Ursa Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Praise

  Logo

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “An inferior people, that’s what the Director called us at the beginning of his reign, but still useful.”

  There are two peoples living in the city of Ursa: the Cerels and the Travesters. Travesters move freely and enjoy a fine quality of life. Cerel men are kept in wild camps and the women are no longer allowed to have children. The Director presides over all with an iron fist.

  Fifteen-year-old Leho can’t remember a time when Cerels lived without fear in Ursa. His parents once tried to organise an uprising – his mother was blinded, and his father was taken away. But now his world is changing. Revolution is coming. People will die. Will Leho be able to save his family?

  “A chilling exploration of totalitarianism, Ursa is also a salient warning about the consequences of segregating and demonising a whole section of society. Thought-provoking and disturbing, it challenges each of us to stand up for the protection of universal human rights.”

  MANDY HAGER, author of the award-winning Singing Home the Whale and Dear Vincent

  “Tina Shaw has captured a teen’s desperation as he walks a sharp wire between taking action or protecting his family caught in a city undergoing ethnic cleansing. Leho’s trepidation, his love and his yearning are so intense you’ll be hooked. The strange setting contains references to our past and our future with the movement of people due to climate problems, the methods of dehumanisation used by the dictator and the way the dominant population stays oblivious to what is right under their noses as they sail about in airships and elaborate fashions.”

  CALLY BLACK, author of the award-winning In the Dark Spaces

  “A masterfully crafted tale of resistance and rebellion, set against a hauntingly familiar political landscape. Tina Shaw holds you spellbound as family, friendship and first love defy an oppressive regime. Ursa takes you gently, yet irresistibly, by the heart then squeezes until you are gasping for breath.”

  RACHAEL CRAW, author of the award-winning Spark series and The Rift

  1

  They’re burning books again in Hubert Square. Black Marks, tossing books onto the bonfire like it’s a birthday party. Me and my friend Bit, we’re crouched watching from a shadowy corner. Bit’s at my shoulder, like he always is, not wanting to put himself forwards, though his face is shiny with excitement, his orangey eyebrows gleaming. Me, I’m shivering with cold, being so thin – like a stoat, says Nanna – though we can feel the heat on our faces from the fire even from here.

  The library, with its fancy marble walkways and impressive steps, is glowing orange, like the stone itself is on fire. Even the stiff stone figures standing grim as ever along the top of the building – the city fathers and mothers – seem to flicker into life in the light of those high-reaching flames.

  The books are burning so fiercely!

  Though I already know that, from the books we burn in the stove when there’s no wood to be had. Books burn good and fierce, but they burn too fast. Pretty soon all you have is a pile of black ashes. It’s kind of funny: the Black Marks burn books because they hate them. Cerels burn books to keep warm.

  Either way, they’re banned now, the books.

  First they closed the libraries. Now they’re being cleared out. It’s all by the Director’s say-so. His so-called “edicts” that come to us by way of roughly printed leaflets that the Black Marks stick up all round the place. I still remember going to the library, when I was a wee sprat. The libraries that were once open to all peoples, Cerels included, but they’ve been closed for years. Now that gracious stone building in front of us will be used for Travester activities, whatever that means. Parties, probably.

  “Leho, is it time?” Bit hisses in my ear.

  “Soon,” I hiss back at him. The longer I can put it off the better. It’s reckless, I know, and I don’t want to think about what it’d do to Ma – or the others – if I got caught, but sometimes you just have to do a thing.

  They dump another cartload of books out the library doors, like tossing a body down the steps towards the fire. Three Black Marks, who must be sweating in their heavy woollen tunics, scoop up armfuls and heft them into the flames. Sparks fly up into the dark. A senior Black Mark, the bear insignia pinned to his collar, is standing off to one side with folded arms, supervising. Miniature twin fires are reflected in his eye goggles. The sight makes me shiver, and I move backwards deeper into the shadows, my back pressing against Bit’s knees. It’s curfew, as usual, but we’ve come out anyway, like I do most nights.

