want me to have a look at that foot? It’ll get infected if you let it go like that.”

  “Thank you again,” Iseult said. Her voice was empty of any warmth. “Leave us be, please.”

  The black-eyed woman shrugged. “Suit yourself. Girl must have got her manners from dad, eh?”

  “Hey,” the man said. Marina had her eyes down again but she could tell the voice was aimed in her direction. “You’d like a ride, wouldn’t you?”

  She was astonished by how quickly Iseult moved. She was wrapped up in her grip again within moments, and this time Iseult stood between her and the car. She could feel her companion’s heart beating against her, hard.

  “We’ll make our own way,” Iseult said. “We’re very grateful.”

  “It’s not right to leave the girl like that,” the man said.

  “Not for us to say, is it?” the woman answered. The car clicked and began rolling slowly forward. With a terrible grating gargle its engine started again. “If we all make it as far as London maybe we’ll see you there,” she called over the noise. “Remember who gave you something for nothing.”

  Iseult didn’t let Marina go until the sound had gone faint in the distance ahead.

  “Who were they?”

  “I’ve no idea.” Iseult unwrapped the paper bag, very carefully.

  “You didn’t want me to say anything, did you.”

  The woman sighed. “It’s all right. They’ve gone.”

  “Weren’t they helpful? Those look all right to eat.” The two of them stared into the bag. Marina dipped her fingers in.

  “Just take one,” Iseult said. “One at a time. Make it last, like she said.”

  The raisins were withered as dry as mouse pellets, but their rank sourness spread through the mouth like nectar. They ate them in turn, one after another, until there were ten or fifteen left, when Iseult closed the bag firmly.

  “For later,” she said.

  “How much longer do we have to go?”

  “Four or five miles from here. We should start seeing it on the signposts soon.”

  Iseult was like Horace, full of mysteriously absolute knowledge about things. At the very next meeting of lanes, the letters and number were there on a sign, pointing ahead, as
if she’d conjured them up just by talking about them: mawnan 4. To Marina their appearance was miraculously encouraging, but Iseult stopped by the sign, frowning, twisting the ends of her hair in her hand. She looked so unwilling that Marina began to feel doubtful herself.

  “Isn’t that the right place?”

  Iseult looked around as if trying to peer over the horizon. “I’m just worried about what we’re walking into.”

  “Where?”

  “See that?” She pointed between bare tree branches. “That’s smoke.” The grey sky was darker and heavier in that direction. “And the helicopters keep buzzing around. They’re nearer now.”

  “They go back and forward a lot. I used to watch from my roof.”

  “I keep wondering what that woman meant about getting all the way to London.”

  It seemed obvious enough to Marina, but she had a feeling she’d done the wrong thing when the people with the raisins had driven by, and didn’t want to start talking about them.

  “The back was full of jerry cans,” Iseult said. “Did you notice that? And the way she’d dressed herself up, the way she talked. She made it sound like she was on a crusade. I watched people like that on the news, before.”