by Natasha Ngan
‘Oh,’ breathed Silver, her eyes widening. After a long pause, she asked hesitantly, ‘But how does your mum know that was what actually happened?’
Butterfly laughed gruffly. ‘Cobe told them. And that’s another thing!’ He threw his arms wide in an exasperated gesture. ‘Cobe knew the Council had tried to kill my parents. He knew what they were really like, and still he didn’t tell me! I’ve spent my whole life working for them, Silver!’
He turned, slumping his forehead back against the tree. A moment later he felt Silver’s arm around his shoulders. She tucked her head into his neck and Butterfly breathed her in, her familiar scent calming him. They stood like that for a few minutes before he turned to face her.
‘Can you put all this aside for now?’ she said gently. ‘Try and concentrate instead on the fact that your mother and sister are here, alive?’
‘Yeah, we are.’
They spun round at the sound of Emeli’s voice. She was striding towards them, her hands on her hips. She looked surprisingly intimidating for an eleven-year-old. Her pose reminded Butterfly forcibly of his mother when she used to get angry at him for breaking something when he flew inside their apartment.
‘Your mother and sister are here alive,’ Emeli said. ‘But I can’t promise you we’re going to be alive much longer. It’s been days since we’ve caught any fish and Yasir’s mad for one. There’s no telling what he might do without some. So.’ She glared at him. ‘Are you gonna help us catch some?’
The sight of his little sister standing there, all grown up with her hair curling down her shoulders like a fiery waterfall and her bright, intelligent blue eyes, dimmed his rage. He felt something else stirring inside him as he looked at Emeli. He couldn’t believe this was the same person as the tiny baby he’d held in his arms all those years ago.
Butterfly managed a half-smile. ‘All right, then, I’ll help,’ he said, and he reached out a hand to take hers.
17
Akhezo Dreaming at the Top of the World
Hundreds of miles away, Akhezo was having lunch. He sat on one of the vine-wreathed platforms skirting the highest pod of the skylung, chewing noisily on a piece of dried sausage he’d pinched from the kitchen earlier. It was one of his favourite spots to sit and look out at Neo-Babel. The city was particularly impressive today. It yawned open before him in a giddying swoop, its buildings and rickshaws – tiny as ants far below – and the great curve of the river’s Outer Circle glittering in the sun. Usually it would have put him in a good mood to sit here looking out at the city, imagining it one day as his own. Today, however, nothing was brightening his mood.
‘Still sulking, are we?’
Akhezo whipped round to see Neve’s grinning face peeking out from behind the door, her silver and pink hair bright in the sunlight. He scowled and turned his back on her.
‘Thought so,’ she said. She settled beside him, dangling her legs between the railing lining the balcony edge. She pointed at the river. ‘Hey, why don’t you jump in? The water looks nice and cool, and I heard you like a swim –’
‘Get lost!’ he snarled.
Neve laughed. ‘Oh, relax. I’m just playing. So. Cambridge has shut you out now? Even after saying you were a … what was it … an invaluable part of this final flight thing?’
Akhezo blushed. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Yeah, you did. What was so invaluable then, that now you’re back where you started? Didn’t shine Cambridge’s shoes as bright as he wanted? Wipe his bum a bit too roughly –’
Akhezo swung a punch at her, and she shrieked, bubbling with giggles as she ducked his fist and shimmied along the balcony out of reach.
‘Just joking!’ she sang. She tilted her head back, letting out a long sigh. ‘Anyway, I dunno how you can stay grumpy when the weather’s so nice.’
Akhezo felt another blush heat his cheeks as he looked at her. His eyes travelled down the length of her body, all bones and sharp edges under the baggy canvas overalls she wore. One of the straps had fallen off her shoulder, pulling down the white top underneath. Her exposed shoulder was a smooth-skinned curve, sharp and small and perfect. He had an overwhelming urge to reach out and curl his hand round it.
