by Naomi Foyle
Astra shrugged. ‘Can’t stop you.’
They scrambled down the steep slope in silence, Lil’s feet above her dislodging little stones that tumbled down around Astra’s shoulders. At the crossroads, Astra turned towards Or and picked up her pace.
‘Are you mad at me?’ Lil’s legs were longer, and she was right at Astra’s shoulder.
‘No.’
‘Then how come you’re not talking?’
‘I think you’re stupid, that’s all.’
‘Ooo-oh.’ Lil skipped over a branch in the path.
Astra was walking as fast as she could without breaking into a run. ‘Yes. It’s stupid to watch them. It’s illegal. They could catch you and then you’ll be in big trouble. Where would you live if Hokma kicked you out?’
‘I can live in the woods.’
‘No you can’t. Not without your dad to help you.’
‘Yes I can. He taught me how.’ Lil’s breath was on her neck, her voice a taunting gloat. ‘And he showed me how to get out of Is-Land if I want.’
Astra spun round to face Lil. ‘You can’t get past the Boundary. IMBOD would stop you.’
‘I can,’ Lil crowed. ‘He showed me a secret way.’
Astra opened her mouth to spit, ‘He did not’, but she hesitated. Lil’s dad had shown her the ancestors. He did know secrets.
‘It’s a tunnel. If we go out tonight and watch, just for five minutes,’ Lil wheedled, ‘I’ll show you.’
‘You said the tunnels were all blocked up,’ Astra challenged.
‘I had to say that, didn’t I? The tunnel is a secret.’
‘Where is it? What direction?’ Astra asked suspiciously.
‘It’s two days’ walking, north-east.’
‘We can’t go out overnight.’
‘We can ask Hokma. I bet she’ll let us.’
‘No, she won’t. North-east is the off-limits woodlands.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Lil’s eyes glittered. ‘I can show you the otters. We can tell Hokma we’re camping by the stream.’
Astra paused. She really wanted to see the otters. But there were bears in the off-limits woodlands, and wolves too, and everything Lil said was leading her deeper into potential big trouble. ‘I’m not lying to Hokma,’ she declared. Lil found it so easy to lie – she was probably lying about the otters and the tunnel. It was a trap – just a story, to get her to break the law. ‘You’re making it up, anyway, to make me go with you tonight,’ she accused.
Lil regarded her with an expression of contempt. ‘You’re scared,’ she said.
‘I am not.’
‘Yes you are. You’re scared of growing up.’
‘What?’
‘All of you are, so cosy cosy. You’re scared of being lonely or hungry or invaded. I’m not. I’m not scared of anything.’
Astra gave her a scathing look. ‘You were scared when you came here asking for food. You were scared of living in the woods then.’
‘I wasn’t scared. My dad told me to pretend I was, so that …’ Lil trailed off.
‘So that what?’
Lil tossed her head. ‘So that you’d feel sorry for me and be my new family.’
‘Yeah, well, it looks like you don’t have any family and we’re stuck with you, that’s all. So don’t go messing things up here.’
Lil dug her heel into the dirt. She jutted her chin out at Astra. ‘I could really mess things up for you.’
‘Yeah? How?’
‘I could tell Ahn that you haven’t had your Security shot.’
Astra’s stomach seized and her heart boomed in her chest. For a sickening moment she thought she might wee right down her leg and into her sandal. But she didn’t. Somehow she had known the threat was coming. She had been on her guard ever since the cliff – that was why she hadn’t bonded with Lil. And that was why, even though her blood was flaring cold in her veins, she was able to control her bladder and her voice. ‘I have so had my shot,’ she replied.
‘No, you haven’t. You don’t act like you’re supposed to. You fight back and get upset easily. That’s why you spend so much time with Hokma, away from the other kids. That’s why Hokma wanted me to be your friend.’
‘You’re nuts, Lil. You don’t know any of the other Or-kids. Yoki gets way more upset than I do. No one will believe you.’
‘See. You’re not even denying it. You’re a rubbish liar, Astra.’
‘I’m not lying.’ Her fists were clenched now.
‘Yes you are. And you’re getting upset. If I tell Ahn the truth he’ll know right away that you’re scared of being found out. He’ll get you tested and then everyone will know I’m right.’
