by Mandy Hager
“No one gets into The Confederated Territories?” Maryam asked.
Aanjay shook her head. “Unless we denounce our own faith and take up theirs, we have no chance. And, even then, it's very rare. They do not trust our kind at all.”
“Your kind?” asked Ruth.
“Buddhist, Hindu or Islamic…people of all the different faiths wash up here.”
“You don't worship the Lord and His Lamb?” Ruth backed behind Maryam, as if Aanjay could somehow do her harm.
“Faith is a choice, child. Here we try to respect every one.”
Maryam blinked back her surprise. She had no idea there were so many alternative faiths. Beside her, Ruth was bristling, so she spluttered out another question to prevent Ruth from antagonising Aanjay right away. She pointed to the row of taps. “Is this water good enough to drink?”
“It does not taste very good,” Aanjay said. “But after a while you will get used to it.”
Maryam crossed to an unoccupied sink and cupped her hand under the running tap. The water looked clean enough, but as she swallowed she pulled a face and the nearby women laughed behind their hands. Aanjay was right. It tasted foul. She slunk back to Ruth's side.
“What about food?” she asked.
“We have rice for breakfast and lunch, and a thin hot soup for our evening meal. Sometimes, if we're lucky, the chickens lay fresh eggs—and a group of us have tried to cultivate gardens to grow vegetables. But the phosphate in the soil is harsh.”
“Phosphate?”
“In the rocks. They used to mine it many generations ago. Now it blows around as dust.” She bent down and combed the white layer of dust with her fingers, then waved her hand under the girls’ noses. The scent of decaying eggs was much stronger now. “It is this dust that causes the smell.”
Maryam met Ruth's eyes. So that was the source. “How many people did you say were held here altogether?” Maryam asked.
“Right now about eight hundred…maybe more.”
“So many? From where?”
Aanjay shrugged. “All the islands in the sea. Life is very hard for all the generations who managed to survive the flares. Those of us caught up here desired a better life.”
“You came from a small island too?”
“Indeed. But, unlike many whose islands can no longer sustain them, my people seek to escape the tyranny on our shores.” She beckoned them onwards, moving with such grace her small feet barely seemed to touch the ground.
In the next courtyard a crush of women and children sat cross-legged eating bowls of lumpy rice. Maryam studied them shyly, struck by their many different shades: from the mellow creamy ambers of the fine-boned women like Aanjay to the same rich brown as she and Ruth—and some so dark their skin took on the indigo hue of midnight skies. Lazarus would be the outsider here, something he'd find hard to bear.
Maryam and Ruth squatted on the outskirts of the group as Aanjay volunteered to collect their lunch. It was a sobering sight: many of the detainees were so thin and frail it was hard to believe they received any food at all. Some rocked in a demented way, their eyes wide and haunted, while others stared into space with such desolation Maryam's pulse grew jittery at the sight. Many suffered weeping sores, a few the milky-eyed curse of the blind, and nearly all the grizzling children had tight protruding bellies and bowed, painfully thin legs. Perhaps she had died and come to Hell already, here amidst the other disbelievers of the Lord? Only Ruth's presence contradicted this possibility, just as only Ruth still kept her from succumbing to the void.
When Aanjay returned with three small bowls of the rice, the girls fell hungrily upon their share. Above them, gulls reeled in the updrafts, seeming to taunt Maryam's inability to refuse the food as they called out their raucous symphony to the wild and free.
The heat of the day was building now, and her own stale body odours rose above the general stench. If only she was back home on the atoll, where old Zakariya would heat clean water for the metal bath and throw in a handful of the pandanus leaves to perfume it. How they'd all taken such luxuries for granted, never for a moment thinking life might not continue so comfortably or peacefully.
“Where are all the men?” Maryam asked, as she scooped the last few grains of rice from her bowl and licked them from her fingers.
