Fenn Halflin and the Seaborn

by Francesca Armour-Chelu

  On every available space hung troughs, buckets, oil barrels and scooped-out logs planted with herbs, chard, cauliflowers and leeks – protected from the snow with sheets of plastic, or blankets made from bulrush leaves. Gerran noticed the look of wonder on Fenn’s face and smiled proudly.

  “The Sargassons have grafted to bid life back,” he said jerking his head upwards to indicate the birch-bark gutters snaking over their heads for collecting rain. The forest was far from dead, it was a city built from trees, but camouflaged from prying eyes by a circle of death and decay.

  The bridge sloped downwards as it looped over the forest, with other bridges branching off from it towards platforms made out of scraps of metal and wood. Fenn passed Sargasson women, all wearing conical leaf hats as they chatted and laughed together, sewing long strips of eel skins to make cloth. On the next platform, men washed and scraped skins of muntjac, beaver and rabbit, dipping them into barrels of white lye to cure them. Further ahead, women and children strung up eel skins to dry over salvaged wire cables from ships and pylons. In the next platform, sopping rubbish was being hoisted up from the dank under-forest below, before being sorted into metal and plastics, just as Fenn had done aboard the Panimengro.

  Gerran and Fenn climbed up a ladder and dodged around two men testing the strength of a breastplate cut from the side of a steel drum, while peat cutters traded clod cut from the marsh. Most of the people Fenn saw were Sargassons, but he recognised other Seaborn tribes; a few Scotians and Venetians, easily mistaken for Sargassons if their hair was woven in the right style. Fenn saw that none of the children were his age – the generation Chilstone stole.

  Fenn couldn’t stop staring; to think all this had been on his doorstep and he’d never known. Halflin had known the Sargassons were here, but never knew the forest was an oasis in the sinking marshes. Into Fenn’s happiness sidled a cold draught of resentment; if only Halflin had known, then their life needn’t have been one of hardship and confinement, ending in death. They could have lived in some kind of comfort. They could even have had friends.

  The walkway climbed upwards towards the fortress. After they passed through a gate Gerran pushed Fenn onto a balcony encircling the tree, then shoved open the door cut into its bark and stepped inside.

  The tree had been hollowed out but left with enough bark so it could still live. There was a circular room, over ten feet in diameter, with a domed ceiling of wood polished to a honeyed gleam. Fenn imagined it was like being inside a giant beehive; the sweet smell of the sequoia and burning fleabane, used to keep away mosquitoes, hung heavy in the air.

  In the centre was a table, cut from a cross section of wood that hung from three chains fixed to the ceiling. There was a series of thin windows like arrow slits that had been hacked out of the tree, then packed tight with small glass bottles glued in with mud. Across the floor, pelts of fox and wolf made a thick carpet. It was warm and smelt of the marsh in spring. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Fenn realised a lone man sat in the shadows. He stood up as Fenn entered and embraced Gerran. Despite being at least ten years older, it was clear this man was Gerran’s brother. His dark hair made him look quite young still but he had a long slab of a face, like a tombstone, with deep set eyes sheltered by heavy brows. Sad, dark eyes, like the windows of a derelict house.

  “What d’you see?” Moray asked.

  “Terras swarming all over the Punchlock,” Gerran replied.

  “Thought it was a trap when I saw the Warspite had moored,” Moray murmured. “Chilstone was waiting for us.”

  “If his mind was to flush any Resistance out, it didn’t work. All we found was this kid. He’d got himself snagged by Chilstone’s men.”

  Moray shrugged indifferently, watching as Fenn stroked Tikki, curled up in his arms.

  “Why bring him to me?”

  “Found this on him,” Gerran revealed, “and a map.”

  He put the key and the map in Moray’s hand. A puzzled expression crumpled Moray’s forehead as he looked first at the key, then at Fenn’s hunger-pinched face, still staring down at his hands and gently stroking Tikki’s back.

  “What’s his tale? He looks half-dead.”

  “Hasn’t sung,” Gerran replied. “No wonder at the fix of him. He took a drubbin’.” His face softened as he looked at Fenn shivering, and he lifted a wolfskin from the bench and gently draped it over Fenn’s shoulders. Moray frowned.

