The Thousand Steps

by Helen Brain

  “She won’t hurt you.”

  I don’t want him to think I’m pathetic, so I take a breath and sidle past the dog and follow him up the stairs. He’d be scared of dogs too if he’d never seen one before.

  The front door opens onto a huge room that runs down the centre of the house. It’s darker and cool inside, and there’s a sweet, earthy smell.

  He gestures towards the first doorway on the left. “Your room. En suite.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t know what en suite is, but I don’t want to ask. He already thinks I’m an idiot. I peer through the door. This is my bedroom? It’s huge. There’s room for at least twenty people. There’s a huge bed with four curly poles holding up a roof and curtains around it. Two massive wooden lockers stand on either side of it.

  “Do you also sleep in here?” I ask.

  His face darkens. “Not part of my job.” He spits out the words.

  I’m confused, then when I realise what he’s thinking, I go even redder.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I say. What must he think of me? “It’s just that …” Forget it, I think. He’s already turned away. He doesn’t want to hear that in my world we’re never, ever alone, and it’s normal to share one sleeping cell with two hundred people.

  “I’m going now,” he says. “What you want for supper?”

  He’s got me on the back foot again. We eat what we’re given in the colony. Unless it’s a special occasion like a birthday, it’s the same thing every meal – a vegetable stew with protein pellets.

  “Um …”

  He’s waiting, with one eyebrow raised. I feel about half a metre tall.

  Whatever I say, it will be wrong. He thinks I’m some kind of sex-crazed lowlife. I’m not going to give him anything more to criticise. “I’ll eat anything,” I say gruffly. “Whatever’s easiest.”

  He gives a curt nod and goes off. The dog has followed him, thank goodness. I don’t fancy being left alone with that brute.

  I close my bedroom door and go into the bathroom. The light in this room is soft too – the windows are small and set deep into the thick walls. I kick off my sandals and stretch my feet on the wooden floors, savouring the warmth as I walk across to the basin. It feels good after walking on rock all my life.

  There’s a long mirror, so I take off my robe and look at my reflection. My skin is so white it almost glows. I’m like a grub that has never seen daylight. A dirty grub, covered in a layer of dust from travelling. I step into the shower quickly and wash myself. Someone has left a half-used bottle of shampoo on the window sill. I wish I knew more about the mysterious great-aunt who has left me a fortune, and a bottle of shampoo that smells of lavender.

  I find a red dressing gown behind the bathroom door and pull it on. When I come out, Leonid has lit the lamp, and there is a tray on the bedside table with a pot of tea, and what I recognise from Letti’s book as a tomato-and-cheese sandwich. Letti’s parents put a family recipe book in her memory box, and one of our favourite things was to page through it, drooling over the recipes. I can’t wait to tell her I’ve tasted it at last. But then I realise I’ll never see her again. I have no one to tell. I try to enjoy my meal but it feels strange to be eating all alone on a huge bed big enough for four people. I finish my meal, and lie back against the soft pillows. It’s quiet in here, and the room is full of shadows. No one is breathing near me.

  My dream has come true – I’ve come home. But there’s no one here who loves me. No parents, no sisters and brothers or grandparents. I’m completely alone.

  I swallow down my tears and climb under the duvet, pulling the curtains closed around the bed. That’s better. It’s more like the bunker.

  I fall asleep. When I wake up a while later and peer out through the curtains, the room is dark and the wind is blowing the trees outside my window. I hope it doesn’t blow a tree onto the house. What if something crawls up out of the floor and bites me? It’s a scary world out there – full of dangers I don’t know anything about.

  The house creaks and there’s a strange noise, like someone scratching on my door. I creep out of bed and tiptoe across the room to lock my door. As I turn the key, I hear a soft whine. Opening the door a crack, I peep out. The dog is standing there, looking at me with big melting eyes.

  She doesn’t look vicious. She looks sad. She wants to come in. “Are you lonely?” I ask. “Did your family all die too?” She licks my hand.

  “Come on then,” I say, opening the door wider. She runs across the room and jumps onto the bed. “Now don’t go biting me,” I say as I gingerly climb back onto my side. “Your job is to look for baddies.”

