Spark

by Alice Broadway

My clothes are heavy; with every movement they slow me down and whisper be still, be still, stay here, be still. I will not listen, I keep looking for her – keep hoping that the next surge of water will give me Gull.

  I have to rise again and breathe, but I take as few gulps as I can risk. All I feel is the cold. My fingers don’t feel like mine and my hair wraps round my face.

  I can’t stop. I swim on, looking left and right through the murky depths, and I think I see a piece of driftwood but it is drifting too limply to be wood and I reach out and I grab her. The tunic is weighing her down so that even in her stillness she cannot float. I rip at it, cursing the seamstress for making the seams so neat and firm. I find the neck and I tear down the middle where the buttons are, and I feel my nails rip too and see little puffs of red as my bloody fingers keep working and like a final gasp the tunic tears open and she is light and free and I hold her and with all my might I swim up. Up is the only word I know right now. Up is the only way, but what if I’ve forgotten? What if I think I’m going up and really I’m taking us deeper and whatever I do she must be dead. Up up up.

  Hands grab me by the hair and rip my face into the air. I heave a breath and wrench Gull’s head out of the water. Whoever is next to me guides me, calls my name and says this way this way.

  Oscar. He brings us back to shore, far away from the side where the blank community is gathered. Then leaves me and staggers with Gull on to the shingle, drops beside her and begins pressing on her chest. I stumble after him but the heaviness of walking in the real world is too much and I’m on my knees. I fall forward and someone else catches me. It’s Fenn.

  Together we stare at Oscar, working on Gull. Nothing, nothing – and then. Water pours from her mouth and she vomits. And a breath sees its chance and squeezes its way into her lungs and she snatches it, claims it and another and another, and she’s crying too and coughing and crying.

  I blink again, and it’s just me and Gull and Oscar and Fenn, who has a flaming torch in one hand – he must have run all the way round when he saw me go after Gull. I stand, my whole body juddering with the violent shivers that have taken me over, and I turn to look at the blanks on the other side of the lake.

  They were going to leave her to die.

  And one by one, they turn and walk away, into the shadow of the trees.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  There is a fire.

  My face is resting against rough ground and, when I sit, I sway with wicked vertigo that makes me feel like I might sink; like I might go under again. Fresh tears fall from my eyes and I hate them. I hate the way they remind me of the water, the way they come from within me, and I’m scared they won’t stop and I will flood the earth.

  But there is a fire.

  When I wake up again, the first thing I see is Gull. She’s here, next to me and asleep on brightly coloured blankets. The fabric that she should have been wrapped in when she came up from the water, triumphant.

  The fire is close enough to warm us, far enough away for us to be safe. My hair smells of smoke, which is better than lake. It’s just the two of us here, but I see evidence of Oscar – his satchel on the ground – and of Fenn too. He must have gathered up those robes; brought the torch around to the side of the lake where Oscar and I were watching. Gull stirs a little and I try to lean across to check that she’s really OK. She looks paler than ever, and her hair is weed-ragged from the water. I’m dizzy just sitting and my chest feels like someone punched me in the ribs. I doze.

  “Are you OK?” Fenn places more wood on the fire, making me jolt upright. His voice is gruff but not unfriendly. Oscar sits next to him, silent and thoughtful.

  “I’m fine,” I croak. Then: “What are you going to do?”

  He stares at the fire, watching it crackle. “We’ll have to take her back.”

  “We can’t go back there. You saw them – they just left her. How could they leave her?”

  “It’s not easy to explain. You’ve not been here long enough to understand.” But his voice is heavy with doubt at his own words.

  “Well, I understand that you don’t just leave someone to die.” I’m watching him tend the fire.

  “I’m not saying it was right.” His teeth are clenched – the fire in his gaze is still there, only I think it’s a little less bright than before. “You could never understand. You come and you play at being blank. But you’re not one of us.”

