by Alex Shearer
I saw, from the corner of my eye, that Gemma was turning her head around slowly to sneak a look at him. But he was onto it immediately and he barked at her to keep her looks straight ahead. But she took her time to turn her head away, and I sensed that he was looking at her too, and that he maybe found her a whole lot more interesting than Peggy, or me, or the sky-fin that was dutifully carrying him along.
And I realised, that apart from me, he was the first real boy Gemma had seen since we had been orphaned and gone to live with Peggy, a whole long eight turnings ago. We’d only known each other. The three of us and old Ben Harley and that’s all it was. It was kind of strange to realise that there were other people in the world near your age. And maybe other worlds too. Ones that you could never even dream of.
9
war zone
MARTIN SPEAKING STILL:
‘You want some water?’ Peggy called to him. She poured out a cupful, left it balanced on the rail, and he swooped down on the fin, took the water, drank it and left the empty cup where he had found it. He nodded, but he didn’t thank her, and he kept the crossbow pointed at her. The sky-fin didn’t get any water. They never drink. They seem to survive on vapour.
We sailed on. The sky was as empty as a pocket. (One of Peggy’s sayings, but then she never did have much money.) After half an hour’s travelling we saw a cluster of islands, mostly small, some little bigger than rocks.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Cut the solar.’
Peggy closed the shields and we slowed, then drifted.
‘We’ll see what the troops say.’
But it was hard to see them. I sneaked a look through the telescope, but I couldn’t see anyone. Maybe I was looking at the wrong island, so I moved the telescope around, but they all appeared to be deserted, except that on the largest of them there were dark, crouching shapes – many of them, and menacing-looking, as if they were predators, waiting to pounce.
‘Tie up.’
We were at a jetty. A bleached, tattered flag fluttered from a post. There was a red fist upon it, against a green background, and the words Liberation Enlightenment Army – Fighting For Freedom.
But when Peggy saw it, she just snorted, and said, ‘Aren’t they all?’ She meant, I guess, that everyone says they’re fighting for freedom, even the ones who aren’t.
‘We’ll talk to the comrades.’
He hopped down from the sky-fin and tethered it to a post so it wouldn’t fly away. Sky-fins are friendly, but they aren’t so friendly that they’ll give up their liberty for you. A chance to escape and they’re off.
The boy soldier’s feet clattered on the planks of the jetty. I saw then that he wasn’t wearing sandals, but military boots, which looked several sizes too big for him, and I wondered if he might have plundered them off a corpse.
‘This way. You first.’
He waved with the crossbow and along we went.
‘Stop right there.’
‘There’ was just down from the jetty, on a promontory. It was like it had been when we stopped to pay off the Toll Troll, only worse. Because it wasn’t just three cairns there – three memorial heaps of stones and pebbles – this was worse, there were scores, maybe a hundred or more.
‘We’ve got to ask everyone what to do,’ he said. ‘We’ll ask my friends.’
And he stopped and sat down on a rock, and he waved at us with the crossbow to stand where we were.
I didn’t understand, but I hoped that someone did. I looked at Gemma. Her face was pale and sad and she was staring at the boy with the crossbow as if she felt the greatest sympathy for him, pitied him, despite all his swagger and bravado. Then I looked at Peggy, and her eyes were moving from him to the cairns and back.
‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Oh my.’ And she sat down suddenly, on a stone next to the soldier – who didn’t look old enough to be any kind of soldier at all. ‘Oh my,’ she said again. And the boy just looked at her, and he seemed to have forgotten all about the crossbow and the arrows, and his eyes were filling with tears.
‘They’re all dead,’ he said. ‘All of them. Everyone.’
And I noticed then that the wind had picked up and that a cool breeze was blowing, ruffling the tattered flag on the post on the jetty. You could hear the cloth slapping against the wire that held it, but other than that, there was barely a sound.
‘What’s your name?’ Peggy asked.
‘Alain,’ he said. ‘Alain Qualar. Colonel. Number 5762.’
‘Oh my,’ Peggy said again, ‘Oh my. I expected to have seen it all by now. But no. Oh my.’
‘They’re all gone,’ he said. ‘I’m all that’s left. Children’s Division, Liberation Enlightenment Army.’ And then he seemed to stiffen, as if with some remnant of military pride, and added, ‘At your service.’
But while this was going on – and it may not sound very good, but it’s the truth all the same – and while Peggy was staring at that boy as if she was looking at the consequences of the worst the world could do to people, and while Gemma was also staring at him, like she wanted to give him some big consoling hug, like he was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen since that dead sky-squid landed in the back garden, all I could think was: I wonder, if I asked him nicely, if he’d give me a go on his crossbow. Because it seemed pretty cool really, and I wouldn’t have minded trying it out.
‘Alain,’ Peggy said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
He looked at her, indecisive, unsure as to whether he should – as a military man – allow this kind of familiarity between soldier and prisoners of war; which, in his eyes, was what we were. But his resolve crumbled and it was as if a barrier broke, and all it had held back came tumbling out.
‘We were Cloud Hunters,’ he said. ‘My family. I’d just been initiated –’ His hand went up to the scars on his face. ‘We’d had a Witnessing. You know about that?’