Aanjay pointed off to their right. “Unless they're here with family, the men are kept apart at night. You'll see them start to mingle soon, when the last of the breakfast has been cleared away.” She gestured to the group. “We eat in shifts, as there is not enough room for all of us to join together in one place.” She lowered her voice, as though she risked being overheard. “The guards use divisions such as these to keep us from uniting to fight for our rights.”
“Has anyone ever managed to escape?” Maryam asked, thinking how her own people on Onewēre had also lost the will to fight.
“It is impossible,” Aanjay said flatly. “The guards patrol the fences and the people of the island here are far too scared to help. They, too, rely on The Confederated Territories for their survival—without the camp, they'd have no aid at all.”
“And the people of The Confederated Territories don't think this is wrong?”
Aanjay ran her finger around the rim of her empty bowl. “From time to time someone tries to tell our stories to their people, but even when they do it seems no one cares.” She met Maryam's gaze. “Those few of us who can speak English do what we can, but every week more like you arrive and others die until, one by one, we lose the will to fight.”
The rice in Maryam's stomach felt as though it had turned to stone. To be trapped in this place was to be caught inside a sticky web, suspended and helpless until the spider was due its next meal. And, sooner or later, she saw now, that meal would be her.
Maryam perched with Ruth in the doorway of the hut, teasing out the tangles from their long wiry hair. They had rinsed their heads in fresh water to rid them of the sticky coating left by the salt-water shower: it felt so good to be clean again. But the activity had stirred the pain in Maryam's arm, and she found it hard to block the throbbing from her mind.
The camp was busier now, men mixing with the women as the day progressed. “What I don't understand,” Ruth said, “is why we're being held here if the Territorials are Believers too? And Lazarus? He's a Believer and he's white. Why are they still holding him?”
Maryam shrugged. “I don't know.” She nearly added that she didn't care, but did not want to fight with Ruth. She stretched, looking for distraction. “Come on, let's take a walk.”
Ruth pulled back her hair and smiled. “Maybe we can find out where Lazarus is being held.”
“Maybe.”
She struggled to her feet, still weighted by the deep sense of exhaustion that had struck her down with Joseph's death. She didn't care about Lazarus, and she hated that he lived while Joseph did not. Despite trying for Ruth's sake to rouse herself from her despair, she couldn't shake the grief of losing him. And, in a way, she didn't want to—for to stop feeling his loss was to forget him, and she vowed that this would never be.
They wandered aimlessly down the dusty walkways, getting a measure of the vastness of the camp. It seemed to go on forever, bigger by far than all Onewēre's villages combined. Eventually they came upon a patch of cultivated ground where women and children toiled beneath the punishing late-morning sun to work the dusty soil. The plants were withered and their fruits were small, though the children worked intently to water each thirsty plant. The more Maryam saw, the more her horror of the place increased. The smell, the heat, the lack of fresh clean water, the misery of knowing they were trapped within these barren bounds…this camp was not a waypoint in some journey, it was the end.
By the time they'd circled the barracks and come back to the place where they'd first entered the camp, the sun had reached its highest point. The same group of men stood stock-still beside the gate, their accusing eyes locked on the guards through the netting of the fence. Up close, the rough st
itching of their mouths made Maryam's stomach churn all the more. What kind of humans could do such a dreadful thing?
Beyond the fence, Maryam recognised one of the guards who'd brought them here. He glared back at the men, his fingers fidgeting with the mechanism of his gun. To Maryam's surprise, Ruth sidled over to the wire and called to him directly.
“Why have you done this?” Her voice shook with nerves as she pointed to the tortured men.
“Don't blame us,” the guard replied. “They've done this to themselves.”
Ruth's face grew pale. “But why?”
“Ask them yourself!” He chuckled at his joke. “The stupid rag-heads think that by starving themselves they'll shame us into giving in.” He snorted. “But they'll crack eventually—they always do.”
The men's bravery touched something deep inside Maryam. If they could fight in the face of so little hope, then so must she. Fury overtook her as she, too, challenged the guard. “We demand that you release us. We've done nothing wrong!”