‘He won’t.’ Astra took a deep breath. ‘He’ll get you tested. For a mental illness. I’ll tell him what you said to me on the cliff. I’ll tell him you’re schizophrenic and paranoid, like your dad, and you’ll have to go and live in a neurohospice in Atourne.’
Lil shrugged. ‘All the Or-adults will know that what I said is true. You’ll find out in your IMBOD Service – if they even let you do your IMBOD Service once they find out you haven’t had your shot.’
Astra took a step closer, tapping her temple with her finger. ‘You know why you’re nuts, Lil? Because if you tell Ahn I didn’t have my shot, he and Dr Blesserson will blame Hokma. Hokma’s already in trouble. What if they punish her? What if they lock her up? Who’ll look after you then? Huh?’
‘I can look after myself. Anyway, they’re going to find my family soon. Hokma told me.’
‘No, they’re not. You don’t have a family. You just have me and Hokma. You’re crazy, Lil. Crazy.’
Lil’s face was pinched up like a lump of brown dough and her eyes were two narrow knife-slits. ‘You have to come and watch with me tomorrow night or I’m going to tell Ahn about you.’ She spun away and ran back up the path towards the crossroads. Astra stood looking after her, her heart thumping in her chest, tears boiling in the corners of her eyes.
2.10
‘Stop fidgeting, Astra.’ Nimma tried to fasten the hipbeads around her back, but the two ends wouldn’t meet. ‘Goodness! You’re growing so fast. I’ll have to add another inch before the clasp.’
Astra was standing on a three-legged stool in Craft House. She shifted her weight again from one foot to the other. The fitting was supposed to be fun. She’d wanted to see all the different beads and help choose them and admire herself in the mirror wearing the sample string, but now the beads were digging into her flesh, her head was racing with furious thoughts and Nimma was annoyed with her.
‘Nimma,’ she wheedled.
‘Yes, pet?’
‘Can I stay at the Earthship tonight?’
Nimma sighed. ‘I thought you were going back to Hokma, darling. I’ve said Meem can have her friends over. What’s the matter with Wise House? You always stay there at the weekend.’
She hadn’t considered the possibility that Nimma would say no. Mostly Nimma complained that she never saw Astra any more. ‘Lil’s acting funny,’ she floundered. ‘It’s because she isn’t Sec Gen. She says mean things sometimes.’
‘Mean things – like what?’
This was dangerous. ‘I dunno – things I don’t like – about Gaia play in New Zonia.’ It was the best she could do.
Nimma tutted. ‘Do you want me to talk to Hokma about it?’
She shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t ask Nimma and Klor about anything Lil had said or did because any strange stories coming out of Wise House about IMBOD or broken Gaia-play rules might get her and Hokma into serious trouble. And she couldn’t tell Hokma what Lil had threatened because the punishment for breaking Rule 3 was going into counselling, and if Lil was forced into counselling there was no telling what she might do. She might even tell the doctor about Astra’s shot instead of Ahn.
She’d have to handle this herself. ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll go back. She changes her mind all the time, anyway. She’s probably forgotten what she said by now.’
>
‘Good. You just try and forget it too. She had a very hard childhood and it’s going to take her time to adjust to the way normal people live.’ Nimma put the sample string back in her sewing bag and slapped Astra gently on the hip. ‘You can get down now, darling. Why don’t you stay here with me and do some petals before you go back up? That will calm you down.’
* * *
It was like doing a scene in Role-Play class, eating dinner at Wise House that night. She and Lil said all the right words – ‘pass the salt please’; ‘what shall we do tomorrow morning?’ – but they were just acting, pretending, so that Hokma would think everything was normal. Afterwards Hokma made them mugs of hot barley and oatmilk, and they sat on the verandah playing whist. They played three rounds, as usual, and everyone won once.
‘Bedtime, girls.’ Hokma gathered the cards back together.
Lil flicked a little look at Astra, then gave a big yawn. ‘Okay, Hokma,’ she agreed.
Perhaps Lil really was tired. They’d hardly slept at all during siesta, after all. And surely Ahn would come very late, if he came at all. But though Astra closed her eyes immediately when she got into bed, she just lay awake on the edge of the futon, her body tense, Lil’s breathing beside her stealthy and light, not hoarse and slow like it was when she was sleeping.
