“But it’s too dark,” Fenn moaned.
“Skeg fer lights then!” Halflin scolded, shaking his head wearily at Fenn’s idleness.
Since he’d been old enough to climb a ladder up into the roof space it had been Fenn’s job to scan the “Whale’s Acre” as Halflin called it. Every hour he had to look out for incoming boats: Fearzeros bringing boats to the Punchlock, Gleaners trading their sea harvests, and now and again the odd barge with Seaborns seeking refuge. When those came he’d help Halflin quickly bundle up whatever they could spare – a few eggs, a peck of rice – and leave it out on the marsh, beneath the red-berried Wayfaring tree. The Seaborns knew to look there, even if they never knew who left it. Fenn felt sorry for them; East Marsh was harsh, but so long as his grandad did what the Terra Firma told him, he wouldn’t be rounded up and imprisoned in one of the dreaded Terra Firma Missions, where prisoners were forced to mine rock to build the Walls or to cut peat for fuel; destroying the marsh, inch by inch. Thousands of Seaborns had been swallowed up in this huge task and Fenn sometimes spotted one of the gigantic prison ships arriving in the distance with new labour for East Isle’s Wall.
Fenn pushed the drying rack to one side to reveal a hidden trapdoor, slid it aside and clambered up into the loft. This was where he had to hide whenever a ship came to East Point, where he’d lie in wait until the ship departed. He crawled over to where Halflin had fixed up a telescope, which poked out of a secret spy hole made by lifting one of the hut’s tiles. Beneath it was a small wooden platform with a couple of blankets, a bottle of water and some dry oats stored in a rat-proof tin, in case Fenn ever had to hide for longer than a few hours.
Fenn hated hiding away; his scars were invisible to the naked eye, but if discovered, they marked him as true Seaborn and Halflin was always reminding him that the Terra Firma believed anyone with the mutation hailed from pure Seaborn stock.
East Marsh was especially dangerous for Seaborns. Halflin had often told him how Chilstone had taken all the babies from East Marsh to punish the Sargassons for helping the Resistance. Fenn knew he would have been taken too, had Halflin not outwitted them. He loved hearing about their midnight flight to a woman called Lundy – who hid him until the raids were over – and the terrifying part where Halflin tricked the vicious Malmuts. It sounded so full of excitement and danger, and there wasn’t a lot of either of those in Fenn’s life. Nor would there ever be, as far as he could see, so long as his sole company was his grandad and a sad old sow.
With a heavy sigh, Fenn pressed his eye to the cold brass of the telescope and peered down the shaft. He found the Panimengro immediately, its lights twinkling, chugging steadily up one of the quieter tributaries that led inland.They always moored out of sight; they weren’t supposed to trade on East Marsh because Chilstone was choking all supplies to the Resistance – and anyone who helped it. Fenn had always dreamt of being out there on the sea, to feel so much space around him, and the ocean beneath him, to sail out to the horizon and discover what lay beyond.
The Panimengro was earlier than usual; dawn hadn’t yet broken and the night sky was only just fading to the deepest indigo. Fenn yawned and stretched out lazily on the blanket. A sly idea sneaked into his head with a wink: if he said he hadn’t seen it yet he could have a few minutes rest from chores, lolling in the cosy roof space. So instead of going straight back down he lay on his stomach, idly sweeping the telescope across the vast black ocean, seeing if there was anything else of interest. It was as he lingered on the faint point where the dark sea met the darker sky that he saw it; a huge patch of pure black looming on the horizon, as if an island had grown there overnight. He strained his eyes to see better; it was a Fearzero. But why was it in the dark like that, lights off, like it was skulking, waiting to pounce?
Fenn climbed back down the ladder.
“Grandad?”
“Yep?” Halflin said, barely looking up from packing the crate.
“There’s a Fearzero, but its lights are off…”
The colour instantly drained from Halflin’s face. He wrenched a telescope from his pocket and stumbled out of the door. He was back almost immediately, looking like he had aged ten years in as many seconds. The gull seemed to sense something was wrong and tried to fly into the eaves, screeching as it crashed into the drying rack and making leaves and dust rain down.
“Gimme them bags!” Halflin said weakly.
