The Boy I Am

by K. L. Kettle

  Long lights clunk on above, on and on and on, into the distance.

  M-dorm were always droning on about the Saints’ engines. They’d talk of things with wheels that could devour distances in the dunes, about the House of Exploration dragging some into the Tower to study, dismantle or even bring back to life.

  And here they are! Those mythical machines. Cars. Trucks. Tanks. Buggies. Buses and bikes. Long rows of vehicles stretching into the dark. Desert-ready. One M-dorm kid drew diagrams and tried to explain them to me once but there are things here I can’t name. Things with huge scoopers on the front, ploughs for moving sand.

  The hairs on the back of my neck are itching.

  “The police don’t know there’s a way out. Vor kept that a secret,” Ro says. “We’re leaving. All of us.”

  The Hysterics fan out, starting as many of the vehicles as they can. They jump on bikes, pile into cars.

  It’s happening. It’s really happening.

  Ro helps me into a sturdy-looking truck with thick metal doors, grilles at the windows. “Best of the beasts,” she says, shutting the door on me. “Vor’s orders.”

  Inside everything is bare metal. Fabric and leather stripped away from seats, only shreds left like skin clinging to the bolts with defiance.

  “Got to go now, while the fog’s in. It’ll pass soon.” Ro gets in the other side, behind the wheel.

  I’m only half listening. As I wipe my palms on my body, the blood smears but doesn’t go.

  Don’t think of the scrape of glass on bone, the crunch as her body hit the ground, the ache in my arm as I snatched it back. The clitter-clatter of the glass as it dropped to the ground. The animal noises she made. Maybe she won’t follow. Maybe she’ll bleed to death? There’s a splinter in the meat below my thumb that I can’t dig out.

  Does this make me what they say we are? Violent animals that need to be protected from themselves.

  Ro is about to shut the door but hesitates as Vor pulls in close to the buggy, her needle-thin shoulders straightening as she looks through the window and straight at me.

  Vor blinks and reaches out to Ro. Her long arms hug her daughter close – she holds her tight. Like she’ll never let go. That’s when I see Madam Vor smile. Walker called it the heart’s-desire smile. Mouth stretched and thin, eyes bright. Grateful, free. She whispers something into Ro’s ear, takes a deep breath and with a sigh turns away.

  Around us there’s the slam of truck doors, car doors, a roaring howl of tyres and engines, hollering Hysterics.

  Determined, angry, Ro pushes herself into the driving seat.

  “Is Vor coming?” I check.

  “She’s going back to High House, to stop the vote,” Ro says. It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. “Hold on!” she shouts, and slams her foot to the floor.

  “To what?” But my words are lost in the deafening noise as our truck, with its time-cracked seats, stripped floors and rattling doors, crunches into life. Leading the pack with a growl that shakes through my boots, we surge forwards, my breath left behind as my body flies ahead.

  Front lights, shining from the pack of vehicles, pick out the concrete and columns flying by in the dark. The world moves too fast under me. My sticky hands grab at dials, clutch on to latches on the panel in front, hold on for dear life as bikes speed past, wvroom-wvroom, towards a dot of light that – with a clunk – starts to spread into a smile. A gaping bright mouth of heat as the bikes catapult up and out into the dense fog.

  We plough into hot winds of dust, and sparks spray in through the open windows from the wheels. Angry sand spatters my face as I battle to close the window, as Ro reaches for the compartment in front of me and clicks it open. She grabs a pair of goggles for herself, yelling for me to put a pair on. Snapped over my eyes, the desert plunges into deep orange.

  Wrestling off my shirt, trying not to cry out at the stab in my gut, I swoop the fabric round my head, my nose. One-handed, holding on to whatever I can reach. We rumble along – road beneath us – until the sound softens as dunes swallow it up.

  Ro revs fast to climb mountains of sand dunes that lunge towards us in waves until we tip over their peaks, the nose of the truck falling – for a second, I don’t weigh a thing – then crashing down. The other buggies pull alongside as the road catches us again.

  Inside the fog, a storm rages, howling at the grilles of the truck, clawing at the doors, the windows. Lightning crackles in clouds above.

  And it’s beautiful. And I wish I could slow it down, hold my breath, tell my brothers that the world is alive.

