by Helen Brain
“No, Alexia. It’s private,” I say, unsure if we should intrude.
“Oh, come on. You know you want to.” She’s already sneaking across the yard to the mulberry tree that grows outside my bedroom, and I follow.
Shorty has gathered all the candles in the house and arranged them on the stoep in the shape of a heart. Letti is standing in the middle, still blindfolded, while he lights them. Behind her is a small table laid for one person. There’s a braai lit in an old drum, and he’s roasting mealies and butternut on it.
“Oh, look,” Alexia whispers. “That’s so cute.”
Letti’s nose wrinkles under the blindfold. “Hurry, hurry, Shorty,” she squeals. “I’m so excited!”
Shorty’s taken a piece of paper out of his pocket and he starts to read:
Letti my love,
I have adored you from the very start.
You are more beautiful than a work of art.
I never want us to be apart.
I’m not rich, but I’m giving you my heart.”
He takes off her blindfold and she gasps when she sees the heart of lights.
“Oh, Shorty.” She flings her arms around his neck and kisses him. “I love you.”
He pulls out her chair. “Sit down, madam,” he says, unfolding her napkin and putting it on her knee. “Dinner will be served shortly.”
“Look,” I whisper, pointing to the braai. “He caught that fish this morning at the dam.”
“It’s tiny.” We both giggle, but I know we’re secretly wishing someone would catch a fish for us.
Shorty takes the mealie and butternut off the fire with the tongs, and places them on a plate. Then he carefully lifts the fish off the grid and arranges it as the centrepiece. “Dinner is served, madame,” he says, placing it before her with a flourish.
She looks at it curiously. “What’s that in the middle?”
“It’s a fish. And I caught it myself,” he says proudly. “It took me all day.”
Alexia stifles a giggle. “That’s so sweet,” she whispers in my ear.
Letti takes a bite. Her face changes.
“Don’t you like it?” he asks, hopping from one foot to the other.
“Bones,” she says, taking one out of her mouth. “Just … bones.”
“Oh dear – you could have choked,” he exclaims. “Here. Allow me.”
He takes her plate and, carefully and slowly, like a surgeon in a medical kinetika, dissects the fish.
There’s not much left by the time he’s finished – just a piece of grey skin and some little flecks of white flesh. She eats the butternut and mealies while he hovers next to her watching every mouthful.
“Do you like it? You’re not just pretending? I thought of you every moment of every second of every minute I spent making this and –”
“I know you did.” Letti reaches out her hand to his. “You’re the best.”
“Tell me this isn’t delicious. My granddad used to catch fish like this for my gran. Every anniversary he made a braai for her, and cooked her a fish he’d caught himself.”
Shorty turns his back to check the fire, and Letti slides the rest of the fish off her plate and kicks it under the table. Alexia nudges me and we have to cover our mouths to keep from laughing.
“… and then he’d make her favourite dessert in a potjie and she’d be so happy and –”
“There’s dessert?” Letti’s face lights up. “What kind?”
“You’re going to love it, I promise you. It’s a family recipe.” He’s beaming. “Would you like some more? I can catch you another fish tomorrow. You ate this one so fast –”
She coughs. “No more, thank you, my darling. I’m leaving space for pudding.”
He disappears into the house with her dirty plate. Letti sits there humming. She’s far too short-sighted to see us hiding in the tree, even with the glasses Aunty Figgy found for her. Soon Shorty returns with a plate, and places it in front of her with a bow.
“Your dessert, madam.”
“Look, it’s a little steamed pudding,” Alexia says. “Man, I wish I had one.”
Letti tucks in straight away.
“Does she always eat so fast?” Alexia whispers.
“When it’s pudding, yes.”
“Darn, I was hoping she’d leave a bit.”
“No chance. Look at her gobbling it down.’”