Halflin’s voice was normally gruff, but it suddenly sounded thin and scared. Fenn looked anxiously at him. He always thought of Halflin in much the same way he did the old, gnarled oak tree growing by the house: ugly, tough and unrelenting, but always there. It frightened him to hear his shaky voice.
“Why?” Fenn asked, taking a tattered leather bag and a rucksack from the door and handing them to him.
“Nothin’ on the tow line! No boats!” Halflin said, stuffing the bags with whatever came easiest to hand: a husk of rice bread, a pouch of scurvy grass, his leather gauntlets and a box of matches. Fenn looked at him blankly.
“Why’s it here then?”
“Dunno, but we’re not waitin’ to find out. It’s the Warspite…”
Fenn’s heart beat faster. Halflin had always told him that if he ever saw the Warspite, hiding in the loft would not be enough; Fenn would have to run and never stop. Halflin scanned the room quickly, cursing himself; in the early days he’d always had a bag ready for flight, but as the years had come and gone he’d grown complacent. Now the moment was upon them he couldn’t think straight. What would they need? He struggled to keep his voice level and calm.
“Get yerself a knife,” he said.
Fenn rummaged in the tin where they kept the knives and passed the sharpest over, his hands trembling.
“Someone must’ve seen yer!” Halflin said, throwing the knife in Fenn’s rucksack. “Have yer been sneakin’ out?” he asked accusingly, before grabbing one of the hams and stuffing it in his bag.
“N–no,” Fenn stammered.
Halflin put his head in his hands, marshalling his thoughts.
“Have ter get yer away from here,” he muttered to himself.
“Where to?” Fenn asked. His voice was wobbly and he tried to keep it steady. Had someone seen him when he’d been swimming? He thought he’d always been so careful.
Halflin didn’t seem to hear him. Instead he pushed past Fenn, stumbled over to the table and crouched down in the shadows, his fingers scrabbling at the wooden planks. Quickly he found a hole in the floorboard, stuck his finger in and pulled it, coughing and spluttering as the dust flew up. Fenn stared in bewilderment. In the whole of his thirteen years cooped up in the hut he’d never known it was there.
Halflin reached into a secret stash hole, lifted out another board and then an old tin box. He yanked the lid off. Inside was an old compass, a bag of jewellery and silver and an unopened bottle of the same liquid brown medicine he took when his back hurt more than usual – the stuff that made his speech slur and his eyelids droop. Reaching further in, he pulled out a wad of documents: fake sea-permits and ID cards. He rifled through them frantically, his hands shaking. At last he found what he was looking for: a sea-permit and ID card for Fenn, with false dates of birth, and a blank permit. As he groped in the dark, his fingers touched the cold gold key he’d taken from Fenn’s neck, and for a split second he paused, wondering if he should take it. No; it was better left in the dark and forgotten. He forced the boards back into place, jammed the papers in the bag and shoved Fenn’s rucksack at him.
“Where’re we going?” Fenn asked as he hitched the bag onto his shoulder.
Halflin yanked back the heavy iron bolt across the door.
“Out the back! Less chance of being seen. Go!” he said, giving Fenn a push.
Across the doorway a spider had spun a web, its spokes blanched with the frosty dew of morning and set rigid; web across the door, a visit for sure. Halflin glowered and angrily brushed the threads away; he knew who the visitor would be.
A veil of icy mist blocked their view of the path and it was impossible to see more than a foot ahead. Halflin grabbed a stick and tapped the ground in front of him like a blind man as he loped away from the hut.
“Keep up!” he growled, and for the first time in years took Fenn’s hand in his own rough paw and yanked him down the flint path, the tip-tapping of his stick echoing across the estuary water.
3
The path led towards the marsh. It passed the ancient, wind-stunted oak, only just keeping anchor in the rocky ground, then snaked down through the gorse before dissolving into a muddy trail used more by wild creatures than humans. Fenn had never been into the marsh before, and despite his fear, felt a tremor of excitement. He glanced back over his shoulder, marvelling at how small his home suddenly seemed, silhouetted against the ashy moon.