  A growling black monster, twice the size of our truck and made of huge lights, swipes us, almost tipping us over. One of the other Hysterics, lost in the fog? We land again, the driver’s‑side wheels jolting, to see the monster ramming into us again.

  Ro swears under the scarf she’s wrapped round her mouth.

  Aspiner. Driving so close alongside I can see the burst veins at the edges of her remaining brown eye. Of course she’d follow! Of course they have their own vehicles! How stupid to hope she’d let us go.

  Catching sight of the shotgun, I duck, pulling Ro down with me as Aspiner fires, the shots smacking into the metal of the cabin around me. Ro veers the truck to the right. Another shot. This time it pierces the back of the vehicle. Another as Ro swerves again, the shrapnel ripping into the side. Ro cries out. I think the shot hit her but there isn’t time to check as she turns the wheel sharply.

  The sand beneath falls away and we fall with it. Rolling. Over. Over. Crunching. My brain twisting in its casing. Those hands, my hands, pressed against any surface – ceiling, window, then floor. Ro’s steadying palm again, pushing against my chest so hard she could break through my ribs and crush my heart.

  We stop. It’s quiet. Sand against the window, deep, dark, drowning.

  Moving fast then, we kick at the windows, the grille, door handle, anything to get out before we begin to sink. We work at the same door, scrambling to the back of the truck. Kick. Shout. Punch.

  The door opens. The shotgun pointed at us like a cannon. Aspiner looks down as the fog begins to clear around us. She’s strapped dark gauze round her head. It’s darker where her eye should be, gummy with blood that crawls down her cheek, as thick as syrup.

  “Out!” she growls, pulling us both up.

  She drags us, fighting against the sliding sand, so we can look back to see the Hysterics driving into the distance, leaving us behind.

  Aspiner wants us to see we’re alone.

  Did Vor get out? Send anyone back to the Tower? As our truck sinks into the sand, there’s that vengeful look in Aspiner’s remaining eye.

  “Romali Vor’s head and the safe return of her potential ward – minus an eye, terrible shame but accidents happen. And I get to tell the Chancellor that Madam Vor is in league with the Hysterics… My bloodline will run the House of Peace for a century!”

  There’s nothing left for me to fight her with. Even Ro looks beaten, shaken.

  “No,” Ro mutters under her breath, shaking her head.

  At first I think she’s going to try to fight but she’s up on her feet, moving faster than I could believe in the opposite direction, back towards the hospital.

  She’s running? Leaving me. Maybe she’s going for help.

  Aspiner laughs. “Don’t worry, she won’t get far,” she says, turning. Then she swears, reaches for her gun. Because Ro isn’t running away. She’s waving her arms, yelling as a bike screams out of the fog.

  “Stay here.” Aspiner runs to her truck, dragging me alongside. As we reach it, I scoop up a hot handful of sand and throw it in her good eye.

  Crying out, she drops me, rubbing at her streaming eye as she rushes to get inside the truck. There are threats: she’ll come back for me; an eye for an eye, or maybe two. I don’t need to see to be loyal.

  The door slams and the monster grinds towards Vor’s bike, speeding through the dust.

  Ro’s ahead of me as I try to run through the sand tow
ards her, my feet slipping, every fall another stab to my side. There are bruises and wounds from the crash, but I keep going. Aspiner’s truck speeds through clouds of sand. It’ll crush Vor and her bike like paper. Vor must know that. But, as the bike gets closer to Aspiner, she swerves, turning side-on. Then the whole of it is swallowed under the wheels.

  The sound of crunching metal makes Ro stop dead.

  I catch up with her just as Aspiner’s truck crunches to a halt, the spines of Vor’s torn-up bike grinding underneath.

  Vor jumped clear, right? That black body in the sand between us and the truck. Vor’s just winded, and now she’s going to fight Aspiner and everything will be fine because … because it has to be. Vor must’ve known that angling the bike like that would disable the truck. She must’ve seen Aspiner follow after us. She knew her. Knew she’d never give up. Vor would risk everything to stop Aspiner from snatching her daughter’s dreams away.

