by S. K Munt
Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘You have six chips?’
‘It’ll be six and a half in the morning, so that means I’ll have four and a half left after I buy the dress, which is perfect, because that means I’ll be able to buy a second uniform next Friday after I get paid again.’ Finn winked at her mother. ‘Then, the neighbours can stop wondering if you’re strip searching me when I get home every day!’
But her mother’s surprised expression turned grim, as Finn had predicted it would. ‘Finn, you shouldn’t have to pay for things like-’
‘But I can, so I’m going to!’ Finn said cheerfully, then paused. ‘Unless… is there something that you need more?’
‘No,’ her mother said firmly, though Finn was sure she had a list three pages long. ‘I don’t want you spending your money on needs, but it will be easier on us both if you have two, so if you want one, then just get it.’ She frowned at Finn. ‘But next time, buy something else for you to wear around here that you like, okay? Because that dress is yellowing, as are your favourite cut-offs, so I’m gonna have to fix them before you wear them again.’
‘Why bother?’ Finn glanced down at the white maxi dress, which was an old beach cover up of her mother’s that she borrowed a lot. ‘Isn’t off-white all the rage now?’
‘Not in my house it’s not…’ her mother grumbled, eyeing the dress. ‘I don’t know if I can justify wasting bleach on that, but I’m sure I have some old dye sachets lying around somewhere…’
Finn snorted softly and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘I’m sure you do,’ she said, and she meant it, because her mother had been hoarding things since well before hoarding had become a way of life.
Back before the apocalypse, living with all of that stuff had driven Finn and Autumn nuts, because there hadn’t been a storage compartment in their van that hadn’t been crammed full of stuff, like sugar packets, fabric off-cuts, toiletries from hotels and old jars. However, since that stuff had started to thin out and the van had become roomier, Finn had found herself longing for the days when she’d open a cupboard and have her mother’s surplus of odd belongings rain down upon her… and she didn’t want to know what life would be like when they finally reached the point where their cupboards were as bare as everyone else’s in the Pen’s were.
*
Finn had a quick shower and then headed down to her part of the van to change, noting that her mother was peering into the oven, which they now used for storage, no doubt looking for fabric dye already. Most of their appliances had been fried along with everyone else’s, but Sair had always been careful about unplugging things that weren’t in use, and holding onto things that she might never use again, so one or two things had survived- like her ancient Westinghouse freezer, which she’d only plugged in on the rare occasions when she’d gone crabbing (and which they now used every day in lieu of a fridge) and her ancient, pedal-operated Singer sewing machine, which she’d been meaning to restore for years. Sair never had restored it, and the antique had been folded in, covered with a cloth and shoved into the narrow gap between her bed and wall, so she could use it like a desk for the longest time, which had prompted Finn to tease her mercilessly about being a hoarder. But her mother’s expensive sewing machine had been killed by the EMP and so, the joke was on Finn, because the Singer was officially their most valuable asset now, second only to the van itself.
Once she’d dried herself off and combed through her damp hair, Finn changed into Autumn’s old Paramore shirt, which was so thin it was practically see-through by then, with just a pair of underwear, and then closed the accordion door that cordoned off her room from the rest of the van. Her mother had a door too, but the van got so hot that they only ever closed them when one of them needed to focus and the other was making noise, which wasn’t often.
Finn didn’t have a desk or anything because aside from the triple bunks, the only other piece of furniture in her room was the built-in closet beside her bed that was exactly the width of the corridor, but when she needed a desk, she either used the built-in kitchen table, or sat up in the middle bunk (the one she’d claimed as her own bed) and used a little foldable lap table over her thighs to do work on. They’d never needed all three bunks, so the bottom one had always been crammed full of boxes with their other things in them, and her mother had filled Autumn’s old bunk with boxes of the things she hadn’t been able to take with her when she’d moved out... But Finn had pushed all the boxes to the back and then had lined up all of her and her mother’s books on the edge in front of them, so from the front, they looked like bookshelves, which suited her not only because she loved how her bedroom looked like a reading nook now, but because it hid the clutter behind them.
Finn’s bunk was covered with a quilt she’d had since before the Strike- a black one, that was printed with cream-coloured suns, moons and stars, like a vintage map of the constellations, which matched the walls and roof within her bunk, because she had decorated them with tiny glow and the dark star stickers when she’d been eleven- back when she’d still associated the night sky with dreams and wishes rather than with death and destruction. Personally, Finn believed that her bedroom was the cutest part of the van, because her mother’s habits always made the rest of the space look somewhat cluttered, but thanks to the fact that the van had old-school, cherry-coloured, wooden-look timber and faux panelling, it still looked very cosy and homey inside even with the clutter- like a cabin in a forest- which suited how it looked from the outside too.
Besides, her mother had always collected beautiful things too, so there were sweet touches everywhere, from her antique hurricane lamp and candle holders, which was their main source of light at night, to her vases stuffed with fresh wildflowers, and dozens of family photos, which were propped or hung up everywhere. Looking at those depressed Finn now, because she actually had five older brothers and sisters and had no idea how any of them had weathered the apocalypse, seeing as how they’d all lived over a thousand kilometres away at the time of the Strike.