“Where—?” Fenn began, but Halflin put his finger to his lips, signing for him to wait; marsh vapours had a knack of making sounds carry. They hurried on until the gorse gave way to an army of bulrushes, higher than either of them, their spiky seed heads thrusting into the lightening sky like spears. Whichever direction Fenn looked was the same, there seemed to be no path at all, but Halflin kept his eyes on the ground, taking them ever deeper into the dense reed beds; he knew that where the animals trod would be safe for them. Once they were completely concealed, Halflin nodded.
“Where are we going?” Fenn panted as he ran to keep up. For an old man Halflin was surprisingly fast, even though his breath was ragged and his forehead shone with sweat.
“Lundy,” he said. Fenn was about to ask more but Halflin put his hand up. “Stop chelpin’ an’ save yer breath,” he instructed. “It’s a good way yet!”
They pushed on, away from the inky night and into the marsh’s milky fog. The air was frosty and the reeds were bent with icy stalactites. As they stumbled through the blackthorn, knuckles of ice fell from its black prickles, stippling the water slopping at their feet. As Halflin and Fenn strode on, the clouds of their breath were lost against the white mist hanging over that part of the marsh. They had been running for nearly an hour when the ghostly shape of a ship’s hulk loomed through the haze.
“Is that Lundy’s?” Fenn asked, pushing forward. Halflin yanked him down to his knees.
“Could be Terras there,” he whispered.
They crawled closer, peeping through the reeds, checking for movement, but save for the sudden startling of an avocet taking flight from the rushes, everywhere was still. At Halflin’s sign they broke cover and scampered across the open ground to the boat, peaty black clods kicking up from their heels as they ran.
When exactly the Ionia had been shipwrecked was long before living memory, but Halflin remembered playing on the wreck as a child. It was sixty feet long, painted black with pitch; probably a fishing smack washed up in the last Rising. The Ionia was just one of hundreds of vessels littering the marshes for up to twenty miles inland.
Over time the boat had settled, sinking deep into the oozy black mud, like a hen nestling down in straw. Old doors and broken pieces of wood leaned up against the sides under which Lundy stored wreckage gathered from the marsh. She had dragged all kinds of things back here: engine parts, scraps of twisted metal, a fridge door, empty paint cans, hubcaps and plastic chairs. Anything to recycle or barter; all now green with mildew.
A few yards from the Ionia, on the little hillocks of drier land, she’d grown vegetables, and on the last piece of high ground stood a neat pile of large, flat stones. Ragged robin and skullcap plants grew up against the weatherboards and lush moss caked the boat like a carpet of lime velvet, growing around the windows cut into the wood. A rich thicket of woundwort grew beneath the narrow steps that ran up the side of the boat to a door hacked out of the hull, halfway up.
The Ionia looked like part of the marsh itself, as if it had always been there and a hazy tranquillity hung over it, like a shroud. For a moment Halflin wondered if she’d died. It had been a year since he last came, bringing provisions she couldn’t glean from the marsh: a bale of linen and paraffin for her lamps.
Halflin stealthily climbed the slime-green steps and listened tentatively at the door. When he was sure the place was deserted he beckoned to Fenn, who tiptoed up and followed him inside. Halflin crept under the curtain and into the boat.
“She must be out on the marsh,” he said. “We’ll get yer dry.”
They were in a huge room, divided into compartments by hemp fishing nets that were woven with rags and shards of plastic. The whole place reeked of salty sweet leeks. Steam from damp cloths rose like ghosts in front of a pot-bellied stove, where a lid bounced on a pan of bubbling soup. Around the walls plants and roots were drying: water starwort, yellow pimpernel and seaholly. By the fire there was a rocking chair made from the barrel of a wheelbarrow strapped between two tyres, and on this curled a huge, one-eyed ginger tom cat with ears so torn they looked lacy. There was no sign of any other living thing. Never having been so close to a cat before, Fenn couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke the dense orange fur. Unused to anyone but Lundy, the cat bushed up its fur in fear, then hissing angrily it lashed out, leaving four deep welts across Fenn’s hand. Bright blobs of blood instantly beaded on his skin.
“Damn thing,” Halflin muttered, toeing the animal brusquely out of the way. Snarling, the cat clawed up one of the nets, glowering at them, its frayed tail twitching viciously. Halflin yanked the scrap of cloth from his own neck and gently wrapped it around Fenn’s wound.