After what seemed like forever, she heard Hokma’s loft ladder creak.
She sat up. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘Shh. I’m just getting a glass of water. I might sit on the verandah for a while. You go back to sleep.’
Hokma padded out onto the verandah and shut the door softly behind her.
‘She’s going to meet him outside,’ Lil whispered triumphantly. ‘We can watch from the window and when they go into the woods, we can follow them.’
Lil was clambering over her to the loft ladder.
Astra grabbed her leg. ‘Stay here, Lil. We can play priest and priestess while they’re gone.’
Lil shook her off. ‘They’ll be gone for hours. We’ve got lots of time to come back and play.’
She was halfway down the ladder. Astra lay in bed, clutching the sheet in her fists. She could just stay here – but then Lil might make good her threat and tell Ahn that she hadn’t had her shot. And anyway, she couldn’t let Lil spy on Hokma during Gaia worship. She’d been thinking hard all evening, and she had come up with a plan to stop her; two plans in fact. She would now have to put at least one of them into action.
* * *
‘There he is.’ Lil was crouching at the back window, peering out across the lawn. Astra’s fingers were gripping the sill. Over them she could see Ahn’s head, his blond hair luminous and floating in the trees. Hokma was striding across the lawn towards him, her bottom like two bronze orbs in the glow from the verandah nightlight. There was an unfamiliar thin dark line around her hips. Was Hokma wearing hipbeads?
‘As soon as she gets to the woods, we can leave,’ Lil instructed.
‘They’ll hear us. Let’s just stay here.’
‘Stay if you want, but if you do I’ll find Ahn tomorrow and tell him what I know.’
Even though there was zero chance of being seen inside Wise House, Lil crept to the verandah door, hunched close to the wall, like a Boundary constable. She opened the door a crack and slipped out. Astra had no choice but to follow.
Outside, Lil ducked right to avoid the pool of light spilling onto the lawn. Keeping low to the ground, Astra went left. She was going to do this her way.
They met at the edge of the wood. Moonlight speckled the leaves and it was just possible to make out the glimmering shapes of individual trees. Lil put her finger to her lips and pointed at the path to the flying field. If Hokma and Ahn had gone down it, they must be nearly at the gate by now.
Lil took the lead, Astra close behind as they passed the back of the Owleon aviary and penetrated the forest. If only she could somehow fly Silver to Hokma, send her a message. But what would she say? And she couldn’t stop, she had to keep close to Lil. The important thing was not to be heard. Not yet. It was impossible to move silently: twigs and leaves crunched underfoot and her breathing was a roar in her ears. But there were other noises in the forest too: distant screechings and abrupt scurryings, and everywhere the hushed sway of branches in the canopy. Surely Hokma and Ahn would be listening to each other. She had to reach them soon, before it was too late to interrupt.
The cedar hedge was towering ahead of them. There was the gate, a tall frame of silver bars. Between them, Astra could see Hokma and Ahn silhouetted in the moonlight flooding the field. They were standing up to their waists in the long grass, holding hands and stretching their arms up to the night sky. She moved back behind a pine trunk.
‘They go to the top of the field, by the juniper tree,’ Lil whispered. ‘I saw where the grass is all flattened.’
Lil hadn’t gone further than this before. Maybe they could still go back. ‘They’ll see us if we go through the gate,’ Astra objected. ‘It squeaks, and we’ll be right in the open. C’mon, Lil, we’ve seen them Gaiaworshipping. We can go back now.’ That was Plan A: to convince Lil to abandon the mission.
‘That was nothing. They’ll be doing way better stuff than that. I bet she hangs off the tree. There’s a hole in the hedge, further up, and then we can come up the dark side of the hill and watch from behind the rock pile.’
It was like being in Debating class. You had to reject everything your opponent said. ‘What if they go to the rocks too?’
‘We’ll see them coming. We’ll hide in the grass.’
‘What if they—?’
But Lil had set off up along the hedge. Astra kept pace. She was going too fast now to feel frightened.