  “Then why are you here?” Somewhere along the line I have stopped being scared of Fenn. “Why didn’t you stand there and watch her drown, like the rest of them?”

  He is silent, poking the fire.

  “That lake would have been her grave. Is that really what your beliefs require?”

  There’s a pause while Fenn rescues a piece of wood that is about to fall. Then: “Obel never told you why he left, did he?”

  “Obel doesn’t tell anyone anything,” I say honestly.

  Fenn laughs bitterly.

  “He’s an awkward swine.”

  Fenn sits on the blanket next to me, crossing his long legs. He takes a flask and drinks, then hands it to me. Then he begins to speak, almost dreamily, and for the first time I see the similarity between him and his older brother. The same slow, deliberate voice. That sense of weighing every word.

  “Obel always did everything right. But he did everything wrong too. He did his jobs well, he was nice to people, he always worked hard and showed up at the fireside full of attention and zeal. But … he had to question everything. You know?” I nod. “Always curious, always questioning. I was only four when he left, but I remember that. He would read our stories and argue with the elders about what they meant. And he was always sneaking off from chores to draw.” I shift a little in my seat, imagining that grave, curious little boy, with his sketchpad in hand. “He was fascinated, always, by your bloody ink. He couldn’t get enough of stories about Saintstone, about the marks, about what they meant. The stories behind them. He was always trying to accompany the riders to Riverton or Saintstone. A stupid, stupid risk. He’d always get caught by Dad.”

  “I was too small to think of him as anything other than my big brother, but eventually people began to talk. Anyway, on his birth day the same thing happened to him as happened to Gull.” He rubs his hand across his forehead. “He went into the water so sure of himself, and…” Fenn shrugs.

  “It was Mum and Dad who went in after him. They brought him out. He wasn’t down for long – not long at all.” He glances at Gull and his brow furrows. “Not as long as Gull. They tried to convince people it was a mistake – that his foot got caught…

  “You know the story of the lake. If someone stays under the water it is a sign that their sin has not been cleared. It shows that they are cursed and must be left to their fate. They thought Mum and Dad had been blinded by their affection – that they had turned their back on their community in saving Obel. And that in so doing, they had cursed us all.

  “They tried to keep it from Obel, but he knew what everyone was saying. And one day he went to the elders and told them he didn’t believe they were right about the birth day ritual.”

  The fire crackles and I hear Gull’s steady breathing. It sounds just like Obel. He went away, worked it all out, and when he was ready he would have presented his case.

  “Obel challenged them,” Fenn says with amused pride. “He said the ritual was never meant to be taken literally. His reading was that it was a ritual of remembrance rather than something they must do each year to atone. Well, remembrance – you can imagine how much they liked that. It sounded too much like the words of the marked.” I incline my head; I can just imagine how incendiary it must have been. Remembrance rather than purification.

  Smoke drifts in Fenn’s direction and he squints his eyes, fanning it away. The fire smells different out here in the forest – more real somehow.

  “Anyway, this all coincided with a terrible year. We’d never had much, but that season all our fruit trees were attacked by insects,
our potatoes came out of the ground rotten. There was water – plenty of water, too much perhaps. But everything else was a failure. And there was a reason for it, people said. A curse brought to our land by Obel, the day he was pulled from the water.” He shrugged, his eyes troubled. “I don’t know whether they were right. Maybe breaking the ritual did bring a curse to our land. But I also know that when you’re hungry, you’ll look for a solution anywhere.”

  He’s right. Hunger does something to your brain and your conscience. I know that now.

  “They talked to him for months, the elders. Mum and Dad. Trying to persuade him that they were right and he was wrong. In the end, Obel told them he would break the curse by undertaking the ritual again. And he walked out to the lake one day, wearing his birth day tunic with the stones still in it. A crowd gathered as he went under. When he resurfaced people were cheering – he was barely under a second.

