Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero

by Francesca Armour-Chelu

  The baby was still there, but apart from bobbing in the rise and fall of the tug’s wash, it was motionless. Halflin held the net out as far as he could, but the baby was being carried away from the tug by the suction of the Albatross as it slid towards the sunken town. Halflin grabbed another pole and as fast as his trembling hands could manage he lashed them together and dragged the net through the choppy water. After two tries, the baby at last slid in. It was face down.

  Halflin hauled the net back onto the tug, trying not to bump it on the sides but still needing to be quick. His knees were weak with fear as he fell to the deck, pulling off the baby’s freezing wet shift. It was a boy, no more than a few weeks old. Halflin parted its lips, hooked his little finger down its throat and pulled out a tangle of oily seaweed. The baby flopped lifelessly in his hands.

  The wind was blowing lightly and the tug drifted on a slow current. Gulls wheeled through the rain-shadowed sky above but even they were silent for once, as if they too were listening out for life. There was no sound on the tug apart from the soft slop-slop-slop of water against the side and Halflin’s own heavy, frightened breathing.

  Halflin started frantically rubbing the baby’s chest but still it lay motionless. He picked it up and stared into its tiny, crumpled face for a sign of hope, but it was as limp as a rag doll. He carefully laid it back down, took a deep breath, closed his mouth around the baby’s tiny blue lips and breathed out. Like a balloon, the baby’s chest lifted, expanded, and deflated. Halflin repeated this again and again, but it was too late. Each time the baby’s chest swelled but flattened again immediately; there was no breath in it save that which Halflin blew there. Halflin felt his throat tighten with the loss of something he’d only just found.

  “Don’t be dead!” he whispered. He picked the baby up again and held it close against his thumping heart, cradling its head on his shoulder, willing it to live. “Don’t be dead,” he said again, almost angry now; he hadn’t woken up this morning expecting his heart to be torn out again. He rocked the baby back and forth.

  Suddenly the baby coughed, spluttering water all down itself and him, and opened its eyes. It began shivering and crying.

  Halflin grabbed some old rags to dry it and peeled away the last strands of seaweed clinging to it. There was a key around its neck. His face grew ashen with fear as he recognised the design: the key of the Demari family. The symbol of the Resistance.

  What idiot would put that around a baby’s neck? Might as well tie a noose around it. Halflin scowled as he rubbed the baby’s head dry. He didn’t want any more to do with that lot; reckless fools, getting people’s hopes up but never delivering. One thing Halflin knew was that you only defied the Terra Firma if you stood a chance of winning; all the Resistance had done was poke a tiger with a feather. Since the assassination attempt on Chilstone, he’d become even more vicious. Halflin ripped the chain off, and was about to toss it overboard when he had second thoughts. It wasn’t his to throw away, and as angry as he was, he couldn’t destroy something so precious, and once so full of hope.

  Instead he stashed it deep in his pocket and pulled the scarf from his neck, carefully swaddling the baby. It was worse than he’d suspected: several toes were webbed. Halflin had seen this before; the deformity was once very rare but, over time, in a drenched world, more children were being born with the defect. It marked them clearly as being from Seaborn stock and it had to be undone. As Halflin had told his own wife when their youngest was born webbed, better cut now than killed later. A hot bolt of nausea thickened in the base of his throat as Halflin peered back out to sea. His forehead pricked with sweat as he scanned for the Warspite, but it was now a tiny speck in the distance. He let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

  Quickly Halflin put the baby into a wicker catch basket and lurched back to the wheel; he had to get the baby as far away from the Punchlock as possible. It was too early to stop work and he shouldn’t do anything to draw attention to himself. He steered the tug towards shore, moored it, then ran with the basket to the workshop where he sorted through the loot gleaned from scuttled boats. He lit the lamp, turning it down low so it would burn all night and anyone passing would think he was at work. Halflin then carefully buttoned his reefer jacket over the baby to hide it and keep it warm. From a distance no one would think he was carrying anything, although they might wonder how an old man could get fat in times as lean as these.

  Checking no one was nearby, Halflin hurried out, slipping into the gorse like a wily old fox. He was wise to be cautious; who knew who might be watching in these dark days? Terra Firma spies were everywhere.

