When he slept, he saw blood upon the ice and Father lying across the ice-hole, speaking dying words of accusation through blue lips. When he slept, he saw Mother with the failed dreamcatcher shard in her hand. When he slept, he saw a doll’s head in a swaddled blanket.
From above, the place where the salvagers worked looked like a sieve. Ice-holes dotted the terrain to give them access to different parts of what had once been a city, and that city had been built on the edge of a vast hill. The underbelly of the ice still divulged the grid of roads that lined the metropolis. No longer inhabited by their makers, the skeletons of buildings beneath the ice were home to the creatures of the sea; those with shimmering scales that flashed wherever the light breached; tentacles that skulked and felt their way around the coral and corroding man-made things; armored shells that offered protection within the sand-sealed homes that had once afforded the same to Henry’s ancestors.
The salvagers stood in a circle around two of their number. One was a girl, who had come up from the ice and was rubbing her limbs urgently under a foil blanket to prevent hypothermia. The second was a boy no older than ten, who was unconscious and had been dragged from the freezing waters by the girl. The salvagers ignored the female and focused on the boy whose lips had turned the same blue as Henry’s father’s had been as he died. Two of the salvagers were bent over him, trying to revive him in a way that appeared almost calm, as though they’d successfully done this hundreds of times before.
Nearby was a pile of goods brought up from the citadel below in the days previous: oyster shells; plates and bottles of different sizes and shapes; silver, stainless steel and plastic cutlery; a rusted oxygen cylinder; a plastic toy dog; a misshapen funnel; a box with ‘Tupperware’ written on it; a reel of cabling; a windowpane with the glass still intact; a handful of colored child’s building bricks; a broken radio; a bicycle; a dented and twisted brass instrument, and a small brass statuette of a child reading a book.
Henry had been told that the salvagers were adults. To see children being hauled from the ice, surprised him and he realized there would be other things that Lanner, or even his own parents had told him, which might not be true in the Favela today.
Henry was able to get fairly close to the children before he was seen. His arrival coincided with the exact moment that the boy shuddered to life and coughed seawater over the two that had saved him. Immediately, the salvagers lost interest in the boy. He was alive. That was it. It was so casual and swift, the return to normal.
Revealed all of a sudden, one of the salvagers pointed at Henry and one of them said something, although Henry wasn’t close enough to hear it. He doubted himself and his purpose then and part of him wanted to break into a run back to his homestead. It would be so easy; his sisters wouldn’t know that he’d been a coward. Martin wouldn’t know he’d failed them. They’d likely assume him dead like their parents. Perhaps they wouldn’t blame him at all for running. But Henry had passed his Ritual. He was the son of the Bearkiller. He thought of Mother’s smiling face, which morphed into her death stare. The same thing happened when he thought of Father. He couldn’t bear to conjure up the image of the bairn, but that too came to him, as it did whenever he slept.
The group below turned to face Henry and shuffled into a formation around the tallest boy, a hard-looking child with his hair pulled up in a knot. The boy – whom Henry figured to be the leader – held a broom handle, which he’d been using to etch a crude map on the floor by his feet.
Henry guessed there were at least twenty salvagers, including the two recovering on the floor. He’d heard that they were hardy men and he’d expected to find Lanner amongst them, since he’d claimed to be one, but to Henry’s surprise, every one of the salvagers was a child, the eldest looking no more than ten and three.
The children had blankets and furs about their shoulders, which they wore like capes, and under them they were bare-chested – even the girls, who looked as tough and unwelcoming as the boys did. Some of them had pelt headscarves protecting their ears and noses. Each of them looked underfed; their bones poked out wherever their flesh was on show, so they appeared like carcasses of children, malnourished beings from a terrible dream. Henry couldn’t take his eyes from their bodies, which shimmered with the layers of blubber they’d coated themselves with to help protect them from the cold in the water. They glowered at Henry with hateful eyes, which unnerved him. Never before had anyone looked at him in that way. Until recent weeks, Henry had only experienced a life full of kindness, even though he’d never thought of it in that way before.