Finn, Autumn and her mother had once called Brisbane home too, until they’d moved north after the divorce, looking for a sea-change, but the older siblings had stayed where they were because they’d already been adults at the time of the divorce who’d have lives, families and homes of their own. On the bright side, Brisbane had escaped being hit with comet fragments and the radiation that had come with it, meaning that they’d probably fared better down there than they had up north so close to a ground zero (word had it that Brisbane was doing better than any of the other capital cities were) but the problem was that Autumn had moved out just before Finn had started high school and had been fruit-picking so she could backpack across Southern Queensland at the time of the Strike, so they had no idea where she’d been, whether she’d survived or how she was doing now if she had. And that was extra troubling because Autumn had always had a very vulnerable disposition, so it killed Finn and her mother that they didn’t yet have the means to go searching for her.
Finn didn’t like giving her imagination the chance to play with those kinds of fears for long though, so she flicked on the tiny torch she kept wedged in her bunk’s window and then reached for the shelf at the end of her bed, which was where she kept her favourite things, including a framed photo of her Paige and Michelle on school camp in the fifth grade, her jewellery box (which had more trinkets in it than it had jewels) and a ceramic cat that she used as a pen holder. What she was after that night, however, was the stack of spiral notebooks that she collectively referred to as her journal.
Finn had been keeping a diary since the third grade, and the pretty assortment of hard-cover notebooks that were lined up on her top shelf were full of the kinds of things that you’d expect to find in a young girl’s diary: a series of messy, rambling entries waxing lyrical about crushes and catfights. Since the Strike though, Finn had started keeping a more in-depth account of what the world was like now in a new set of tall, spiral bound notebooks, which looked more professional
than her personal diaries did. Maybe she’d show them to her kids someday, and maybe she wouldn’t, but almost no one had a working camera anymore, and Finn didn’t have Mischa’s artistic talents, so it was the best way Finn knew how to capture what her life was like for the sake of preserving it for future reflection. She wrote as neatly and professionally as she could, treating it more like a writing exercise than an emotional punching bag, but she was an emotional person so more often than not, her feelings found a way of creeping onto the page, which was why she ended up writing about the argument that she’d had with Aaron in great detail that night, until she’d found a way to articulate what it was about him that bugged her so much:
‘I know life is hard for him, but haven’t we all been traumatised, in some way? Haven’t most of us lost whatever it was we were living for before? Yes! But if we let people justify their hostile attitudes towards others on the grounds of trauma, then what will be left of the human race worth saving now that all of us can plead that? No, it’s almost like King Amory needs to make a law: If you’re moving into Laidlaw, please leave all non-essential baggage- especially emotional baggage- at the door so there’s more room for everyone! Not just to live in, but to breathe in- and find peace within!’
Satisfied that she’d purged herself of some of her pain, Finn put her journal away and then grabbed her copy of The Pillars Of the Earth from the top bunk, which was long enough to keep her imagination occupied for at least a week.
When she’d grabbed it, she’d figured that she’d just read a chapter or two until her eyelids grew heavy enough to close, but she was apparently more exhausted than she’d thought, so she ended up falling asleep two pages in, and dreamt deeply of welcoming smiles and dresses that shimmered like pearls under her private sky of harmless stars without a cloud- or strike- in sight.
CHAPTER SIX
When Finn awoke on Friday morning, she realised that a part of her (no doubt a part that she’d inherited from her mother) was reflexively trying to keep her excitement regarding the Gala in check, by reminding her of how badly things had gone for her the last time she’d gotten her hopes up about a party that was being thrown in Cara Wiley’s honour.
Finn knew that her anxiety had a lot to do with the fact that Aaron Bragg and Georgia Janks had both crossed her in some way the day before, re-awakening her social anxiety, but she pushed those memories back down into the pit of her stomach before slapping a thick layer of excitement over the top of them. No, Paige’s party hadn’t lived up to her expectations, but that night had ruined everyone’s lives, so Finn knew it was silly to take the way the evening had played out personally, or to assume that she was cursed because of the way one event had played out two years before.
And I’m actually invited to this party! Finn reminded herself as she got ready for school, wolfed down some avocado on some flatbread her mother had baked the night before and then pedalled off. I also have an idea about what everyone else is wearing, which means I’m not going to show up over dressed, underdressed or badly dressed either! So, if they come at me again, well, at least I’ll have some suave armour on this time!
Finn rode as fast as she could, first through the park, then past the refugee tent city, then past the marina, and then past the tiny, civic precinct. That singular block of buildings shared a fence with Peninsula Primary, but that campus was more like a… well, Finn wasn’t quite sure what to call it; like a city heart, really, but one that served a town with next to no pulse. There was still a small kindergarten in operation in there, and another class that jointly taught grades one through six, but there weren’t any official teachers on staff because they couldn’t afford to pay anyone to do that on a permanent basis anymore, so they only got by because different people volunteered to look after whoever showed up every day on a rotating roster. Sometimes, they lucked out by getting a former teacher, and the school’s last principal, Mr Van Der Merwe still worked two days a week there like a captain going down with his ship, but more often than not, the most anyone could ask of the adult that volunteered for the day was to keep the children alive and distracted.