  Not that I’ve been caught – yet. The city’s like a map I’ve drawn myself. Certainly the Cerel part of it: the ghettos where we live. I can run and slink through the city, avoiding unwelcome attention. I know the alleyways and sewers and secret passageways through the city, the kinds of places the Black Marks don’t use. I’m thin enough to squeeze through a bathroom window, or through a stormwater grating, or shimmy up spouting. The Black Marks call the city of Ursa their own, but it also belongs to me and my friends.

  Bit shuffles uneasily behind me. “I don’t like waiting so long.”

  “All right,” I tell him, ready to go anyway.

  From the cloth bag over my shoulder I pull out one of the devices, feeling the weight of it in my hand, and pass it to Bit, then I get one for myself. My hands are shaking. Not as brave as I let on, eh. “On the count of three,” I whisper, hoping that my throw will be true.

  Bit nods, and his thin face is solemn. This is his first time out and I’m not sure if he’s loving or hating it. Bit’s the pacifist in this relationship.

  “Toss yours over to the left, at the fire.”

  “Where are you throwing yours?” Bit asks in a low voice.

  “You’ll see.” I take a deep breath and risk standing up, my gaze fixed on the hated officer. Then I call softly, out loud: “One, two, three!”

  I lob the device at the man in the goggles, dimly aware of Bit’s throw from beside me. We crouch down again immediately, wild animals watching their prey. The device smashes at the man’s feet and explodes. He falls back with a shout. It’s brilliant.

  “Take that, you bastard,” I mutter, though my voice trembles.

  An explosion comes from the fire – a great gout of flames leaps towards the stone figures on the building – and pandemonium is loosed. Shouts ring out. Books clatter freely down the steps. Men scatter.

  And I yell, “Run!”

  * * *

  It’s late by the time I get back to the ghetto, but I know my mother, Freya, will still be awake. She spends most of the night pacing her cell-like room in our area at the back of the building. I see the weak glow of the lantern Nanna leaves in her room as I go down the corridor off the kitchen.

  “My son, where are you? Let me see you–”

  Ma reaches out her hand to me, still skulking at the edge of the room. I always notice when she uses the word “see”, even though she’s blind. Her milky-white eyes turn at the slight rasp of my breathing.

  “Leho,” she says softly, coaxing me forwards no
w, like I’m still a little kid and not turned fifteen last solstice. “Come closer, so I can touch you.”

  My hand, holding the stump of a candle in a dish, shakes a little. I never know when she might pick up more than I want her to. Things go on in the night that I don’t always want to share with my mother. It’s those damaged eyes, I don’t know what’s going on behind them, and that scarred face. Silly and weak to be nervous of my own mother, I know, but I can’t help it. I still remember what her eyes used to look like – as blue as the Gola Lake in high summer. Yet when she touches my arm or hand, she’s still got that second sense that a mother seems to have, and sometimes I like to keep my secrets close. In any case, I step a little nearer.

  “Son,” my mother croons, “what have you brought me?”

  She chooses to live like a prisoner in this room deep in the heart of the tenement building. We have a few rooms on the second floor. A shuttered window overlooking the inner courtyard lets in a little sunlight (her eyes hurt if there is too much light); she wants only a bed, and in winter, a fire. My mother is sitting now in her spindle chair, cane propped nearby. Her long wavy hair, dark like all of us Cerels, is loose over her shoulders. Her face is turned towards me, and I step forwards quickly before she can call for me again.

  Her hand is dry and warm when I put my own cold mitt into it. Then I put the candle dish on the floor and fish out the gift from a pocket of the oversized jacket I always wear. Mostly I visit her in the night if I’ve found something; otherwise I see her at mealtimes in the kitchen off the end of the corridor.

