Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero

by Francesca Armour-Chelu

  “What’s his name?”

  “Doesn’t have one,” Fenn replied.

  “I had a dog once; wouldn’t have just called it ‘dog’.”

  “What was it called then?” Fenn asked. A strange, hurt look flitted over her face, then her jaw set hard again.

  “I’ve waited long enough,” Amber said, hoisting down the rack hanging above the smoky fire. It wasn’t heavy with socks, as Fenn had thought earlier, but rats being smoked. She lifted a few dozen off, threading a sharp piece of wire through them until it was packed, then she did the same with a second piece of wire. As she did this, bits of charred meat fell off into the ash. Comfort quickly gathered them up and brought them over to feed the mongoose. The mongoose curled its tail in happiness as it scoffed down the meat.

  “Is Comfort coming?” he asked, as Amber finished threading the last rat.

  “She doesn’t leave,” Amber replied. “Someone has to stay to bolt the fort up or it’d be taken.”

  “She must get lonely,” Fenn said.

  “Tough,” Amber retorted, but Fenn noticed how she still ruffled Comfort’s head as she passed by.

  Amber hiked the ends of the wires together to make a kind of choker and hung them around her neck. Then she put her coat on over the haul to protect it from being stolen or rained on. The coat was orange with silvery stripes across it, which shimmered in the slanting sunlight. Fenn was surprised to see the Terra Firma logo that someone had partially scratched off. No one on the marsh would have dared wear such a thing and he felt a flash of admiration at her nerve. As he grabbed his jacket, Amber passed him a hoop of rats.

  “Round your neck,” she instructed. He held it away from himself, grimacing at the yellow teeth sticking out from their charred skulls. Amber glared at him again.

  “I’m fine,” he lied as he hitched the hoop around his neck, shuddering at the way the crispy bodies crunched and rustled as they rubbed against each other. He whistled for the mongoose, which slipped into the safe darkness of his rucksack.

  Amber grabbed a trade bag from the hook, unbolted the hatch and swung it open, then slid the ladder down. Just before she stepped out, Fenn noticed how she rubbed the little clover stud in her ear, as if for luck. He pulled his jacket over the top of the rats as she had done and climbed down after her. Above them, Comfort hauled the ladder back up and shut the hatch, snapping the bolts back hard.

  “Keep up,” Amber shouted. She was just as quick at as Gulper, practically sliding down the iron struts, and by the time Fenn reached the ground she was already a good distance ahead. He sped after her, the memory of Mrs Leach’s warning snapping at his ankles.

  The mist had lifted but it was no easier to make out the size and shape of the Shanties. Most of the alleys were murky tunnels that ran between boats so close to each other their top gunwales touched. Where the boats didn’t quite touch, wood had been nailed between them to make another path running above the one at sea level, and this was used when the sea was choppier. Here and there, rickety ladders ran between these alleys; sometimes a barge blocked the way and over time a path had been tunnelled through, so Amber and Fenn had to walk through people’s homes as they cooked or slept. Hurrying along, Fenn heard the bleating of goats and the excited clucking of a chicken letting the world know she’d laid an egg. Rheumy-eyed cats mewed at his feet and lines of sodden washing were spooled between the barges, bespattered by seagull muck. People huddled together on the decks of larger barges, pooling meagre scraps of kindling to make a fire, or sharing a pot to make soup in. Fenn realised that to be down in the Slimes, as Amber told him they were known, was the worst of all worlds to live in; there was no chance here of ever getting warm or dry. Along the way Amber yelled over her shoulder, explaining what to expect to trade for a brace of rats: four eggs, half a bag of rice or flour.

  “Gulper came a different way,” Fenn gasped, finally drawing level with her. He wondered if she’d deliberately taken a difficult route, to test him. She shrugged, pushing her way through some dripping fronds of seaweed and letting them slop back in Fenn’s face.

  “We never go the same way, in case someone tries to nick our stuff when we leave,” she explained. They passed a barge where the portholes had rotted away, leaving huge splintered gaps in the side. Through the decaying wood Fenn could see a couple of young girls playing with two filthy little rag dolls made out of strands of rope.