  It was nearly night time when he stumbled through the back door of his hut, clawing for breath. He quickly bolted the door behind him and closed the shutters to hide the light. Then he fumbled along the driftwood shelf, found a candle stub and lit it. The hazy light revealed two sparse rooms, separated by a threadbare sail sheet. In one room was an upturned crate next to a bed, which was made from a door laid on top of two old oil cans and covered with a sailcloth pad stuffed with bulrush seeds. In the larger room a second door bridged two crates to make a table, and next to an oil drum stove stood a wooden clinker boat cut in half – the bow pointing upwards – where Halflin could sit to smoke his pipe, protected from needling draughts. Plants hung from the ceiling to dry: marsh cinquefoil, red baneberry and gypsywort. Over the mantelpiece gaped a shark’s jaw, its teeth glinting, and inside this perched a gull with a torn wing that Halflin had rescued. Now it eyed the bundle beadily and squawked for fish before flapping clumsily to the ground. Halflin shooed it away and shuffled over to the table. He propped the candle in a cup and shoved the dirty plates aside, then carefully laid the baby down and pulled off the scarf.

  He took a penknife from his pocket, slid out the bright steel blade and lifted the baby’s foot, noticing how the skin had pruned from being in the water. He quailed; Halflin was as tough as old leather but he’d never had the stomach for hurting any living creature. Even stoking up the stove he’d break the bark off each log to give the woodlice a chance to escape, singeing his fingertips as he plucked them from the flames. Folding the blade back into the handle he stared glumly at the baby wriggling helplessly on the table before him, but he knew he had to protect it. He gritted his teeth, pulled the knife out again and tested its sharpness on his thumb, drawing a thin line of blood across his own skin. A sharp blade would hurt less and the wounds would heal better. The Terras had got wise to this trick and looked for scars now; you had to be so neat.

  He rummaged on the shelves and found the precious jar of honey he’d been saving. There was just enough. He stripped some leaves of dried woundwort into a cup and poured water on them, then held the blade in the candle flame for a moment, wiped it briskly on his cuff and tore two strips of cotton from his own shirt. He dipped the stub of his finger in the honey, put it in the baby’s mouth and let the baby suck. Holding the baby’s tiny foot in his rough hand he spread the offending toes out, stretching the wafer thin cobwebs of skin, like a frog’s.

  He made the first cut, biting his lip as he trimmed off the bits of extra flesh as though he was paring an apple and tossed the scraps of skin into the fire; there could be no evidence. Immediately the baby yelped in pain but Halflin put more honey in its mouth. He worked swiftly. The honey had barely dissolved on the baby’s tongue before he gave it more again. Soon the toes were separated.

  Halflin gently slid the damp woundwort leaves between the baby’s toes, then cleaned the honey jar with the cotton rags and wound them around the baby’s feet to heal the wounds. With the baby crying and shaking, he wrapped the remains of his shirt around it and laid it in an old box he had packed with sailcloth, then tugged a sweater from where it hung on a nail and tucked it around the baby. But it still wouldn’t stop crying; it needed feeding. In the corner stood a wooden bucket of water where a pitcher of goat’s milk was kept cold. That’d do.

  Halflin filled a bottle with milk, cut t
he finger off an ancient rubber glove, pierced this with the end of his knife and fitted it over the bottle neck, then squatted down by the stove to feed the baby. It sucked and mewed, then at last, worn out with crying, the baby blinked drowsily and fell asleep.

  Halflin pulled on his only other shirt and flopped down in the clinker boat seat. He needed to think; a smoke would help. He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe and felt the cold of the chain. He took it out and held it aloft, staring as the key twisted back and forth, glinting in the firelight, then stuffed it away again. He tamped some dried yarrow into his pipe, lit the strands, and sucked hard several times to get it going. Damp smoke unfurled up into the rafters like a ribbon.