  She gives a big sigh and rests her head on my leg. I tentatively touch her. She’s pretty – white all over, except for three big black spots on her back. Her tail gives two thumps. “Good dog,” I say, stroking her head. “Pretty Isi.”

  I lie there trying to process everything that has happened. In just twelve hours I’ve gone from thinking I’m about to die to discovering I’m an heiress; from being crowded in a bunker with two thousand kids to being totally alone in a strange house.

  I wish I could get a message to Jasmine and the twins. If only they could be here with me.

  Suddenly a ray of light shines into my room. It reminds me of an old sci-fi kinetika we saw years ago, about aliens landing on earth. Micah and the older boys thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t sleep for weeks, imagining them walking around on top of the mountain, looking for a way into the bunker so they could destroy us.

  I lie under the duvet, just my nose sticking out, watching the ray move across the room. Is it searching for something? For me? I’m about to run into the passage screaming for Leonid when I realise it’s just the moon.

  I go to the window and peer out into the star-splattered sky. The silver moon is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Not an alien in sight.

  DURING THE NIGHT I dream my old recurring dream. I’m walking in a forest. The trunks are thick and twisted and tower over me. I’m looking for my mother, desperate to find her. I see a woman walking in the distance but before I can catch up with her, she disappears.

  I feel the familiar sense of sadness. She’s left me. She wouldn’t wait.

  I hear a rooster crowing and I wonder why I’m sleeping in the poultry gallery. There’s a strange clopping sound I can’t place, and I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Where am I? Why hasn’t the waking siren gone off yet?

  Then I realise there’s a ray of real sunlight streaming through the window and a dog yawning at my feet, and the sound is of horses walking on the road that runs around the house. I’m in my new bed, in my own house, in my new life. I get up and open the wooden lockers. They’re packed with clothes – robes like Mr Frye’s, and pretty clothes like the ones people used to wear long ago. I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear here. I’ll have to wait for someone to tell me what my uniform is. So I pull on my white shift and pants again and stand at the window. Horses are eating grass in a field. Chickens are scratching in the plants, running around freely in the open. The sky, the trees, the vibrant green … They take my breath away.

  I go out into the hallway. Twenty people could sit at the table that runs the length of it. I imagine my family sitting at this table, filling all the seats. And now they’re all dead. It makes me miserable, so I cheer myself up by imagining Fez and Letti and Jasmine and me enjoying a feast, like in the old kinetikas, and servants bringing in all the food from Letti’s recipe book.

  I investigate each room – there are three more bedrooms. One for each of us. There’s a really big sitting room filled with paintings, and a study. But it’s the kitchen I’m heading towards. I’m dying to see what other food I can find, and Leonid’s not here right now to make me feel stupid.

  Just as I hoped, the kitchen is big and homely, with a kettle on the hob and pretty china on a dresser. I take a blue-and-white striped bowl and go into the pantry. I’m not sure what everything is, but I dip my fingers in and taste everyth
ing, like a naughty child. “This all belongs to me,” I tell myself. “I can eat it all if I want,” but after sixteen years in the colony, where everything was shared, I still feel like I’m stealing.

  I recognise the yoghurt from my ninth birthday meal. I can’t believe there’s a whole bottle of it here, and it’s all mine. I serve myself a bowl, add a teaspoon of sweet sticky golden liquid I think may be honey and sit down at the table to eat it. It’s so good I lick the plate. Leonid almost catches me when he comes in, stamping the dust from his boots on the doorstep.

  “Oh. It’s you,” he says. “Mr Frye’ll be here soon.” He grins. “You’ve got something on your nose.”

  I wipe off a smudge of yoghurt. Oh, great. More things to despise me for.

  I begin to wash my bowl but he stops me. “Not your job. Leave it.”

  “What is my job?” I ask. “When does the work siren go off?”

  He snorts. “Your job, miss? You’re a citizen. Your job’s sitting around all day ordering the servants around.” And he turns on his heel and marches off. Isi runs after him.

  I sit down, and wonder what to do next.

