Brothers

by Corinna Turner

  PRAISE FOR CORINNA TURNER’S BOOKS

  LIBERATION: nominated for the Carnegie Medal Award 2016.

  ELFLING: 1st prize, Teen Fiction, CPA Book Awards 2019

  I AM MARGARET & BANE’S EYES: finalists, CALA Award 2016/2018.

  LIBERATION & THE SIEGE OF REGINALD HILL: 3rd place, CPA Book Awards 2016/2019.

  PRAISE FOR I AM MARGARET

  Great style—very good characters and pace. Definitely a book worth reading, like The Hunger Games.

  EOIN COLFER (Author of Artemis Fowl)

  An intelligent, well-written and enjoyable debut from a young writer with a bright future.

  STEWART ROSS (Author of The Soterion Mission)

  This book invaded my dreams.

  SR. MARY CATHERINE BLOOM OP

  ***+***

  BROTHERS

  U.S. Edition

  CORINNA TURNER

  Copyright 2017 Corinna Turner

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-910806-61-6

  ASIN: B0782LS4G4

  Also available as a paperback

  ***+***

  U.S. Edition, License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ***+***

  CONTENTS

  Brothers

  Other Books by Corinna Turner

  I AM MARGARET Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Connect with Corinna Turner

  Boring Legal Bit

  ***+***

  If we have died with him, then we shall live with him.

  2 Tim 2:11

  JOE

  I’d spent thirteen years very happily—but so ignorantly—alive and at no point had I studied the art of illegal border crossing. I’d totally taken life for granted. Everything, in fact. But K had spent quite a few of his eighteen years preparing for this journey. And he’d taken good care of me so far.

  So when he drew me away from the narrow slit where the tarpaulin side was unfastened from the end of the truck trailer against which we were sitting, I didn’t resist, though I’d been watching the end of the Channel Bridge coming closer, peeping at the guard towers up ahead, the big barriers—open at the moment, thankfully—and the soldiers, on guard beside them.

  But in the dim glow from the bridge lights I saw K place a finger to his lips, then point to our eyes and make a rapid gesture towards and then away from them…oh, he meant that flashlights could reflect off them and give us away. No looking out, then.

  That was hard, though. In fact, it was almost unbearable. Like some form of torture. My hands clenched together, tighter and tighter, as I pictured the French end of the bridge coming nearer and nearer.

  “They don’t usually stop many vehicles,” K murmured, not for the first time. “We’ll be okay.”

  But as my shoulder pressed against his arm in the darkness, I could feel the faint, rhythmic muscle movements that said his fingers were keeping tally as he prayed. Huh. From a factual point of view it was fascinating learning all the things the EuroGov were so scared of everyone knowing, but I wasn’t usually very interested in the praying side of K’s God-stuff, considering how I felt about fathers and mothers right now—but just at this moment I found myself hoping very hard indeed.

  Don’t let them stop us. Don’t let them stop us.

  The Channel Bridge was the only really dangerous chokepoint between here and Vatican State. Well, entering Rome itself was going to be dodgy, but K had procedures to contact people who could deal with all that. We just had to get there.

  And if we made it across this bridge, surely we would?

  K

  I could tell Joe was scared. Well, he might only be thirteen, but he was no fool. I tried my hardest to feel calm and unconcerned, because feelings were contagious, after all. What I’d just said was true—unless there was an alert in place, they didn’t stop much traffic for inspection. They did so like to make a big thing about how the EuroBloc was just one large country, after all.

  Our truck had slowed right up to pass through the barrier area. A searchlight played on the side, moving from front to back in a downright sinister manner.

  My heart pounded harder and harder. If they stopped us… If they stopped us, it would mean Joe’s life. Mine too, but for me the stakes were higher still. My life and my sister’s life and my parent’s lives and Lord only knew how many others.

  Lord, please don’t let them stop us. Please don’t let them stop us.

  I realized how tense I’d become and started trying to relax again. They hardly stop any vehicles. They hardly stop any vehicles.

  Soldier’s voices…we must’ve reached the barrier.

  The truck carried on moving, but it was only crawling now. Joe pressed closer to me, so I slipped an arm around him, trying to breathe slowly and calmly.

  Crawling…crawling…still moving…and…

  The truck began to accelerate. We’d made it through the checkpoint. Thank you, Lord! Thank you. I couldn’t help letting my head fall back with a slight sigh of relief. I gave Joe’s shoulders a squeeze and caught his blazing smile just before we left the bridge lights behind us and were plunged into darkness.

  “Right,” I murmured. “Time for some supper.”

  Joe tensed again—in eagerness, this time. Like most boys his age, he was always hungry. So was I, just at the moment. But I couldn’t help suspecting that the simple provision of regular meals had been quite instrumental in earning Joe’s guarded trust!

  I crossed myself and said grace, smiling in the darkness as Joe mumbled an automatic ‘Amen’. How baffled he’d been the first time I’d done this!

  “What are you doing?” he’d asked.