  “Giv’us!” they implored as Fenn and Amber ran past, stretching out their skinny arms. Fenn hesitated but Amber grabbed his arm and pulled him onwards.

  “They looked like Comfort,” Fenn said.

  “There are loads of Moken here. Water Jipseas. The Terras confiscated their sea-permits first.”

  Fenn felt a wave of anger at the injustice of it all bubble up in his chest. What right did the Terra Firma have forcing innocent kids to live like this? He wondered if anyone on the Shanties had any energy to think of fighting it, but at that moment Amber pushed her way through another huge curtain of seaweed and let it fall back in Fenn’s face again. He spluttered and coughed.

  “Could you stop doing that please?” he said indignantly, but Amber acted like she hadn’t heard him. Fenn wiped the green gunge from his face and tried to flick it away, but it wound around his hand instead.

  “What about Gulper? Where’s he from?”

  “Born here. He had a sister but he never talks about her. Mrs Leach took him in.”

  “When?” asked Fenn, peeling the slime off his hand and getting it stuck on the other one.

  “Before she met Nile … before I came.”

  Amber sighed heavily and picked up the pace, but Fenn didn’t recognise the warning signs. The only entertainment back at home was talk: Halflin telling him about his day, using words to draw a picture of the world for Fenn who was always trapped inside. Halflin never minded questions so long as their answers weren’t useful to Chilstone.

  “And Fathom?” he asked. Amber was plainly ignoring him now, her eyes fixed on the ground. “Fathom?” he tried again. Still no answer. Then, “What about you?”

  Amber stopped abruptly and whipped around to face him.

  “Look,” she said, and took a deep breath. She was almost laughing, but her eyes were hard and sharp, glinting like shards of flint in the sun. Her voice was brittle and clear as ice. “You may have had all the time in the world for chit-chat on the pretty little marsh with your grandad, collecting shells, chasing butterflies and having cosy suppers, but—”

  She stopped short, like she’d run out of time for even this. “If we don’t trade this lot before dusk, Nile will not be happy. And if Nile’s not happy, we’re out. If we come back empty-handed we get half rations. There are hundreds of kids who’d give their teeth free to Waggit just for one warm night in the fort. So shut up and move!” She jogged on again, dodging past a woman sloshing out the night’s slops. Fenn only just managed to hop over the stinking brown mess.

  The alleys were getting more crowded now as they approached the main square by the Mercy-Ship where the Market was held. Water-sellers hawked their wares in rusty tin cans and wood-sellers hobbled around, bent double under the weight of the damp flotsam wood that was loaded on their backs. Beggars and crawlers called out for scraps of food and women with bales of drying kelp, hanging from yokes over their necks, sang to attract custom. There was a pair of jugglers and a woman in a ragged dress walking a slack line tied across a huge gap in the bargeboards. The whole place felt decayed and dangerous.

  At last Amber stopped in a narrow alley just off the main square and they set up in a free corner. She strutted back and forth, scowling at people passing by. From time to time she shouted aggressively, “Rats! Roast Rats!” No one looked her way. No one was buying.

  By the Mercy-Ship mast a crowd had gathered and in their midst a woman was crying, a tattered black length of fishing net veiling her face. Ancient, the captain of the Mercy-Ship, was reciting a few quiet words, the hem of his straggly white beard lifting and dropp
ing in the breeze. As Fenn watched, the wire grille from a hole was lifted up and a body, bound in cloth and weighted by a stitched-in stone, was held upright over it. Four more shrouded bodies were lined up crookedly against the flank of the Mercy-Ship. The crowd muscled in to watch, so Fenn couldn’t see, but when a gap opened again one of the shrouded figures had gone.

  “Is that a funeral?” he asked.

  “It’s a Seaborn tradition; Bury me standing cos I’ve spent my life on my knees.” Amber smiled bitterly. “And they sink faster that way,” she finished pragmatically.

  A group of young crawlers, who had crowded around the funeral hoping to get a bit of food, were shooed away by the congregation. They dispersed into the Market like hungry sticklebacks, trying to snatch food and steal little pieces of dropped kindling. One of them, a skinny little girl of about five years old with a smudged face, sidled up.