Those kids weren’t getting much of an education, which was why Gladdy had out-sourced tutors for Maya and why none of the kids from the Shards bothered coming to the mainland for primary school anymore, but the parents who dropped their kids there every day were free to be productive afterwards, which benefitted the community as a whole. Then, once the students turned twelve, they had two options: try and pass the test that would get them into the tiny school on Whitecap that Paige and Hadley now attended with their cousins that had always offered grades prep to twelve, (for a fee) or to find a way to make an honest living. It wasn’t fair, but what was?
The rest of the school was used for other purposes- partially as a community farm (every family worked at least two hours a week there in order to qualify for the rations it provided- the Monroe’s included) and two rooms were used as a town hall and a hospital respectively. That ‘hospital’ had exactly one doctor and one nurse, and though King Amory had tried to lure them off to Laidlaw many times, Dr Banik and Nurse Judy had both refused him out of loyalty to their neighbours. Besides, there were so many Outskirters in need of their services right there that they both had more business than they could manage, which kept them comfortable, even if they were mostly paid in trade.
Once Finn had cycled past her old school, she began her ascent into the mountains, where Yuibera Road began to coil and unwind wildly, like a twirling ribbon spinning in a wind. There was a beautiful breeze that morning that blew from behind her, so before she knew it, she was at the very top of the highest hill where the Pen’s water tower sat, where, thanks to the way the fierce ocean winds had balded the area, you could see the coast of the Peninsula and the Shard Islands on one side, and the Kingdom of Laidlaw on the other. The sea was showing off that day, creating an ombre effect where the dark, deeper waters met the turquoise shallows, but Finn had spent most of her life admiring that view, so it was easy to be distracted by the more fantastical one that was on the other side now, which still looked less like a place she belonged, and more like an illustration that had been torn out of a fairy-tale.
I’ll never get used to it, Finn paused at the top of the hill by the water tower, admiring the view while she caught her breath. But how could I? This is Australia- the land that skipped the middle ages and went straight from living in caves and huts, to modern homes! Turrets and Machicolations don’t fit in here anymore than a pyramid would!
But the new monarchy had found a way to make it fit, so now there was nought to be done about it but stand back and behold in awe, which Finn still did on the daily. However, it wasn’t so much King Amory’s ingenuity that she admired when she took it all in, but Lady Miriam’s Enigmatic skills, which the gods of architecture had really come to the party for!
Laidlaw Kingdom had mostly been constructed on a slightly elevated spit of land on the western side of Reliance creek, so that the natural lie of the land there would help serve as an additional boundary to Outsiders. Reliance Creek itself ran inland from around the forested tip of the Peninsula and meandered south for a while before it hit the man-made dam right near the old quarry, although there were still places where the creek flowed on inland in much shallower streams before meeting up with other tributaries. There was more to the kingdom on the other side of the creek in a hilly development called Pleasant Valley, which was where all of the farmers from the kingdom lived and worked and where Laidlaw got all of its freshwater from, but Finn never had to go there, and it was mostly obscured by the hills and mangroves from ground level, so she often forgot that it existed at all.
The moat that ringed the main part of the kingdom hadn’t circled all the way around that spit of land before they’d settled there, but King Amory had the Enmity in his employ mentally dig a trench down the western boundary of the rise, so the narrower channel now intersected with the creek at a place called Farmer’s Junction, which was where you�
�d find the drawbridge and heavily guarded road that led over the mountains and into the Pleasant Valley. That canal made the heart of Laidlaw Kingdom an island unto itself and a distinctive one at that, because the giant stone fence followed the same path as the moat at the edge of the island, hugging its shape perfectly making it an impressive sight to behold, like Mont St Michael, only it looked hilly because of the staggered architecture upon it, and not because it had been constructed upon mountainous terrain.
Meanwhile, the wrought-iron perimeter fence enclosed a much larger area that extended along the rear-edge of the Peninsula, from its headland to the back of the quarry, near Paige’s old place, which was now in ruins, across the southern border and to Cutrock Hills which again, served as a natural boundary. Also, it stretched for about a kilometre inland from just above the harbour too, shielding the majority of the kingdom from those who might think to invade it from the coast.
Due to its tapering shape, the Kingdom of Laidlaw started out broad and flat and angled toward the mouth of the inlet, so the castle itself was central to the water, with the Tutelary Barracks, factories and marina stretching out along the far side until they met the mangrove-laden headland at the most north-western point. The creek was deeper there because it was closer to the open water, so that part was where they’d built their small harbour, which could only be reached by following the boardwalk up to the long, narrow jetty that bordered the mangroves. But the smaller businesses and ventures that were most commonly used were lined up between the gate and the common on the promenade, so that was where the general public spent most of their time.
The school, the hospital and the castle itself were lined up along the centre of the promenade too, affording all three institutions ocean views, and the private housing sector sat behind it, hiding behind the larger buildings like a child hiding behind its mothers’ skirts; first with a few blocks of townhouse apartments and then, with a small, urban residential area with one hundred tiny cottages.