  We worked in the colony. Twelve hours a day. I was Ebba, “the girl who could grow anything”, part of sabenzi group 4.7, Year Five. I got up when a siren went, ate breakfast when the siren told me to, started work. Each moment in each day was allocated and all I had to do was be obedient and work my hardest. For the common good, so we could all survive.

  But up here, who am I?

  I’m just a girl with a big house and nothing to do.

  I go out of the front door, and follow the driveway around the side of the house. I pass rows of rain tanks, chicken coops, go through a half-open door in a wall, and I’m in a kitchen garden. So many food plants, all growing in the ground. Just the sun, the soil, and rows and rows of vegetables.

  I fall onto my knees, hands in the earth, sniffing it, feeling it crumble between my fingers, feeling the coolness when I dig down a little way. Insects fly around a row of plump purple aubergines. The ones we grew in the colony were a quarter of this size. Beans dangle from frames, tomatoes cluster together, ripening in the sun. I pick one and take a bite. I’ve never tasted anything as wonderful as this fresh tomato, warmed by the sun and grown in the earth.

  Leonid comes past then, pushing a wheelbarrow along the dirt path. “Like gardening?” he grunts.

  “It’s the best thing in the world,” I say, and his brooding face almost shifts. “Please can I help?”

  “Fine. Vegetables need picking, and stake the tomatoes.”

  We work together all morning, and I’m happy with my hands in the dirt, happy under the sky and in the fresh air. If only Jasmine and the twins were here with me, it would be perfect. Leonid seems more cheerful, and I think maybe we can be friends after all. Maybe he’s shy, or was in shock, and now he’s getting used to me.

  “I wish I could take a basket of your vegetables to my sabenzis in the colony,” I say as we go towards the kitchen at noon. “Let them see what real fresh vegetables ripened in the sun look like.”

  “They say food’s running short there,” Leonid says.

  I stop in my tracks. “Really? But we’ve been dehydrating the excess and sending it to the storage galleries. There must be a massive stockpile.”

  “That’s what I heard.”’

  I ponder this. They lied to us about the outside world. Could they be lying about the food too? Why?

  “What will happen when it runs out?”

  He’s pumping water at the well, but now he stops and shrugs. “Who knows?”

  “They’ll have to elevate everyone,” I say.

  “Pah! Table Island can’t feed thousands more. Won’t elevate them.”

  “Then what will happen?”

  He’s scrubbing his hands like the dirt has gone down to the bone. “How’d I know?”

  I don’t ask him any more.

  He’s probably got it wrong.

  I go inside to shower. Mr Frye is coming, and I’m filthy.

  I’VE JUST FINISHED showering when I hear Mr Frye’s nasal laugh in the hallway. There’s another voice too – a male’s. I quickly check myself in the mirror on the front of the wardrobe. My robe is too dirty to wear again, especially if I’m meeting the High Priest’s son, so I pull on a robe I find in the wardrobe. The colour is astonishing – a deep indigo blue, with yellow embroidery around the neck. I smooth back the tendrils of hair escaping from my plait, take a deep breath and open the door.

  “Ebba!” Mr Frye says, giving me a hug. “You look stunning. Doesn’t she, Haldus?” He releases me, and pushes forward a guy a year or so older than me. “This is my godson, Haldus Poladion.”

  “Hal, please.” The guy takes my hand and gives it a triple shake, looking into my eyes all the while. “All my friends call me Hal,” he says with a cheeky smile.

  He’s gorgeous. A strong nose, square jaw, large black eyes, and skin like burnt butter. All the boys I’ve ever known have worn the same clothes as me – the off-white tunic and pants. Even Leonid wears a grey version of it. But Haldus is wearing a flowing crimson robe and pants, and he looks like a king.

  “I am here on behalf of my father,” Hal says. His grin is gone, and he’s looking me in the eye. “He would like me to extend his sincere apologies to you for the unfortunate incident in the colony. Had he known who you were, he would have elevated you far sooner. He hopes you can forgive him and the Council.” And he smiles again. “Friends?”