‘We know.’ Peggy nodded.
‘It was a turning – two turnings – I don’t know. I remember the day clearly … well, you would. But we were travelling and we met another cloud-hunting boat and my father waved and called them over and asked them to Witness, and they said they would, that it would be an honour – well, that’s what they have to say, don’t they. That’s what you do.’
‘You didn’t have the scars then?’
‘No. I wasn’t old enough. I mean, you’d remember your coming of age. But there was something else – on the boat we hailed, there were four Cloud Hunters, two brothers, the wife of one of them, and their daughter. But there was also a boy who was an Islander. No scars, nothing. And they’d taken him along with them for the journey. Which you never see. Cloud Hunters stick together. And I can remember him staring, as my father thrust his knife into the fire, and then brought the red-hot tip up to my face, and cut the scars.’
‘Didn’t it hurt?’ I couldn’t help asking.
‘Shhh!’
‘Martin!’
But Alain didn’t mind the question.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really. Not then. Afterwards, maybe. You get a potion to drink and it numbs the nerves.’
‘Then I wouldn’t mind getting some scars too,’ I said. But Peggy scowled and Gemma snapped at me again.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’
‘After the ceremony we went our different ways. We headed in the direction of the Forbidden Isles, as our tracker said the clouds would be good there, and the other boat sailed towards the island the boy with them called home.’
He was silent a while. I wanted to prompt him, but Peggy stared me quiet.
‘Anyway … we’d been sailing a few days and the scars on my face were beginning to heal. We could see clouds forming in the far distance and kept on a course to meet them. But then we saw we had company. There were six boats moving across the sky towards us at tremendous speed. They had everything on board – solar engines, wind sails and, along the sides, galley-men with paddles, all pawing at the air in unison to drive the boats along.
<
br /> ‘“Barbaroons!” That was what my father thought, and wanted to turn our boat around and try to outrun them, but, as our tracker said, it would have been pointless. Compared to their boats, ours was a snail.
‘Yet, as they got nearer, it was plain that they weren’t Barbaroons at all. They were too smart, too disciplined, as Barbaroons are usually a scraggy and uncoordinated bunch given to fighting among themselves. No, they were soldiers. But no ordinary ones. They were child soldiers, every one of them. The tallest – their commander – was still in his teens, and he was the eldest. There wasn’t an adult among them.
‘‘‘Heave to, or we’ll blast you out of the air!”
‘It wasn’t friendly, but it was perfectly clear. So we reeled in the sails and drifted, waiting to see what they might want.
‘The eldest of them, in the leading ship, threw a grappling iron out to haul in our boat.
‘“What can we do for you?” my father said, keeping it cool and polite. “Gentlemen,” he added. “And ladies too,” he said, when he saw – as I did – that at least half the child army was composed of girls.
‘“We’re at war and looking for recruits,” their commander said.
‘“Who’s at war?”
‘“The Liberation Enlightenment Army.”
‘“Not heard of it.”
‘“You have now.”
‘“At war with who?”
‘“The Oppressionists.”
‘“Not heard of them either.”
‘“Then that’s something else you’ve learned today.”
‘“Well, your war isn’t our war,” my father said. “Whatever it may be.”
‘“It is now,” the commander said. “It just became your war. That’s how wars are, my friend. You have to take a side.”
‘“We’re Cloud Hunters,” my father told him. “Cloud Hunters don’t get involved in –’
‘“We’ll take the boy,” the Commander said. And then he looked at my sister, who was still only small then. “The girl’s too young. You can keep her.”
‘Well, it’s pointless to go into the details, but you can imagine how it was, my father’s anger, my mother’s grief, my sister crying, our tracker reaching for his knife and nearly getting himself killed. But there was nothing to be done. I had to go or they’d have murdered us all. So I sailed one way, and my family were left behind me, and so – like it or not, willingly or not – I became a member of the Liberation Enlightenment Army.’
‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Amazing. And did you get a uniform and a gun and stuff and learn how to kill people with your bare hands?’
I got the looks again, the Peggy looks and the Gemma looks. But the look I got from Alain was nothing like theirs. Their looks were angry and disgusted. His look was sympathetic and understanding, but kind of sad.
‘What’s your name, kid?’ he said.
‘Martin –’
‘You’d like to be a soldier, would you, Martin?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It sounds like – an adventure. I mean, tell me – did you ever shoot anyone?’
He didn’t answer immediately. In fact, I didn’t think I was going to get an answer at all. But I did, if an oblique one.
‘This island that we’re on now was the barracks,’ Alain continued. ‘Barracks and training ground. Where they break your spirit and build it up again. And when you wake from what seems like one long nightmare, you find you’ve turned into a soldier.’
‘Wow …’ I couldn’t help saying that one. It just slipped out. I wasn’t trying to be annoying.
‘The Liberation Enlightenment Army was one of two factions on one of the Forbidden Isles. They were revolutionaries; their opponents were the junta in power. They explained the politics of it to me, but I could never understand them. All I knew was that we were in the right and the others were in the wrong, and we had God on our side, but they didn’t –’
‘And they, of course, believed exactly the same, no doubt,’ Peggy said. Alain looked at her.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never really thought of it like that.’