Neve raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
To distract himself from thoughts of Neve, Akhezo focused on the distant high-rises of the inner city, their tall shapes no more than dark silhouettes against the sky. I’ll be living in one of ’em one day, he thought. I’ll have my own air-tram that stops right outside my door and all the trainers I could ever want, even though I’d never have to run ever again. An image came to his mind; Neve, laughing, standing there above it all with him, her bare shoulders white and round like perfect moons in his sky.
I’ll have it all, he thought.
Neve scooted back beside him, startling him out of his daydream. ‘So, you gonna tell me what happened? Or am I gonna have to live the rest of my life thinking you can’t even wipe a bum properly?’
‘Nothing happened.’ Akhezo scowled. ‘Just tried to listen in on the exchange, that’s all. As if you wouldn’t do the same.’
She grinned. ‘Of course I would’ve. Though I wouldn’t have got caught.’ She dodged the punch he threw at her. ‘Sorry, sorry! Come on, tell me what happened.’
‘Just did.’
‘I mean, what did you hear, what were they saying? It must’ve been important for Cambridge to do the exchange himself.’
Akhezo shrugged. He thought of how everything had changed after the information exchange. Instead of a thrill of pride when Domino’s voice called out of the speaker in his room, calling him to Cambridge’s office, he felt his gut clench at the memory of plunging into the river. The foul water had been all around him and inside him too, as he’d swallowed it when his lungs screamed for air. He’d thought he’d die like that, with the disgusting taste of the river and the coldness of it pressing against him, squeezing him until he could barely move, but a passing junk-boat had spotted him, the Reds on board pulling him out.
Cambridge didn’t save me. That was the first thing Akhezo had thought as he lay on his side, coughing up water. He didn’t save me. It surprised him how much that hurt.
‘Hey, what’s wrong with you today?’ Neve grumbled, poking Akhezo. She stood up. ‘Fine, then. Don’t tell me. I won’t bother telling you the news I was coming to share.’
Akhezo rolled his eyes. ‘All right, I’ll tell you. But don’t get excited – it was only materials. Nothing interesting. That’s all Cambridge wanted.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Materials? What sort?’
‘Dunno. That’s when those stupid women … Anyway, Cambridge said something ’bout not being able to get as much as he needed from the Limpets.’
‘But the Limpets have everything!’
He nodded.
‘Wait.’ Neve chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘I think this might be to do with what I was coming to tell you.’ She started pacing back and forth. ‘Yeah, I think it is!’
‘How?’ asked Akhezo excitedly, getting to his feet.
She turned to him, her face alight with a feverish glow. ‘You said Cambridge wants a load of materials he can’t get in the Limpets?’
‘Yeah. And?’
‘Well, I was coming to tell you that I’d overheard Domino and Cambridge talking about some delivery they were expecting tomorrow night. All pretty normal. But then Cambridge said he wanted Domino to make sure no one in the skylungs was around when the delivery arrived.’
‘That’s weird,’ said Akhezo. ‘They usually want us all there to help bring the stuff up.’
‘There’s more,’ continued Neve, nodding. ‘See, Cambridge told Domino to be really careful with the delivery, as though it was something dangerous. Whatever materials he wanted from the Council … this must be it!’
Akhezo grinned. ‘We’ve got to find out what it is!’
He thought about how Cambridge had left him drowning in the river
, even how his mother had abandoned him when he was just a baby. He was tired of adults failing him. It was time for him to stop putting his hope in them and start making his own instead.
‘There’s only one way the delivery’ll be getting in,’ he said. ‘The tunnel to the Limpets. We can wait for it there.’
‘What about Domino?’ Neve asked, a shiver of unease in her voice. ‘He’ll be there.’
Akhezo smirked. ‘He’s just a useless old man. We can take care of him.’
18
Caterpillar Boy
In the shallows of the river a few miles from the village, Emeli was teaching Butterfly and Silver to fish. She showed them how to brace their legs against the rush of the water, to keep as still and quiet as possible, and then lunge forward in one quick movement to pierce the fish with the spear. Emeli, however, was having difficulty with the keeping quiet part. She hadn’t stopped talking about her life in the Outside since they’d left the village. Butterfly was listening patiently, seeming to warm to his little sister. At first, he’d been tentative around her, but Silver had noticed that he’d started opening up more, laughing more easily.