The guard laughed. “Oh yeah? You and whose army, sweetheart?” He raised his gun towards her. “Now get the hell out of here before I lock you up with that poncy little traitor you arrived with.”
Everything she'd endured since she'd first Crossed seemed to boil up inside her. How dare this man think he could treat them like this! A surge of energy flowed through her, as if Joseph's spirit somehow buoyed her up and urged her to act.
She wrapped her fingers into the netting of the fence and shook it, yelling loudly: “Let us out! You have no right to hold us here.”
Ruth put her hand on Maryam's shoulder. “Don't. You'll end up locked away as well.”
“I don't care,” Maryam said. “I'll not sit back quietly and let them steal away our lives.”
The guard, on high alert, took a step towards her, and others ran over to his side. But she found she was no longer alone, for several of the men joined with her in beating at the fence. Ruth, however, backed away, a look of terror on her face as the guards dragged over a long flexible pipe and aimed it straight at Maryam. A furious jet of water shot from its end, hitting her square in her stomach and knocking her off her feet. One by one, the others were sent sprawling by the blast of stinging rain.
Maryam scrambled up, launching herself back at the fence as her anger and pain at Joseph's death recharged her words. “Let me out!” Again she was struck down by the water, and again she rose. But now the guards were swarming in through the gate. They swooped on her, and she screamed as they seized her broken arm and jerked it roughly behind her back. Then they took her other arm, then her legs, and swept her off the ground in a writhing ball of fury. She twisted, trying to locate Ruth, and glimpsed her panicked face through a frame of other arms and legs. But she couldn't hear what Ruth was shouting, her heart pummelling so hard its pulse filled up her ears.
The guards had trussed her like a sacrificial goat; now they snapped restrictive metal cuffs around her ankles and her wrists—right over the plaster cast. She struggled, powerless to do anything but submit as they hauled her, squirming and kicking and biting, to a stone building and dragged her to a tiny cell. There they left her, bound and panting and sodden. Locked her in.
For several minutes more the storm raged on within her. When it finally abated she cried, howling like a baby as the last of her bottled-up emotions were purged, until nothing more was left inside.
In the aftermath, she couldn't believe what she had done. Had she been possessed? But she didn't regret it, despite the terrible burning in her injured arm. On the contrary, she felt as if she'd rid herself of something festering and poisonous that could have done her harm. Besides, at least in here, alone, that nightmare world was held at bay.
Then she recalled Ruth's words as they'd stepped off the ship: Please don't let them split us up. Too late. Less than a day, and already Ruth's worst fears had been realised. What had got into her? All she could hope was that Aanjay would befriend Ruth now and keep her safe until Maryam was released. If she was released. Oh Lord, what if they just leave me here to die?
She twisted her neck around until she could see up to the ceiling of the cell. Cobwebs draped between the rough timber rafters, their fine-spun silk accentuated by thin layers of white phosphate dust. She could hear birds clattering across the roof and, closer still, in the cells beyond her own, the unnerving sound of a man sobbing and an incessant mumbling from someone else.
She snaked over to the metal grille that separated her from the corridor beyond and tried to peer into the next-door cell, but she could not. The mumbling continued, disconnected, from a cell much further down. It didn't sound like Lazarus—though she had no real idea of whether he was held here as well.
Now the outside door burst open again and one of the hunger strikers was escorted past her cell, two burly guards forcing his shackled arms unnaturally high behind his back. His eyes met hers and she nodded, acknowledging their bond as he was led away. Their footsteps echoed off the hard stone walls, and she heard the scrape of lock and key.
As they passed on their way out, one of the guards noticed Maryam's vigil by the bars and lashed out, his boot stamping only inches from her face. “Crazy black bitch,” he spat at her. “They should've left you in the sea to die.”
“I wish they had,” she shot back, turning her face from him and holding her breath until she heard the outer door slam shut.
“Maryam! Is that you?”
“Lazarus?” She pressed her ear up to the bars to see if she could track his voice.