  “Giddock and Scad haven’t returned, nor their men,” he said bleakly. “You best ride out tonight – check where they’re at. Might be they clanked down too if Terras are scoutin’ the marsh.”

  Gerran nodded and the two hugged goodbye. Then the door slammed shut and Moray and Fenn were left alone. Moray slowly turned to gaze at Fenn again, holding out the key. He let the chain trickle through his fingers.

  “So who d’you filch this from?” he asked softly. “Think it’d get you passage somewhere?” Fenn tried to grab the key but missed. He felt dizzy and strange. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing Chilstone, nursing his hand.

  “It’s mine,” he whispered feebly, steadying himself on the table as the room slid to the left and right. He fixed his focus on the growth rings in the table’s wood and stuck out his hand, waiting for Moray to return the key. He was swaying and his bloodstained hand trembled.

  Moray took a step closer, looming over him. This kid might look done in, but something marked him out from the other strays the Sargassons had found running from the Terras. Despite his ragged clothes and his skinny frame, he carried himself like a fighter.

  “What d’you call yourself?” Moray asked, studying Fenn’s face intently. The wound above Fenn’s eye had opened up again and blood was trickling down his face. The room suddenly seemed to lurch to one side and he felt too dizzy to stand much longer. He took a breath to quell his sickness.

  “Fenn Demari,” he said, looking up from Tikki.

  Moray sighed. So many had washed up on Sargasson shores claiming to be the last Demari; all of them thinking it would get them special treatment, none of them realising Moray would know if they were telling the truth and not just because of some fake trinket.

  “You’re a liar.”

  “I’m not!” Fenn said again, trying to fight off Moray as he fought off dizziness.

  There was definitely something different about this one. Moray leant in closer still and gripped Fenn’s chin, forcing his face into the light, then cried out and stepped back as if he’d seen a ghost. He hadn’t seen those eyes since he’d kissed his friend Maya goodbye, twenty years earlier, when she had been this kid’s age. Her eyes were always unmistakable; Moray had never forgotten them.

  “It’s you!”

  Fenn couldn’t speak. He suddenly felt very cold as the shock of what he’d been through hit him. Moray grabbed him and held him tightly, laughing and crying at the same time, firing questions at him, calling the guards to get Gerran back. The door opened and someone came in. There was a shout and he heard Chilstone’s name again.

  Fenn wanted to speak, but his heart was pounding and the rushing sound in his ears was drowning out the rest of Moray’s words. He could still see Moray’s mouth moving, but couldn’t make sense of it. Then everything went black.

  9

  Fenn tried opening his eyes but something was strapped across them. He managed to sit up and pushed a rough bandage away. He reached up to where the thorn had sliced across his brow and found four twists of what felt like horsetail. He must have been stitched up while he was unconscious.

  He was lying on a low truckle bed in the same hollowed room he’d met Moray, although Moray was nowhere to be seen. It was late afternoon and a slab of buttery sunlight fell on the floor through a doorway he hadn’t noticed when he first arrived. Outside he could see an orange sky, flecked with birds flying so high they looked no bigger than eyelashes. He pushed the heavy wolf skin off and found Tikki nuzzled down by his side, fast asleep. He gave him a stroke and Tikki yawned widely but didn’t wake, sma
cking his lips as he wriggled back to sleep. Fenn stood up, listing precariously for a few seconds while he tested his balance.

  “Wake up, slug-a-bed,” he murmured as he lifted Tikki up onto his neck, but Tikki was just as happy to drowse there as well and carried on snoozing.

  Next to his bed was a set of Sargasson clothes and his boots, newly lined with soft rabbit skin. Fenn dressed and slid the boots on, then wobbled towards the half-open door. Outside, Moray was standing on a shallow balcony encircled by a stout rail. He was deep in thought as he stared at the setting sun, twiddling something shiny between his fingers. At the sound of Fenn’s footfall, he turned and smiled.