  “Saying thank you for the food.”

  “But who are you thanking?” he’d demanded.

  That had been our first conversation about God, come to think of it.

  “But everyone knows God doesn’t exist,” he’d announced with all the certainty a thirteen-year-old could muster, which was rather a lot.

  “Oh? How do they know that?”

  He’d opened his mouth…and stopped. “Well…the teacher said,” he offered at last. With rather less certainty. “It was in the textbook, too,” he added, even more doubtfully.

  “Did the teacher—and the charming EuroGov textbook—also say that children like you needed to be dismantled for the greater good of society?”

  Silence.

  Utter silence.

  Still smiling slightly at the memory, I opened my backpack and fished around for food. We’d been able to buy it freely from small towns with market stalls that didn’t require ID cards for purchases, and I’d made sure we had plenty before we stowed away in the truck.

  The secret to a successful trip like this, so ‘Cousin’ Mark had told me often enough, was to make a clean getaway—i.e. no pursuit—and have plenty of money. The unexpected presence of a preSort-age child had complicated things, but thankfully the funds were holding out okay. The clean getaway…certainly seemed to have been achieved, though in the circumstances that seemed near-miraculous. Did it just.

  Goodness knew I hoped it had really been achieved. If not…I swallowed painfully. If not, Margo and my parents might already be arrested…might already be dead. Their safety relied entirely on me not getting caught. No, not even merely not being caught. Not being identified in any way.

  “We have got enough food?” Joe sounded anxious, alarmed by my inact
ivity.

  “Plenty, plenty.” I dragged my attention from the fears and worries that had dogged me like a toxic cloud ever since I left Salperton—imagined stuffing them into the Lord’s hands and leaving them there—and passed Joe a couple of slices of bread and some cheese. “Don’t you remember that story about the loaves and fishes?”

  “That was cool,” said Joe. I guess just at the moment, magic multiplying food was something that stuck in his memory rather well. “Probably just a story, though.”

  “What if it wasn’t?” I’d never really been able to speak to anyone about my faith, for obvious reasons. Joe was proving something of a crash-course in evangelization for me. Not that he was exactly evangelized, though the Lord surely knew I was trying my best. Was this some sort of providential preparation for my vocation?

  Joe shrugged. “Be even cooler then. Can’t you multiply this bread and cheese for me?” The question was half challenging—but half…hopeful? Just a shade.

  “Sorry,” I said, biting into my own somewhat meager meal. “That’s rather a rare ability. But I don’t think that event is supposed to make us think we can just click our fingers ourselves and magic up food—even though some saints have done pretty much that, just occasionally. It’s supposed to show us that if we trust in Him, He will always provide us with what we need.”

  I just glimpsed Joe frowning in the low light. “Like…you turning up when I needed you?”

  I beamed, unseen by Joe, who was focused on the food. “Yes, exactly.” Except…

  “Couldn’t He have just got my parents to follow the rules in the first place, then?”

  The tight thread of pain in that seemed to whip around my guts and constrict them viciously. Clear enough what he was thinking: then I’d be at home right now, and none of this would have happened.

  “Well, that’s the thing about what I just said. He gives us what we need. Not what we think we need. Not what we want. Sometimes all three are the same. But sometimes they aren’t. And we may not understand why something was actually what we needed until we’re face to face with Him. Sometimes one is just left scratching one’s head and wondering why, how is this what I need, how?”

  Joe frowned even harder. “Then how do you know He’s even there at all? I mean, maybe it’s just random chance?”

  “Because sometimes you can see the reasons, the chains of events, especially with hindsight. Holier people are better at it. Anyway, random chance doesn’t account for things like multiplying loaves.”

  “I wish you could do that.” Half Joe’s food was gone already.

  I smiled. “Sorry. I can only—” I hesitated. What I was about to say was kind of private. I mean, my family had figured it out, but I’d always been shy talking about it to other people. “Well, I do get a flicker of prophecy. Just now and then. Sort of a…feeling. When talking to God. Not all the time. Evidence against your ‘random chance’ idea, but we can’t eat it, I’m afraid.”

  Joe looked up from his food at last, peering intently at my face in the darkness. Oh, trying to tell if I was having him on. Great, I bared my soul to him and he just wondered if I was pranking him. I smothered a sigh.

  “So…are we going to get to Rome?” he demanded eventually. Giving me the benefit of the doubt? “Did it tell you to get on this truck? Is that how you picked it?” His voice grew eager as he spoke.

  I did sigh, though, at that. “I told you, it’s only now and then. I picked this truck with a God-given gift, it’s true, but it was my intellect. When I pray about our trip—manage to properly pray, that is, you know, settle myself, not just thinking, help, help us, Lord, well, I just feel…peace. And love. Like God really loves us both. Nothing else, really.”

  It was Joe’s turn to give a huge sigh. “We can’t just not eat it,” he exclaimed rather melodramatically, “it doesn’t seem to be any use at all!”