  Halflin shook his head and frowned at the box and its contents. If he ever discovered a Seaborn hiding on a Sunkmarked boat, he was supposed to turn them in. How was he supposed to keep a crying baby hidden from the Terra Firma when he was collecting boats for them every day? He’d had some bad luck in his time, but this baby was the worst thing to ever happen to him. Even so, he’d pulled enough tar-smothered gulls from the oil-slickened sea to know that if you rescue something, then you’re responsible for it. Only one person could help: Lundy. She lived deep in the treacherous marshes; the baby would be safe out there, for as long as she’d have him.

  2

  The boy Halflin found no more needed to be taught how to swim than a spider learns to spin. The first time he slid into the water he instinctively knew how to pack air into the many pockets of his lungs, like they were separate bundles he’d unwrap when needed. He could soon dive down for ten minutes or more before needing to come up for air.

  This morning, deep in the dark green water, he was swimming directly above the hundreds of boats lying rotting in the ruins of the old town, their sterns sticking up through the wrecks of the stone houses. He dived down, weaving through the broken masts and rigging that lay tangled in the shattered hulls. When he arrived at the spot with the most recent wrecks he dived even deeper, down past bosuns’ chairs and figureheads of beautiful women, wrenched off and lying broken on the old cobbled streets. Bright shoals of mackerel flashed like silver daggers around him, swimming in and out of portholes and through the ripped bulkheads. He’d never been this deep before, but he felt happy in the gloom. He was never afraid, never feared drowning. Here he was away from prying eyes and felt free.

  There was an old barge lying across the main gate of the sunken town. The hull of a smaller fishing boat had been crushed beneath it and the wooden struts stuck out like ribs. As he swam closer, he noticed how the two holes on either side of its bow looked exactly like the empty eye sockets in a skull and he shuddered. Suddenly an enormous black eel darted out of the nearest hole, straight for him, its teeth glinting like needles. It had to be twenty feet long at least. In all his life on East Point he’d never seen one so big. The eel came too quickly to dodge and clamped its vicious jaws around his leg. He jolted in shock and let out a stream of bubbles.

  “Wake up!”

  Halflin was shaking him awake. When he didn’t move he gave him a sharp kick for good measure.

  “Wake up, boy!”

  Halflin never used the name he’d given the baby: Fenn, the name of the wetlands that had hidden him, a Landborn name, a name to hide behind. Maybe he thought by using it he would grow to care for him and he didn’t want that; he didn’t want to care about anything ever again.

  “Geddup! Get dressed,” Halflin barked.

  Fenn slowly woke, rubbing sleep’s glue from his eyes and blinking in confusion as Halflin threw his clothes at him. It was pitch black outside but Halflin had already rekindled the fire, and the room smelt of wood smoke and bacon fat. The oil lamp had been lit and its yellow glaze filled all but the darkest shadows in the corners of the kitchen where they slept on the bitterest winter nights. A forest of shadows shimmied across the whitewashed walls as Halflin’s ropes of drying marsh plants swayed in the draught, and his bottles of ointments winked on the driftwood shelves. The old gull perched on the back of Halflin’s smoking chair, preening its crooked wings and watching Halflin’s every move in case of scraps.

  Fenn groggily dragged himself out of bed. Normally he was awake first, feeding the pigs, collecting the eggs for breakfast, packing a bundle of food for Halflin to take out while he worked down at the Punchlock, and he scowled at having missed the opportunity for an early secret swim. He was forbidden to even go near the water and Halflin always kept him close to the hut, to look after the pigs or gather plants and herbs from the scrap of land behind, obscured by reeds. Halflin had always been terrified of anyone seeing him, but even though Fenn knew this and felt guilty disobeying, the pull of the water was too strong. He was like a moth to the flame; any time Halflin went to work, or before Halflin even woke up, Fenn would try to sneak out.

  With nothing to get excited about, Fenn was slower than usual. He stretched and yawned widely at the thought of another day of being stuck inside, first mending nets while his grandad worked the Punchlock, then studying his one book saved from a barge by Halflin years before: a thick encyclopaedia covering every subject from Cadavers to Dragons. He peered over at the window; it had been glazed with twenty or more jars jammed tightly together on their sides, in which lay the chubby corpses of bristle-backed blowflies that had battered themselves to death trying to reach the sun. Through the shades of dappled turquoise glass, Fenn saw it was dark outside.