Shorty is rocking on his feet, hands locked behind his back, beaming from ear to ear. “It’s good, isn’t it? You like it, don’t you? It’s my gran’s recipe. It’s got raisins and nuts in it. Aunty Figgy had to change the recipe a bit because she didn’t have some of the ingredients, but she did a good job, hey?” He’s talking nonstop as she wolfs it down.
Suddenly, she stops mid gobble and stares at him. She jumps up, making a strange gurgling sound.
“She’s choking. We must help her!” Alexia hisses, but I pull her back.
“She’ll know we were spying on her.”
“But look at her. She could die.”
Finally Shorty realise something’s wrong. “Oh dear me,” he exclaims. “Oh no, no, no … what do I do now?”
Letti seizes his arm and points to her back. He grabs her in a hug from behind, and punches her in the stomach. She coughs and something shoots out of her mouth.
She doubles up coughing, but Shorty’s on his hands and knees scrabbling on the stoep floor.
“What’s he looking for?” Alexia is craning her neck, trying to see through the leaves.
“What was that?” Letti gasps, slumping into her chair. “What did I swallow?”
“Found it!” Shorty calls from under the table.
“What is it? It could have killed me!” She’s scowling at him, hands on her hips, but he’s too busy scrabbling in the dirt to notice.
“This.” He holds something in the air. “It was this, my angel.” He kneels at her feet. “Letti, heart of my heart. I love you now and for all eternity. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
“Yes!” she shrieks. “Yes, yes, yes!”
CHAPTER 10
For the next while, everything is calm. We settle into a routine with the girls from the colony. Even Jaline is less difficult. The new lands are planted at last, and the seedlings are growing fast. Micah stays on the farm and I almost stop thinking about Samantha-Lee.
Aunty Figgy is keeping a close eye on us though, making sure he doesn’t sneak into my room or do anything – as she puts it – “inappropriate”. She’s spending every spare moment searching for the amulets. She’s got Alexia and Letti emptying every cupboard and drawer in the house, and I try my key in everything I can think of, but it doesn’t fit any of the locks. One afternoon, Aunty Figgy even makes Leonid open up the bunker under the house so that they can search it from top to bottom. But nothing turns up, and she goes about the house muttering prayers to the Goddess about the end of the world.
Meanwhile, Letti and Shorty are infecting everyone with their happiness. All they can talk about is the wedding. They want to get married as soon as possible.
I wish it was Micah and me getting engaged, but his first love is the resistance. Things are easier between us now that we’re both citizens, but it’s still weird that I am so wealthy and I’m his boss. I wish it could be the other way around.
ONE AFTERNOON, HE comes into the greenhouse to call me. It’s been drizzling on and off all day, and the girls get restless if they can’t work. I would ask Fez to give them a reading lesson, but he’s away with Mr Adams learning about running a business, so I’ve told the guards to take them back to the barracks. We all feel relieved when they finally march off five abreast down the driveway.
“Come,” Micah says. “I want to show you something.”
“Where are we going?”
“For a walk.”
“Where to?”
He puts his finger on my lips. “Don’t ask questions.”
Hand in hand we set off through the forest. As usual, as so
on as I’m under the trees, the things that have been stressing me drop away. We follow the course of the river downstream until we get to the wall. Micah wades into the water and shifts the iron grille to one side.
“Come on,” he says. “The thing I want to show you is in here.”
I’ve seen plenty of beaches in the kinetikas – there was always golden sand, shells and blue sea with waves and foam. The fresh smell of salt and seaweed would fill the recreation room where we’d sit, wishing we could play in the waves.
But this beach is dark, and it stinks. The sand is brown and littered with old bottles and tins, shredded plastic and half-buried, rusty metal appliances. The further we walk, the stronger the smell. We reach a rocky outcrop and there’s a dead seal, half of its flesh torn away, its teeth displayed in a macabre grin. A bird is standing on its back, ripping away the flesh.
“I don’t like it here.”
Micah squeezes my hand. “Come, I want to show you what’s around the corner.”