  Ma holds out her hand, palm up. An expectant smile plays on her lips, tugging at the tear-like scars that run down her pale cheeks. And truth be told, I’ve brought the gift to see that smile. Placing the object in her palm, I watch her hands. She turns the object, viewing it from all angles with her fingertips. Then her smile broadens and she looks young again, like when I was a kid and would make her laugh with some silly antic.

  “Ah,” she sighs.

  Yep, it’s worth it for this moment. I took a big risk to get the button, but now the risk has paid off. A polished metal button from the uniform of a grunt – one of the junior Black Marks – with the outline of a bear impressed into its centre.

  Smiling all the while, my mother holds the button to her fine-boned nose and inhales, and I imagine the scent of my pocket lining, with all the little things that go in and out of that: the scent of the streets. She presses the ball of her thumb against that outline of the bear. The symbol we all know so well, the symbol that has oppressed us for years.

  “Leho, however did you get it?”

  I can’t help the feeling of pride and satisfaction, the daring of it, as I sit on her bed and lean forwards, readying in my mind how to tell the story to capture her imagination. “I crept into their barracks–” I begin, the way Jorzy starts his stories, slow at first, inching it out.

  “Which one?” Ma always wants to know every detail.

  “The small one on Miter Street,” I tell her, and wait till she nods before I continue. “They were outside on drill duty, dawn.”

  “Wet? Dry?”

  “The cobbles were dry.” Again Ma nods, remembering her city. “The side door, down the alley, where they put their rubbish, was open.” She is breathing through her mouth, and I know she’s seeing it, seeing me creep past the battered grey bins crammed full of stinking Black Mark rubbish. “So I went in. There was a jacket, hung on a chair.”

  “What kind of room?” She frowns. I’m not all that good at describing places for her, but I try.

  “To the left of the doorway, a kitchen area. Table. A copper urn in the fireplace. Water was heating. I didn’t have much time. Beds were lined up on either side of the room. The glass windows were painted grey, so you can’t see in.”

  “Or out,” she comments, satisfied. Like some other Cerels, she believes the grunts are the most abused, the most oblivious of the Black Marks, the ones who are deliberately kept ignorant.

  “At the table, thirteen chairs.”

  “An unlucky number,” my canny mother says smugly.

  “The jacket was on the chair closest to the door. I slipped off the top button with my knife.”

  Ma leans her head back then, and laughs softly. “Ah, you have done well, my son.” She reaches out for my hand, and presses the button into my palm. “Put it with the other things,” she whispers. It’s our secret: all the things I’ve brought back for her, often illegal, things that I should never have laid hands on in the first place, let alone kept.

  As my mother is an enemy of the Director who has been allowed to live, an unexpected visit from the Black Marks is always possible. If men burst into her tenement room and find her treasures – any one of which could incriminate her and the whole family – it would go badly. For just this one button, she could be extinguished, as if she had never lived. And then they would hunt down the rest of the family. Guilt by association. It’s why she wants to stay indoors and not be seen, to protect the rest of us. She told me once they have long memories, the Black Marks. Though it doesn’t stop her from dictating pamphlets encouraging people to stand up to the Director. I hear her voice sometimes late at night, and the quiet step in the corridor as her trusted but anonymous friend leaves the building.

  Opening my special pocketknife, the one that was Papa’s, I lever out the single brick in the wall opposite the window. It’s a loose brick of many such others, in the far right-hand corner. Times like this, it’s useful we live in a tenement, a broken-down building. The brick doesn’t stand out. Though not completely safe, it is safe enough. I pull out the old tin cigar box that belonged to my grandfather from the hole, and place the button inside, along with all the other small gifts I’ve brought her.

  Ma raises her chin. “No more risks, Leho.” I pause and scan her face for clues. Is there something she isn’t telling me? Maybe an intuition of bad things to come? “I do not want you to be in danger for my sake.” I realise it’s just a mother’s fear. I lift her right hand to my cheek, and nod my agreement. I’ll try, at least, to keep safe. Though the fingers of my other hand are crossed behind my back.