Silver stood on her own a little way downriver, watching them. She had changed back into the plain clothes she’d been wearing when they left Neo-Babel yesterday; the grey jumper that hung off one shoulder and dark green trousers. Her skin was slick with sweat under the heat of the sun, but she barely noticed, wiping her brow with the back of her hand absentmindedly.
Since arriving at the village, she had felt like Butterfly had slipped out of reach. As though their worlds – which had always orbited each other’s with a steady, even gravity – had somehow broken apart; his swinging off to trace a new orbit the moment the word Mum had left his lips. They’d only been at the village for just over half a day, but already Silver felt anxious to move on. The flush of hope that had filled her when she’d found out about the village had quickly disappeared after it became clear that no one had seen her parents passing through, or knew anything about their whereabouts. To see Butterfly now with his mother and sister only reminded her of her own parents’ absence.
She shook her head. Stop being so selfish, she told herself angrily. Butterfly has spent years without his parents. If anyone deserves this, it’s him, and no friend would ask to take it away from him so soon.
Laughter erupted upstream as Butterfly speared a fish. He held his spear aloft in a triumphant stance, the fish’s metallic scales flashing in the sun as it squirmed. ‘I got one!’ he called, catching Silver’s gaze. A huge grin lit his face. It was dazzling, like looking straight at the sun.
She forced herself to return his smile.
‘Yasir will be so pleased!’ Emeli beamed. ‘Five fish! That’s loads more than we caught last time.’
It had taken forty minutes to return to the forest where the village was hidden at its centre, walking slowly through sun-blushed meadows and sloping hills. The village was a large space, filled with one-storey buildings all made from an assortment of wooden planks, metal sheets and other flat pieces of material that had been hammered together haphazardly. Green sheets of tarpaulin stretched over every roof.
‘How did this all start, Emeli?’ Silver asked as they walked through the village.
Emeli shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t really know. You should ask Yasir – he set it up.’
She led them to the cooking house, a rectangular building on the far western side of the settlement. Unfurling clouds of steam rose from the chimneys that peppered its roof. Inside was a long corridor. Off to both sides were a series of rooms, all equipped with cooking equipment. Silver and Butterfly followed Emeli to a room at the back with a stove and wooden table, a selection of pots and crockery piled on its worn surface.
‘These are some of the only machines we have in the village,’ Emeli said, gesturing at the stove. She pushed aside a stack of plates on the table for Butterfly to set down the container with their fish. ‘Yasir doesn’t let us use anything that’ll interfere with the natural world too much.’
‘But what powers it all?’ asked Butterfly.
‘A solar generator Yasir built,’ she explained. ‘We’ve got just enough electricity to power everything – that’s how we recharged your torches. But when we’re outside the village, Yasir only lets us use natural methods to do things. Dad wanted to divert some of the river straight into the village, but Yasir wouldn’t have it. Said it was …’ She stopped and fell silent. Her voice had broken slightly at the mention of her father.
Silver understood immediately how Emeli was feeling. She couldn’t think of her parents without remembering that awful night walking through their apartment, not knowing whether she’d ever see their faces again. Emeli must still be grieving over her father’s death.
Perhaps sensing the mood darkening, Butterfly reached forward and touched his sister’s shoulder tentatively. ‘Did Dad ever tell you that when you were a baby he sung to you?’ he asked.
She looked up at him with big eyes and shook her head, blinking back tears.
‘He sang to you all the time,’ Butterfly went on. He sat on one of the chairs round the table. ‘I only saw you once, but when Dad sang to you then, you gurgled back, like you were trying to sing along.’
Emeli giggled. She stepped closer to him, holding on to the edge of the table. ‘Dad told me loads of stories about you,’ she said, launching into a story about an unfortunate incident concerning baby Butterfly and a vacuum cleaner, her voice shrill and full of delight.