  I shrugged. “We aren’t puppets, remember? God doesn’t promise never to let bad things happen to us, he just promises to bring good things out of them. God’s priorities are totally different from ours, anyway. Think what an ant’s priorities must be like, compared to ours? Pretty small and narrow and stupid, right? Well, with God, we’re the ants.”

  “Huh.” I wasn’t sure Joe liked being an ant, much, but he fell silent, munching on his second slice of bread and cheese, so I tucked in properly as well.

  A few glimpses through the slit as we drove showed large highways, quiet at this time of night, and lots of big truck parking lots. Back at Dover I’d made very sure we got into a trailer already attached to a truck from the Swiss department, though. If things went well, maybe we would get all the way over the first part of the Alps before we had to part company with it.

  I’d specifically avoided an Italian truck. They got stopped and searched about six times more often than any other nationality, according to Father Mark.

  But Swiss lorries, no more than any other kind.

  JOE

  We got over the bridge! Soon enough that thought was running through my mind as I scoffed the last of my bread and cheese, despite the strange conversation about prophecy and K not being able to multiply food. We got across. There was nothing between us and the Vatican, and a ship to the African Free States! And…the rest of my life!

  Well…okay, over a thousand kilometers of EuroBloc stretched out between us and the rest of my life, but all the same. Surely that was the worst bit over? Hopefully we could just sit here, nap and eat, and in, what—forty-eight hours or so?—we’d be in the Swiss Department.

  If we could manage to stow away again, we might even make it to Rome by the next day, but we’d probably have to walk. That was how we’d gotten from Yorkshire down to Dover, using footpaths and off-road trails. In all, it took us almost three weeks, but we’d had no serious alarms and even if he still wouldn’t tell me his full name, I’d come to trust K more than I really felt was wise. I mean, after what my parents did, what hope was there that anyone could be trusted?

  All the same, K was smart. He’d delayed his own flight until after the summer holidays— apparently the time when most SortEvaders fled, hoping to blend in with summer backpackers, who were for this reason regularly stopped and ID’ed. Posing as a New Adult on a weekend hike, he’d aimed to stay well off-road in the week—doubly important once he found himself stuck with school-age me.

  Each day of the weekend—Friday evening through to Sunday—he’d hidden me in the forest near a town and gone in on his own, buying only a modest amount of food each time, but after he’d done it several times we’d always had enough for the week ahead. Just about. No prizes for guessing who’d carried most of it. I wasn’t exactly big for my age. Each time, I’d been watching the road like a hawk from my hiding place, terrified he’d give me the slip.

  But on one occasion I’d strayed too far into the woods near our camp and got lost, and rather than thanking his God and slipping away he’d actually searched until he found me. So maybe K really wouldn’t desert me too readily. Even though nothing but chance—and a really inconvenient chance it had been for him—had landed him with me. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have a brother that I’d been tricked into partial trust, despite...

  A father figure, now, no chance.

  I shook the memory away. Again.

  My meal was gone. I almost asked for more but stopped myself. K had only planned and saved enough for one on this trip. The money wasn’t endless, and he didn’t have the knack of multiplying food! I couldn’t help shaking my head, amused by my sensible self-restraint. Three weeks ago such behavior wouldn’t even have occurred to me. I’d probably have whined for more, in fact, if my mum had said no.

  My mum… Who lied. My whole life.

  A massive yawn cracked my jaws and again I pushed away the thoughts of my former life in favor of scooting down, knees drawn up in the tiny space, propping my feet up on my rucksack, much smaller and lighter than K’s, and resting my head on his legs, which didn’t really make a better pillow than t
he rucksack, but prevented him from sneaking off without me. Because my brain knew the trust was stupid, even if my heart didn’t.

  “K?” Something I’d been meaning to ask him for ages popped back into my head.

  “Umhum?”

  “Are there railways in Africa?” They’d never really covered Africa much in school. Or on telly. The EuroGov didn’t like the African Free States very much. Too many Believers. K would fit right in.

  Except he didn’t want to go on to Africa, did he? He wanted to stay in the Vatican State and train to be an honest-to-goodness underground priest. Suicidal, or what? Perhaps he’d change his mind and come with me. I really hoped so. For his sake…and yeah, mine too. Except…I couldn’t forget how he’d described it to me. Described why he was doing it…

  “Yes. Some of the longest railway lines in the world, I think,” K replied.

  I smiled in the darkness. Good. I was glad to know that.

  “And I’m sure they need train drivers,” added K slyly.

  I could hear that he was smiling too, but I didn’t mind. I mean, we were off to Africa—both of us, please, please, please?—where I would one day drive cutting edge electric locomotives—or possibly quainter, older ones—across vast expanses—Africa was big, right?—crossing massive sunsets that took up half the sky, maybe having to stop for elephants and look out for lions…

  By the time K had dug my foil blanket out of his rucksack and started tucking it over me, I was almost asleep. The familiar rustle-rustle lulled me right off, that and the clicketyclack of train wheels in my head.