  “Gave you a dose to help you sleep; the thorns cut deep. I had you needled,” he nodded at Fenn’s stitches. “You lost a lot of juice, but Mattie did her best. It might not even leave a scar,” he said. He held out the sparkling object, “Found this in your shirt.” He gestured Fenn to come to his side, then pinned Amber’s clover earring in Fenn’s pocket before returning his gaze to the forest, scrunching up his eyes against the low golden sun. Fenn followed his gaze, slack-jawed with wonder; the whole forest was stretched out before him, and beyond that the rest of East Marsh. Moray smiled to see his eyes widen and pulled open a brass telescope for Fenn to look through. Fenn pressed his good eye against the brass ring and tracked it over the forest.

  The Sargasson forest was enormous. Huge swathes of trees had been killed by the brackish water, but there was also a beating heart of green, from which sounds of hammering and voices rose. Towards the south-east all that was left of the forest were a few splintered stumps of trees sticking up like broken teeth. Beyond these, barely visible in the far distance, loomed the long, snaking line of the Wall. They could see people that looked the size of ants working on the last section where the Terras were strengthening it with huge buttresses. It would only be a matter of weeks before it was finished. On the southern shore two dots glinted: the Hellhulks. It was dizzying being so high and Moray reached out his hand to steady Fenn. At the same time he leant over to stroke Tikki’s head.

  “Your little friend took a chunk out of Mattie’s hand before she’d finished stitching. He doesn’t like strangers much!” Tikki’s lip curled and Moray quickly retracted his hand, smiling.

  “You’re wise not to trust too quickly, little one,” he said calmly, watching Fenn settle Tikki back around his neck. The last of the evening sun glanced off Fenn’s face and Moray shook his head sadly.

  “You have her eyes.”

  “Whose?”

  “Your mother’s.”

  “You knew her?” Fenn gaped at Moray in disbelief, wincing as the stitches pulled in his skin. He would have to remember not to move his forehead so much. Moray nodded.

  “A long time ago.”

  “How did you know her? What was she like? Did she live here? I don’t—” Moray raised his hand to quieten him.

  “Too many questions!” he smiled. “I only knew her briefly. She lived here a few years. She was lovely; clever, sweet-tempered, hot-tempered too sometimes.”

  He laughed at some old memory he wasn’t going to share, then looked down at Tikki. “She was good with animals too. She had a way with them. They trusted her.”

  “She was Sargasson then?” Fenn asked. Instinctively he touched his own black hair; it was black enough to look Sargasson. Moray shrugged sadly.

  “What’s in a name? My father found her on the shore, nearly water-slain. She was just a bantling, no more than four summers old. Strong though. She’d swum two furlong to shore when a Labour-Ship sank. Even then I knew she’d become someone great. We took her in and believed she had no kin til her thirteenth winter, when kin in New Venice sent for her.” Moray sighed as he remembered the unhappy day Maya left his world. “She went before the blossoms came and that was the last time I saw Maya, but I never forgot her.” He took the telescope back from Fenn and collapsed it shut, packing away his melancholy as he did. He smiled brightly.

  “So, Fenn Demari; your mother was my friend, a stranger, a Sargasson or a Venetian. You pick the story you want…”

  “But what about Halflin?” asked Fenn. Moray’s smile faded. “He was her father,” Fenn explained. “Why wasn’t she raised by him?”

  “The boat-wrecker was Maya’s father?” Moray asked incredulously.

  “When Chilstone killed my parents, I was given to him to raise,” Fenn explained, unquestioningly repeating the lie Halflin had told him.

  “You were raised on East Marsh?” Moray asked, stunned that the Demari child had been close all this time. Fenn nodded.

  “All I heard was Halflin’s family had been taken to work on one of the Mainland Walls. That was years ago,” Moray said, looking over the ocean of forest, shaking his head at the pity of it. “To think Maya was saved and he was here all along. So he kept you hidden for thirteen years?”

  “He was afraid Chilstone would come after me, because of being their child. Two months ago, he did,” Fenn said flatly, recalling the morning his world flipped upside down. He swallowed back the memory.

  An odd look came into Moray’s eyes as he watched Fenn fighting back tears. His own boy would have been Fenn’s age, had he not drowned in the eel buck his wife hid him in that fateful night when the Terras came. He had reason to hate Fenn Demari, the child that had brought about the death of his own, but all he felt was love for Maya’s child and the certainty that he’d never let Chilstone hurt a hair on his head. He hadn’t been able to save his own boy, but he could at least protect this one.