‘Here,’ Lil hissed. At their feet, there was a small gap between the hedge and the soil. Astra knelt. The soil had been dug out as if by animals, perhaps dogs, years ago when Or was new and community mammals were still allowed. There was fine dry dirt in the air; it tickled her nostrils and she stifled a sneeze.
There had to be a way to talk Lil out of this. ‘It’s way too small for us,’ she claimed. ‘It’s for … I dunno … rats.’
Lil was on her knees, peering into the hole. ‘We’ll crawl on our bellies, like snakes,’ she crooned, placing her palms together and waving them about in the dirt.
‘We’ll get scratched,’ Astra insisted. ‘Then Hokma will know we were out.’
‘If we get scratched we can wear our housecoats in Wise House and our hydropacs outside. We can go for a walk in the morning and say it happened then.’
Lil threw herself down on the ground and began inching through the hole. Her head and her slim back disappeared, swallowed up by the hedge. Then her legs wriggled through, and finally the soles of her feet.
‘C’mon, Astra. It’s easy. I didn’t get scratched one bit.’ Lil’s whisper echoed back through the twiggy tunnel. ‘Okay. Maybe the tip of my left shoulder blade.’
There was no help for it. Astra lowered herself to the earth and entered the black bush.
She had to grab in the dark for roots and branches, drag her chin through the dirt and propel herself forward with her toes. Lil had lied, of course: the poky fingers of the hedge did carve into her back, and there was a rock in the dirt that scraped her chest until she stopped and reached beneath herself to dig it out. She was going to be grazed and bruised all over tomorrow. There was no way Hokma wouldn’t see the marks.
But once she had started, she had to continue. At last her head was out the other side and Lil was pulling at her armpits, tugging her through into the moonlit field.
‘My knee hurts,’ Astra scowled, fingering the tender spot. She was sure it was bleeding.
‘Oh, it’ll be all right. You’ll soon forget about it. Look—’
They were at the foot of the slow rise to the centre of the field. Astra followed Lil’s finger. She could see the solitary juniper, a writhing black mass sucking the moonlight out of the night air, and in front, their bodi
es barely visible against a smear of stars, Hokma and Ahn. They were embracing, their silhouette like a broken column, jagged at the top. Hokma’s head, Astra realised, was pressed against Ahn’s chest and his face was in her hair. Why was she doing that? She looked small in Ahn’s arms. But Hokma wasn’t small: she was a giant. Then, in a slow slithery motion, Ahn slid down Hokma’s body and began sucking one of her nipples. Hokma threw her head back to stare at the stars.
Astra had seen enough. She picked at a twig that had got caught between her foot and her sandal and threw it back under the hedge.
‘Wow.’ Lil exhaled. ‘We’re just in time.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Astra muttered. ‘Why is she letting him act like a baby?’
‘C’mon, let’s go to the rocks. They’ll be lying down soon.’ Lil was scrambling to her feet. Her back hunched, she sneaked left, along the edge of the field as it curved behind the tree. Astra watched her go, moonlight grazing her hair, her body flowing into the dark crescent of the slope.
She had tried everything, but Plan A had failed. Lil had left her no other choice. Astra got to her feet and crept after the small, intent figure, letting the gap between them widen until she could barely see the gleaming curve of Lil’s shoulders, the silver ghost of her hair. When Lil reached the path to the rocks, she looked back once, pointed into the field then turned and disappeared into the grass. Astra stopped and breathed in the dusty scent of soil and wild grains. Plan B depended on her and Lil not being together. She placed both palms on the earth. Please Gaia, help me protect your secret mysteries.
She continued to the path, and entered the field. Lil would be nearly at the rocks by now. She stood up and started running.
‘STOP, LIL, STOP,’ she yelled. ‘Hokma, Lil’s running away!’
* * *
‘Okay, girls. What was going on out there? One at a time. Astra, you first.’
Hokma and Ahn were sitting on one sofa, Astra and Lil on the other. There were four mugs of hot barley oatmilk with honey on the table. Lil was scrunched up against the sofa arm, refusing to look at anyone; Astra was perched on the edge of her cushion. Hokma was unsmiling, but Ahn was regarding her and Lil with an almost amused expression. Astra didn’t like his look at all. Why did he think this was funny?