  “But he didn’t turn around. He swam on and he emerged from the water on the other side of the lake – where you came out with Gull. He stooped to collect a bundle – he must have hidden his things over on that side of the forest – and we never saw him again.” He flings the fragments of leaf into the fire and I watch them blacken and burn.

  “They say that from the day he left, the land began to yield something. Not much, but something, and it made people hope. They believed the curse had been broken because Obel had been obedient. He had proved Belia’s story. His atonement, his absence – it had fixed all that had been broken.” He shrugs. “Until now, I guess.”

  There is a long pause after Fenn has finished speaking. I clear my throat.

  “And you never saw him after that?” I ask, and Fenn shakes his head. He raises the flask in a toast. “To Obel. Who messed everything up and walked away. To Obel. Who might have saved us, but didn’t stick around to find out.”

  I take a long look at Fenn, and it’s another piece of the puzzle – all his anger, all his devout obedience and earnest faithfulness – he’s been trying all this time to not be another Obel, to prove himself, to save himself. Toe the line. Be perfect. It’s a heavy burden to have been carrying.

  I pull the flask from his hand and hold it up. My voice shakes when I speak. “No, Fenn. To Obel, who has done all he can to help you since he left Featherstone. To Obel, who has remained faithful to your ways even while living like a marked man.”

  “You know, from all I’ve heard about Obel, I think he would love this much attention.” Gull’s voice is scratchy and her words end in a hoarse cough that leaves her gasping for breath.

  Fenn goes over to her. “Come on, we’re not having a toast without you. Sit up and drink this, it’ll help.” Gull sits, supported by her brother, and we pass the flask between us.

  “And now it’s happened again.” Gull’s voice comes as a whisper; her eyes are full of fear. “Is our family cursed? Or am I?” Her shaking becomes too intense and I pull her close to me. She burrows her head into my shoulder and her sobs frighten me.

  “No one can hurt you, Gull,” I whisper to her.

  “I should have died. I wasn’t meant to come back.”

  I think back to her tunic, sewn so tightly, not one button undone, and I daren’t ask whether she tried to save herself. Maybe she did; maybe the buttons in the water were too stiff. Or maybe she was trying to make things right by— And I hold her more tightly and whisper that I love her, that I’m here and I won’t leave her.

  Oscar, who has been quiet, stands and stretches. “What will you do now?” It’s the question none of us want to think about.

  “I don’t know.” Fenn is gazing into the fire. He smiles. “You know, it’s time for the fireside, back home. I’ve never missed one, not even when I was sick as a little boy.”

  “Me neither,” whispers Gull. Then, “Fenn – we’ve got a fire – why can’t we do it here instead? We can make it just like a fireside gathering at home.”

  “OK.” Fenn smiles at her fondly and Gull claps her hands. “How should we begin? A story?” She nods eagerly. There is some colour in her cheeks, although her eyes are still sad.

  “Go on, then, Fenn. You tell us one of your stories,” Oscar says. Fenn seems a little embarrassed but he looks at Gull, shining with excitement, and steels himself to begin.

  “OK, then.” Gull tries to look serious but her grin breaks through and Fenn is smiling back and I can’t believe he is here, with two marked and an outcast blank, and I’ve never seen him look so at peace. “Time for a story. I hope you’re sitting comfortably – but if not, there’s nothing I can do, so deal with it.”

  “You two might not like this one.” He looks at me and Oscar. “It’s a story about power and control. It’s the story of how we escaped.”

  Chapter Forty

  The Sleeping Princess

  Once upon a time, a king ruled his kingdom. He liked to think he ruled well, but his people lived in fear. They obeyed and served because the alternative meant torture and death. The kingdom grew rich as the people slaved for their king, but it was only he and his queen who saw the bounty, and she was as cruel as her husband.

  When the queen became pregnant, a small group – a band of brave ones – began to pray. They begged that this child would somehow change things, that this baby would bring the hope and release they so desperately needed. They had prayed before and their appeals had gone unheeded. But this time they persisted.