‘Why didn’t you try to run away and escape?’ That was Gemma. Alain swivelled his eyes around to look at her. She looked away before their eyes could make contact.
‘They take you up into the hills,’ he said. ‘Where they keep the prisoners they’ve taken. And they put a crossbow into your hands. And they say, “You’re one of us now. We’re your family and we’re your friends. You don’t have any other family any more. Just us. We’re all you have. And we’re going to look after you and all we ask in return is your loyalty. And all we ask is that you demonstrate that loyalty to us. So all you have to do is to point the crossbow now, and to pull the trigger.”’
I felt suddenly sick. I didn’t want to be a soldier any more. I’d thought it was just kind of fun and adventures.
‘And if you don’t pull the trigger – if you say you don’t want to pull the trigger – can’t pull the trigger – then they turn their crossbows onto you … and … well … that’s the choice,’ Alain said. ‘Does that answer your question?’
Peggy was staring at him once more, and she looked as old as the universe, as old as time itself, and she just shook her head and she looked so sad, as if she were looking at some terrible disease that there should have been a cure for by now, but there wasn’t.
‘And that’s the choice …’ Alain said again. ‘That’s the only choice you have.’
And it didn’t look like there was anything anyone could say. There were no patches, no repairs. It was like there was so big a hole in the world that you could never darn it up.
‘What happened here, Alain?’ Peggy said.
‘It’s Colonel!’ he snapped, like the soldier had come back into him, and he was all steel and bayonets and pack drills and marches, and civilians like us were foreigners from another land. ‘Colonel by default. The surviving soldier assumes the higher rank!’
‘Sorry …’ Peggy said. ‘… Colonel.’
He stared back at her, a glint of some kind of madness in his eyes. But then that spark extinguished, and he was just a boy again, a couple of years older than me, with Cloud Hunters’ scars on his face.
‘No … that’s all right … Alain’s fine … it’s fine.’
I looked at the piles of stones. I couldn’t count all the cairns. Peggy said my maths was terrible, despite her best efforts, but it would all be fixed when we got to City Island. I wondered if it would. I wondered if teaching could really fix as much as she claimed, or if there were things in the world that nothing could fix, not education or love or anything. I was starting to suspect there might be damage that could never be repaired.
‘I was sent out as a scout – on the sky-fin there. I was gone half a day. When I came back I could see the clouds – too dark for vapour – and the glow of fires. I knew there had been a battle, but I didn’t ever imagine … You see, most of them, they were all like me, they’d been press-ganged, abducted. It wasn’t our war, we were just made to fight it. But when I came back … there was no one left alive. I had to do all the rites, all myself – each one sent to the sun – and I made a cairn for them, so that they’d be remembered … if anyone came … their parents maybe, finally finding them … so they’d know …’
‘And then?’ Peggy said. ‘How long ago was that?’
‘A while,’ Alain said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do … I didn’t know how to find my family … so I went on being a soldier.’
‘I think you’d better come with us,’ Peggy said.
He flared up with anger again.
‘I’m the commander here. I give the orders.’
‘It’s an invitation, Colonel. Not an order.’
He looked crestfallen, strangely confused.
‘I don’t know …’
‘We’re going to City Island,’ I piped up. ‘To get clever. Why don’t you come too? And maybe I could get a go on your crossbow –’
‘Martin!’
‘And Gemma wants you to come with us as well. I’m sure she does. You can see it from her face –’
‘Martin! Shut up!’
But it was true. She did want him to come. And she wouldn’t have blushed otherwise. So I knew I was right.
Alain stood and walked away, turning his back to us. He left the crossbow. If we’d been quick, one of us could have grabbed it and shot him. Not that we would have, of course. I was probably the only one who thought of that. He kicked at the dust with his military boots. Then he turned to face us.
‘I don’t think so. I’m a Cloud Hunter. Cloud Hunters wouldn’t be wanted on City Island, or any other island.’
‘Young man,’ Peggy said, at her sternest. ‘Right now the government is desperate for educated and intelligent people. It’s handing out free educations to whoever wants one. If you’ve got the brains – and I don’t doubt you have them – who cares about the scars on your face? It’s what inside your head that matters. And you can’t stay here, can you?’
He moved away and walked to where the memorial cairns were. He picked up some loose stones and patted them into place. Those cairns would stand there for thousands of turnings. It would be a long, long time before the sparse rain eroded them and the wind and time crumbled them to dust.
‘You might even find your family again – one day. An educated person would know how to look, where to look. You can do anything with an –’
‘What about my sky-fin?’
‘Set it free. Or take him with you.’
‘It’s a she.’
‘Her with you then.’
‘Can I bring her with me?’
‘Of course.’
‘What are your names?’
‘Peggy. Gemma. Martin.’
‘I apologise if I –’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘I’ll just … say goodbye.’
‘We’ll wait for you, at the jetty.’
Which we did. I saw him up by the cairns, saying goodbye to every single one.
‘And stop asking him if you can have a go on his crossbow, Martin!’
‘I was only asking, Gemma. And what’s it got to do with you anyway?’