“It were jus’ scared. Don’t meddle wi’ creatures yer don’t know, boy, an’ yer won’t get hurt!” Halflin murmured. As he tightened the knot there was a click of metal behind them and Fenn jumped; a bulky woman blocked the doorway, pointing the snout of a loaded harpoon at them.
“No!” Halflin cried, instantly placing himself between the harpoon’s point and Fenn. Lundy squinted to see better.
“Halflin…?” She lowered the harpoon. “Thought you were thieves,” she said. Lundy turned and whistled down the steps.
“Gelert!” she called.
An enormous wolfhound, which reached the same height as Fenn’s shoulders, trotted up beside her. She clicked her fingers and the dog obediently slunk over to a goatskin rug, where it lay down and stretched out, resting its head on massive paws as it gazed adoringly at Lundy. Fenn considered stroking its shaggy white fur as it padded by, but remembered the cat’s reaction. Lundy looked Halflin up and down.
“Time’s not been kind,” she said, “but expect you could say the same of me.”
She laughed creakily despite her eyes being full of pain, and poked Fenn with a witchy nail.
“He’s grown!” she said, as Halflin stepped aside. “Tall, but skinny!”
Fenn stared. Lundy was like a female Halflin: the same weather-mottled skin, the same capable, mallet-like hands. Her goatskin dress was covered in mud and held together with rope, from which hung knives, scissors, a sack and a long-handled colander. Four liquorice-black eels were threaded on a hook on her belt. Over her head and shoulders she wore a woven grass mat, part hat, part cape, which covered her back, and made her look like a shapeless green mound; but it helped to hide her when she went scavenging or hunting in the marsh. Burweed was wound into the mat’s peak, obscuring half her face, but through the dead fronds a pair of bright, black eyes peered out.
“Cat got your tongue, young man?” Lundy said sharply. Fenn shook his head and lifted the bandage to display the cat’s claw marks.
“My hand,” he said.
Lundy laughed and her expression softened. She put the safety catch on the harpoon, propped it in the corner and flopped the eels on the table. Then she looked them up and down, taking in their thinness, their soggy clothes, the way Halflin hunched protectively in front of Fenn, who was shivering despite the warmth of the stove.
“So what do you want here?” she said. “Again.” She shot Halflin a guarded look.
“The Warspite’s back,” Halflin said.
Winc
ing in pain, Lundy shuffled as quickly as she could to the window, her belt of knives and scissors clattering like a wind chime and the sour reek of marsh water wafting from her clothes as she moved. She scanned the hazy horizon before quickly slamming back the bolts of the shutters.
“Might not be after him,” she said, lighting one of the paraffin lamps and filling the room with a greasy smell of burning. Halflin shook his head.
“Chilstone will never give up.”
Gelert’s gleaming white fur bristled and he growled at the name.
“Then why’ve you brought him here?” Lundy said.
“You hid him last time,” Halflin said hopefully. Lundy shook her head in disbelief.
“It’s one thing hiding a tiddly scrap of a baby, another hiding that.” She jerked her head in Fenn’s direction.
“Jus’ fer one night?” Halflin asked.
“No,” she said.
“Till dusk?” he implored. Lundy ignored him.
For a second Halflin looked beaten but quickly rallied.
“Yer could get ‘im to the Sargassons fer me.”
“With the Warspite here? Haven’t they suffered enough?”
Something about the set of her jaw made Fenn realise Lundy wasn’t going to help, but Halflin wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“Saw fresh wolf scat on the way here – the pack’s near. What chance ‘e got on the marsh?” Halflin persisted, intending to prick her conscience. He squinted through the shutter slats, calculating how long it would be before the morning mists rose. If they had to hide out in the reed beds they’d best be going now.
“Should’ve thought of that thirteen years ago,” Lundy muttered.
Halflin gave her a sharp look to ward her off revealing any more and Lundy nodded almost imperceptibly, but Fenn caught the glance they exchanged. It was some secret code between old survivors.
“At least let ‘im take the dog. Fer protection,” Halflin begged.
“No,” said Lundy, folding her arms. “He’s all I’ve got.” She stared ahead stubbornly. “I did my bit, Halflin. You’re not taking me or Gelert down with you.” Her voice trembled with anger and fear.
Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero Page 3