I dig my heels into the sand. “Why? What’s so important? This place is disgusting.”
“Ebba, you can’t hide from reality. You need to see what really happened during the Calamity. Then you’ll understand why my work is so important.”
I follow him because I don’t want him to think I’m childish. We wade around the rocks, the sea lapping sullenly at our feet. I used to dream of unlimited water like this.
“Do you remember how we only showered twice a week in the colony?” I ask him. “How we lined up and soaped ourselves, then stepped under the shower, and the water turned on just long enough to wash the soap off our bodies?”
“I remember,” he grins. “And I remember you without your clothes on.”
I laugh and smack his arm. “Whenever we saw kinetikas with people swimming in a pool or the sea, I’d wonder what it was like to be underwater, floating in that blue emptiness, with your hair swirling around your face.”
“I know. I used to think about swimming out to sea. Even now, I think about swimming all the way to the mainland.” He points to the horizon and I imagine us arriving on a deserted continent and starting a new life, just the two of us.
But all too soon we arrive at a gloomy little bay, surrounded on two sides by high boulders, and overshadowed at the back by the island’s vast grey wall. A small sailboat is pulled up onto the sand.
“Are we going on the boat?” The sea is immense, and I’m not sure I want to venture onto it in something this flimsy.
“No, not today. I wanted you to see this.” He points up the beach to the tumbledown walls of an old building. “The people who lived here could have been saved, but the wall cut off their access to water and food.”
I shiver, picturing this place before the Calamity, when it was a thriving neighbourhood with houses and families and happy children playing in gardens.
“Ebba,” he says quietly, “this is why we fight the government. Why your parents fought them. For justice; for fair access to food and water, and a safe place to live. This is why it’s important.”
I try to imagine what it was like in the days when the people were preparing for a disaster they knew was about to happen. What was it like to be cut off from everything you’d known and relied on all your life?
Micah leads me up the beach towards the ruined house.
“People tried to keep living here after they built the wall,” he says. “They couldn’t survive for long. They had to fetch all their water from the river. And there was nowhere to get food.”
“They could have stockpiled –”
“Not everyone could afford to stockpile. And if you had a stockpile, you had to guard it from thieves.”
We’ve reached the house now, and I try the door. “Have you been inside?” I ask, giving it a shove.
“Once, long ago.” He puts his shoulder against it and the brittle wood cracks and gives way.
Inside it’s desolate. An old lounge suite, faded to nothing, rots on the rags of a carpet. A few faded photographs hang skewly above the couch, covered with dust. I go closer and wipe one with my sleeve.
A smiling family look out at me – a mom and dad lying on their tummies with two small boys lying on their backs. They look happy and well fed. In the second photo, the children are older. They’re standing in the garden. Behind them is the outline of the mountain, and I realise with a shock that it was taken in the garden of this house. The back garden, as it would have been before the wall. I can even see the roof of Greenhaven in the distance.
We walk through to the kitchen. Rusted tins of food line the shelves. There are still cups and plates in the sink. A half-finished bowl of something grey stands covered in dust on the kitchen table.
“Why would they leave all this food behind?” I ask, puzzled. “Why didn’t they take it when they left?”
Micah is standing in front of a closed door.
“What’s in there?”
“Don’t go in. You won’t like it.”
But I ignore him and push it open.
The windows have blown out, and in the middle of the room, a double bed has collapsed. It lies at an angle against a pile of sand, the mattress rotten and full of holes.
And at my feet are the bones of the family that once lived here.
I gasp. “What happened to them?”
“They must have died of a disease.”
“But couldn’t they get help? The old world had every kind of medicine. They must have –”
“Once the wall was up, the High Priest and the council wouldn’t let anyone into the city,” he says. “That’s what the wall was for – to keep people out. Of course they could have helped this family. Their storage bunkers were packed to the rafters with medicine, food and bottled water. They had a bunker that was set up as a hospital ward, but it was for citizens only.”