As Henry studied the rabble, he noticed that a few of the children bore the signs of having survived frostbite, and had parts of – or whole – fingers missing from their hands. One boy only had a finger and thumb on each hand, which reminded Henry of the pincers from one of the crabs he’d seen in the engine room of the ship.
A bird flew high above them and for a moment Henry imagined Mary knocking it out of the sky with her sling, until he remembered that she wasn’t with him and that she didn’t have her sling upon her and that he didn’t know if she was still alive.
The leader of the group stepped forward. His long curly hair was held from his face in a top knot and he bore raised scars upon his chest in ornate patterns, hewn intentionally upon him as decoration. Henry noted that others had the same upon their arms or hands, and one upon the cheeks of his face, like lightning bolts, which took Henry back again to his homestead and the shard of mirrored glass that hung in the center of the igloo, and of Mother holding it in a death grip.
Henry walked toward the group and they held their ground, apart from the leader, who’d taken another step forward. None of them held weapons apart from the leader with his broom handle, but everyone – including Henry – knew there were enough of them to disarm and kill him, so he kept his knife strapped to his belt for the time being. He stood separated from them by one of the circles cut through the ice, half expecting a seal to emerge from the center at any moment.
“Who’s this whale’s prong?” sniped a brunette with pigtails when Henry was in earshot. She wore the bruise of a love-bite on her neck proudly. The children laughed menacingly, apart from the leader.
“Meat,” said another girl at the end of the formation. She had an overbite, and a large red scar that followed the shape of her brow. Her scar didn’t look intentional and Henry imagined she’d not been compliant in its creation.
“Looks like a cunk,” replied one of the boys – Henry couldn’t tell which one with so many eyes upon him – and the laughter returned.
“To beat down, or not beat down? That is the question. Maluco!” added one of the youngest boys.
“Dayum,” one added.
“Dayum,” echoed another.
Henry raised his hands in the air. “Tenha calma,” he said quietly, using words Father had taught him. The children all creased up, which embarrassed and angered him at the same time.
“Acalmar esta!” Calm this. One of the boys dropped his trousers and presented his bare ass cheeks, which the girl with the overbite slapped hard to another roar of laughter.
“Kill the cunk!” yelled half a dozen in unison across the ring of water as the group became more animated.
“We don’t kill the cunk till we know what the cunk wants,” said an ebony-skinned girl who’d been standing at the back of the group warming her skin under a foil blanket. She was pretty, with her hair in cornrows, still dripping from the water that she’d not long been out of. The girl lowered the foil blanket. Her arms were muscular and both her poise and posture suggested a sureness he’d only ever seen in Mother. “What’s your bit, cunk?”
The girl unfolded her arms, displaying her bare chest beneath furs draped across her shoulder. Henry found himself staring at her flesh. The girl’s boldness left him perturbed, as this was the first time he’d looked upon the body of a girl outside his family. He looked away and took the time to regard each of the ragged children that might’ve
done him harm. He tried to assess who the strong ones were and the weaklings, but he found he couldn’t focus on any of them. They were a unit; a mass of unfamiliar faces that scrutinized him as one.
Two of the boys draped their arms around one another in a close, protective embrace. Everything was alien. Everything unfamiliar.
Henry tried to compose himself. “I’m looking for the salvager, Ginger Lanner.” He stared at the leader. The boy stared back, then looked at the girl with the cornrows. He shrugged and took a step backward.
“What you looking at him for? I’m the boss man,” the girl with the cornrows said firmly.
“You’re all kids,” Henry replied, disbelieving.
“And you a poo poo cunk!” heckled a smiling child from the end of the line who had a huge, lumbering frame, but spoke like a child of four. Laughter returned from the ranks and the smiling child stepped forward as if he were going to walk around the ice circle and greet Henry, but the others held him back subtly.
“No, Boo.” The real leader gestured, smiling at the large child with something close to kindness before fixing her stare on Henry once more, all gentleness gone from her.
“Adultos ain’t done this for years. It’s all down to the Orfins now,” spoke a child with his hair cut in a jagged fringe that hung over his eyes. He looked a year or so older than Martin. His expression remained serious, but the fact that he spoke made Henry feel he was making progress with the gang of children.