After Emeli’s story, the three of them cooked the fish on the stove in oil the villagers made from nuts, and when the food was ready, they carried the plates outside. There was a bench under the shade of the cooking house’s roof. Leanor and Yasir were there already. Emeli and Butterfly placed the plates on the table and slid onto the bench. Silver set down a jug of water and sat down opposite Yasir.
‘Looks great.’ Leanor smiled.
‘Butterfly caught three fish, Mum!’ said Emeli as they began helping themselves to the food. ‘He was really good for his first time.’
Butterfly nudged his sister. ‘I had a good teacher,’ he said, and a smile as bright as sunshine beamed across her face.
As the three of them started chatting, Silver leant towards Yasir. ‘Emeli said you created the village. Could you tell me more about it?’
‘Of course,’ Yasir said. ‘You must be very curious. Neo citizens always are when they first arrive.’
Silver looked puzzled. Then she gasped. ‘Did everyone here leave Neo?’
He nodded. ‘We have had a few people from nearby settlements visit, and once even a nomad ice tribe from the New Arctic passed through with their magic men. But none of them stay for long. Being so close to the city troubles them.’
‘You mean you’ve met people from outside Neo?’ Silver was still reeling from the fact that all these people had left Neo. The thought of people who had actually been born and raised in the Outside made her feel giddy.
Yasir smiled, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘What did you think? That the people in Neo were the only ones in the world?’
‘No! I just …’ She looked down at her food, pushing it with her fork. ‘It’s so difficult to imagine the outside world when you’ve only ever known Neo.’
‘I understand,’ he said kindly. ‘I myself was once like that. But I left Neo over ten years ago and I’ve felt free ever since. It was like a blindfold being lifted when you never knew you wore one.’
Silver nodded. ‘So you set up this village when you left the city?’
‘Not straight away,’ Yasir explained. ‘I spent a few years at a settlement far upriver, but most of the people there had strong anti-birthchip beliefs. I did not want to get caught up in those issues, so I left and joined with a couple who had recently left Neo. We searched for a good spot to build a settlement that would function in tune with nature, and … well, here we are.’
‘And you’ve been here since?’
He nodded.
‘My friends left after a few years. They felt vulnerable, so close to the city. But I wanted to make sure that any who left Neo could find us easily, and that the village would become a place where anyone could stay as long as they liked.’
‘But when you found us in the trap,’ Silver pressed, ‘you asked us whether we’d come to kill you.’
Yasir leant in closer, lowering his voice. ‘I did. You see, there are not many settlements this close to Neo. People are superstitious of the lands here – they say that ghosts walk the hills. In my twelve years of living here, I have never seen anything. But I have heard rumours.’
‘Rumours?’
He nodded. ‘Rumours of masked men with guns and bombs and other unspeakable weapons. They say they come from Neo under the cover of darkness and burn whole settlements to the ground. Kill all that live there.’
A shiver ran down Silver’s spine. She stared back into Yasir’s dark, serious eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why would the Council do that? Me and Butterfly – we work for them. They’ve never mentioned anything like that. Why would they destroy the settlements? Surely they’d be happy that people were contacting us from the Outside after all these years of isolation?’
Yasir let out a long sigh. ‘Do you know why the Council ordered Butterfly’s family to be killed?’
‘Yes. Butterfly told me.’
‘And you think a government that could do that to its own people would not do it to others?’
Silver shook her head. ‘They’ve got no reason to.’
‘No reason?’ Yasir raised his eyebrow. ‘Silver, Neo is a miracle city. In an entire world where civilisations hundreds of centuries old have fallen, still it stands. It survived the riots and wars, the sea-level rises, the slow demise of the modern world. It survived the Great Fall. Can you imagine how great it must have been itself to do so? It is not the only settlement that did, no, but the one that has been least changed, because of the delicate balance the Council have skilfully kept. Neo’s very existence is a promise. A promise to the remaining Mainland and Red Nation and Afrika peoples that here is a start. Here is a new beginning for them, a place where the world they once knew has survived. Not unchanged, not undamaged. But is has survived none the less. Now, do you see?’