Shaking, I follow him out of the death house. I want to get away from here, away from this gloomy, sunless beach.
I can’t stop thinking about the family as we wade back around the rocky outcrop through the surf, past the grinning seal, and hike up the beach to the culvert.
No wonder people gave up their kids to the colony. Jas, Micah, Letti and Fez’s parents must have guessed what was coming.
They must have known that their children’s chances of survival beyond the wall were minimal, so they gave their babies to the High Priest, to the colony, to keep them safe. To keep them alive.
Walking back to the house, Micah is very gentle with me. We stop under a copse of milkwoods and he takes me in his arms.
“Do you see now?” he murmurs into my ear. “Do you see what we’re fighting against?”
I lean my head on his strong shoulder. It’s all so hard to bear; the sadness of the world, the way it’s been destroyed through greed and fighting and selfishness.
“Ebba, do you see why it’s important you’re with us one hundred per cent?”
“I am with you,” I sob. “I support you completely.”
He kisses me down my neck, running his hands around my back, making fireworks explode in the pit of my stomach. “Just making sure,” he whispers.
CHAPTER 11
I can’t get those poor people out of my mind as we walk back through the forest. I keep seeing the bleached bones, jumbled up on the floor, half covered in sand.
And the words of the prophesy run relentlessly through my head:
In the sixteenth year after the first Calamity, a young woman will arise from the earth. She will bear the mark of the Goddess upon her left hand. To her will fall the task of reuniting the sacred amulets before the year is out. She must open the gateway to Celestia, so the Goddess can return to heal the earth.
I KNOW MICAH doesn’t believe that anything written in the book of the Goddess is true, but I suddenly feel the need make him understand.
“Micah, Aunty Figgy says if I don’t find all four of the lost amulets, the whole earth will be destroyed,” I say as we reach the holy well.
But h
e is dismissive, as he always is about this. “It’s just a fairy tale. I’d rather focus on what really matters.”
“But the Book of the Goddess predicted all this. Aunty Figgy says that when Major Zungu threw me against the window and my head was cut, dark forces were released.”
He snorts. “Dark forces? Please. There’s nothing supernatural going on, babe. It’s political. And we’ll only defeat them if we keep fighting. This amulet stuff is just a distraction.”
When we can see the house, he leans over and kisses me, and I feel our togetherness slipping away.
“Anyway, I’m off. I’ve got things to do before nightfall.”
As I walk alone to the house, I wonder if he’s right about it all being a fairy tale. I’d like him to be – life would be much simpler without amulets and ancestors and dark forces.
But I can’t just wish them away. My birthmark, the way I can make plants grow, Clementine and her little boy who showed me the way out of the prison cell – they’re all real, I swear.
THE RAIN HAS stopped, and Aunty Figgy and Alexia are picking lemons in the kitchen garden.
I fall in next to Aunty Figgy, and look around to check that Micah is out of earshot.
“Tell me more about my ancestor Laleuca,” I say, dropping a lemon into the basket. “You told me how she was born to Theia and the woodcutter, and her older sister Bellzeta tried to kill her and she was hidden away by a wise woman. And when she grew up she married, um …”
“Adam den Eeden.”
“So what happened next? How did my family end up in Table Island City?”
“Well,” she says, brushing aside the leaves to reach a lemon deep in the tree, “Laleuca grew up in the Forêt de Soignes and became a wise woman, like her foster mother.”
“What, like a healer?” Alexia asks.
“Yes – a healer who looks after people’s bodies as well as their hearts. Laleuca was famous for her healing powers. She helped women in childbirth, eased the suffering of the dying, and made poultices and infusions to deal with infections and diseases. People came from all over to consult her. She married Adam den Eeden, a man from the town, and they had two children – a girl called Emilie, who had red hair, green eyes and the birthmark on her hand. Then a few years later, they had a boy called Jan.
