The Reject. Edyth Bulbring

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      THE REJECT

      Edyth Bulbring

      Tafelberg

      For Julia, wonderful Savage

PART ONE

      1

      THE MESSAGE

      The bird swoops over me, her outstretched claws skimming my head. She pelts the deck of the seacraft with scat, then shoots into the sky. I watch her fade to a speck until my eyes become a blizzard of spots.

      Princess Fanny visits me every afternoon. Some days, like today, the hadeda taunts me. Other times, she brings me news. The last time she told me, crowing with glee, that the state of Mangeria and its Locusts had cornered the rebel Savages. They were packed like rats in the underground sewers of Posh City, starving as supplies ran out. Their only source of water the putrid liquid dripping from the pipes.

      “They will all go to Savage City.” The teller tapped her beak on the deck to mark time. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Mucus leaked from her scarred eyes as she glared in my direction.

      I spat at the bird. She was saying it to torment me.

      The rebels are led by my father, Handler Xavier, and Kitty, my best friend from the orphanage. I look across the ocean to the shores of Mangeria. Slum City is burning, the fires grow every day. The rebels will fight to the bloody end – they will never be taken alive. They know what capture and a sentence to Savage City prison means: torture and then slow death from heat and starvation. Freedom or death!

      I hear a shuffle of footsteps on the deck. “What news from the bird, my beauty? Has the time come for us to leave?”

      I am not alone on the seacraft. Reader, the blind past trader who taught me my letters as a child, is my only companion. He bribed his way onto the craft with a suitcase full of books that would teach me how to sail. But only Reader knows how to read the dots. When I have learnt his blind language, I will turf him overboard and push his head beneath the water. Hold it down.

      “There’s no news, old man. Stop asking.”

      Reader arches his neck and sniffs. “I smell moisture in the air. Tell me what the sky looks like.”

      I peer up. The sun is a smear of pus against the dark sky. It is cloaked in black clouds.

      “There’s not much to see. The sky is full of smoke. And the sun is very faint,” I tell him.

      “The smoke is deceiving us. Rain clouds are lurking. We cannot wait much longer, faithful Juliet. The season has turned and the seas are perilous when the storms come.”

      “Hold your tongue. I’ve told you: I won’t leave until I have news. Go back to your berth. You disturb my peace with your prattle.”

      The old man chuckles. “Oh, my beautiful Juliet. You have no peace for me to disturb. I hear you at night when you cry out in your sleep. It shreds my dreams.” He stretches out his hand.

      I turn away. Nothing can comfort me.

      My beloved Nicolas and I were supposed to run away across the sea to discover what lay beyond. We tricked The Machine and killed the marks on our spines. But instead of sailing away together, I took our seacraft and left him behind.

      I was faced with an impossible choice: My half-sister, Larissa, was dying and Mistress, the woman I recently discovered to be my mother, wanted me to save her. But to do this, I would have had to betray Nicolas by telling Mistress where he was. Nicolas’s father, the Guardian of Justice and Peace, believed the rebels had taken his son hostage – until Nicolas was returned to him, the Guardian refused to let Larissa have the procedure that would save her life.

      Unable to make a choice between Nicolas and Larissa, I have waited for fate to decide. Until I know whether Nicolas is back with his father, or that the Guardian has relented and allowed Larissa’s procedure to take place, I cannot leave these shores.

      Reader sighs. “While we linger, let me read to you from one of my books. You are slow to learn my blind language and there is much you need to know. You have mastered the sails and the tiller, but you have not learnt how the sun and stars can guide us. I have an excellent book in my collection about how Polynesian sailors from the old world navigated the seas without instruments by observing the sky and the swell of the waves.”

      He gives a sly smile, his toothless gums as pink as a baby’s. He knows that for as long as he is useful to me, he has a place on board. He is old and past his time, but he is still cunning.

      During the past three months, while I have waited for news from the bird, we have sailed out of sight of the coastline during the day, dropping anchor close to shore only at night. We are careful to keep out of sight of the Locusts. I have become skilled at raising and lowering the sails; I have learnt how to helm, and how to lash the wheel to hold the boat steady while I sleep, but I am still battling to read the skies.

      As Reader fumbles his way across the deck and disappears into his berth below, I hear the cry of the teller again. She has come back to provoke me. Princess Fanny spins wildly around the mast and suddenly dips towards the seacraft, crash-landing onto the deck.

      She is not a beautiful bird. Not anything like the pictures I’ve seen of other birds in books Reader has lent me over the years. But now Princess Fanny looks more hideous than usual. Her feathers are covered in oil and her talons are stained with blood. She pulls herself across the deck, dragging a ragged wing behind her.

      I give her some water – she is no use to me dead. The bird drinks, and dunks her head into the bowl. She searches her feathers. She finds a fat louse and crunches it in her razor-sharp beak.

      “Do I have to wring your scrawny neck to make you speak? Tell me about Larissa and Nicolas. And don’t lie to me.”

      She scowls at me with scarred eyes. The Muti Nags who make magic in Slum City blind the chicks when they hatch so they have sight of the future. The tellers are unable to lie. But I do not trust this ugly bird. Her loyalty is tied to Larissa.

      Larissa found Princess Fanny as a chick and promised she would never blind her, but gouged out her beloved bird’s eyes when she thought the rebels had kidnapped me, the drudge carer she had grown to love. She wanted the blind teller to help her find me.

      The bird has not forgotten my part in this betrayal.

      Princess Fanny’s voice is hoarse. “Your sister will have her procedure tonight. The Guardian of Justice and Peace has given his blessing. They have found a Savage girl who is a perfect match. My Little Miss will be well again.” She empties her bowels on the deck and utters a strangled howl.

      A slab of concrete lifts off my chest. Larissa will live!

      And after the procedure, the Savage donor will die. Tomorrow, some mother and father will wake up in Slum City to the news that their daughter has been sacrificed to make a Mangerian miss well again. The girl is probably a drudge like me. Someone of no value.

      “And Nicolas? Is he alive? Is he still free? Tell me.”

      The teller stares blindly across the water. “Nicolas is alive.” She probes her bloody talons with her beak, picking, then spitting out bits of flesh. She senses how much news of Nicolas means to me.

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