  For a moment I pause. He’s calling almost murdering me an “unfortunate incident”? But Hal is so cute with his dimples and the mischievous twinkle in his eye, that I can’t resist. “Of course,” I say. “Apology accepted.”

  “All good, all good,” Mr Frye beams. He snaps his fingers. “Leonid, don’t just stand there. Fetch some tea.”

  Leonid hurries to the kitchen and Mr Frye turns his electric grin to me. “Let’s go into the sitting room and have a chat.”

  His hand on my back guides me through the door.

  “Have a seat, Ebba,” Mr Frye says, gesturing to a deep sofa. I sink into it, and he and Hal sit opposite in armchairs. The walls are lined with paintings and I keep staring at one on the far wall. Something about it is so familiar.

  Leonid comes in and puts a tray on the low table.

  “We have a lot to discuss,” Mr Frye says, ignoring him. He pours the tea and passes me a cup.

  Hal is so … so … then I think of the word: polished. Everything about him gleams – his teeth, his eyes, his nails, even his skin. I feel rough next to him. Mr Frye is talking about investments, developments, making the best use of my windfall, relinquishing the burden and adopting a new lifestyle, about doing what’s best not just for me but for the settlement as a whole, etcetera, etcetera, but I stop listening. It’s all too complicated. My eye falls again on one of the paintings on the far wall. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.

  Suddenly I see what the picture represents. It’s the forest – the forest where I walk in my recurring dream.

  “Who painted that?” I blurt out.

  “Try to follow, Ebba,” Mr Frye says. “This is important.” Then he smiles benignly. “I suppose this information is overwhelming for you. You’re so young, and you’re a girl. Much better to leave it all to me. The picture – yes, that is one of your great-aunt’s works. She was a famous painter, before the Purification.”

  My great-aunt? How on earth did she paint what’s in my dream?

  He talks on about art and investments and income and how he will look after my money for me, and pay the servants’ wages, and anything I want, I just have to ask him. I’m half listening, trying to work out what’s going on.

  “You can’t live here alone,” he says, “with nothing to do all day. We’ll have to sort something out for you. Hopefully it won’t be long before you can move to a settlement, nearer to the rest of the citizens. You could move to Newlands settlement, or even Woodstock or Vre
dehoek would be fine. This farm is so far away from everything, you’ll be lonely here with no neighbours. It was alright for an old lady, but you’re a young girl with your whole life open before you, and you’ll want to go to parties and entertainments and mix with young people your own age, and maybe the High Priest will select a husband for you …”

  I’m transfixed by the painting. It’s my dream exactly – the forest, the path where my mother disappears.

  “I hope you’ll be alright here with Leonid for a day or two. I’ve warned him that if he so much as lays a finger on you …” He sees the alarm in my face. “Don’t worry about it, my dear. He wouldn’t dare, but you never know with these rough boat-people. Perhaps I should send over a maid or two from my house to cook and clean for you until Aunty Figgy gets back. Leonid looks after the kitchen garden and the maintenance on the house. He’ll also drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  “Drive me? I can go anywhere I want?”

  He and Hal laugh as though I’ve said something really amusing. “You don’t seem to understand, my dear. You’re an heiress. Of course Miss den Eeden had a buggy. And yes, you can go anywhere you want. You’re a citizen now.”

  He snaps open his briefcase and takes out a sheaf of papers. He puts the papers on the table and takes a pen and a bottle of ink out of his case. “I’m going to need your signature on these, please.”

  “Um …” I begin. I have to tell him I can’t write, but it’s so embarrassing, especially in front of Hal.

  Leonid knocks on the door. He’s come to clear away the tea tray. Mr Frye barely acknowledges him.

  I feel awkward being waited on. “Thank you, Leonid,” I say, clearing my throat.

  He grunts.

  “Hurry up, boy,” Mr Frye snaps. “Miss den Eeden is waiting.”

  Leonid jumps. Hal gives a little snort of amusement.

  I lean forward to put my cup on his tray. My hand knocks the milk jug and it tips over. I try to pick it up, but I bump the tray with my elbow. Leonid tries to save it, and next thing the tray is upside down on the table and there is tea everywhere.