  “You’ve been out on the marsh since then?” he asked. The marsh was a hard place to survive, especially alone in midwinter.

  “I got on a Gleaner called the Panimengro. They saw a patrol ship and dumped me on the Shanties.”

  “You survived that hellhole?” Moray asked, amazed. He’d known very few who’d ever escaped. “And got back here?”

  “The Warspite destroyed the Shanties. Me and my friends found a boat.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “West Isle.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I had to light the Punchlock. The Terras came, so I ran,” Fenn continued. “They’ve been hunting me since. Last night they nearly caught me and Tikki…” Fenn’s voice cracked with rage. “Chilstone hurt him, and I…” Fenn’s lips were white with anger and Moray recognised the same expression Maya had had whenever she witnessed cruelty.

  “I didn’t mean to…” Fenn faltered.

  “What?” asked Moray.

  Fenn bit his lip. “I… I cut him…”

  “Chilstone’s injured?” Moray looked at him in awe.

  “I cut his fingers off with Grandad’s billhook,” Fenn blurted out.

  Moray let out a long, low whistle. This scrap of a kid had done that? No one had ever got close enough to hurt Chilstone; he was always surrounded by so many guards.

  “He must know you’re here,” Moray said solemnly, shielding his eyes against the bright light as he looked beyond the forest perimeters. The clouds were melting to orange and purple as they spread across the sun. “He’ll come for you.”

  Fenn shivered, feeling afraid and helpless. His wounded eye suddenly felt so tender and he shrank back from the edge of the balcony, feeling too exposed.

  “I’m sorry,” Fenn said.

  “Don’t be, our peace with the Terra Firma was never going to last. Until the attack on the Warspite, Chilstone left us alone; he didn’t even call us Seaborns. We’re nomads of rivers. They call us Bog-men – an insult that protected us.”

  The muscles at his temple twitched in anger as he continued to stare into the distance, scanning the sea-charred trees.

  “After the Warspite was attacked, the Resistance was broken, destroyed. Your parents paid with their lives and the Sargassons paid with their children. Just as no one came to help your parents, no one came to help us. There is no Resistance any more – just what you see here.” He turned and looked at Fenn intently.
r />   “The Seaborn tribes have always looked out for themselves. Even on the Hellhulks they still fight each other.” He sighed heavily and swept his arm across the forest. “Meanwhile the forest grows again and Terra loggers steal our trees for mine props, while our people are sent to the Hellhulks if they so much as take a bulrush from the marsh. Soon we’ll have no home left to defend and no one to help us defend it if we did.” He smiled bitterly at Fenn. “You are our only hope. Our last hope. You could bring the tribes together.” At that moment there was a creak as the door was pushed open.

  “Is the child ready?”

  “Mattie!” Moray said warmly, and steered Fenn back into the room.

  Inside, a grey-haired old woman waited, wearing a bandage on her hand. She ducked a curtsey as Fenn walked in, running her hands over her shorn hair. Ever since Chilstone took their children, Sargasson women shaved their heads to honour the bereaved mothers. Mattie lit a lamp and pulled up a seat for Fenn to sit on. Moray nodded at her to continue but Mattie hesitated, glancing warily at Tikki. Fenn lifted him down onto his lap where he pretended to sleep while keeping one sneaky eye on Mattie as she lifted a lid from a pail. A lemony smell filled the hut.

  “Fleabane for mosquitoes, or they’ll eat you alive,” Moray said, leaning back in his chair. He folded his arms over his chest while he watched Mattie work.

  “How do we stop the Terra Firma?” Fenn asked, as Mattie pulled a horn comb through the knotty tufts of his marsh-matted hair. “Are the Sargassons ready to fight?”

  “We have a few guns, but not enough for an army. Bows, beggars’ bullets…” Fenn frowned. “Slingshots,” Moray explained.

  Mattie dragged the comb twice more through the filthy clumps of Fenn’s hair before she began picking out the beetles and twigs. Fenn bit his lip, imagining how such a battle would end. Stones against Swampscrews? There would be so many lives lost.