  “It’s still night!” he said, his voice thick with sleep as he pulled on one of Halflin’s old Guernseys, greasy and blackened with dirt and oil. It stank of pipe smoke and fish and although Fenn was tall for his age it still hung halfway down his thighs. Fenn only ever had Halflin’s cast-offs, hemmed up crudely, for even if Halflin had the means to barter for clothing the right size, it would have been too dangerous. Someone might guess about Fenn.

  Fenn only ever went out before dawn or after dusk, so he was ghostly white, like one of the spills they used to light the fire, and never meeting another soul meant he had a shy, closed-off look in his eyes. Sometimes, after Halflin had finished for the day and if they’d got a bit more food than usual, he would stoke up the fire and tell stories. He’d tell Fenn about the mischief he’d got up to as a young boy or make up tales about his missing finger; like a squid had bitten it off, or he’d been picking his nose and it got stuck so his mum had to cut it off, and if Fenn looked up that right nostril really carefully … then Fenn would laugh so much there’d be tears in his eyes. When happy, Fenn’s face would open up and if anyone had seen him they’d have said he was handsome. Although he was thin, he was wiry, strong and healthy. But Fenn didn’t know what he looked like; there were no mirrors in the house, save a broken shard lodged on the shelf where Halflin shaved once a year – his birthday gift to himself. Fenn only ever saw bits of himself, a jigsaw face; a clear blue or green eye, an eyebrow there, a shock of soot-black hair.

  “The Panimengro’s comin’ today,” Halflin reminded him gruffly. Every few months the Panimengro or one of the other Gleaners would moor up secretly in one of the tributaries, coming to trade whatever flotsam and jetsam they had scavenged from the oceans. Ever since Chilstone realised the Sargassons had been helping the Resistance, the Terra Firma had forbidden Gleaners to dock at East Marsh or anyone to trade with them. But Halflin had to take the risk; he needed too many things the marsh couldn’t provide. He’d bundle up hare-meat, a flitch of bacon, eggs and medicinal herbs, swapping them for diesel, tools and parts for a generator he’d been trying to build – for what seemed like for ever to Fenn.

  Halflin pierced a slab of bacon griddling on the stove and wrapped a slice of rice bread around it, squeezing it into a clump. He tossed it over and Fenn took a greedy bite.

  “I forgot,” Fenn mumbled through a mouthful of bread and hot fat. He waited until Halflin turned away again before ripping off the juicy rind and flipping it into the gull’s beak. The gull guzzled it down with a happy squawk.

  “Told yer before, bacon’s too
good fer the bird,” Halflin grumbled, without turning around.

  “What are we trading?”

  “Meat. An’ get us six dozen eggs from the store.”

  With that Halflin hitched three large hams up onto the rough table and rolled them in a thick layer of salt, then wrapped oily sailcloth around them, tying each with a length of twine. Fenn stared vacantly at him, slack-jawed and dopey. Halflin caught him looking.

  “Stop faffin’ about an’ get on wi’ it then! An’ feed the animals while yer at it,” he barked.

  Fenn jumped up and quickly tugged his boots on. He sometimes imagined what it would be like if his grandad wasn’t so harsh. He guessed it must be because seeing him reminded Halflin of the day when Fenn’s parents had drowned, but Halflin didn’t like Fenn asking about the past. He stumbled over to the stone sink and cranked the pump’s handle a couple of times until green water spat out of the copper piping. He splashed his face, rubbed it dry with his cuff, grabbed the bucket of pig swill then opened the front door.

  Outside it was freezing and Fenn shivered as his breath puffed out in the cold air. A few raggedy stars still lingered in the sky, and a lank, briny fog had seeped up from the estuary and folded around the little stone house, making it hard to see more than a few feet. Fenn stumbled into the pigsty, emptied the swill bucket into the troughs, scratched the ears of the old sow who still missed her piglets, tossed the hens some marsh millet and filled the bucket with eggs from a fat earthenware crock, full of slippery water-glass to keep them fresh over winter. Back in the hut Halflin had already lined a crate with straw.

  “Go see if it’s docked,” he said, without looking up.