  * * *

  The next day, me and Bit are wandering the streets. The voice booms out from a loud hailer attached to a lamp post – a disembodied voice that may or may not be the Director’s. Bit stops in his tracks. We are both scruffy and grimy around the edges, in patched clothes and scuffed boots. I push back the lanky dark hair that keeps falling in my face. I could chop it off, but I like hiding the high forehead that people say is like my father’s.

  “Cerels,” the voice shouts, “you are not to congregate in public places, you are not to use Travester shops–” The broadcast carries on, blah blah blah, with the usual reminders of what we are and aren’t supposed to do.

  “Come on,” Bit urges, running a hand through his dark orangey hair.

  It’s not good to hang around like this. Somebody might notice and report you. A bored Black Mark, walking past, might knock your head in. Yet I’m transfixed when the broadcasts start up; it’s like being hypnotised. What will they say next?

  “Cerels, you are of inferior blood, you must not taint those of superior breeding by mingling with them …”

  An inferior people, that’s what the Director called us at the beginning of his reign, but still useful – for keeping the factories going and doing all the dirty jobs that the Travesters don’t want to do, like emptying latrines and cleaning out drains. Long ago, the Cerels were nomadic, before settling down in Ursa, and sometime later the Travesters arrived in greater numbers and took control of the area. How does that make them better? As for being Cerel, it’s no fun being a second-rate person. Pigs are treated better.

  I can feel the heat rising into my face. “I hate them,” I spit out.

  “Shut up,” says Bit. We’re in public: anybody might hear. It’s enough to get you killed. I don’t care so much, but Bit is nervous about such things. He’s always been a scar
edy-cat, jumping at his own shadow. We’ve known each other forever, and I’m the one who wants to have adventures, to roam the city at night while he stays at home with his mother. Maybe it’s a country thing. After all, he’s not a native to Ursa.

  We set off again, and I’m shaking my head as if to slough off the broadcast. If I could live anywhere else, even some godsforsaken dump at the edge of the known world, I would.

  Bit has to get some greens from the market, so I head home.

  I always approach our building with care, glancing behind to see if I’m being followed or watched. There is a thin door, unpainted, between two tall buildings, and that’s all. It’s a door the Black Marks walk past every day. I suppose they know about the tenements – how can they not? – and they obviously know about the Cerel population within the city, but what isn’t obvious or flaunted, they tend to leave alone. Mostly. Even that you can’t predict or take for granted. Like an adder, the Black Marks can strike at any time.

  I hang about in a nearby doorway and check the street both ways, pushing my cap down low over my eyebrows as a pair of Black Marks in their belted and buttoned uniforms march past, their attention on a Cerel cart up ahead that’s hit a rut in the street and lost half its load of cabbages. Quickly, I make for the door, shove it open and duck inside. I relax now, sauntering along the narrow, dark and smelly corridor that runs between the two buildings, gliding my fingers along a wall of sandy brick. Echoes of sounds reach me from above, although there are no windows that open onto this passageway. It’s like a tunnel, with a streak of sky at the top. Then I reach what would appear to a stranger to be a dead end. It was once a throughway to the next street, but it’s bricked up these days. Lifting up the manhole cover, I lower myself inside before pulling the cover back, my boots ringing on the metal ladder in the wall. It’s our hidden entrance, a secret way into the basement of the building.

  Through the ruined basement – too ruined even for us Cerels to use, all broken bricks and piles of rubble – and I clatter up a flight of steps. Then I make my way along the ground-floor corridor, past the doors of small apartments in various states of disrepair, but habitable. The building is like a rabbit warren, and full of Cerels. I pause to poke my head out the doorway that opens onto the inner courtyard with the veggie gardens, and look up at five storeys of blank windows, some of them broken and patched.