  But Vor isn’t getting up. Ro pulls away from me, runs towards her mother. Aspiner has less distance to travel, hobbling forwards with her gun raised. Spitting out sand, wiping grit from her remaining eye, she reaches Vor’s bruised body first.

  Maybe Vor jumped too late. She isn’t going to fight. Not today. Not ever.

  We get close enough to see the gloating Aspiner kick Vor’s bruised body. Close enough to make out Aspiner’s face as she sees Vor’s still alive, as she takes a breath to gloat. Close enough for Vor to recognize her daughter ploughing through the sand towards her. Close enough for Vor to raise her palm.

  Stop, it says. Stay there. Stay back.

  Ro shakes her head, shouting, drawing Aspiner’s smirking glance a second before the grenade in Vor’s hand takes them both.

  The sky boils dark with storm clouds as a handful of Hysterics relight their torches. The ones that stayed back with Vor. There are only a dozen, Cora and Haz among them.

  By the time they returned, the blaze was almost out.

  Ro is on her knees, still lost in tears. I don’t know what to do, where to look, how to make it better. So I sit beside her, my shoulder warm against hers, until she folds into me.

  “You shouldn’t look,” I say but Ro won’t move.

  Last time I heard her cry was in that appointment. I took her hand. Our bloody palms press together now. Ro squeezes tight, roaring into the dust until there’s nothing but a crackle to her voice and her grief becomes the fierce grip on my fist.

  It pricks at a part of me that sound, the strength of it. The dorm Fathers taught us about families, their structure, their purpose, but not about how it feels to have a mother – what Vor meant to Ro. I can see how it hurts.

  Flanking us, a handful of Hysterics stand silent, disciplined. They raise their hands in salute as Cora and Haz run over to us. We hold our breath as they get closer.

  “Let the desert have her,” says Haz. She rests her hand on Ro’s head. “We should move out, stay ahead of the weather.”

  Ro’s as stiff as stone. “I’m not leaving my mother to the desert.”

  It takes a while for the rain to come, thick, driving. The sand gives up a strange earthy scent as the clouds douse the flames. Ro still hasn’t moved. The Hysterics find a way to cover us from the rain – sails of fabric are draped between the cars. The ceilings patter and applaud.

  “At the party … you asked why she left?” Ro sniffs, wiping the rain from her face. “My mum, Diani.”

  “Ro, you don’t have to…”

  So she’s quiet. Behind us, the air twists and dances where the horizon meets the sky.

  The twins collect what’s left of Madam Vor, wrapped in a rough cloth.

  I go to check on Walker, stashed in the truck. No more forever smile on his face. He seems at rest, for the first time, curled up against the window. I wonder if he dreams now.

  Around us there are more tents being assembled to protect us from the rain. The twins dig out our shot-riddled truck from the dune, check on the engines. There is singing, sad, mournful. Light passes, carrying grief in it like stone. No one speaks as they work. Eli guards Ro, his scorched cheeks stern, thick arms folded.

  We stay until the fog-watchers deliver their warnings. Vor’s remains are lifted like they’re a glorious thing. Laid on a truck flecked with spots of rust and green glittering paint, metal leaves gripping its metallic bark. Through the rain, I can smell the charred cloth and try not to imagine what’s inside. Picture her sleeping, like Walker.

  “Mum wanted to explore – it’s all she ever wanted,” Ro says. It must’ve really hurt, what I said when we fought, to keep bringing it up. “There were lots of people who wanted her to run for Chancellor. Then suddenly this opportunity comes up, the big trek. I tried to make her stay. Vor did too. But ‘what if?’ she’d say. ‘What if there is life Outside?’ She left because the Chancellor told her there was evidence, proof.”

  The words fall out between long pauses, heavy breath. There are too many things inside and she can’t keep them in. “She lied. The Chancellor. I know it, even if I pretend not to. I just… I didn’t want to… Why can’t it be true?”

  “There’s no one out there?”

  Romali shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s true any more. Vor was willing to let me go and find out. Even if she never saw me again!”

  She needs to talk so I don’t interrupt. Let it come.