  They prayed so hard and their magic was so strong that the forces of evil began to worry. Surely the king’s rule would not be thwarted? And so, one night, just before the baby was due to be born, a demon visited both the king and queen in a dream. The demon warned them that the future looked bleak and that the baby could bring down the kingdom. The demon told them of the brave band of prayerful worshippers and warned them of the magic that had been laid down as a result.

  “The day your daughter pricks her finger with a needle is the day your kingdom is destroyed.”

  The king and queen woke in terror – staring at the shifting mass in the queen’s belly as though it were a monstrous thing. The queen’s panic brought on labour – the king gave futile orders: he told her to stop, told her to cross her legs and not let the baby come! But, of course, their daughter was born the very next day.

  Now the king was adamant that the curse could not be allowed to take hold.

  “We must kill her,” he said to the queen. “Let’s be rid of this albatross and carry on our days in peace. We shall tell the people the baby died at birth.”

  And so the queen assured the king that a guard would take the baby into the woods and kill it. But although the queen would not dream of letting her kingdom be spoiled by her own daughter, she could not bring herself to kill the baby. And so, instead, she sent her baby to a desolate place – a place where only the cursed blanks lived. The baby would be cared for by a group of women who – she made them promise – would never use needles. Her child would be safe, for these cursed people lived in a land surrounded by a wall – a wall that her grandmother, Moriah, had built. The queen would make sure the blank women caring for her child had what they needed, but the daughter would never be allowed to leave her confines; and of course, she would never be allowed to see a needle.

  And for the next sixteen years all was well, if well meant “as things have always been”. The king and queen continued in their cruelty, the people suffered, the daughter was kept within the walls, safe but neither happy nor whole. By this time the brave band of the faithful had dwindled to just one woman – for when prayers aren’t answered quickly, people’s faith has a tendency to die. But this woman kept on praying every day. She had almost given up hope – after all, hadn’t the princess died at birth? Would there ever be a chance for change to come?

  And yet through her prayers, the magic was kept alive – the tiniest spark was enough – and the princess began to ask questions.

  She asked many things, but one of them – one that made her guardians’ faces blanch with horror – was
how clothes were made. She was sick of dresses. She wished she could make trousers that she could climb in. She examined the pieces and saw tiny holes, thin thread, and wondered at what magic had brought the pieces of material together. The women who cared for her never told her, and the queen sent new pinafores and tunics each year as her daughter grew.

  One day, a new pinafore arrived, and on it was a pocket. And in the pocket was a needle. A negligent seamstress, no doubt. But the princess kept it in her pocket; she would take it out in secret and examine it, wondering at its shininess and tiny, brittle strength.

  And another day, the thread on her pinafore became loose. It had never happened before and, as the princess watched the thread unravel – over under over under – and the seams come free, she began to see what the needle might be for. And in secret, she began to sew.

  With the magic growing ever stronger, the king was visited once more in a dream.

  “Your wife has tricked you and the girl lives!” the demon-visitor howled. “Just look at how your daughter thrives. Your downfall is near!” The visitor gave the king a vision and he saw the princess behind the wall, sewing busily, and when he woke he knew he must act.

  And so the next night he rode through the woods and found the wall. He used ropes to scale it and crept in to where his daughter slept. He would not see her beauty nor her hope. He could only see his fear; and yet, he could not kill her. Something – magic, perhaps – stilled the blade in his hand. And so, while she slept, the king took up a pair of scissors that she used to cut cloth and swiftly, he cut off each of her dainty fingers – snip, snip, snip – and placed them in a velvet bag around his neck. He stole away through the night, back to his palace, and slept well, knowing he had solved the problem once and for all. Now and then he would pat the bag that remained around his neck and smile.

  When the daughter woke, bed full of blood and fingerless, she howled. She called out to the ancestors to save her, to pity her, to vindicate her. And her voice entwined with the old woman’s prayers and made the magic even stronger.