“I think I'm in the cell right next to you.” There was a banging on the bars to her left and she swivelled around in time to spy his fingers reach out into the corridor and wave.
“Yes, I see your hand.”
“What happened? Why are you here?”
She laughed, surprising herself by the cheerful nature of the sound. “I don't think they like to be reminded of their evil ways.”
“You challenged them?”
“It seems I did.” Despite her antagonism towards him, it was a relief to hear his voice. She felt small and vulnerable, and very scared.
“Did they hurt you too?” His question sounded strangely charged.
“Nothing I couldn't bear.” She rolled her wrist within the cuff, trying to slide her right hand from the metal ring. No luck. “Are you bound as well?”
“Bound? No. Are you?”
One rule for brown, another for white. Her heart hardened towards him again. “Forget it.”
“But I heard crying. Was that you?”
What pleasure it would give him to think this so. “It was an act to shame them.” She was determined not to feed his prejudices, knowing he already thought her foolish and weak.
Lazarus did not reply, and she sensed that he didn't believe the lie. The floor was hard beneath her hips now, so she wriggled over to the side of the cell and pushed herself up until her back was propped against the wall. This eased her hips but put more pressure on her throbbing arm, still pinned behind her back. Again she shifted, leaning sideways against the wall, which eased her arm but did little to aid her overall comfort while her clothes still dripped and her hair hung lank and tickly around her face.
Even though she didn't want to talk to him, Lazarus's silence now unsettled her. What was he thinking? Was he sitting there judging her as harshly as she judged him? In the unnatural lull, she heard a dog barking and the nagging, plaintive cry of a child in pain. She closed her eyes, thrown back into a childhood memory of a time when she'd been ill and forced to stay in bed: how she'd so resented being stuck inside, forced to play eavesdropper to the happy voices of her playmates as they'd romped free, without her, in the sun. But Mother Elizabeth had come to comfort her, retelling stories from the Holy Book. She'd felt so special, tucked up next to her. How long ago that seemed. How distant and unreal.
A cough broke through her thoughts, and Lazarus cleared his throat. “I know you may not want to hear this but I have something I really ne
ed to say…”
Maryam could not reply. Her heart beat double time as she worked through every possibility. Perhaps he was going to admit the truth: that he had planned Joseph's elimination and his own rise to power from the start…or that now he planned to dump them here and travel on to The Confederated Territories alone? Whatever it was, she knew it was momentous by the nervous catch he hadn't quite managed to disguise.
She nibbled at a flake of dry skin on her bottom lip and steeled herself for what was coming next. “All right. What?”
Again he cleared his throat, as if he had to force the words to come. “I've had a lot of time to think,” he said. “Way too much time.” He paused. “I want you to know that I'm—that I'm…sorry. I've behaved…badly.”
Was this another of her hallucinations, like the disconnected voices she'd heard on the boat? A huge churning stirred in her chest as she remembered the humiliation and terror that she—and poor dear Ruth—had suffered at his hands. The churning cemented into a cold fist of fury that dropped into her gut. Did he think he could make everything right by a few trite words? He had tormented her, terrorised and tried to force himself on her; treated everyone around him with disdain. Did she have it in her to forgive him? She wasn't sure. Not sure at all.
“Right,” she murmured, knowing he was waiting for some kind of response but truly not able to give him more. The hurt—the hate—she felt was still too raw, and she dared not soften her stance to him, lest he still do her more harm.
“Look, I know you probably find this hard to believe—”
She snorted, unable to hold back her bitterness.
“Okay, I guess you can't.” He sounded less guarded now, and she knew by his tone that her response had rankled him. What did he expect? “When Joseph died—”
“You mean when you killed him,” she spat.
Even through the stone wall of the cell she heard him gasp. “What in all Hell is that supposed to mean?”
Maryam leaned over, hissing out her accusation through the bars. “It means you planned to see him dead. I had the equipment there to save him—keep him alive until we found him help—but you poisoned his mind to this. You let him die.”