  “Mum, she cared, but she never wanted a kid, not really. It was Vor who wanted a kid but she couldn’t so Mum… I didn’t know, not before… Aunt Lorri told me when I moved in. I was old enough to understand, she said. And I … I was mad. Didn’t believe her. I needed to cry, to let it out, so I came to see you. There was nowhere else I could go. No one else I could talk to. You held my hand. You were different.”

  The Hysterics are taking down the tents. The rain’s all gone now, along with the blood from the cracks in my knuckles.

  Ro wipes her nose on her arm. “Vor, my mother, she stayed behind. Everything she did, every disgusting thing, she did to keep me safe. Making sure the Chancellor thought her loyal, even when she hated it…”

  I can still see the hospital in the distance, then the Tower, High House, veiled behind dark curtains of water like something out of a legend. It doesn’t seem so scary, though, from here. “You told me stories your mum read you. The ones with fairy godfathers, evil kings, wizards and stuff?” I say.

  “You laughed at them.”

  “Remember the one where the princess saves the handsome prince from the mean dragon and they ride off into the sunset happily ever after? I laughed because there were songs. You sang them. Repeatedly.”

  “Oh Saints, I did, didn’t I?” Ro grins, all sideways. Catching herself, she buries it fast. It was good to see her smile. “Don’t read too much into those things – they’re kids’ stories.”

  We’re standing still but my heart’s thumping like we’re dancing again. “What I’m trying to say is you need some new stories. Not princesses and magic but adventurers, noble leaders, discoveries. Whatever’s out there…”

  Pay attention. Look at her. Really look. Take in that face they didn’t want me to see. The smear of her lips as she twists them, not knowing what to say. Count her freckles, find where they hide – by her ears, in the line of baby hairs framing her face, the creases of her nose. After this, her face will change. Her skin is mottled with dust. There’s sand in her red hair. Any softness will harden. I’ve seen it in boys I knew. There were things that made them men. Ro won’t ever be that girl again.

  It takes a second, a blink. Ro pulls away as Cora calls her to get the wound in her shoulder looked at. Haz checks on my dressing too. I don’t like the face she pulls, the complaints about me not taking care, as the Hysterics climb into the fleet of vehicles, juddering and sparking them back to life. They raise their burning torches and bow, rev their engines and chant Vor’s name. They shout the oaths of Hysteria.

  When Ro returns, she’s clutching something in her other hand: Vor’s blast-dented badge of office.
A single metal V for the House of Peace. Only the Chiefs of House get badges like that. Ro holds it to her chest.

  I look back towards the Tower appearing through the haze of passing rain.

  “Jude?” Ro asks.

  “What?”

  “No lies, no secrets,” she says. “This isn’t a fairy tale. You can’t save Vik. You know that?”

  “I know. He’s dead. The Chancellor lied so I wouldn’t shoot her.” It makes sense. Saying it out loud makes it real. And I can feel it, like aching heat being lifted away by a cold wind. My eyes tingle. I look up to the clouds to stop tears coming. But then I let them fall because out here I can.

  I’ve been wishing you alive. Keeping you in my head. But you’re not gone – you’re dead. There’s just your ghost left. Little paper notes, the hope, it was all a game. She likes to watch us run, she said.

  Maybe we shouldn’t run.

  “No, it’s—You don’t owe him, or anyone, anything. Not me. Not Walker. Definitely not Vik.” Ro stares back, towards her mother’s remains, and I think she might break down again, but she doesn’t. In the light from the torches, her features seem even more fixed. “Before we left, Vor said if I l-liked you I should let you go.”

  “I’m not some prisoner.”

  “I don’t think she meant it like that.” Her smile seems forced. A number twenty-eight: if-I-don’t-smile-I-might-cry-or-scream kind maybe?

  “We’re not that far from the hospital. You could make it back to the Tower, you know,” she says. “There are meds in the hospital and if you reach the Tower there are doctors.”

  Of course I remember the doctors. Everything hurts and everything’s heavy. Ro’s eyes lock on to mine. I can see the grey in them, twists of blue, of brown.

  “You were right before. It’s suicide.” She blinks when I say the word like she’s surprised I’d use it. “I don’t want to die. But … you heard her. Aspiner wanted to take me back alive. The Chancellor doesn’t want me dead. After all, she got what she wanted, didn’t she? She wanted you exposed, out of the way.”