  “Can you spare a bit? Got two hungry brothers, Miss.”

  “Tough,” snapped Amber.

  The beggar looked beseechingly at Fenn, her eyes large and watery in her haggard face. Her elbows and knees stuck out like joints on a twig. He pulled a rat off and handed it to her. She grabbed it, instantly running off without even thanking him. Amber turned on Fenn, so furious that spit flecked his face as she spoke.

  “You idiot! We’ll be hassled by crawlers all day now!”

  “She was starving,” Fenn retorted angrily.

  “We all are!” Amber shouted. “Why do you think I look like this? I had to sell my hair just to get Comfort enough to eat! There hasn’t been a single rice ship for two months! Too much water to cross and most of the Mercy-Ships get their supplies confiscated by the TF patrols anyway!”

  “My grandad used to say a kindness comes back around,” Fenn began. “He said—”

  Amber snorted.

  “He was wrong. Here it’s dog-eat-dog. How’s a crawler like that ever going to pay you back?” Fenn opened his mouth to answer but stopped.

  “Quick learner. Yeah, right…” she muttered sulkily. “Normally this is a good spot, but I haven’t sold one rat yet. You’re obviously putting people off.” She frowned and glanced along the alley.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “you’re not going to sell anything anyway so you can stay here. I’ll try down there for half an hour. If I can’t find better than this, I’ll come back and you move.”

  Fenn nodded. He was glad to have a break from her. Amber unhooked half the rats from Fenn’s necklace and threaded them on her own. “I might as well have these, you’ll never sell them,” she said, and disappeared into the throngs of people.

  Fenn let her go; he was sure selling couldn’t be that hard.

  “Fresh roast rats!” he called, but even he could barely hear himself over the hubbub of the Shanties.

  “Fresh roast rats…!”

  People milled by, glancing suspiciously at him from time to time, but no one stopped. Lots of kids were selling rat meat, dried or roasted strips of salted gull, bags of kelp. He thought hard; he needed to stand out from the crowd. A hook. Maybe he could pretend the mongoose caught the rats, make it a unique selling point? He opened up his rucksack and let the mongoose out. It scampered up his arm, blinking its eyes at the bright light, and sniffing the strange smells in the air.

  “Fresh rat! Caught the natural way! Without traps!” He felt an idiot, but a woman stopped to stare at the mongoose. Fenn started getting it to perform little tricks: running up one leg, across his shoulder then down the other, going so fast you could barely see it. Two more women stopped to laugh; one of them offered a small bag of rice for three rats.

  Fenn told some of Halflin’s corny old jokes and the mongoose let himself be petted without baring its teeth, almost like it knew what Fenn wanted from him. A small crowd soon gathered. Someone gave the mongoose a nut and it managed to crack it open by repeatedly throwing it at the ground, making the assembled crowd roar with laughter. Within ten minutes, Fenn had traded every single rat; he had three bags of rice, half a dozen eggs and some coffee grounds. It was nearly time to show Amber up; he was looking forward to this. He whistled while he waited, swinging the empty hoop from one arm ostentatiously. He’d never felt smug before; it felt good.

  He waited another ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Thirty minutes turned into an hour. By then the smug feeling had faded and his face and hands were numb from the cold. It slowly dawned on him that Amber wasn’t coming back. The exuberance he had felt at selling all the rats faded. Now he was just scared and alone. He had no idea how to find his way back. It was impossible to see where the forts were once you were down at sea level and there were a multitude of passageways to get lost, robbed or murdered in. It had started to get dark.

  He looked around for somewhere to get a good vantage point. Banked against the alley there was a fishing boat with a piece of net hanging over the side. He chivvied the mongoose to run up so that when it got as far as the netting its weight dragged it within reach of Fenn. He hauled it down, yanking hard on it to make sure it’d take his weight. When it held true he climbed up.

  He reached the top, leant on the bow rail and peered over the marketplace and alleys, which splayed out like rays on a sundial. Amber was nowhere to be seen. As he let the mongoose back into his rucksack he noticed how some crawlers had spontaneously clumped at the base of the boat, peering up at him. Seeing as he had nothing left to give them anyway, Fenn stubbornly stared ahead and pretended he hadn’t seen them.

