C Fletcher - A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

My name is Isabel. My mother used to tell me it was a pretty name. She said it was her mother’s name. And yes, Isabel turned to Grizabel in my father’s mouth when I was too small to walk even, and then it got shortened to Griz—and now you know my fancier name, the one that doesn’t fit me at all.

What I didn’t know, although I suspected it, was that it was Joy who had stolen my book.

I told you stories saved me. This one did. Because she read it. And like a magic spell or a prayer—all the right words in the right order—that changed everything. Or maybe it was a curse. Maybe a curse is sometimes just a desperate prayer seen from the wrong end.

There was—after all—a death to come.

But first there was a noise outside my window. Two days after the book had gone, I had put all my energy and despair into scraping away at the mortar around the block in the wall beneath my bed.

I had scraped and scraped and gouged and hacked and swore until my hands hurt and my back felt like it was never going to unbend and be straight again. And then as I was hunched on my side in the tight space beneath the bed, my ears caught a noise and I stopped.

I heard nothing else, but the nothing that it was sounded dangerously like someone else being very still and listening right back. For me. So I rolled quietly out from under the bed and lay on my back in the middle of the floor and looked up through the darkness at the moonlight slanting in through the barred window.

Are you sick? a voice said.

Joy’s voice—but very different to the last time I heard it spitting at me.

I stopped breathing, not consciously, but as if my body had just forgotten it was necessary. I was trying to work out what it was that had changed in her tone.

Yes, I said. Sick of being in here. But no. I haven’t got a disease.

Good, she said. Because I’m not wearing their bloody mask.

An arm reached out and then her hand—the scarred one—hooked one of the bars and then her face swung into the window, cutting out half the moonlight. And there she was. Looking down at me.

To me, in that moment, she was a wonder. She looked like I did, I realised. And she looked like Mum. And she wore her hair like Bar’s. I don’t know if it was because I was starved of them or just starved of any people to look at, but I stared at her for a long time just drinking in both the strangeness and the familiarity of her.

Joy, I said, sitting up.

Mum’s not dead, she said.

No, I said carefully. No—she’s not. She doesn’t talk though. But she still smiles and her hand is still her hand and she likes us to sit and hold it with her.

I was slowly getting to my feet—moving deliberately carefully so as not to spook her into leaving.

She won’t like my hand, she said, a catch in her voice. It’s just an ugly claw now.

I reached up and put my own hand on it. She flinched and tried to pull it away. I didn’t let her. I gripped it. There were scar ridges but it just felt warm and normal. Like a hand should.

Brand told me how it happened, I said. I’m so sorry. And I’m so happy that—

I know, she said. I read your story.

And then there was nothing to say, because there was suddenly too much to say so we just stood looking at each other. After a bit, she relaxed and stopped trying to pull her hand free. She looked away from me, up at the moon. Her voice was raw but steady. Only the pale moonlight betrayed the wetness streaking down her cheek.

She took a deep breath.

They told me she was dead, she said. They told me and I saw her lying on the ground. And then I fainted or they did something to me because the next thing I remember is that it was night, or maybe two or three nights, and when it was day I didn’t recognise any of the land we were passing. They told me I had been traded and that Dad had done the deal, that Mum had had second thoughts and chased after me and fell and they hadn’t hurt her, not like I thought they had.

And you believed them, I said.

Not at first, she said. But when Dad and Ferg and Bar didn’t come after me, the only reason I could think of was that they were telling the truth.

I’m sorry you lost your baby, I said.

Yes, she said. Yes, I am too, though I didn’t want him to start with. And then when he was born the way he was, a poor little blue shred of a thing, I thought he looked like a doll no one could have loved except me and I was sadder than you could ever imagine.

He was a boy, I said.

Ellis told me it was not as big a loss as if it had been a girl, she said. They want more breeders. Not more boys. That’s why Ellis is so excited that you’re here.

Ellis, I said. He’s…

Yes, she said. All the bad things you’re thinking? He’s them and more. And the way he looks at me it’s like he knows.

Knows what? I said

That I’m going to kill him, she said. I’ve always meant to. Now I have to.

I’d spent most of my life—ever since that worst day—thinking of her as a little girl. That difference in her voice? She sounded like Bar. Or like Bar would have sounded if she’d ever felt the need to be dangerous and protective. That was my big sister talking.

You don’t, I said. Can you get me out of here?

No, she said. I mean I can open the barred gate at the end of the hall, but there are no keys to your door. Ellis is going to take a sledgehammer and knock a hole in the wall when it’s time to get you out.

But I’ve nearly done it, I said. The excitement made my voice catch. Joy, I said. I’ve nearly done it. I’ve scraped out a big block under the bed. I just need a couple of hits with a hammer to get it moving back out of the way and I can crawl through.

They’ll hear a sledgehammer, she said. Sound carries. But I know what you can do.

Her voice had caught my excitement.

Whatever I can do, it’s “we”, I said. Or I’m not doing it.

What do you mean? she said.

I mean I’m not doing anything, I said. I’m not doing anything on my own. Maybe never again. But definitely not this. We’re doing it. Us.

What? she said.

You know what, I said.

We’re going home.

Her idea was better than a sledgehammer. It was a jack. The kind you would have put under heavy things like cars to lift them by cranking a handle. She went away for a bit and came back with one that she handed through the bars. She passed in another length of pipe like the one they used to bring the water to me.

Here’s what you do, she said.

I got it, I said. Good plan. Brilliant really.

She smiled.

Hard to believe, she said. But you’re really nearly as old as me, aren’t you?

Yes, I said.

Right, she said. Ellis has forbidden me to come near this place. But if the jack works, call for the dogs when I walk past in the morning. I’ll whistle for them so you’ll know to look. If it doesn’t work? Don’t call out for them and we’ll have to think of something else.

What are we going to do if we do get me out? I said.

Well, she said. For a long time I thought about locking them in their church one day and burning it down. But that seems a little too much. They’re not even really bad people. Not without Ellis. They’re just easily led. They like the god stuff. It makes them feel special, and it makes them feel less lonely about having been left behind at the end of things, the way we have been. I think Ellis knows the god stuff is not real. Or not real for him. But it was a good way to tell a story they could all agree to, that put him at the top of the pile. That made breeders seem like a good idea. Like it was god’s work, so if it felt a little not quite human, that was the reason.

We’re not burning them alive in their church, I said.

No, she said. And her eyes went away for a moment, like she didn’t want me to see what she was thinking. No. We won’t do that. But we’ll have to stop them following us.