“Orfins?” Henry had not heard the word before.
“Tranquilo! Shut it, Bart!” cried the leader furiously.
“Boo. My name’s Boo. You poo poo,” said the smiling boy, who’d edged a few meters around the circle toward Henry. His friends pulled him back once more into their number.
Henry smiled at Boo politely and the boy nodded and repeated his name a few times in delight. The girl with bunches shoved the boy to the back of the group once more, out of sight.
“Us. We’re the Orfins,” Bart, the boy with the jagged fringe, continued. “Salvaging got hard. All the good stuff is taken. Adultos made the Orfins do it. We ain’t got mothers or fathers to feed us, so we salvage for a feed. Lanner ain’t no salvager. He’s a—”
“Shut your beaks!” screamed the real leader. Silence engulfed them all. She moved her hands to her hips where a belt held a truncheon of some kind. She didn’t reach for it, but the threat was implied. When she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted she turned and scowled at Henry. “You’re not from here, so you don’t know our ways. If you toss your sticks or cutters this way nice enough, I’ll see to it that your death is done mercifully and proper. If not, your end will have a sting to it, no doubt. Eu promito.” A couple of the children sniggered, but the leader gave them a scornful look and they ceased their laughing. One of them bowed his head apologetically. The other, a dark boy with dreadlocks and the start of a beard – nearer the age of the leader – glowered resentfully.
Henry thought about why he’d traveled all those leagues across the ice on his own, and remembered his anger at finding Father beside the igloo. He summoned it then so it was still with him and took his time to answer. He tried to imagine how his father would approach the group. How he’d convince them of his strength. How his body language would fill the space between them and show them that taking him down wouldn’t be the easiest of tasks, despite their number. Henry had to look them all in the eyes one at a time so they saw no weakness in him. He needed to sow an element of doubt in their minds. Sow some fear. Sow a little bit of crazy. He was older than the salvagers and although the leader and the boy with the broom handle were just two or three years younger than him, he’d passed his Ritual already, and that meant something. He doubted that any of these had ventured far on their own, although he didn’t fancy daring it under the ice like they did.
When he was ready, only then did he speak.
“I’ve come a long way and I brought this sealskin with me,” Henry slipped the sealskin from his shoulder that had contained the flesh of one of the raiders and held it aloft so all could see that it was unremarkable.
“The man called Lanner is wearing a pelt that belonged to my father and I want that pelt, because it is mine. Then I want Lanner’s head, because it is mine to take. I shall take it back to my homestead in this sealskin that my father once made and look upon it whenever I fancy. If I have to fight each and every one of you to get to that man, I will. You might think you can stop me because of your number, but you won’t without suffering a big loss. I’ve come a long way and I will be ruthless. No doubt.”
The Orfins looked at their leader, uncertain how to react and waiting for her to do so.
Henry continued,
“Lanner killed my mother an’ father, an’ our bairn. He took my sisters an’ brother to this place an’ it’s my job to bring them back home. He made us all Orfins like you. He needs to die for that, and I need his head.”
“He’s the brother,” declared one of the salvagers.
“Martin!” yelled Boo gleefully from his exile at the back of the troop.
“Shit,” said another and before Henry could question it, he felt the crack as a broom handle came crashing down on his head from behind and his legs collapsed beneath him. A static of stars appeared in Henry’s field of vision and he lost consciousness.
Henry hadn’t seen the boy he’d originally thought the leader swim beneath the ice and emerge from it like a seal pup to get at him. The boy looked embarrassed as Henry focused on him when he came to, drawing the connection as the boy was now shivering from having dove into the freezing waters.
Henry found his wrists crudely tied with twine made from old shoelaces and other things that had survived a hundred years in some form or another. His head was throbbing and he instinctively raised his hands to check the wound, finding a crust of dried blood that had streamed into his ear and down his neck. The broken broom handle lay in two pieces on the floor and a circle of salvagers sat around him, whispering amongst themselves until the leader spoke again.