  “Oi! It’s me!” a voice squeaked. Fenn looked out of the corner of his eye as he tied up the rucksack. It was the little girl he’d given the rat to earlier. She cocked her head to one side. “That ugly girl you were with? Thinks she’s somethin’ special?” The little girl spoke authoritatively, her eyes wide in her filthy, mud-streaked face. Fenn nodded. “Got ’erself in a spot.”

  “What?” asked Fenn, frowning.

  “She’s gettin’ twocked.” Fenn stared blankly. She tried again. “Twocked? Jacked? Pinched?” She looked at him like he was an idiot then yelled like he was deaf, “ROBBED!”

  “Where?” Fenn gabbled, slithering back down the net as fast as he could.

  “Down by the Bilge. Din’t call a Whipper, ain’t got nuffin’ ter give ‘im,” the girl explained as she took Fenn’s hand trustingly and lead him at a trot down through turning alleys. Finally she stopped and pointed down a dank lane, flanked either side by crumbling boats.

  Fenn squinted into the smog, trying to see. At the far end, beyond dripping curtains of seaweed and wet washing, he caught a glimpse of the fluorescent stripe of Amber’s jacket. She was standing with the blind old lady who had grabbed at Fenn on his first day.

  “That’s Blind Sally. Her boys work with her,” the little girl whispered.

  Sure enough, in the shadows beyond Amber, Fenn could see the two men who had stolen his rucksack when he first arrived.

  “Amber!” Fenn shouted, trying to warn her.

  She couldn’t hear him. As Fenn sprinted towards her, he heard the little girl give a shrill whistle. At the same moment the men dived towards Amber and Sally grabbed her arms, pinning them by her sides. The bald one grabbed Amber’s bag, but suddenly the gang of crawlers darted out from the surrounding alleys and mobbed them, scurrying between their legs, grabbing and nipping at their clothes like a shoal of fish. Swiping at the kids, the bald man tripped and fell head over heels in the slippery mud, dropping the bag. Fenn saw his chance. Skidding in the mud he made a swoop for the bag, slamming into Sally, knocking her over. She screeched loudly, clawing at the air and scratching his face. He struck out and, regaining his balance, grabbed the bag and yanked Amber to her feet. They flew back up the lane. The two men were still fighting the hordes of beggars, but they kept flocking around them like seagulls, kicking and punching back – giving as good as they got.

  Fenn and Amber ran on through several more alleyways and up a level until they were sure they were in the clear, then they stopped to catch their breath. Fenn was doub
led over with a stinging stitch in his side. He tried to take slow steady breaths like Halflin had once shown him, but the pain was making his eyes water. He wasn’t going to cry in front of Amber of all people. Amber slumped against the side of a barge.

  “She said she had a sack of flour to trade! Flour! Should have known it was too good to be true,” Amber gasped. “How did you find me?”

  Fenn had no breath to tell her about the beggar girl, but he was looking forward to speaking. After all, Amber had treated him like an idiot; it was high time she was told that she wasn’t always right and that Halflin’s advice about kindness coming back around had been good. The stitch was subsiding now and he straightened up. Amber was staring at him, waiting; her eyes larger than normal and grey as the sea surrounding them. She looked like a frightened ghost; white and scared, her lips trembling. And strangely she seemed much smaller.

  In that second Fenn understood. This was the real Amber, beneath the sarcasm and angry showing-off. All that was just to make herself look bigger and scarier, trying to protect herself – like Lundy’s vicious cat. Fenn realised he should have expected a few scratches from her; he should have let her get used to him first, before meddling with a creature he didn’t know.

  “Beginner’s luck,” he finally answered with a lopsided grin.

  13

  The sun had set and the sky had turned lavender-blue over the fort. Amber banged on the hatch with the pole and replied to the whistle with the same three notes Gulper had used. When she helped Fenn through, she shot Fathom a look which meant he left them alone for a few moments. They pulled the ladder up together and Fenn knelt down beside her, helping shunt the last bolts across the hatch. She couldn’t look at him.

  “Are you going to tell Nile?” she asked as she jammed a bolt in place.