“I ain’t going to hurt you none, but I do have to report you. Otherwise we’re done for, and I can’t have that for me or my crew,” she said. “I’m Sissel. You met Yaxley,” she added, motioning toward the boy who’d hit Henry with the broom handle. “This is Cuba, Florrie, Paala, Beany Bobs, Jeezus, Bethlen, Keni, Bart, Dibber, Felipe, Leaf and Q-Tip. Over there we got Big L and his brother Little L, Cola, Moon, Gethen, Miley, Japan, Skindred and Boo.” Each of the children nodded awkwardly at the sound of their names. Some of them smiled. Most didn’t, especially one of the eldest boys with dreadlocks who’d grunted in answer to the name Skindred. Henry felt uneasy about Skindred. He had the same look in his eyes that he’d seen in Lanner’s. He made a mental note not to trust Skindred and to put him down at the first opportunity.
“Martin. Where is he?” Henry said drowsily.
“They brought him to us yesterday. Lanner and a couple of his. They normally stay for the first dive, to make sure they go under. To make sure we enforce it. We took Martin down an’ old Lanner went back to the Birdcage to take drink. Ain’t seen Lanner since and ain’t seen no girls yet. They might end up here, eventually,” Sissel replied.
Henry fought the urge to cry in front of the strange children gathered around him. The thought of Martin’s body floating in the frozen water for the sea creatures to devour was too much. Over at the ice hole, Boo was on his belly, pulling faces at the fish idling near the surface, sharing none of Henry’s worry.
“He’s only a little boy. He can barely swim. He’s just a—”
“Look at us. You think we didn’t go through the same?” Sissel took the hand of a child beside her – the one she’d introduced as Little L – and held it so Henry could see clearly where the fingers stood at irregular heights and a thumb was barely a stump. To Henry’s horror, the boy’s face featured a black hole where the nose should’ve been. “Each of us done this from being nippers,” said Sissel. “I seen tens of kids stif
f up and die under there, and double that frostbitten. It ain’t on us. Like my boy said, we’re Orfins.”
“You killed him!” Henry wailed. Whispers erupted amongst the rabble before him, until one of the Orfins spoke up finally.
“We didn’t kill him. He’s still alive. He’s still under the ice. But he lives,” said Yaxley.
Henry turned to the leader, who nodded.
“We’ll get a dram of alkehole each for dobbing this ‘un in to Lanner right now,” Skindred hollered, “and more favors to come, no doubt.” The boy eyeballed Sissel, who stared back. Yaxley moved himself between them, clearly loyal to his leader, but Skindred was already backing down, moving his eyes to the floor.
“Sissel decides it, Skin. Calm your bit,” said Florrie, the girl with the overbite. Sissel let it go and carried on addressing Henry. Skindred shoved and cursed a path through Florrie and the kids around her to the back of the crowd and sat on his own, reminding Henry of his sister, Hilde.
“He’s in one of the caverns in a high rise. He’s above the water, but under the ice. Ain’t no way of getting him from the top as he’s a few floors down. One way in an’ out, an’ that’s under,” Sissel informed him. Her hands were no longer at her belt. Her face seemed kinder than it had been before.
“Why is he still under there, all alone?” Henry probed, trying not to sound accusing.
Sissel spoke softly as she explained it.
“He’s scared and he’s been there a while. We’ve been taking turns, trying to fetch him back up. He won’t budge. We don’t know him, but he’s one of us now and we do what we can.”
It seemed Henry had been wrong about the salvagers in more ways than one. He got to his feet, used his teeth to undo the twine about his wrists, and took off his coat. No one helped him, but none hindered him either. The bodysuit he’d found in the container beside the ship was completely warm still and he kept that on, feeling it’d offer him better protection than the blubber oil, as its material was unlike anything he’d ever seen and he’d not once felt the cold in it. The snow had not penetrated the fabric of it and it had remained warm and dry throughout his trek. The children marveled at it, clearly having never seen anything like it either. Sissel studied it too, her eyes lingering a bit too long on Henry’s body. Yaxley noticed it and looked away, frowning.
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